Do you wish to catch a glimpse of God? Look intently at creation.

Anthony de Mello

The human mind twists teachings

Question: Have the teachings attributed to the great teachers - Christ, Buddha, Hermes and others - any value for the attainment of the direct path to truth?
Krishnamurti: If you will not misunderstand, I would say that their teachings become valueless because the human mind, being so subtle, so cunning in its desire for self-protection, twists the teachings to suit its own purposes and creates systems and ideals as a means of escape, out of which grow petrified churches and exploiting priests. Religions throughout the world, through their systems and the trickery of their organized exploitation, seek to teach man to love, to think, to live sanely, intelligently; but how can a system create love or teach you to think selflessly? As you do not want to do this, as you are unwilling to live completely, integrally, with vulnerable mind and heart, you have created a system which has become your master, a system that is contrary to and destructive of thought and love. So it is utterly useless to multiply systems. If the mind frees itself from the illusion of its own self-protective demands and cravings, then there will be love, intelligence; then there will not be this division created by religions and beliefs; man will not be against man.

Krishnamurti "The Collected Works" Volume II Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. 18 May 1935

mastery

If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful at all.

Michelangelo

 

The World is Sacred

Do you want to own the World and improve it?

I don't think you can.

You see the World is sacred.
It can't be improved upon.
If you try you will ruin it.
If you try to own it,
You will lose it.

The Little Book of the Tao Te Ching page 23 

No challenge is beyond our capability; Every challenge promises new growth and a measure of serenity.

Karen Casey & Martha Vanceburg

Philosophies are mental fabrications

All philosophies are mental fabrications. There has never been a single doctrine by which one could enter the true essence of things.

 Nagarjuna

If you hold on to particular perspective, you don't have the correct perspective.

Gunpa Nyingpo

Desire for instruction is a distraction

Even a desire for more instruction is a distraction. Too many explanations without the essence is like an orchard of trees without fruit. Knowing many explanations is not knowing the Truth. Too much conceptualisation has no spiritual benefit. Only the secret treasure benefits the heart. If you want riches, concentrate on this.

Milarepa

True spirituality

People change and needs change. So what was spirituality once is spirituality no more. What generally goes under the name of spirituality is merely the record of past methods.

Anthony de Mello in "The Song of the Bird" page 11.

When you think you know who you are

Whenever you think you know who you are, run away from that self-image and embrace Him of whom nothing can be said.

Rumi

Meditation has nothing to offer

MEDITATION is a very important action in life; perhaps it is the action that has the greatest and deepest significance. It is a perfume that cannot easily be caught; it is not to be bought through striving and practice. A system can yield only the fruit it offers, and the system, the method, is based on envy and greed. Not to be able to meditate is not to be able to see the sunlight, the dark shadows, the sparkling waters and the tender leaf. But how few see these things! Meditation has nothing to offer; you may not come begging with folded hands. It doesn't save you from any pain. It makes things abundantly clear and simple; but to perceive this simplicity the mind must free itself, without any cause or motive, from all the things it has gathered through cause and motive. This is the whole issue in meditation. Meditation is the purgation of the known. To pursue the known in different forms is a game of self-deception, and then the meditator is the master, there is not the simple act of meditation. The meditator can act only in the field of the known; he must cease to act for the unknown to be. The unknowable doesn't invite you, and you cannot invite it. It comes and goes as the wind, and you cannot capture it and store it away for your benefit, for your use. It has no utilitarian value, but without it life is measurelessly empty.

Krishnamurti in "Commentaries On Living Series II" Chapter 52 Evaluation

What is life?

What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the winter time. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the Sunset.

Crowfoot

Let-go is a beautiful space

Let-go is one of the most beautiful spaces. You simply exist, doing nothing, sitting silently, and the grass grows by itself. You simply enjoy the songs of the birds, the greenness of the trees, the multidimensional, psychedelic colors of the flowers. You don't have to do anything to experience existence; you have to stop doing. You have to be in an absolutely unoccupied state, with no tensions, no worries.

Osho in "Body Mind Balancing" page 129

The one Reality

Confused by thoughts, we experience duality in life. Unencumbered by ideas, the enlightened see the one Reality.

Hui-Neng

Here it is.

Here it is - right now. Start thinking about it and you miss it.

Huang-Po

The violet can be perfect in itself

A violet can never become a rose, but the violet in itself can be a perfect flower.

Krishnamurti

The Words of the Master

The words of the scholar are to be understood. The words of the master are not to be understood. They are to be listened to as one listens to the wind in the trees and the sound of the river and the song of the bird. They will awaken something within the heart that is beyond all knowledge.

Anthony de Mello in "The Song of the Bird" page 4

We are always in a hurry

We are always in a hurry, we run, we run, we run, in order to be able to do as many things as possible: to achieve, to become, to obtain. To run is a symptom of fear, to run after something, after somebody. We are slaves not only to others, but to ourselves, to our ideas, to our ambitions, to our projects, and even to our mental projections. This is a miserable attitude that life does not deserve.

Vanda Scaravelli in "Awakening the Spine" page 121

Past, Present, Future

The past has passed already.
The moment won't stay for a moment.
The prepared for future never comes.

P'ang Yun

 

Whisperings of desire

The seductive whisperings of desire are the howls of a wolf that can tear a man to pieces.

