The 70 best sentences of Jiddu Krishnamurti
When we talk about philosophy, we usually think of the great classics such as Socrates or Plato, Descartes, Bacon, Hume, Kant ... But although they are not usually cited and named in comparison, there have also been great thinkers in recent centuries.
One of them was Jiddu Krishnamurti, Hindu writer and philosopher , who throughout his life made many reflections on various aspects of existence and the human condition.
In this article we present a series of sentences of Jiddu Krishnamurti that allow to understand his thought and that in turn allow us to reflect on what we think about these issues.
- Related article: "123 wise phrases to reflect on life"
70 sentences of Jiddu Krishnamurti
This is a small selection of great quotes from Jiddu Krishnamurti on such relevant topics as love and feelings, education or beliefs and opinions.
1. One is never afraid of the unknown; one is afraid of the known coming to an end
What we fear is not that new things happen, but that we lose those we love.
2. The more you know yourself, the more clarity there is. Self-knowledge has no end. You do not reach an achievement, you do not reach a conclusion. It is a river without end
We will always be able to discover new things about ourselves that surprise us, helping us to have a clearer vision of who we are and what we want.
3. Education is not the simple acquisition of knowledge, nor collect and correlate data, but see the meaning of life as a whole
The role of education is not only to give data to the apprentice but help him to structure his world and to accept the different facets and perspectives of life.
- Related article: "The 13 types of learning: what are they?"
4. The whole can not be understood from a single point of view, which is what governments, organized religions and authoritarian parties are trying to do
Phrase that reflects that there are always multiple perspectives regarding situations and different aspects and elements present in our lives.
5. Only if we listen can we learn. And listening is an act of silence; only a serene but extraordinarily active mind can learn
Listening is much more complex than it seems, and requires a great deal of activity to understand what the other tells us and what does not, as well as what he wants or does not want to tell us.
6. Throughout life, from children, from school until we die, we are educated by comparing ourselves with others; however when I compare myself with another I destroy myself
Competitiveness is something that is already instilled in our childhood , comparing us continuously between us. We forget, however, who we are and what makes us special.
7. The word "reach" again implies time and distance. The mind is therefore the slave of the word to reach. If the mind can get rid of the words "get", "reach" and "get there", then the seeing can be immediate
The author indicates the importance of not focusing so much on the long term and on what we need to enjoy the here and now and what we already have.
8. The religion of all men must be that of believing in themselves
Krishnamurti reflected in this sentence that we must believe in our possibilities and love ourselves.
9. Have you noticed that inspiration comes when you are not looking for it? It arrives when all expectation stops, when the mind and the heart calm down
Things generally arise when we do not look for them in despair. They arise when we are relaxed and calm with the world and with ourselves.
10. Evading a problem only serves to intensify it, and in this process self-understanding and freedom are abandoned
Running away from something does not solve it, it only lengthens the problem and generates an anxiety and frustration that ultimately limit us.
11. Learning from oneself requires humility, requires never assuming that you know something, it is about learning from oneself from the beginning and never accumulating
It is not so easy to know oneself, and often we start from biased conceptions about how we are. As with our relationship with others, to be understood requires not prejudging oneself .
12. One is the world, it is not separate from the world. It is not American, Russian, Hindu or Muslim. One is not any of these labels and words, one is the rest of humanity because their consciousness, their reactions are similar to those of others. He may speak a different language, have different customs, that is superficial culture, all cultures are apparently superficial but his consciousness, his reactions, his faith, his beliefs, his ideologies, his fears, anxieties, his loneliness, suffering and pleasure They are similar to the rest of humanity. If you change, that will affect all of humanity
We are all part of the world, and we share our being with the rest of him.
13. Fear corrupts intelligence and is one of the causes of egomania
Fear can paralyze us and prevent us from acting.
14. It is not a sign of good health to be well adapted to a deeply sick society
The fact of adapting to something is not always good, when it goes against what is fair.
15. Love gives itself as a flower gives its perfume
The author proposes that love corresponds with love by nature , although it may not be the same type that we would like.
- Related article: "The 4 types of love: what different kinds of love are there?"
