What is pleasure?

What is pleasure? To possess a beautiful car! Or have lovely 12th century furniture; to polish it, to look at it, to evaluate. There is a
furniture in England, in a particular room, it's about l6th, l5th century. And one
has paid a great deal of money for it. And it gives you, watching it, great pleasure. Then you identify yourself with that furniture. Then you
become the furniture, because whatever you identify yourself with, you are that. It
may be an image, it may be a piece of furniture, it may be a man, woman, or it may be some idea, some conclusion, some ideology. And all the
identification with something greater or something which is convenient, satisfying, doesn't give you too much discomfort, that brings us a
great deal of pleasure.

And pleasure goes with fear. I don't know if you have watched it. It's the other side of the coin. But we don't want to look at the other side.
But we say to ourselves, pleasure is the most important thing, either through drugs, which is now becoming more and more in this country - opium,
cocaine, alcohol. You know all that, what is happening in the world, especially in
this country, which breeds certain irresponsibility, gives you for the moment certain elan, energy, quietens the brain probably and dulls the
brain, and ultimately destroys human beings. You have seen all this on television. If you haven't seen all this, you know of somebody and so
on. We start with pleasure, and end up in ruination. And pleasure of possessing
something, the woman or the man; pleasure of power - you understand - over somebody, maybe over your servants , if you have domestic help, over
that person, or your wife or husband or something or other, we want power. Right?
Let's be quite honest about all this. We admire power, we extol power, we idolize power. Right? Whether it is spiritual power of the religious
hierarchy, or the power of a politician, power of money. To the speaker power is evil. That's why followers are those who want power through
knowledge, through enlightenment, you know all that rot they talk about. Not that there is not enlightenment, but not the stupid nonsense that they
talk about.

J. Krishnamurti
Ojai 3rd Public Talk 18th May 1985

On Meditation

Meditation is not an escape from the world; it is not an isolating
self-enclosing activity, but rather the comprehension of the world and
its ways. The world has little to offer apart from food and clothes
and shelter, and pleasure with its great sorrows.
Meditation is a wandering away from this world; one has to be a total
outsider. Then the world has a meaning, and the beauty of the heavens
and the earth is constant. Then love is not pleasure. From this all
action begins that is not the outcome of tension, contradiction, the
search for self-fulfilment or the conceit of power.
What is important in meditation is the quality of the mind and the
heart. It is not what you achieve, or what you say you attain, but
rather the quality of the mind that is innocent and vulnerable.
Through negation there is the positive state. Merely to gather, or to
live in experience, denies the purity of meditation. Meditation is not
a means to an end. It is both the means and the end. The mind can
never be made innocent through experience. It is the negation of
experience that brings about the positive state of innocency which
cannot be cultivated by thought. Thought is never innocent. Meditation
is the ending of thought, not by the meditator, for the meditator is
the meditation. If there is no meditation then you are like the blind
man in a world of great beauty, light and colour.
Wander by the sea-shore and let this meditative quality come upon you.
If it does, don´t pursue it. What you pursue will be the memory of
what it was – and what was is the death of what is. Or when you wander
among the hills, let everything tell you the beauty and the pain of
life, so that you awaken to your own sorrow and the ending of it.
Meditation is the root, the plant, the flower and the fruit. It is
words that divide the fruit, the flower, the plant and the root.In
this separation action does not bring about goodness; virtue is the
total perception. Meditation is not the repetition of the word, nor
the experiencing of a vision, nor the cultivating of silence. The
beads and the word do quieten the chattering mind, but this is a form
of self-hypnosis. You might as well take a pill.
Meditation is not wrapping yourself in a pattern of thought, in the
enchantment of pleasure. Meditation has no beginning and therefore has
no end. Meditation is not the pursuit of an invisible path leading to
some imagined bliss. The meditative mind is seeing, watching,
listening, without the word, without comment, without opinion –
attentive to the movement of life in all its relationships throughout
the day. As the mind watches, listens to the movements of life, the
outer and the inner, to such a mind comes a silence that is not put
together by thought.
It is not a silence that the observer can experience. If he does
experience it and recognise it, it is no longer silence. The silence
of the meditative mind is not within the borders of recognition, for
this silence has no frontier. There is only silence – in which the
space of division ceases.
Meditation is the unfolding of the new. The new is beyond and above
the repetitious past – and meditation is the ending of this
repetition. The death that meditation brings about is the immortality
of the new. The new is not within the area of thought, and meditation
is the silence of thought.
Meditation is not an achievement, nor is it the capture of a vision,
nor the excitement of sensation. It is like the river, not to be
tamed, swiftly running and overflowing its banks. It is the music
without sound; it cannot be domesticated and made use of. It is the
silence in which the observer has ceased from the very beginning.


