“There are three things which we must understand: concentration, choiceless awareness, and attention. Concentration implies resistance – concentration on a particular thing, on the page you are reading, or on the phrase you are trying to understand: to concentrate, to put all your energy in a particular direction. That is one thing.
“So we are enquiring what is the root of fear, not a particular fear but the root of all fear. The root of fear is time: what I will be, what I have been, what I might not be. Time is the past, the present, and the future. The past modifying itself in the present and continuing in the future.
“Psychologically we have created walls around ourselves, walls of resistance, walls of hope, fear, greed, envy, ambition, desire for position, power, prestige. They are created by the thinker. The thinker has created the space around himself in which he lives, and there he is never free. Beauty is not only the thing that you see; that’s a very small part.
In this quote, Krishnamurti discusses attention and how the use of meditation can be important to help to understand the world around us, developing a deeper sense of connection with ourselves and others.
“When you listen attentively, in that attention there is no ‘you’ attending. You are listening. Not that you are listening, there is only the act of listening.
“So what does death mean? The ending of things we have remembered, which we have now, and with the hope of something in the future. A great confusion, turmoil, sorrow. This is our life. And death comes, says, it will end. All this will end. So is it possible —please listen if you are interested—is it possible, take for example one thing, attachment.
“This consciousness is the consciousness of the rest of mankind because every human being in the world, everyone from the most primitive, from the most uneducated, to the most highly sophisticated, educated, they go through all this—faith, fear, longing, depression, anxiety, sorrow, pain, every human being in the world goes through it, whether he is a Communist, Socialist, Capitalist, or Democrat, or doesn’t belong to any group.
“There must be a new order, a new way of living. To bring about that new order, that new way of living, we must understand disorder. It is only through negation that you understand the positive, not by the pursuit of the positive…
“What is religion? Man has sought something that is not of this world. From the most ancient of people till now man has sought something that time, thought, has nothing to do with that. He has sought it. And in his search he has been trapped by…
If you’ve ever looked at a flower, what takes place? First, you name the flower. You say it belongs to a certain species. Then you say…