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LO61T10 - What is the quality of the mind that is capable of meditation?
London - 23 May 1961
Public Talk 10



0:00 This is J Krishnamurti’s tenth public talk in London, 1961.
0:07 Krishnamurti: We have been talking about so many things while we have met here, and I would like to talk this evening about the quality of the meditative mind.
0:40 It may be rather difficult and rather complex and abstract, but if one goes into it thoroughly, not so much in detail, but the nature of it, the feeling of it, the essence of it, perhaps then it will be worthwhile so that our lives, which are so empty, so superficial, so habit-ridden, may somehow, without conscious effort and deliberate purpose, break through the shallow mind.
2:13 That’s... what I would like to talk about this evening.
2:21 And, I think it would be worthwhile, first of all, to realise for oneself how shallow we are.
2:44 It seems to me the more shallow we are, the more active, the more...
2:54 how collective we become, the more social reforms we indulge in.
3:07 We collect works of art, chatter about so many things endlessly.
3:18 And, the more shallow we are, the greater the capacity for words and the things of the intellect.
3:33 And, being shallow, we try to escape from that emptiness, from that shallowness into religious activity, prayers, contemplation, the pursuit of knowledge, become idealists and hang pictures in our rooms, attend concerts.
4:06 And we know fairly well, if we are aware, how shallow we are.
4:17 And, a shallow mind practicing a habit, or trying to discipline itself to become something, is made more dull, more stupid, and it loses its sharpness, its sensitivity.
5:02 And, it’ is very difficult for a shallow mind to shatter its own narrowness, its own limitation, its own pettiness.
5:20 I don’t know if you haven’t thought about it. First of all, none of us I do think we are petty, we are shallow, or that we are dull; because knowledge, pictures – I don’t mean cinemas – concerts, books, social activities fill our lives, and also, of course, the everlasting office.
5:58 These things do make us dull. And when we do realize this dullness, this lack of sensitivity, we try to sharpen ourselves with words, with intellect, with the things of the mind.
6:25 Now, I’ am going to talk about something this evening which not only demands certain activity of the mind, of the intellect, and also is aware of the word and its limitation, and, perhaps, if we can communicate with each other not only verbally, not only beyond the symbol which the words evoke in one’s mind, but also feel our way together, then we shall begin to discover for ourselves what it is to meditate, what is the quality of the mind that is capable of meditation.
7:33 Because it seems to me without the comprehension of this extraordinary beauty of meditation, life, however intelligent, however gifted, capable, penetrating, such a life is extraordinarily – for me – superficial and has very little meaning. And having very little meaning, we seek to have purpose in life, and we’re everlastingly asking ourselves and others what is the purpose of life.
8:26 And the nobler the purpose, the greater we think our endeavour.
8:35 I feel that’s a wrong question altogether. There is no purpose; there’s only a living beyond measure, and to discover that state which is beyond measure requires a very astute, sharp, clear, precise mind, not a mind that is made dull by habit, however noble that habit is.
9:16 But before I go into all that...
9:23 As I was saying, our lives are empty, shallow, and we are searching for an ideal.
9:34 And a shallow mind is so easily satisfied and it becomes discontented and follows a narrow groove.
10:06 And this pursuit of something other than ‘what is’, the pursuit of what should be, is in essence the nature of the shallow mind.
10:36 And such a mind, do what it will: sit cross-legged, meditate upon its navel, or think about the supreme, whatever it does will still be shallow because the very source, the very essence of it is shallow.
11:09 A stupid mind can never become a great mind.
11:18 What it can do is to realize its own stupidity, and the moment it realizes itself what it is, not imagine what it should be, then there is a breaking down of stupidity.
11:38 So when one realizes that, seeking comes to an end, which doesn’t mean the mind becomes stagnant, it doesn’t mean that the mind goes to sleep; on the contrary, it faces ‘what is’, actually.
12:09 And the resolution or the solving of ‘what is’ is not the seeking but the understanding of ‘what is’.
12:24 Because after all, most people are seeking happiness, God, truth, love everlasting, a permanent abode in the heavens – it’s rather difficult with all these rockets about – a permanent virtue, a permanent love.