The mind freeing itself from the known is meditation. Meditation is
the total denial of everything that the mind has accumulated. The
known is the observer, and the observer sees only through the known.
The image is of the past, and meditation is the ending of the past. It
is only when the mind transcends time that truth ceases to be an
abstraction. Then bliss is not an idea derived from pleasure but an
actuality that is not verbal.

Thought cannot conceive or formulate to itself the nature of space.
Whatever it formulates has within it the limitation of its own
boundaries. This is not the space which meditation comes upon. Thought
has always a horizon. The meditative mind has no horizon. The mind
cannot go from the limited to the immense, nor cannot it transform the
limited into the limitless. The one has to cease for the other to be.
Meditation is opening the door into spaciousness which cannot be
imagined or speculated upon. Thought is the centre around which there
is the space of an idea and this space can be expanded by further
ideas. But such expansion by stimulation of any form is not the
spaciousness in which there is no centre. Meditation is the
understanding of this centre and so going beyond it. Silence and
spaciousness go together. The immensity of silence is the immensity of
the mind in which a centre does not exist. The perception of this
space and the silence is not of thought. Thought can perceive only its
own projection, and the recognition of it is its own frontier.
Meditation is hard work. It demands the highest form of discipline –
not conformity, not imitation, not obedience, but a discipline which
comes through constant awareness, not only of the things about you
outwardly, but also inwardly. So meditation is not an activity of
isolation but action in everyday life which demands cooperation,
sensitivity and intelligence. Without laying the foundation of a
righteous life meditation becomes an escape and therefore has no value
whatsoever. A righteous life is not the following of social morality,
but the freedom from envy, greed and the search for power – which all
breed enmity. The freedom from these does not come through the
activityof will but through being aware of them through self-knowing.
Without knowing the activities of the self, meditation becomes
sensuous excitement and therefore of very little significance.
Meditation is the emptying of experience and is going on all the time,
consciously or unconsciously, so it is not an action limited to a
certain period during the day. It is a continuous action from morning
till night – the watching without the watcher. Therefore there is no
division between the daily life and meditation, the religious life and
the secular life. The division comes only when the watcher is tied to
time. In this division there is disarray, misery and confusion, which
is the state of society. So meditation is not individualistic, nor is
it social; it transcends both and so includes both. This is love; the
flowering of love is meditation.
Meditation is a movement in stillness. Silence of the mind is the way
of action. Action born of thought is inaction, which breeds disorder.
The silence is not the product of thought, nor is it the ending of the
chattering of the mind. A still mind is possible only when the brain
itself is quiet. The brain cells – which have been conditioned for so
long to react, to project, to defend, to assert – become quiet only
through the seeing of what actually is. From this silence, action
which does not bring about disorder is possible only when the
observer, the centre, the experiencer has come to an end – for then
the seeing is the doing. Seeing is possible only out of a silence in
which all evaluation and moral values have come to an end.
Intelligence is not discernment and judgement, or critical evaluation.
Intelligence is the seeing of what is. The ¨what is¨is continually
changing, and when the seeing is anchored in the past, the
intelligence of seeing ceases. Then the dead weight of memory dictates
the action and not the intelligence of perception. Meditation is the
seeing of all this at a glance. And to see, there must be silence, and
from this silence there is action which is entirely different from the
activities of thought. Meditation is not a separate thing from life;
it is the very essence of life.

JK

Dealing with Fear

"One is afraid of public opinion, afraid of not achieving, not fulfilling, afraid of not having the opportunity; and through it all there is this extraordinary sense of guilt—one has done a thing that one should not have done; the sense of guilt in the very act of doing; one is healthy and others are poor and unhealthy; one has food and others have no food. The more the mind is inquiring, penetrating, asking, the greater the sense of guilt, anxiety. ...Fear is the urge that seeks a Master, a guru; fear is this coating of respectability, which every one loves so dearly—to be respectable. Do you determine to be courageous to face events in life, or merely rationalize fear away, or find explanations that will give satisfaction to the mind that is caught in fear? How do you deal with it? Turn on the radio, read a book, go to a temple, cling to some form of dogma, belief?