16. Sowing wheat once, you will harvest once. Planting a tree, you reap tenfold. Instructing the worn, you will harvest one hundred times
Krishnamurti tells us the importance of instruction and training on how to solve problems in order to solve them, instead of providing a temporary patch.
17. By the hope of tomorrow we sacrifice today, however happiness is always in the now
We can not be happy if we think only of the future, because it is now that we are living.
18. Freedom is essential for love; not the freedom of the revolt, not the freedom to do what we please or to give openly or secretly to our appetites but rather the freedom that comes with understanding
Krishnamurti indicates that love comes from understanding oneself and the other.
19. Only when the mind is free of ideas and beliefs can it act correctly
The author establishes that our opinions and prejudices hinder and hinder our vision of the world and our judgment.
20. Virtue is freedom, it is not a process of isolation. Only in freedom can the truth exist. Therefore it is essential to be virtuous, and not respectable, because virtue produces order. Only respectable is confused, in conflict: only the respectable exercises his will as a means of resistance, and such a person can never find the truth because he is never free
The author expresses that to know the truth it is necessary to travel a path of virtue and self-liberation.
21. The decisive thing to bring peace to the world is our daily conduct
While we can do great momentary acts, it is what we do day by day what marks the future and our role in the world.
22. Life is an extraordinary mystery. Not the mystery that is in the books, not the mystery that people talk about, but a mystery that one has to discover for oneself; and that's why it's so important for you to understand the small, the limited, the trivial, and to go beyond all that
Each one of us has to understand himself and his role in the world.
23. The way you eat is very important: if you make noise while eating, that matters a lot. The way they behave, the manners they have when they are with their friends, the way they talk about others ... All these things matter because they point out what you are internally, they indicate if there is or there is internal refinement. A lack of internal refinement is expressed in the external degeneration of the form
The author refers to the significance that what we express with our behavior can have.
24. Happiness is strange; It comes when you are not looking for it. When you are not making an effort to be happy, unexpectedly, mysteriously, happiness is there, born of purity
Happiness tends to appear pure in often unexpected moments , in which we are ourselves and we appreciate the now without worrying about looking for it.
- Related article: "75 phrases of happiness and joy to value life"
25. The meaning of life is to live
Many people have worried throughout the history of why we live. The answer is in the question itself: we live to live.
26. Wisdom is not an accumulation of memories, but a supreme vulnerability to the true
The author expresses that it is not age that makes us wise, but to be open to accept and understand the different perspectives on life.
- Maybe you're interested: "Wise people: these are the 6 characteristics that define them"
27. When there is no love in our hearts, we have only one thing left: pleasure; and that pleasure is sex, therefore this becomes a huge problem
Krishnamurti considers that using sex as an attempt to substitute love makes us suffer. It refers to the sex that is maintained by mere compensation of emotional deprivation.
28. The search becomes another escape from what we really are
To be continuously looking means that we do not focus on the present or on what we already have, nor on who, what or how we are. Some people spend their lives looking to avoid confronting themselves.
29. The end is the beginning of all things, suppressed and hidden. Waiting to be thrown through the rhythm of pain and pleasure
The author considers that the beginning and the end are equal concepts, establishing an endless cycle. The end allows the beginning.
30. No matter how intense the storm, the spirit must always remain impassive
This phrase pushes us to remain calm despite the fact that circumstances can be very adverse .
31. Discipline can only build walls around us; It is always exclusive, and always provocative of conflicts.Discipline does not lead to understanding, because understanding is reached through observation, through study, without prejudice of any kind
Although the discipline is socially desired, it is easy to generate conflicts by not allowing a true understanding of what happens.
32. No book is sacred, I can assure you. Just as the newspaper is only pages printed on paper, and there is nothing sacred in them either
Krishnamurti was critical of the idea of the existence of books considered sacred.
33. What matters, especially while young, is not to cultivate memory but to awaken critical thinking and analysis; because only then can you come to understand the real meaning of a fact instead of rationalizing it
This phrase expresses that the important thing is to know how to understand, give meaning and doubt the things that are presented to us, not memorize them by accepting them without further ado.
34. Loving is not asking for something in return, even not feeling that you are giving something and that is the only love that can know freedom
The one who truly loves does not ask or demand anything from the other, nor even be loved. Amar implies the desire for freedom for both parties, without imposing their own feelings.
