--> Skip to main content


J Krishnamurti Thoughts

Jiddu Krishnamurti (11 May 1895 - 17 February 1986) was a philosopher, speaker and writer. This is a collection of thoughts on mind, attention, truth, awareness …

Technologically, man has advanced incredibly, yet he remains as he has been for thousands of years, fighting, greedy, envious, burdened with great sorrow.

Unless the mind is absolutely free from fear, every form of action brings about more mischief, more misery, more confusion.

Change in society is of secondary importance; that will come about naturally, inevitably, when you as a human being bring about this change in yourself.



Religion, then, is something that cannot possibly be put into words; it cannot be measured by thought…

Can you observe without the center, not naming the thing called fear as it arises? It requires tremendous discipline.

A mind that is caught up in knowledge as a means to freedom does not come to that freedom.

For the stillness of the mind, its complete quiet, an extraordinary discipline is required;… the mind then has a religious quality of unity; from that there can be action which is not contradictory.

Seeing this vast fragmentation both inwardly and outwardly, the only issue is that a human being must radically, profoundly, bring about in himself a revolution.

The word ‘individuality’ means ‘indivisible,’ not fragmented. Individuality means a totality, the whole, and the word ‘whole’ means healthy, holy. But you are not an individual, you are not sane, because you are broken up, fragmented yourself; you are in contradiction with yourself, separated, therefore you are not an individual at all.

As long as the ‘me’ survives in any form, very subtly or grossly, there must be violence.

If you have this extraordinary thing (meditation) going in your life, then it is everything; then you become the teacher, the disciple, the neighbor, the beauty of the cloud – you are all that, and that is love.

The very process of control breeds disorder; just as the opposite – lack of control – also breed disorder.

The religious mind is a light to itself. Its light is not lit by another – the candle that is lit by another can be put out very quickly.

For most of us, freedom is an idea and not an actuality.

To be free to express ourselves, we have to be totally free of fear.

Unless the human mind is inwardly, psychologically, totally free, it is not possible to see what is true, to see if there is a reality not invented by fear, not shaped by the society or the culture in which we live.

To explore, there must be freedom, not at the end, but right at the beginning. Unless one is free, one cannot explore, investigate or examine.

One cannot learn about oneself unless one is free, free so that one can observe, not according to any pattern, formula or concept, but actually observe oneself as one is.

None of the agonies of suppression, nor the brutal discipline of conforming to a pattern has led to truth. To come upon truth the mind must be completely free, without a spot of distortion.

If we know how to look at violence, not only outwardly in society – the wars, the riots, the national antagonisms and class conflicts – but also in ourselves, then perhaps we shall be able to go beyond it.

Freedom is a state of mind – not freedom from something but a sense of freedom, a freedom to doubt and question everything and therefore so intense, active, and vigorous that it throws away every form of dependence, slavery, conformity and acceptance. Such freedom implies being completely alone.

J Krishnamurti
(Source - Freedom from the Known)

Jiddu Krishnamurti Thoughts on Mind

From awareness comes attention. Attention flows from awareness when in that awareness there is no choice, no personal choosing, no experiencing...but merely observing.

And, to observe, you must have in the mind a great deal of space.

A mind that is caught in ambition, greed, envy, in the pursuit of pleasure and self-fulfillment, with its inevitable sorrow, pain, despair, anguish – such a mind has no space in which to observe, to attend. It is crowded with its own desires, going round and round in its own backwaters of reaction.

You cannot attend if your mind is not highly sensitive, sharp, reasonable, logical, sane, healthy, without the slightest shadow of neuroticism.

The mind has to explore every corner of itself, leaving no spot uncovered, because if there is a single dark corner of one's mind which one is afraid to explore, from that springs illusion...

J Krishnamurti Thoughts on Attention and Awareness

Attention is not the same thing as concentration. Concentration is exclusion; attention; which is total awareness, excludes nothing.

It seems to me that most of us are not aware, not only of what we are talking about but of our environment, the colors around us, the people, the shape of the trees, the clouds, the movement of water. Perhaps it is because we are so concerned with ourselves, with our petty problems, our own ideas, our own pleasures, pursuits and ambitions that we are not objectively aware. And we talk a great deal about awareness.

We are not aware of outward things or of inward things. If you want to understand the beauty of a bird, a fly, or a leaf, or a person with all his complexities, you have to give your whole attention which is awareness. And you give your whole attention only when you care, which means that your really love to understand – then you give your whole heart and mind to find out.

Such awareness is like living with a snake in the room; you watch its every movement, you are very, very sensitive to the slightest sound it makes. Such a state of attention is total energy; in such awareness the totality of yourself is revealed in an instant.

(Source: Freedom from the Known – page 31-32 – 1969 edition)

Jiddu Krishnamurti on Truth

Truth has no path, and that is the beauty of truth; it is living. A dead thing has a path to it because it is static, but when you see that truth is something living, moving, which has no resting place, which is in no temple, mosque or church, which no religion, teacher, philosopher, nobody can lead you to – then you will also see that this living thing is what you actually are: your anger, brutality, violence, despair, the agony and sorrow you live in. In the understanding of all this is the truth, and you can understand it only if you know how to look at those things in your life. And you cannot look through an ideology, through a screen of words, through hopes and fears.

What is important is to observe what is actually taking place in our daily life, inwardly and outwardly.

And when we look at what is taking place in the world we begin to understand that there is no outer and inner process; there is only one unitary process, it is a whole, total movement, the inner movement expressing itself as the outer and the outer reacting again on the inner. To be able to look at this is all that is needed, because if we know how to look, then the whole thing becomes very clear, and to look needs no philosophy, no teacher.

Jiddu Krishnamurti on Happiness and Gratification

What is it that most of us are seeking? Probably most of us are seeking some kind of happiness, some mind of peace; in a world that is ridden with turmoil, wars, contention, strife, we want a refuge where there can be some peace.

Now, is it that we are seeking happiness or is it that we are seeking gratification of some kind from which we hope to derive happiness? There is a difference between happiness and gratification. Can you seek happiness? Perhaps you can find gratification but surely you cannot find happiness.

Happiness is derivative; it is a byproduct of something else. So, before we give our minds and hearts to something which demands a great deal of earnestness, attention, thought, care, we must find out, must we not?, what it is that we are seeking; whether it is happiness, or gratification. I am afraid most of us are seeking gratification. We want to be gratified, we want to find a sense of fullness at the end of our search.