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Meditation
“So, could we start with saying I do not know what meditation is?”
17th Conversation with Dr. Allen W. Anderson, San Diego, 1974
“And waking towards dawn, meditation was the splendour of light for the
otherness was there, in an unfamiliar room. Again it was an imminent and urgent
peace, not the peace of politicians or of the priests nor of the contented; it
was too vast to be contained in space and time, to be formulated by thought or
feeling.
…
meditation was the very essence of life.”
Krishnamurti’s Notebook Part 6. Bombay and Rishi Valley, 20th
October to 20th November 1961.
“Now, let us see if we can together feel the importance of meditation, and
also perceive the beauty, the implications, the subtleties of it. To begin with,
that word ‘meditation’ has a very special significance to you, has it not? You
immediately think of sitting in a certain posture, breathing in a certain way,
forcing the mind to concentrate on something, and so on. But to me that is not
meditation at all. To me meditation is entirely different; and if you and I are
to share this inquiry into what is meditation, you will obviously have to put
aside your prejudices, your conditioned thinking about meditation. That is true,
I think, whether we discuss politics, or a particular system of economics, or
our relationship with each other.
…
If you are given to a particular form of so-called meditation, and the other is
not, there can obviously be no sharing. You must let go of your prejudices and
experiences, and he must also let go of his, so that both of you can look into
the problem and find out together what is meditation.”
1959 8th Public Talk, New Delhi
“The flowering of meditation is goodness, and the generosity of the heart is
the beginning of meditation.”
“You cannot meditate if you are ambitious – you may play with the idea of
meditation. You your mind is authority-ridden, bound by tradition, accepting,
following, you will never know what it is to meditate on this extraordinary
beauty.”
“You have to find out what meditation is. It is a most extraordinary thing to
know what meditation is – not how to meditate, not the system, not the practice,
but the content of meditation. To be in the meditative mood and to go into that
meditation requires a very generous mind, a mind that has no border, a mind that
is not caught in the process of time. A mind that has not committed itself to
anything, to any activity, to any thought, to any dogma, to any family, to a
name – it is only such a mind that can be generous; and it is only such a mind
that can begin to understand the depth, the beauty and the extraordinary
loveliness of meditation.”
1962 7th Public Talk, Bombay, CD-Rom code bo62t7.
‘Meditation is a movement in and of the unknown … it is
that energy that though-matter cannot touch. Thought is perversion for it is the
product of yesterday … Everything put together by thought is within the area of
noise, and thought can in no way make itself still … thought itself must be
still for silence to be. Silence is always now as thought is not. Thought,
always being old, cannot possibly enter into that silence which is always new.
The new becomes the old when thought touches it … Love can only be when thought
is still. This stillness can in no way be manufactured by thought … this
stillness can never be touched by thought. Thought is always old, but love is
not … the flowering of goodness is not in the soil of thought’
‘Meeting Life’ (Bulletin
4, 1969) © 1991 Krishnamurti Foundation Trust, Ltd; Published by
Harper SanFrancisco
How to meditate
- what is it?
[J. Krishnamurti had the following dialogue with
students at one of his schools in India.]
[Krishnamurti:] Do you know anything about meditation?
Student: No, Sir.
Krishnamurti: But the older people do not know
either. They sit in a corner, close their eyes and concentrate, like school
boys trying to concentrate on a book. That is not meditation. Meditation is
something extraordinary, if you know how to do it. I am going to talk a little
about it.
First of all, sit very quietly; do not force yourself to sit quietly, but sit
or lie down quietly without force of any kind. Do you understand? Then watch
your thinking. Watch what you are thinking about. You find you are thinking
about your shoes, your saris, what you are going to say, the bird outside to
which you listen; follow such thoughts and enquire why each thought arises. Do
not try to change your thinking. See why certain thoughts arise in your mind
so that you begin to understand the meaning of every thought and feeling
without any enforcement. And when a thought arises, do not condemn it, do not
say it is right, it is wrong, it is good, it is bad. Just watch it, so that
you begin to have a perception, a consciousness which is active in seeing
every kind of thought, every kind of feeling. You will know every hidden
secret thought, every hidden motive, every feeling, without distortion,
without saying it is right, wrong, good or bad. When you look, when you go
into thought very very deeply, your mind becomes extraordinarily subtle,
alive. No part of the mind is asleep. The mind is completely awake.
That is merely the foundation. Then your mind is very quiet. Your whole being
becomes very still. Then go through that stillness, deeper, further – that
whole process is meditation. Meditation is not to sit in a corner repeating a
lot of words; or to think of a picture and go into some wild, ecstatic
imaginings.
To understand the whole process of your thinking and feeling is to be free
from all thought, to be free from all feeling so that your mind, your whole
being becomes very quite. And that is also part of life and with that
quietness, you can look at the tree, you can look at people, you can look at
the sky and the stars. That is the beauty of life.
On Education, first published
1974, Krishnamurti Foundation Trust Ltd., London, , p. 58
So we are asking now: what is the movement of meditation? First of all we must
understand the importance of the senses. Most of us react, or act according to
the urges, demands and the insistence of our senses. And those senses never act
as a whole but only as a part – right? Please understand this. If you don’t mind
enquiring into this a little more for yourself, talking over together, but all
our senses never function, move, operate as a whole, holistically. If you
observe yourself and watch your senses you will see that one or the other of the
senses becomes dominant. One or the other of the senses takes a greater part in
observation in our daily living, so there is always imbalance in our senses –
right? May we go on from there?
Now is it possible – this is part of meditation, what we are doing now – is it
possible for the senses to operate as a whole; to look at the movement of the
sea, the bright waters, the eternally restless waters, to watch those waters
completely, with all your senses? Or a tree, or a person, or a bird in flight, a
sheet of water, the setting sun, or the rising moon, to observe it, look at it
with all your senses fully awakened. … if you observe this, if you observe this
operation of the whole senses acting you will find there is no centre from which
the senses are moving. Are you trying this as we are talking together? To look
at your girl, or your husband, or your wife or the tree, or the house, with all
the highly active sensitive senses. Then in that there is no limitation. You try
it. You do it and you will find out for yourself. That is the first thing to
understand: the place of the senses. Because most of us operate on partial or
particular senses. We never move or live with all our senses fully awakened,
flowering. Because as most of us live, operate and think partially, so one of
our enquiries into this is for the senses to function fully and realize the
importance and the illusion that senses create – are you following all this? And
to give the senses their right place, which means not suppressing them, not
controlling them, not running away from them but to give the proper place to the
senses. This is important because in meditation, if you want to go into it very
deeply, unless one is aware of the senses, they create different forms of
neurosis, different forms of illusions, they dominate our emotions and so on and
so on. So that is the first thing to realize: if when the senses are fully
awakened, flowering then the body becomes extraordinarily quiet. Have you
noticed all this? Or am I talking to myself? Because most of us force our bodies
to sit still, not fidget, not to move about and so on – you know. Whereas if all
the senses are functioning healthily and normally, vitally then the body relaxes
and becomes very, very quiet, if you do it. Do it as we are talking.
4th Public Talk, Brockwood Park, 1978
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