35. The world is as full of opinions as it is of people. And you know what an opinion is. One says this, and someone else says that. Everyone has an opinion, but opinion is not the truth; therefore, do not listen to a mere opinion, no matter who it is, but discover for yourself what is true. Opinion may change overnight, but we can not change the truth
The author indicates the importance of keeping in mind that opinions are fickle and are not objective, so we should not let ourselves be carried away by them.
36. When you listen to someone, completely, carefully, you are listening not only to the words but also to the feeling of what you are transmitting, to the whole, not to part of it
Understanding someone means not only listening to what they tell us, but also what they do not and the emotions that intervene in their interaction with you.
37. If one observes, one will see that the body has its own intelligence; It requires a large dose of intelligence to observe the intelligence of the body
Our body is wise and most of the time knows what it does: it reflects our needs, informs us of its condition and acts so that we move in the right direction.
- Related article: "The theories of human intelligence"
38. When one loses his relationship with nature and open skies, he loses the relationship with other human beings
The connection with the world that surrounds us is an element that we are losing more and more and that involves the loss of a large part of our being.
39. We always cover the inner nothingness with some of the so-called deadly sins
The author expresses that the excesses are not more than a way to try to supply our internal deficiencies.
40. One of the strange things related to love is that whatever we can do, it will be correct if we love. When there is love, the action is always correct, in all circumstances.
True love (not to be confused with possessiveness) leads us to act to achieve the well-being of the loved one.
41. We cultivate the mind making it more and more ingenious, more and more subtle, more cunning, less sincere and more tortuous and unable to face the facts
Criticism of the tendency to try to boost some capacities at the price of ceasing to be authentic.
42. The desire that is not realized ends up becoming anger, anguish and human misery. Our great enemies in life are precisely those friends and relatives from whom we expect too much and expect a perfect correspondence to what we gave them.
We often tend to believe that others must reciprocate our affections and efforts. And when that does not correspond to reality pain and suffering arise .
43. If we remain totally attentive to what is, we will understand it and we will be free of it; but to be attentive to what we are, we have to stop fighting for what we are not
We must stop locking ourselves in what we think we should be and be able to accept what we really are.
44. When you are attentive to everything, you become sensitive, and being sensitive is having an inner perception of beauty, it is having the sense of beauty
To be able to see beauty, you need to be sensitive , for which it is necessary to observe the world with curiosity.
45. If you have clarity, if you are an inner light for yourself, you will never follow anyone
The author proposes that we be ourselves and think and be guided by what we create, without relying on third parties.
46. Love is not reaction. If I love you because you love me, there is a simple deal, something that can be bought in the market; that's not love
Jiddu Krishnamurti lets us see that love arises from the correspondence between two people who love each other and not just because one loves the other.
47. Only the individual who is not trapped in society can influence it fundamentally
This phrase indicates that whoever is not influenced by what society dictates is who is going to have a vision that can change things.
48. It is not understood first and then it is acted upon.When we understand, that absolute understanding is the action
The author indicates that understanding is a complete action by itself.
49. The idea of ourselves is our escape from the fact that we really are
This phrase refers to our ideal self, which prevents us from actually approving who we are.
50. Passion is a very scary thing because if you have passion you do not know where it will take you
The author reflects the fears of being carried away by a large part of the population.
51. Be careful with the man who says he knows
He who is wise does not need to proclaim it, and whoever does is probably not and pretend to benefit from what it would be.
52. What is needed, instead of escaping, controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear; it means looking at it, learning about it, going to contact it. We have to learn about fear, not how to escape from it
Again the author expresses the need not to try to avoid emotions like fear but to try to learn from it and how to deal with it successfully.
53. It is because we are so dry ourselves, so empty and without love, that we have allowed governments to seize the education of our children and the direction of our lives
Krishnamurti criticizes excessive directivity on the part of governments in regards to our way of living life.
54. We waste our energy because of conflict, quarrels, fear and vanity. When our energy is not wasted at all, we have all the energy in the world. While our brain does not deteriorate because of conflict, ambition, effort, struggle, feeling of loneliness, discouragement, etc. we have energy in abundance
Krishnamurti reflects in this sentence the great level of energy that we have, which, however, is wasted in aspects such as those cited.
