Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895 – 1986) was an Indian philosopher, speaker and writer. As a young man he renounced the role bestowed on him as a world teacher, as he did not wish to belong to any organization of a spiritual kind or have any allegiance to any nationality, caste, religion, or philosophy. He spent the rest of his life travelling the world, speaking to large and small groups and individuals about his own insights into the human mind. He wrote many books, among them The First and Last Freedom, The Awakening of Intelligence, and Krishnamurti’s Notebook. Many of his talks and discussions have been published as well. Krishnamurti also founded several schools around the world based on his views on education.
Quotes by Jiddu Krishnamurti…
There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning.
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
There is no path to truth. Truth must be discovered, but there is no formula for its discovery. What is formulated is not true. You must set out on the uncharted sea, and the uncharted sea is yourself. You must set out to discover yourself, but not according to any plan or pattern, for then there is no discovery.
If we do depend on others psychologically, we become secondhand people; which we are. The whole history of mankind is in us… and we don’t know how to read that… You’re not the reader… you are the book. When you read the book as a reader it has no meaning. But if you are the book, and the book is telling you; showing you the story, then you’ll not depend on a single person. Then one will be a light to one’s self.
To be united with the Beloved is to love all, for in all dwelleth the Beloved.
True education is to learn how to think, not what to think. If you know how to think, if you really have that capacity, then you are a free human being — free of dogmas, superstitions, ceremonies — and therefore you can find out what religion is.
It is only a religious mind, a mind that is enquiring into itself, that is aware of its own movements, its own activity, which is the beginning of self-knowledge — it is only such a mind that is a revolutionary mind. And a revolutionary mind is a mutating mind is the religious mind.
In the fear of life, the temptation of sorrow is created.
As one beholds through a small window
A single green leaf,
a small patch of the vast blue sky,
So I began to perceive Thee,
in the beginning of All things.
As the leaf faded and withered,
the patch covered as with a Dark cloud,
So didst Thou fade and vanish,
But to be reborn again,
As the single green leaf,
as the small patch of the blue sky.
For many lives have I seen the bleak winter and the Green spring.
Prisoned in my little room,
I could not behold the entire tree nor the whole sky.
I swore there was no tree nor the vast sky — That was the truth.
Through time and destruction My window grew large.
I beheld, Now,
A branch with many leaves,
And a greater patch of the blue, with many clouds.
I forgot the single green leaf,
the small patch of the vast blue.
I swore there was no tree, nor the immense sky — That was the truth.
Weary of this prison,
This small cell, I raged at my window.
With bleeding fingers I tore away brick after brick,
I beheld, Now,
The entire tree, its great trunk,
Its many branches, and its thousand leaves,
And an immense part of the sky.
I swore there was no other tree,
no other part to the sky — That was the truth.
This prison no longer holds me, I flew away through the window,
O friend, I behold every tree and the vast expanse of the limitless sky.
Though I live in every single leaf and in every small
Patch of the vast blue sky,
Though I live in every prison,
looking out through every small casement, Liberated am I.
Lo! not a thing shall bind me — This is the truth.
Silence cannot be purchased but comes when the mind is no longer seeking, caught in the process of becoming.