Fear is the destructive energy in man. It withers the mind, it distorts thought, it leads to all kinds of extraordinarily clever and subtle theories, absurd superstitions, dogmas, and beliefs. If you see that fear is destructive, then how do you proceed to wipe the mind clean? You say that by probing into the cause of fear you would be free of fear. Is that so? Trying to uncover the cause and knowing the cause of fear does not eliminate fear."

Dealing with Fear - Book of Life

Him

"If he is on God's side he is one of us, and it does not matter in the
least whether he calls himself a Hindu or a Buddhist, a Christian or a
Mohammedan, whether he is an Indian or an Englishman, a Chinaman or a
Russian. Those who are on His side know why they are here and what they
should do, and they are trying to do it; all the others do not yet know
what they should do, and so they often act foolishly, and then try to
invent ways for themselves which they think will be pleasant for
themselves, not understanding that all are one, and that therefore only
what the One wills can ever be really pleasant for any one. They are
following the unreal instead of the real. Until they learn to
distinguish between these two, they have not ranged themselves on God's
side, and so this discrimination is the first step."

J.K.

thought

"... When there is not the directly new and
alive spiritual presence or meaning, thought
puts together the image, the picture, the
idol, from the past, the old, which is dead.

But these maneuvers of thought--like savages
making straw models of airplanes--do not give
fresh life or the experiencing that is Truth.

The direct answer one needs, which is fresh
perception of the problem, cannot come as long
as one is seeking to apply a theory, a dogma,
an external authority, an answer or solution
from outside ..."

state of unity

Rom Landau: "How did you come to that state of unity with
everything?"

J. Krishnamurti: "People have asked me about that before, and I
always feel that they expect to hear the dramatic account of some
sudden miracle through which I suddenly became one with the universe.
Of course nothing of the sort happened. My inner awareness was always
there; though it took me time to feel it more and more clearly; and
equally it took time to find words that would at all describe it. It
was not a sudden flash, but a slow yet constant clarification of
something that was always there. It did not grow, as people often
think. Nothing can grow in us that is of spiritual importance. It has
to be there in all its fullness, and then the only thing that happens
is that we become more and more aware of it. It is our intellectul
reaction and nothing else that needs time to become more articulate,
more definite."

Bob M.

poem by an African kid

This poem was nominated poem of 2005 for the best poem , written by an African kid.........amazing thought!!!

When I born, I Black,
When I grow up, I Black,
When I go in Sun, I Black,
When I scared, I Black,
When I sick, I Black,
And when I die, I still black..
And you White fella,
When you born, you Pink,
When you grow up, you White,
When you go in Sun, you Red,
When you cold, you Blue,
When you scared, you Yellow,
When you sick, you Green,
And when you die, you Gray..
And you calling me Colored ??

Sensitivity

November 14th 1961 - Bombay & Rishi Valley

...

Sensitivity and sensation are two different things. Sensations, emotions, feelings always leave a residue, whose accumulation dulls and distorts. Sensations are always contradictory and so conflicting; conflict always dulls the mind, perverts perception. The appreciation of beauty in terms of sensation, of like and dislike, is not to perceive beauty; sensation can only divide as beauty and ugliness but division is not beauty. Because sensations, feeings, breed conflict, to avoid conflict, discipline, control, suppression, have been advocated but this only builds resistance and so increases conflict and brings about greater dullness and insensitivity. The saintly control and suppression is the saintly insensitivity and brutal dullness which is so highly regarded. To make the mind more stupid and dull, ideals and conclusions are invented and spread around. All forms of sensations, however refined or gross, cultivate resistance and a withering away. Sensitivity is the dying to every residue of sensation; to be sensitive, utterly and intensely, to a flower, to a person, to a smile, is to have no scar of memory, for every scar destroys sensitivity. To be aware of every sensation, feeling, thought as it arises, from moment to moment, choicelessly, is to be free from scars, never allowing a scar to be formed. Sensations, feelings, thoughts are always partial, fragmentary and destructive.

Sensitivity is a total of body, mind and heart.