12:57 And it seems to me, a mind that is seeking is a very shallow mind, a very superficial mind, and I think we ought to be a little bit clear on that point; we ought to a little investigate it, to see the absurdity of a shallow mind and its activities, or rather, its... absurd activities of a shallow mind.
13:45 Because what we are going to go into this evening, you will... one will not be able to penetrate if you are still thinking in terms of seeking, making effort, trying to discover.
14:06 On the contrary, you need an extraordinary sharp, quiet, still mind, but a shallow mind becoming still is still a shallow mind, and when it makes efforts to become silent, it will still be a shallow pool; and when the petty mind, the mind that’s so learned, so cunning, so superficial, because all effort is superficial because it wants to get somewhere.
15:12 The acquisitive pursuit of God, of truth, of some state, which involves effort, is the outcome of a mind that is limited, narrow, petty.
15:37 And such a mind can never be sensitive.
15:49 I think one has to face the truth of that, that effort to be, to become, to deny, to resist, to cultivate virtue, to suppress, to sublimate, to make itself become something, is in essence the nature of a shallow mind.
16:37 I know most of you won’t agree with this, probably, but it doesn’t matter. It is not a matter of agreement or disagreement, it’s an obvious psychological fact.
17:02 Now, when one really realizes it, when one is aware of it, when one sees the truth of it actually, not verbally, not intellectually, not allow the mind to have... to ask innumerable questions how to become...
17:27 how to go out of this shallowness, which all imply effort, when one is actually aware of that, then you will see the mind realizes that it cannot do anything about itself.
18:11 All that it can do is to perceive, see things brutally, ruthlessly as things are, without distortion, without bringing opinions about the fact; to merely observe.
18:45 And that is extremely difficult, to observe, because our minds are trained to condemn, to compare, to compete, to justify, or identifying itself with what it sees, so it is never capable of seeing things exactly as they are.
19:28 To live with a feeling as it is, whether it is jealousy, envy, greed, ambition, or what you will, to live with it without distorting it, without having an opinion about it, a judgment, requires a mind that has energy to follow all the movement of that fact.
19:55 Fact is never still, it’s moving, living, but we want to make it still so as to capture it by opinion, by a judgment.
20:23 So a mind that is aware of the futility of effort, even in our education.
20:49 The child, the student that makes effort to learn never learns. He may know, he may acquire knowledge, he may have a degree, but learning is something beyond effort.
21:09 Perhaps this evening we’ll be able together to learn without effort and therefore it’s no longer within the realm of knowledge.
21:36 So a mind that is aware of the fact without distortion, discoloration, without giving it any bias, to look at ourselves as we are with all the theories, hopes, despairs, suffering, longings, failures, frustrations, makes the mind astonishingly sharp.
22:18 What makes the mind dull is belief, is an ideal, habit, the pursuit of its own enlargement, of its own growth, as becoming or being something.
22:48 But to follow a fact requires a very sharp, subtle, active mind because the fact is never still.
23:06 I don’t know if you have looked at envy as a fact, and to follow it, because all our social morality and religious sanctions are based on envy, from the archbishop down to the ordinary clergyman.
23:50 Our social responsibilities, our relationships is acquisitive, is envious, comparative, and to follow that right through in every new movement...
24:15 in all its movements, in all the daily activities, requires a very alert mind.
24:32 And it’s very easy, is it not, to suppress it, to say, ‘I mustn’t be envious’, or, ‘Well, I’m brought up in a society like this, rotten, but there it is, I must accept it’, but to follow its movement, to follow every curve, every line, every nuance, subtlety.
25:07 The very following of the fact makes the mind subtle. I don’t know...
25:29 Now, if one does that – not try to alter the fact, not try to condemn it, but follow it, then there is no contradiction between the fact and what should be, which creates effort. Conflict brings about effort.
26:00 But if the mind is following the fact, it has no time, it has not caught up in trying to alter or in trying to make the fact different.
26:13 I don’t know if you see...
26:21 You know, again this is a psychological truth.
26:43 So if one does that, if the mind is doing that all the time, night and day – and I mean night and day, even in sleep.
27:01 I mustn’t go into all that, that’s too long.
