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SA68T9 - Meditation is the understanding of the nature of life
Saanen, Switzerland - 25 July 1968
Public Talk 9



0:01 This is J Krishnamurti’s ninth public talk in Saanen, 1968.
0:11 Krishnamurit: As we said, we are going to talk over together a rather complex problem.
0:28 Most of us function in fragments – political, religious, social, individual, family, and so on – and we don’t seem to be able to find out for ourselves an action that will be total, answering all the issues comprehensively, not broken up into fragments.
1:16 We don’t seem to be able to live a total, complete, full life, not broken up into fragments, and we are always seeking or trying to find out an action that will somehow bring a total contentment, a total satisfaction in whatever we are doing.
2:09 Whether we are medical people or politicians or a religious person, it seems almost impossible to find an activity that will answer all these issues without contradiction, without a feeling of insufficiency.
2:51 And if we can this morning go into a question that may be worthwhile and perhaps will answer this comprehensive, total activity in which there is no division, in which there is no pulling one against other, another action.
3:41 As we said the other day, we are going to talk over together this question of meditation.
3:58 Some of you perhaps may think that it is merely an entertaining individual experience to find something that is beyond the measure of the mind; some of you may think it is merely an unnecessary introduction to something that has no value when we are concerned with daily living; and some of you may perhaps have already experimented according to some systems of meditation, both in the Far East and the Near East, and the Middle East.
4:57 But before we go into it, I think we should lay down, for clarification, certain absolute necessities.
5:19 First, to be free of all hypocrisy, in which there is no pretension whatsoever, in which there is no double standard of life, double activity – say one thing, do another, think a totally different thing – so that any form of self-deception is utterly ruled out.
6:14 And most of us are so delicately balanced between hypocrisy and the desire to tell the truth.
6:32 We are so pretentious, having experienced some footling little vision or an emotional state, we think that is the absolute end of everything.
6:54 So, first, is it possible for a mind, for the whole of one’s being, in action, in thought, to be completely honest and non-hypocritical?
7:19 Because that is very important; if one is at all hypocritical in any way, then it leads to self-deception, illusion.
7:41 And a mind that is wanting to find out what is right meditation must in no way be entangled in this double-standard of life, a way which one so easily slips into – which is to say one thing and do another and think another thing altogether.
8:22 That is the first thing. Second, there must be the highest form of discipline.
8:36 And most of us dislike that word ‘discipline’.
8:50 Discipline means, I believe, the root of that word in Latin is ‘to learn’.
9:01 But we have misrepresented or misinterpreted that word to mean conformity, obedience, imitation, in which is involved suppression of one’s own desires, ambitions, to conform to a pattern, to a formula, and therefore follow an ideal, in which there is always conflict – the ‘what is’ and ‘what should be’.
9:53 If one pursues ‘what should be’, that leads to hypocrisy.
10:03 And most idealists are, if I may put it very gently, have a tinge of hypocrisy because they are avoiding ‘what is’.
10:24 And to conform to a pattern of ‘what should be’ not only leads to conflicts, struggle, a dual existence which inevitably leads to double standards and hypocrisy.
10:47 And when we use the word ‘discipline’ we are using it in a totally different sense.
10:56 We said there must be complete and the highest form of discipline, without conformity, without suppression, without following an ideology, creating a double, dualistic existence.
11:26 This discipline is not something you impose on yourself.
11:38 It isn’t an external compulsion or an inward demand to conform, to imitate, to follow, to obey.
11:51 But rather, in the very act... the very act of learning about anything is discipline itself.
12:06 If I want to learn a language, the language demands that the mind be disciplined.
12:16 The very learning implies discipline, in which there is no conflict at all. If you don’t want to learn a language, that is the end of it, but if you do want to learn a language, and the very learning of it brings about its own discipline.
12:46 So, discipline in the highest sense, which is the sensitivity of intelligence, must exist.
13:05 So that is the second thing. Third, which is a little more complex, is this whole problem of gurus.
13:21 I believe that word in Sanskrit means ‘one who points out’.
13:32 He does not take any responsibility for you, originally, but it has been misused like every other word.
14:03 The guru, in the ancient of days, was one with whom you lived; he told you what to do, how to look, how to examine.
