Home > Work > Life Ahead: On Learning and the Search for Meaning
21 " To compare is the very nature of a mind that is not awake to discover what is true. "
― J. Krishnamurti , Life Ahead: On Learning and the Search for Meaning
22 " Solitude helps the mind to see itself clearly as in a mirror, and to free itself from the vain endeavor of ambition with all its complexities, fears, and frustrations, which are the outcome of self-centered activity. "
23 " Most people are afraid to stand alone; they are afraid to think things out for themselves, afraid to feel deeply, to explore and discover the whole meaning of life. "
24 " Happiness comes when you are doing something because you really love to do it, and not because it gives you riches or makes you a prominent person. "
25 " Peace is not something petty, created by the mind; it is enormously great, infinitely extensive, and it can be understood only when the heart is full. "
26 " The important thing is first to find out what you are afraid of, to understand it and not run away from it. "
27 " To understand the whole operation of one’s own mind requires a great deal of insight, a great deal of inquiry without condemnation. "
28 " following of authority in any form, whether self-imposed or established from outside, as well as any form of imitation, copying, is destructive of incentive, of creativeness, and that it blocks the discovery of what is true. "
29 " Through a narrow window we can see only part of the sky, and not the whole vastness, the magnificence of it. "
30 " In a deep river there is richness and many fish can live; but the shallow pool is soon dried up by the strong sun, and nothing remains except mud and dirt. For most of us, love is an extraordinarily difficult thing to understand because our lives are very shallow. "
31 " The mind can only gather, accumulate, deny, assert, remember, pursue. Peace is absolutely essential, because without peace we cannot live creatively. "
32 " Your parents and society use that word duty as a means of molding you, shaping you according to their particular idiosyncrasies, their habits of thought, their likes and dislikes, hoping thereby to guarantee their own safety. "
33 " In understanding what beauty is, we shall know love, for the understanding of beauty is the peace of the heart. "
34 " Peace is of the heart, not of the mind. To know peace you have to find out what beauty is. "
35 " Self-reliance brings a certain freedom in which you discover; and that freedom is denied to you when you are comparing. "
36 " it is very important, while you are young, to be real revolutionaries—which means not accepting anything, but inquiring into all these things to find out what is true. Only then can you create a new world. "
37 " Real peace is as creative and as pure as war is destructive; and to find that peace, one must understand beauty. "
38 " Do you know what a free mind is? Have you ever observed your own mind? It is not free, is it? You are always watching to see what your friends say about you. Your mind is like a house enclosed by a fence or by barbed wire. In that state no new thing can take place. A new thing can happen only when there is no fear. And it is extremely difficult for the mind to be free of fear, because that implies being really free of the desire to imitate, to follow, free of the desire to amass wealth or to conform to a tradition—which does not mean that you do something outrageous. "
39 " The individual has to awaken his intelligence, not through any form of discipline, resistance, compulsion, coercion, but through freedom. "
40 " Any feeling of malice or envy, however slight it may be, is also destructive of this creative understanding without which there is no happiness. "