27:11 Because the activity of the mind when the body is asleep is much more deliberate, purposive, and those activities are discovered by the conscious mind through symbols, through hints, through dreams.
27:40 But if the mind is active not only consciously, unconsciously, throughout the day, all the time watching every word, every gesture, every movement of thought, then there is no dreaming; then the mind can go beyond its own consciousness.
28:12 But I won’t go into that for the moment... this is not the occasion for it.
28:21 What we want to bring out is the necessity of a sensitive mind, not a sharp intellectual mind – that’s partly necessary – a good reasoning mind, a good mind, not an opinionated mind, not a mind that believes.
28:51 A mind that is capable of discussion, to argue, not like a schoolboy, but to find out, to doubt, to question, to inquire, is a good mind.
29:14 It is absolutely necessary to find out what is truth, God, or whatever name you like to give to it.
29:29 But sensitivity is essential, and a mind that has frontiers, that is conditioned, is not sensitive. A nationalist, a believer, obviously has not a sensitive mind; his belief, his nationalism limits his mind.
30:07 So in following the fact, the mind is made sensitive. The fact makes the mind sensitive, not you have to make the mind sensitive.
30:31 Then, if that is somewhat clear, then what is the nature of beauty which such a mind discovers?
31:23 Beauty for most of us is in the things that we see objectively: a building, a picture, a tree, a poem, a flowing river, a mountain, or the smile on a lovely face, or a child in the street, a building round the corner.
32:09 To us, beauty is in the things that we see.
32:18 And the reaction to that, the denial, or saying, ‘That’s ugly’, is part of the sensitivity, for most of us.
32:46 A mind that is sensitive is sensitive both to the ugly and the beautiful and therefore it is not in pursuit of what it calls beauty and avoidance of what it calls ugly.
33:19 And with such a mind we discover that there is a beauty which is not in the things that we see, or in the things that we feel what beauty is, or in the avoidance of what we call the ugly, the evil.
33:57 You know, beauty demands simplicity.
34:12 The really very simple mind, not a cunning mind, not a mind that’s made simple, but a very simple mind that sees facts as they are is a very beautiful mind.
34:38 But one cannot be simple if there is not abandonment, and there is no abandonment if there is no austerity.
35:06 I don’t mean austerity of the loincloth, or of the beard, the austerity of the monk, or the austerity of one meal a day or no meal a day, but the austerity of a mind that sees itself as it is and pursues what it sees endlessly.
35:56 And the pursuit of that is abandonment because there is no anchorage, there is no anchor to which the mind can cling to. It must completely abandon itself to see ‘what is’.
36:25 So the perception of what is beautiful demands the passion of austerity.
36:38 I am using the word deliberately, both the word ‘passion’ and ‘austerity’, not as it is understood by the saint or by the sinner, but you must have passion to see beauty, obviously.
37:04 There must be an intensity and a sharpness.
37:19 And a mind that’s made dull has no sharpness, it cannot be austere, it cannot be simple and therefore has no passion. It is in the flame of passion you perceive beauty, and so you can live with beauty.
37:49 You know, you’re listening, and perhaps to you these are all words to be remembered, to be conjured up, to be felt later.
38:03 There is no later, there is no ‘in the meantime’.
38:13 It must take place now, as we are discussing, communing with each other.
38:26 And this perception of beauty, not only in things, in vases, in statues, in the heavens, in trees, in the rivers, but also one begins to discover the beauty of meditation, and the intensity, the passion of a mind that is meditative.
39:04 Now, I’d like to go into that.
39:12 Meditation is necessary, to meditate. I’m going to explain what I mean by meditation.
39:25 I’m laying the foundation.
39:39 A mind that is capable of being silent, not made silent by tricks, by discipline, by coaxing, by suppression, but a mind that’s completely quiet – that is absolutely essential for a mind that is in a state of meditation.
40:35 Which means a mind that is free of symbols and words, because the mind is slave to words.
40:56 The British are slave to the word ‘queen’, the religious person is a slave to the word ‘God’, the symbols of all religions.
41:16 A mind that is cluttered up with symbols, with words, with ideas, is incapable of being silent, quiet.
41:37 And a mind that is caught up in thought is incapable of being quiet.
