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Meditation
‘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’
J. Krishnamurti on how to meditate
[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 1874, Krishnamurti
Foundation Trust Ltd., London, , p. 58
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