Jiddu Krishnamurti Quotes and Sayings

• Self-knowledge is the beginning of meditation - not the knowledge that you pick up from my books, from authorities, from gurus, but the knowledge that comes into being through self-inquiry, which is self-awareness.
   
• Meditation is the beginning of self-knowledge and without self-knowledge there is no meditation.
   
• If I don't understand the ways of my thoughts, of my feelings, if I don't understand my motives, my desires, my demands, my pursuit of patterns of action, which are ideas - if I do not know myself, there is no foundation for thinking; the thinker who merely asks, prays, or excludes, without understanding himself, must inevitably end in confusion, in illusion.
   
• There is only one central issue, crisis, or challenge for man, which is, that he must be completely free. As long as the mind is holding on to a structure, a method, a system, there is no freedom.
   
• When the mind goes beyond the thought of “the me,” the experiencer, the observer, the thinker, then there is a possibility of a happiness that is incorruptible.
   
• If we can understand the process of life without condemning, without saying it is right or wrong, then, I think, there comes a creative happiness which is not “yours” or “mine.” That creative happiness is like sunshine. If you want to keep the sunshine to yourself, it is no longer the clear, warm life- giving sun. Similarly, if you want happiness because you are suffering, or because you have lost somebody, or because you have not been successful, then that is merely a reaction. But when the mind can go beyond, then there is
  a happiness that is not of the mind.
   
• Tranquillity comes only when I understand the whole process of myself the various entities in conflict with each other which compose the “me.” As that is an arduous task, we turn to others to learn various tricks which we call meditation. The tricks of the mind are not meditation. Meditation is the beginning of self-knowledge, and
  without meditation, there is no self-knowledge.
   
• A man who would meditate must understand himself. Without knowing yourself, you cannot go far. However much you may attempt to go far, you can go only so far as your own projection; and your own projection is very near, is very close, and does not lead you anywhere.
   
• If you have followed this inquiry into what is meditation, and have understood the whole process of thinking, you will find that the mind is completely still. In that total stillness of the mind, there is no watcher, no observer, and therefore no experiencer at all; there is no entity who is gathering experience, which is the activity of a self-centred mind.