41:55 I mean by quiet not stagnation, not a blankness, not a state of hypnotized either by an idea or by oneself – hypnotized by the word ‘silent’.
42:26 But one comes to that state of silence darkly, unexpectedly, without volition, without desire, and that... you come to that only, the mind comes to that only when you understand the process of all... the process of thought.
43:05 Thought is the reaction of memory.
43:14 Memory is the residue of experience, and what is the residue is the centre, so there is the formation of the centre, the self, the ‘me’, which is the accumulation of experiences past and present in relation to the collective as well as to the individual.
43:54 That centre, which is the residue of memory, from which springs thought. If that centre is not...
44:06 if that process is not understood completely, which is the self-knowing.
44:20 So without self-knowing, consciously as well as unconsciously, the mind can never be quiet. It can hypnotize itself to be quiet – that is too childish, too immature.
44:45 So self-knowing is immediate, necessary and urgent in order to... – not in order – so that the mind, knowing itself and all its tricks and its imaginations, all its activities, without effort, quietly, without demand, without premeditation, comes to that state of quietness.
45:26 The knowing of oneself – not the higher self and the lower self, and all the rest of it – the whole of thought, which thinks about the higher self, and thinks the lower self, as itself, as lower and higher.
45:51 You know, in this movement of experience, memory, thought and the centre – the centre becoming the thought, memory and experience, and the experience becoming memory, and conditioning experience...
46:18 You’re...? I hope you are following all this. If you observe yourself, you will see this. The centre is never static.
46:33 What was the centre becomes the experience, and the experience becomes the centre, and the centre is transformed into memory.
46:53 It’s like cause and effect: what was cause becomes the effect and the effect becomes the cause. I don’t know if you’re following.
47:10 Am I making myself clear?
47:26 And this process is not only conscious but unconscious, the unconscious which is the residue of the race, of man, whether it is the Western man or the Eastern man; the inherited traditions, those traditions meeting the present and transforming it into a particular tradition, into another tradition, the many layers of the unconscious.
48:22 To be aware of all the movements, of its movement, requires a mind that is extraordinarily sharp and alive, and so never a moment of seeking security, comfort, because the moment you seek security, comfort, you’re finished.
49:02 Then you’re bogged down, then you’re held, then you’re anchored.
49:14 A mind that’s anchored to security, to comfort, to belief, to a pattern, to habits cannot be swift.
49:35 So all this is the knowing of oneself, and the knowing of oneself is the discovering of facts and pursuing the facts without the urge or the compulsion or the desire to change the fact.
50:07 And that requires attention.
50:15 Attention is one thing and concentration is quite another thing.
50:27 Most people who want to meditate hope to gain concentration.
50:41 Every schoolboy knows what concentration is.
50:49 They want to look out of the window and the teacher says, ‘Look at your book’, and there is a battle between... war between wanting to look out of the window and the urge and the fear and the competition that makes you look at the book.
51:10 And the more you can look at the book, the more you concentrate, which is a form of exclusion, isn’t it?
51:20 You exclude and so you... in that process of exclusion you are limiting the mind. Though it may become sharp, you’re limiting the mind.
51:45 Please follow what I’m saying; don’t accept or deny anything that I’m saying, but observe it.
51:58 So, a mind that is capable of mere concentration knows distraction.
52:10 Knowing distraction, it says, ‘How shall I get away from distraction?’ But a mind which is not completely held in concentration knows no distraction. Then everything is a living thing.
52:46 You are following what I’m talking about? Do please take this to your heart and you will see you’ll throw off all the burdens of the religions and the edicts that have been put on one and you will look at it differently.
53:03 Life becomes something amazing, enormously significant – the very living, not the escaping from living.
53:21 So there is a difference between concentration and attention.
53:30 We understand what we mean by concentration, that is, when a child is absorbed by a toy, the child becomes quiet. We know that. Give him a toy and all his restlessness subsides.
53:59 That’s a form of concentration. The thing absorbs him.
54:08 And that’s what grown-up people do too. They have their toys: the masters, the saviours, the pictures.
54:19 They want to be absorbed by that so that their mind becomes quiet.
54:27 That absorption is death to the mind.
54:44 We want to be absorbed by God, whatever that word is.
