We are so sluggish in our mentality that we think the world’s problems are not our business, that they have to be resolved by the United Nations or by substituting new leaders for the old.
Leaders destroy the followers and followers destroy the leaders.
If I follow a particular method of knowing myself, then I shall have the result which that system necessitates; but the result will obviously not be the understanding of myself.
Love is love, not to be defined or described by the mind as exclusive or inclusive. Love is its own eternity: it is the real, the supreme, the immeasurable.
A man who lives never asks, “What is living?” and he has no theories about living. It is only the half-alive who talk about the purpose of life.
Freedom from the known is death, and then you are living.
Whatever the one generation may learn from the other, that which is genuinely human no generation learns from the foregoing... Thus no generation has learned from another to love, no generation begins at any other point than at the beginning, no generation has a shorter task assigned to it than had the previous generation.
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.
We human beings are committed to a way of life that leads to war and yet at the same time we want peace, we want freedom; but it is peace only as an idea, as an ideology; and at the same time everything we do conditions us.
Do you know what time is? Not by the watch, not chronological time, but psychological time? It is the interval between idea and action.
So freedom lies, not in trying to become something different, nor in doing whatever you happen to feel like doing, nor in following the authority of tradition, of your parents, of your guru, but in understanding what you are from moment to moment.
You have to be a light to yourself in a world that is utterly becoming dark.
It is only when I look at you without comparative judgment that I can understand you. But when I compare you with somebody else, then I judge you and I say, ‘Oh, he is a very stupid man’. So stupidity arises when there is comparison. I compare you with somebody else, and that very comparison brings about a lack of human dignity. When I look at you without comparing, I am only concerned with you, not with someone else. The very concern about you, not comparatively, brings about human dignity.
Organized religion is the frozen thought of man, out of which he builds temples and churches; it has become a solace for the fearful, an opiate for those who are in sorrow. But God or truth is far beyond thought and emotional demands.
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.
The mind can only gather, accumulate, deny, assert, remember, pursue. Peace is absolutely essential, because without peace we cannot live creatively.
In understanding what beauty is, we shall know love, for the understanding of beauty is the peace of the heart.
Peace is of the heart, not of the mind. To know peace you have to find out what beauty is.
You compare yourself with somebody, compare yourself with an example, with the ultimate ideal. Comparative judgment makes the mind dull; it does not sharpen the mind, it does not make the mind comprehensive, inclusive, because, when you are all the time comparing, what has happened? You see the sunset, and you immediately compare that sunset with the previous sunset.
Discipline must be without control, without suppression, without any form of fear... It is not discipline first and then freedom; freedom is at the very beginning, not at the end.