Rumi

The quality of life

The quality of one's life depends on the quality of attention. Whatever you pay attention to will grow more important in your life.

Deepak Chopra

Life is a school

Realise that life is a school and you are here to learn. Problems are simply part of the curriculum that appear and fade away like algebra class, but the lessons you learn will last a lifetime.
 

Show up

No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.

Let the thing that you are watching tell its story

Let the thing that you are watching tell its story, rather than you tell it what it should be. You follow, sir, what I mean? Can you do that? Can one do that? So that it reveals everything. Like a flower, when you watch it very, very closely, there it is, you see everything in its detail, the delicacy of the vein, you know, the beauty of the whole thing. In the same way, perhaps, if we could watch this burden of attachment - I won't even call it a burden, attachment - it may contain an extraordinary beauty in it, and go, from that move. But apparently we can't do it. Why not?

Krishnamurti To Be Human-Brockwood Park 5th Seminar Meeting 17th September 1978

Simple Awareness

Question: Will you please explain what you mean by awareness? Krishnamurti: Just simple awareness! Awareness of your judgments, your prejudices, your likes and dislikes. When you see something, that seeing is the outcome of your comparison, condemnation, judgment, evaluation, is it not? When you read something you are judging, you are criticizing, you are condemning or approving. To be aware is to see, in the very moment, this whole process of judging, evaluating, the conclusions, the conformity, the acceptances, the denials. Now, can one be aware without all that? At present all we know is a process of evaluating, and that evaluation is the outcome of our conditioning, of our background, of our religious, moral and educational influences. Such so-called awareness is the result of our memory, - memory as the `me', the Dutchman. the Hindu, the Buddhist. the Catholic, or whatever it may be. It is the `me', - my memories, my family, my property, my qualities, - which is looking judging, evaluating. With that we are quite familiar, if we are at all alert. Now, can there be awareness without all that, without the self? Is it possible just to look without condemnation, just to observe the movement of the mind, one's own mind, without judging, without evaluating, without saying "It is good", or "It is bad"? The awareness which springs from the self, which is the awareness of evaluation and judgment, always creates duality, the conflict of the opposites, - that which is and that which should be. In that awareness there is judgment, there is fear, there is evaluation, condemnation, identification. That is but the awareness of the `me', of the self, of the `I' with all its traditions. memories, and all the rest of it. Such awareness always creates conflict between the observer and the observed, between what I am and what I should be. Now. is it possible to be aware without this process of condemnation, judgment, evaluation? Is it possible to look at myself, whatever my thoughts are, and not condemn, not judge, not evaluate? I do not know if you have ever tried it. It is quite arduous, - because all our training from childhood leads us to condemn or to approve. And in the process of condemnation and approval there is frustration, there is fear, there is a gnawing pain, anxiety, which is the very process of the `me', the self.

Collected Works Volume 9 J. Krishnamurti Amsterdam 5th Public Talk 26th May 1955

True holiness is completely unselfconscious

Will awareness bring you the holiness you so desire? Yes and no. The fact is you will never know. For true holiness, the type that is not achieved through techniques and efforts and repression, true holiness is completely unselfconscious. You wouldn't have the slightest awareness of its existence in you. Besides you will not care, for even the ambition to be holy will have dropped as you live from moment to moment a life made full and happy and transparent through awareness. It is enough for you to be watchful and awake. 

Anthony de Mello in "The Way to Love" page 196

Holiness is a Grace

Holiness is not an achievement, it is a Grace. A Grace called Awareness, a grace called Looking, Observing, Understanding. If you would only switch on the light of awareness and observe yourself and everything around you throughout the day, if you would see yourself reflected in the mirror of awareness the way you see your face reflected in a looking glass, that is, accurately, clearly, exactly as it is without the slightest distortion or addition, and if you observed this reflection without any judgement or condemnation, you would experience all sorts of marvelous changes coming about in you. Only you will not be in control of those changes, or be able to plan them in advance, or decide how and when they are to take place. It is this nonjudgemental awareness alone that heals and changes and makes one grow. But in its own way and at its own time.

Just observe your own mind

When the mind is occupied with the past, it is incapable of seeing something real, true, new, original, uncontaminated. A mind that is occupied with the past - the past is the whole consciousness that says, `this is good; `that is right; `this is bad; `this is mine; `this is not mine' - can never know the Real. But the mind unoccupied can receive that which is not known, which is the unknown. This is not an extraordinary state of some yogi, some saint. Just observe your own mind; how direct and simple it is.

Krishnamurti Collected Works Volume 7 Bombay, 4th March 1953

Effort does not lead to growth

Effort does not lead to growth; effort, whatever the form may take, whether it will be will-power or habit or a technique or a spiritual exercise, does not lead to change. At best it leads to repression and a covering of the root disease.
Effort may change the behaviour but it does not change the person. Just think what kind of a mentality it betrays when you ask, "What must I do to get holiness?" Isn't it like asking, How much money must I spend to buy something?

Anthony de Mello in "The Way to Love" pages 192 - 193

Be empty, that is all

Do not seek fame. Do not make plans. Do not be absorbed by activities. Do not think that you know. Be aware of all that is and dwell in the infinite. Wander where is no path. Be all that heaven gave you, but act as though you have received nothing. Be empty, that is all.

Chuang Tsu

The hardest battle

To be nobody-but-yourself - in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

E.E.Cummings