55:00 And there is a vast difference between attention and concentration. I don’t want to go more into concentration; we understand it more or less. Now, attention is something entirely different, not the opposite of concentration, not the opposite.
55:23 It is unrelated to concentration, therefore it is not a reaction to concentration.
55:40 I mean by attention when your mind is aware of every movement that’s taking place within itself, and attention implies not only hearing all the noises of the bus, cars, but also of what is being said, and your reaction to what is being said without choice, but being aware without frontiers.
56:40 When the mind is so attentive, then concentration has quite a different meaning.
56:50 Then concentration is not an effort, not an exclusion, but part of this awareness, and yet the mind, being aware, can concentrate. I don’t know if you’re following this.
57:02 Such an attention is goodness.
57:09 Such an attention is virtue, and in that attention there is love and therefore, do what you will then, there is no evil.
57:32 Evil comes into being only when there is conflict, and an attentive mind, a mind that is completely aware of itself and all the things within itself, such a mind is then capable of going beyond itself.
58:12 So meditation is not the knowing of how to meditate.
58:31 That’s totally immature, being taught to meditate – good Lord.
58:46 If you are taught to meditate, then it becomes a habit, and a habit makes the mind dull.
59:05 And a mind caught in its own conditioned movement, though it may have visions of Christ, and the Indian gods, and all the rest of it, is still conditioned.
59:20 As a Christian will only see the visions of Christ, and the Indian only his own pet gods, and a mind that is caught in visions is not a meditative mind.
59:51 A meditative mind is not an imaginative mind, therefore has no visions.
1:00:13 And so when the mind has floundered within its own movements, pursues the activity of its own thoughts, is in love with its centre, with its movement, with its experiences, then only it can follow; then the mind becomes quiet...
1:01:08 not becomes – then the mind is quiet.
1:01:16 In that state of quietness...
1:01:23 Now, wait a minute.
1:01:34 I can tell you verbally, the speaker can tell verbally what takes place, but that’s of very little importance.
1:01:47 I’ll tell you why. You have to discover it, you have to come to that state when the door is open, when you open the door, but for another to open the door for you, then the other becomes your authority.
1:02:08 You become his followers and then, therefore, there is the death to truth.
1:02:20 There is death to the person who says he knows, and there is death to the person who says, ‘I want to know’, therefore the craving to know breeds authority.
1:02:41 So the leader and the follower are caught in the same net.
1:02:53 Now, I am going... we are going into this, the speaker is going into this, not because to convince you, to show you, to entice you, or anything of that kind, because when once you understand this, you will see what relationship time and space has.
1:03:36 You know, when the mind is completely without barrier, without limitation, it is full.
1:03:53 And being full, it is empty.
1:04:04 And being empty, in it can contain time, time as space and distance, time as yesterday, today and tomorrow.
1:04:30 But without that emptiness, there is no time, no space, no distance. Because of that emptiness, time exists and therefore distance and space.
1:04:53 And when one... when the mind discovers this, experiences this, not verbally but actually, not as a remembered thing, then that mind is a creation, is creation.
1:05:21 It knows what is creation, not the thing created.
1:05:38 And then you will see that when you go around the corner in a wood, you will meet the everlasting – not only in the wood but in a filthy street.
1:06:13 And so a mind that has journeyed into itself, into the very depths of itself without holding back, the journey – not in a rocket to the moon, which is fairly easy and mechanical – but the journey within, the inward look, which is not the reaction to the outer.
1:06:59 It is the same movement, the outer and the inner. When there is this deep, inward look, inward pursuit... – ah – inward flow, inward going, then the mind is not anything apart from that which is sublime, and therefore all search, all seeking, all longing comes to an end.
1:08:20 We have two more talks, next Thursday and Sunday morning, and we’ll discuss other things. And please don’t be hypnotized by words; don’t be influenced by what is being said.
1:08:50 If you’re influenced, it is not yours.
1:09:01 I don’t mean yours as though it were something personal.
1:09:08 If you are influenced, then you will not know what love is.
1:09:17 And the meditation is this discovery of this extraordinary thing called love – discovery.
1:09:29 Not the social, moral love.
1:09:41 We’ll talk about that, perhaps next Thursday evening, that’s day after tomorrow evening.