55. If one wants to understand and get rid of fear, one must also understand pleasure, both are related to each other. They are two sides of the same coin. One can not be free from one without being free from the other: if we are denied pleasure, all psychological tortures will appear.
This phrase reflects the need to feel both fear and pleasure in our lives, since they are related. It also reflects the need to allow us to feel pleasure and the possible appearance of problems and suffering linked to their absence.
56. The process of fighting something only fuels and strengthens what we fight against
The active avoidance of a thought or a fear only generates its strengthening.
57. I maintain that truth is a land without a road and you can not reach it by any road, by any religion or by any sect
The truth is something that each one must reach on their own, not being able to guide us any type of dogma or ideology.
58. Without love, life is very sterile; without love the trees, the birds, the smile of men and women, the bridge that crosses the river, the boatmen who sail on it, the animals, do not make any sense. Without love life is like a shallow well. In a deep river there is wealth and many fish can live; but the pit without depth is soon dried by the intense sun and nothing remains in it, except mud and dirt.
The fact of love is discovered as one of the great forces that govern our life and allow us to make sense of it.
59. When the mind is completely silent, on both the superficial and the deep levels; the unknown, the immeasurable can reveal itself
This phrase expresses the need to stop forming preconceived ideas and silence our mind in order to capture and observe the unknown cleanly.
60. By giving a name to something we have limited ourselves to putting it in a category, and we think that we have understood it; we do not look at it more closely. But if we do not name it, we are obliged to look at it. That is, we approach the flower, or whatever it may be, with a sense of novelty, with a new quality of examination: we look at it as if we had never looked at it before.
Classifying the world makes us stop paying attention to all its details. This phrase pushes us not to do so to learn and enjoy every little aspect of life.
61. Between two solutions, always choose the most generous one
Generosity is a rare virtue, but it means benefiting not only oneself but also the rest of the world.
62. Intelligence is the ability to perceive the essential, what "is", and education is the process of awakening this capacity in ourselves and in others
The author considers intelligent not the one who has knowledge but the one who is able to see beyond the observable. It also highlights the role that education should have to facilitate it.
63. Do not repeat after my words that you do not understand. Do not just put on a mask of my ideas, because that will be an illusion and you will be lying to yourself
This phrase asks us to be ourselves and think for ourselves, without assuming the ideas and thoughts of others as their own .
64. To transform the world we must begin with ourselves and what is important to start with ourselves is the intention
If we want to change things, we must be willing to change ourselves and accept those changes.
65Tell your friend that in his death a part of you dies and goes with him. Wherever you go, you also go. You will not be alone
We are united to the people we truly love and value. Even beyond death, we have given a part of our being to these people and we will never leave them behind.
66. The perfection itself is the very antithesis of freedom and learning. Discover how to live without comparing and you will see that something extraordinary happens
The fact of trying to perfect part of the comparison between the real and the ideal self. Fully accept oneself it is incompatible with it, and it would allow us to be free.
- Related article: "How to accept oneself to be happy, in 6 keys"
67. To understand life is to understand ourselves and this is jointly the beginning and the end of education
Education must help us to get in touch with ourselves, understand and build ourselves.
68. True freedom is not something that can be acquired, it is the result of intelligence.
Freedom is not "learned", but is achieved throughout life if we get the ability to reflect on what is important and we understand ourselves.
69. When they tell an interesting story to a boy, he listens with a huge sense of curiosity and energy. He wants to know what will happen, and waits anxiously until the end. But we, the adult people, have lost all curiosity and energy to discover, that energy necessary to see things clearly as they are, without distorting them
The author expresses and criticizes that over the years we stopped really listening to focus on interpreting what they intend to say according to what we believe.
70. All life is a movement in relation. There is nothing living on Earth that is not related to one thing or another. Even the hermit, a man who goes to a solitary place, remains in relation to the past and those around him. It is not possible to escape from the relationship. In this relationship, which is the mirror that allows us to see ourselves, we can discover what we are, our reactions, our prejudices and fears, depressions and anxieties, loneliness, pain, grief, anguish
We are all related to everything, and it is this relationship with the world that allows us to see who we are.
