We think we see but we don't

I need to talk about words and concepts because I must explain to you why it is, when we look at a tree, we really don't see. We think we do, but we don't. When we look at a person, we really don't see that person, we only think we do. What we're seeing is something that we fixed in our mind. We get an impression and we hold on to that impression, and we keep looking at a person through that impression. And we do this with almost everything. If you understand that, you will understand the loveliness and beauty of being aware of everything around you. Because reality is there; "God," whatever that is, is there. It's all there.

Remain with the feeling

Try remaining with the feeling of hate, with the feeling of envy, jealousy, with the venom of ambition; for after all, that's what you have in daily life, though you may want to live with love, or with the word 'love'. Since you have the feeling of hate, of wanting to hurt somebody with a gesture or a burning word, see if you can stay with that feeling. Can you? Have you ever tried? Try to remain with a feeling, and see what happens. You will find it amazingly difficult. Your mind will not leave the feeling alone; it comes rushing in with its remembrances, its associations, its do's and don'ts, its everlasting chatter. Pick up a piece of shell. Can you look at it, wonder at its delicate beauty, without saying how pretty it is, or what animal made it? Can you look without the movement of the mind? Can you live with the feeling behind the word, without the feeling that the word builds up? If you can, then you will discover an extraordinary thing, a movement beyond the measure of time, a spring that knows no summer.

Krishnamurti in "Commentaries On Living Series III" Aloneness Beyond Loneliness

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

The enlightened never stop forging themselves

Those who are enlightened never stop forging themselves. The realizations of such masters cannot be expressed well in words or by theories. The most perfect actions echo the patterns found in nature.

Morihei Ueshiba trans. John Stevens in "The Art of Peace" page 52

Words

People feed on words,

live by words, would fall apart without them.

Anthony de Mello in "The Prayer of the frog" page 81

Words

Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.

Rudyard Kipling

Words are indicators

Words (and concepts) are indicators,

not reflections, of reality.

But, as the mystics of the East declare,

When the sage points to the moon

all that the idiot sees is the finger!

Anthony de Mello in "The Prayer of the frog" page 80

World is a mental contruct

We almost never see reality.

What we see is a reflection of it

in the form of words and concepts

which we then proceed to take for reality.

The world we live in

is mostly a mental construct.

Anthony de Mello in "The Prayer of the frog" page 80

Words

Words can be communicative only between those who share similar experiences.

Alan Watts in "The Way of Zen" page 24

Words become extraordinarily important

We use words to measure the immeasurable. So one must be aware also of the network of words, how words cheat us, how words mean so much: communism, to a capitalist, means something terrible. Words become extraordinarily important.

J. Krishnamurti in "On Nature and the Environment" page 92