an introduction to J. Krishnamurti

This post is for getting ideas. Jiddu Krishnamurti's "talks" provide another very useful angle to self-study. I say "talks" rather than "teaching" because he himself told everyone all the time to not make him their authority, for each person to find out for themselves what was true.

The below link is a talk from the 1950's, it's a good quick introduction to his talks.
http://www.jiddu-krishnamurti.net/en/1950_madras/1950-02-05_madras_3rd_public_talk_5th_february_1950.html

The core of Krishnamurti's teaching is contained in the statement he made in 1929 when he said:
"Truth is a Pathless land."

Man cannot come to it through any organization, through any creed, through any dogma, priest or ritual, not through any philosophic knowledge or psychological technique. He has to find it through the mirror of relationship, through the understanding of the contents of his own mind, through observation and not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection. Man has built in himself images as a fence of security--religious, political, personal. These manifest as symbols, ideas, beliefs. The burden of these images dominates man's thinking, his relationships and his daily life. These images are the causes of our problems for they divide man from man. His perception of life is shaped by the concepts already established in his mind. The content of his consciousness is his entire existence. This content is common to all humanity. The individuality is the name, the form and superficial culture he acquires from tradition and environment. The uniqueness of man does not lie in the superficial but in complete freedom from the content of his consciousness, which is common to all mankind. So he is not an individual.

Freedom is not a reaction: freedom is not choice. It is man's pretence that because he has choice he is free. Freedom is pure observation without direction, without fear of punishment and reward. Freedom is without motive; freedom is not at the end of the evolution of man but lies in the first step of his existence. In observation one begins to discover the lack of freedom. Freedom is found in the choiceless awareness of our daily existence and activity.

Thought is time. Thought is born of experience and knowledge which are inseparable from time and the past. Time is the psychological enemy of man. Our action is based on knowledge and therefore time, so man is always a slave to the past. Thought is ever-limited and so we live in constant conflict and struggle. There is no psychological evolution.

When man becomes aware of the movement of his own thoughts he will see the division between the thinker and the thought, the observer and the observed, the experiencer and the experience. He will discover that this division is an illusion. Then only is there pure observation which is insight without any shadow of the past or of time. This timeless insight brings about a deep radical mutation in the mind.

Total negation is the essence of the positive. When there is negation of all those things that thought has brought about psychologically, only then is there love, which is compassion and intelligence.

This statement was originally written by Krishnamurti himself in 1980.

FOR MORE visit this page and check out MANY TALKS(&books):

http://www.jiddu-krishnamurti.net/en/index.php

Some big names who were drawn to his ideas(if that helps with his "cred"):

• Dalai Lama
• Eric Clapton
• Aldous Huxley
• Alan W. Watts
  
• Kahlil Gibrab
• Hurricane Carter
• Greta Garbo
• Deepak Chopra
• Van Morrison
• Helen Keller
• Charlie Chaplin
• George Bernard Shaw
• David Bohm

In the movie about Hurricane Carter, Denzel is reading a book called, "The Awakening of Intelligence" by J. Krishnamurti. He puts a picture in this book in the movie. That's actually a very good book to have in your bookshelf. The "circus of man's struggle" is a chapter everyone needs to read, imo. Go to the bookstore, and read that one chapter, and you might just end up buying it. This guy is up there with Plato and all the others, including the man known as the buddha. He'll really add to your toolbox of self-study. Don't follow him exclusively, but read and reflect on your own path. Those would be my suggestions.

His words seemed dry and lifeless at times early on, but over the years, they ring more and more true as my understanding of myself grew. I've read from different ideas/teachings....seeing how they are different, throwing out some superstitions that never really helped in understanding myself. I'll probably have blind spots. I'm sure there will blind spots, but my problem has usually been beating myself up for mistakes. In understanding myself, in reflecting on things I've read, ideas I've used......I've learned to not beat myself up quite as much. That's helped finding other blind spots, because less energy used to beat myself up for mis-stepping or making mistakes....which is just another wave of the mind. "The dart" sutta(sutra)...was helpful in that. It's called, "Sallatha Sutta." Gil Fronsdal talked about the buddha's speech on the "second arrow" in one of his mp3's. I never knew where his source was for that..until recently...

Lauren found the actual text on "the dart"(arrow) I'd been searching for ..for a few years.
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn36/sn36.006.than.html

Ok, so this was more than I wanted to say, but hope this is useful somehow.

Cheers!