14:20 You lived with him and perhaps thereby learned – not imitate, not conform to the pattern which he set, but through observing you were learning.
14:44 From that grew this whole illusion of gurudom, gurus.
14:57 Please, one has to understand this rather deeply because we are going to go into this question of meditation, which in itself is very, very complex.
15:17 One must understand the necessity of freedom from all authority, including that of the speaker, so that the mind, that highest form of supreme intelligence is a light to itself.
15:48 And all intelligence will not accept any authority – of the saviour, the master, the guru, or anybody, because it has to be, and it is, a light to itself. It may make a mistake, it may suffer, but in the very process of suffering, making a mistake, it is learning and therefore it is becoming a light to itself.
16:31 And there are so many gurus in the world, the hidden ones and the open ones.
16:43 Each of them promise through a certain system, method, to arrive at that realisation of what truth is, and no system, method – which implies imitation, conformity, following, and thereby fear – has any significance whatsoever for a mind that is enquiring into this whole question, which needs such a very delicate, highly sensitive intelligent mind to inquire into what is meditation.
17:42 The guru is supposed to know and you don’t know. He is far advanced in evolution and therefore has acquired, through many lives, through many experiences, through following other superior gurus, and so on, has accumulated immense knowledge.
18:09 And you, who are down below, lower down, are gradually going to come to that highest form of knowledge.
18:17 This whole hierarchical system, which exists not only in society outwardly in religions but also inwardly and among the so-called gurus, is obviously an illusion when one is enquiring into what is truth.
18:59 So, knowledge, technologically, there must be – we can’t wipe away all the technological, scientific knowledge that man has accumulated through centuries.
19:19 That knowledge must exist, and you and I cannot possibly destroy it.
19:29 There have been saints and all those people, said mechanical knowledge is useless, and they have their own particular prejudice.
19:44 And knowledge, apart from technology, of what value has it?
19:57 I can know about myself most profoundly.
20:06 And when there is an accumulation of knowledge it begins to interpret, translate what is seen in terms of its own past.
20:35 As long as there is the burden of knowledge, psychologically, inwardly, there is no free movement.
20:46 And the difference between the man who says he knows and will lead another to that knowledge, to that supreme thing, if he has at all realised, and if he says, ‘I have realised, I know’, then you distrust him completely.
21:16 A man who says he knows, he does not know. And that is the beauty of truth.
21:36 So, there must be the foundation of right behaviour, which is righteousness.
21:52 One may make a mistake, put in that foundation a stone which may not be strong; but put a strong stone there so as to make the foundation completely unbreakable in virtue.
22:18 And there is no virtue if there is no love. And virtue is not a thing to be cultivated, then it becomes a habit, and virtue is never a habit, it is a living thing.
22:41 And the beauty of it is, since it is not a habit it is ever-living.
22:53 So there must be the foundation of virtue, and that sense in which there is no hypocrisy whatsoever and therefore no self-deception.
23:12 And there must be that highest form of discipline, which is a sensitivity of quick action, quick understanding.
23:45 And as we said, all authority – we are talking of inward authority not the authority of law – but inward authority anchored in knowledge, in experience, in the concept that there is one who knows and the other does not know, that only breeds arrogance, a lack of humility, both on the part of the one who knows and on one who tries to follow him. So when this is firmly established, deeply, then we can proceed to enquire into that extraordinary thing called meditation.
25:06 Discipline is not something that you make into a habit.
25:17 You have to watch it all the time, every day, every minute.
25:27 Right. So that is the foundation. Because if you don’t lay that, every form of calamity, deception, hypocrisy, illusion will come.
25:47 Is that all right now? Shall we proceed?
26:11 You know, for most of us that word has very little meaning.
26:29 It is firmly established in the East that meditation means certain ways of thinking, concentrating, repetition of words, and following a system – which all deny the freedom, the quickness of the mind.
27:07 And meditation is not a deviation, something that is entertaining.
27:19 It is part of one’s whole life. It is as fundamentally important and essential as love, beauty.
27:36 If there is no meditation, into which we are going, then you do not know how to love, then you do not know what beauty is.
27:53 And do what you will – you may search, go from one religion, from one book, from one activity to another, always seeking to find out what truth is – you never will, because search for truth implies that a mind can find it when it appears, you have the capacity to say that is truth.
