Krishnamurti & the Art of Awakening

Krishnamurti Quote of the Day

Eddington, Pennsylvania | 1st Public Talk 12th June, 1936

Awareness is not occupation with one's own thoughts and feelings. Such occupation, which is introspection, objectifies action and calculates the results of an act. In that there can be no sympathy, nor the fullness of being. Each one is so occupied with himself, with his own psychological needs, his own security, that he becomes incapable of sympathy.

Now awareness is not this. Awareness is discernment, without judgment, of the process of creating self-protecting walls and limitations behind which the mind takes shelter and comfort. Take, for example, the question of faith, with its fear and hope. Faith gives you comfort, a solace in misfortune or sorrow. On faith you have built up a system of compulsion, discipline, a set of false values. Behind the protective wall of faith you take shelter, and that wall has prevented love, sympathy, and kindliness; because your occupation has been with yourselves, with your own salvation, with your own well-being here and in the hereafter.

If you begin to be aware, to discern how you have created this process through fear, how you are constantly taking shelter, whenever there is any reaction, behind these ideals, concepts and values, then you will perceive that awareness is not occupation with your own thoughts and feelings, but the deep comprehension of the folly of creating these values behind which the mind takes shelter.

Most of us are unconscious that we are following a pattern, an ideal, and that it is guiding us through life. We accept and follow an ideal because we think that it will help us to wade through the confusion of existence. With that we are occupied rather than in comprehending the whole process of life itself. We are therefore unconscious of this constant adjustment to an ideal, and never question why it exists; but if we were to examine critically, we should see that an ideal is but a means of escape from actuality, and that in conforming ourselves to an ideal we are allowing ourselves to become more and more restricted, confused and sorrow laden. In comprehending the actual, with its sufferings, acquisitiveness, cruelties, and in eliminating them, there is true sympathy, affection. This awareness is not occupation with one's own thoughts and feelings, but a constant discernment, freed from choice, of what is true. All choice is based on tendency, craving and ignorance, which prevents true discernment. If choice exists, there cannot be awareness.

Tags: awareness

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