Sensitivity

November 29th 1961, Madras

Without sensitivity there can be no affection; personal reaction does not indicate sensitivity; you may be sensitive about your family, about your achievement, about your status and capacity. This kind of sensitivity is a reaction, limited, narrow, and is deteriorating. Sensitivity is not good taste for good taste is personal and the freedom from personal reaction is the awareness of beauty. Without the appreciation of beauty and without the sensitive awareness of it, there is no love. This sensitive awareness of nature, of the river, of the sky, of the people, of the filthy road, is affection. The essence of affection is sensitivity. But most people are afraid of being sensitive; to them to be sensitive is to get hurt and so they harden themselves and so preserve their sorrow. Or they escape into every form of entertainment, the church, the temple, gossip and cinema and social reform. But being sensitive is not personal and when it is, it leads to misery. To break through this personal reaction is to love, and love is for the one and the many; it is not restricted to the one or to the many. To be sensitive, all the senses must be fully alive, active, and fear of being a slave to the senses is merely the avoidance of a natural fact. The awareness of the fact does not lead to slavery; it is the fear of the fact that leads to bondage. Thought is of the senses and thought makes for limitation but yet you are not afraid of thought. On the contrary, it is ennobled with respectability and enshrined with conceit. To be sensitively aware of thought, of feeling, of the world about you, of your office and of nature, is to explode from moment to moment in affection. Without affection, every action becomes burdensome and mechanical and leads to decay.

................

To the so-called religious to be sensitive is to sin, an evil reserved for the worldly; to the religious the beautiful is temptation, to be resisted; it's an evil distraction to be denied. Good works are not a substitute for love, and without love all activity leads to sorrow, noble or ignoble. The essence of affection is sensitivity and without it all worship is an escape from reality. To the monk, to the sannyasi, the senses are the way of pain, save thought which must be dedicated to the god of their conditioning. But thought is of the senses. It is thought that puts together time and it is thought that makes sensitivity sinful. To go beyond thought is virtue and that virtue is heightened sensitivity which is love.

Love and there is no sin; love and do what you will and then there is no sorrow.

~ Krihnamurti's Notebook

Sensitivity

Sensitivity means being sensitive to everything around one -- to the plants, the animals, the trees, the skies, the waters of the river, the bird on the wing; and also the moods of the people around one, and to the stranger who passes by. This sensitivity brings about the quality of uncalculated, unselfish, response, which is true morality and conduct.

Life Ahead, Krishnamurti

Buddhist tradition has identified this virtue as compassion, the origin of which is in mindfulness. Krishnamurti points to it as a methodology for dispelling the arbitrariness of culture and authority. Other traditions will root this virtue in metaphysics or define it as the essence of morality. But from the point of view of Krishnamurti's philosophy and psychology -- not Western but not merely Eastern, either -- mindfulness or sensitivity is a prerequisite to knowledge of self.

(from an article in Hermitary)

To be alone

"To be alone, which is not a philosophy of loneliness, is obviously to be in a state of revolution against the whole setup of society, not only this society, but the communist society, the fascist, every form of society as organized brutality, organized power. And that means an extraordinary perception of the effects of power. Sir, have you noticed those soldiers rehearsing? They are not human beings any more, they are machines, they are your sons and my sons, standing there in the sun. This is happening here, in America, in Russia, and everywhere, not only at the governmental level, but also at the monastic level, belonging to monasteries, to orders, to groups who employ astonishing power. And it is only the mind which does not belong that can be alone. And aloneness is not something to be cultivated. You see this? When you see all this, you are out, and no governor or president is going to invite you to dinner. Out of that aloneness there is humility. It is this aloneness that knows love, not power. The ambitious man, religious or ordinary, will never know what love is. So, if one sees all this, then one has this quality of total living and therefore total action. This comes through self-knowledge."

JK

"To Be Alone" - The Book of Life

Sensitivity

"But even when we are sharpened and quickened intellectually by argument, by discussion, by reading, this does not actually bring about that quality of sensitivity. And you know all those people who are erudite, who read, who theorize, who can discuss brilliantly, are extraordinarily dull people. So I think sensitivity, which destroys mediocrity, is very important to understand. Because most of us are becoming, I am afraid, more mediocre. We are not using that word in any derogative sense at all, but merely observing the fact of mediocrity in the sense of being average, fairly well educated, earning a livelihood and perhaps capable of clever discussion; but this leaves us still bourgeois, mediocre, not only in our attitudes but in our activities."

JK