28:32 But do you know what truth is? Can you recognise it?
28:41 If you recognised it, it is already something of the past.
28:50 And so it cannot be found through search. It must come either uninvited, or if you are lucky, by chance.
29:08 So meditation is not an escape from life, it is not something of your own particular, individual process.
29:31 You know, there is no path to truth.
29:41 There isn’t your path or my path.
29:48 There is no Christian way to it or the Hindu way to it.
29:55 A way implies a static process to something which is also static.
30:08 There is a way from here to that next village – the village is firmly there, rooted in the house, in the buildings, and there is a road to it.
30:21 But truth is not like that, it is a living thing, a moving thing, and therefore there can be no path to it, yours or mine or theirs.
30:37 And also, that must be very clear in one’s mind, in one’s understanding, because man has invented so many paths.
30:53 He has said that you must do this in order to find – like the communists who say this is the only way to govern people – which implies tyranny, dictatorship, brutality, murder.
31:17 And when one has cleared the field, the decks, as it were, then one can proceed to find out what is meditation.
31:36 And it is not a monopoly of the East.
31:43 That is one of the most monstrous things, to say that there are those who will teach you how to meditate.
31:59 And that obviously is the... I won’t use adjectives.
32:10 So let’s proceed to find out for ourselves, not as individuals, but as human beings living in this world, with all the extraordinary complexity of modern society, as we are trying to find out what love is.
32:36 Not find it – be in that state of affection, of that quality of mind which is not burdened with jealousy, with misery, with conflict, self-pity.
32:53 Then only there is a possibility of living in a different dimension, which is love.
33:01 And as love is of immense importance, so is meditation.
33:17 How shall we – I am asking this not casually but seriously – how shall we proceed with this problem?
33:31 The problem is this: our minds are conditioned, which is fairly obvious, and our minds are everlastingly chattering, and our minds are never quiet.
34:02 And when we try to be quiet it is imposed, or it happens casually by chance.
34:14 To learn, to see, there must be the quietness of a mind that is not broken up, that is not torn apart, that is not tortured.
34:41 If I want to see something very clearly – the tree or the cloud, or the face of a person next to me – to see very clearly without any distortion, the mind must not be chattering, obviously; mind must be very quiet to observe, to see.
35:20 And the very seeing is the doing and the learning.
35:28 Right?
35:37 So, what is meditation?
35:47 Is meditation possible? That is, we are using the word as it is given in the dictionary, not extraordinary meaning given by those who think they know what meditation is – to consider, to observe, to comprehend, to learn, to see very clearly without any distortion, to hear everything as it is, not interpreting it, not translating it according to one’s prejudice.
36:34 When you listen to the bird of a morning, to listen to it completely, without a word cropping up into your mind, to listen to it with total attention, to listen to it without saying how beautiful, how lovely, what a lovely morning.
37:01 All that means that the mind must be silent, and the mind cannot be silent when there is any form of distortion.
37:20 That is why one must understand every form of conflict, between the individual and society, between the individual and the neighbour, between himself, his wife, his children, her husband, and so on – any form of conflict at any level is a distorting process.
37:57 Which is, there is conflict when there is contradiction within oneself.
38:05 This contradiction arises when you want to express yourself in various different ways and you cannot, and then there is a conflict in it, there is a struggle, there is a pain, which distorts the quality, the subtlety, the quickness of the mind.
38:31 And so, meditation is the understanding of the nature of life, with its dual activity, its conflict, and understanding it, see the true significance of it, the truth of it, so that the mind – though it has been conditioned for thousands of years, to live in conflict, to struggle, to battle – becomes clear, without any distortion.
39:17 And a distortion must take place when you are following an ideology.
39:30 Which is, there is the idea of ‘what should be’ and ‘what is’, and hence there is a duality, and there is conflict, there is a contradiction, and so the beginning of a mind that is tortured, distorted, perverted.
39:51 There is only one thing, which is ‘what is’, and nothing else.
40:01 And so to be completely concerned with ‘what is’ puts away every form of duality, and hence there is no conflict, and therefore there is no tortured mind.
40:27 So meditation is a mind that sees actually ‘what is’ and without interpreting it, without translating it, without wishing it were not, or accepting it.
40:54 It is only a mind that can do this when the observer ceases to be.
41:10 Please, this is important to understand. You know, most of us are afraid. We went into that the other day. There is fear and the one who wants to get rid of fear, who is the observer.
41:38 The observer then tries to do something about fear.
41:45 The observer is the entity who recognises the new fear and translates it in terms of the old fears which he has known, stored, and escaped...
42:01 from which he has escaped. So as long as there is the observer and the thing observed there must be duality and hence conflict, and therefore a mind becomes twisted.
42:18 And that is one of the most complicated states, a thing which we must understand. As long as there is the observer there must be conflict of duality.
42:46 And is it possible to go beyond the observer? The observer being the whole accumulation of the past, the ‘me’, the mind, the ego, the thought which springs from this accumulated past.
43:11 So, meditation is the understanding of the whole machinery of thought.
43:25 I hope as the speaker is putting into words you are listening to it and observing it very clearly, and to see if it is possible to eliminate all conflict so that the mind can be utterly at peace – not contented.
44:01 Contentment arises only when there is dissatisfaction, which again is the process of duality.
44:13 When there is no observer but only observing, and hence no conflict, then only can there be complete peace.
44:31 Or otherwise there is violence, aggression, brutality, wars, and all the rest of the ways of modern life.
44:46 So meditation is the understanding of thought and discovering for oneself whether thought can come to an end.
45:07 It is only then the mind is silent; it is only then the mind can see actually ‘what is’ without any distortion, without any hypocrisy, without any self-illusion.
45:24 And there are those systems, gurus, and so on, who say to end thought you must learn concentration, you must learn control.
45:45 You know, a disciplined mind, in the sense imitative, conforming, accepting, obeying, such a mind is always frightened.
46:00 And such a mind can never be still – it can pretend to be still.
46:14 And the quiet mind is not possible through any drug, through repetition of words – you can reduce it to dullness but it is not quiet.
46:34 So, thought breeds fear and sorrow – which we went into the other day – and meditation is the ending of sorrow in daily life.
47:03 When you are married, when you go to business, where you must use your technological knowledge, but when that knowledge is used for psychological purposes, to become more powerful, occupy a position that gives you prestige, position, honour, fame, such a mind not only breeds antagonism, hatred, but such a mind can never possibly understand what truth is.
47:56 So meditation is the understanding of the way of life – the understanding of sorrow, the understanding of fear, and going beyond them. To go beyond them is not to intellectually grasp the significance or the rational process of sorrow or fear, but to go beyond it.
48:27 And to go beyond it is to observe it, to see it as it is.
48:34 And to see it very clearly the observer must come to an end.
48:44 So meditation is the way of life, not an escape from life.
48:55 Meditation obviously is not the experiencing of visions or having some strange mystical experiences.
49:12 You know, you can take a drug that will expand your mind.
49:21 Chemically it will produce certain reactions which will make the mind highly sensitive, and in that sensitive state you see things according to your conditioning, heightened.
49:51 And meditation is not a repetition of words.
49:58 You know, there has been the fashion lately of someone giving you a word, a Sanskrit word, and you keep on repeating it and thereby you hope to achieve some form of extraordinary super experience – which is all utter nonsense. Of course, if you keep on repeating a lot of words your mind is made quiet and therefore made dull, but that is not meditation at all. Meditation is the constant understanding of the way of living, the way of life, and therefore meditation is not an escape, it is the understanding of life every minute.
50:49 And to understand that, the mind must be extraordinarily alive, alert, not burdened by any fear, any hope, any ideology, any sorrow.
51:13 And if we can go together that far – and I hope some of us have been able to go actually and not theoretically that far – then we enter into something quite different.
51:36 Please, as we said at the beginning, without laying the foundation of this understanding in daily life – the daily life of loneliness, of boredom, of excitement, of sexual pleasures, of the demand to fulfil, to express oneself, of this conflict between hate and love, life in which one demands to be loved, a life of deep inward loneliness – to understand all that without distorting, without becoming neurotic, to be completely, highly sensitive and balanced, unless that is there you cannot go very far.
52:58 And when that is deeply laid, then the mind is capable of being completely quiet and therefore completely at peace, which is entirely different from being contented, like a cow.
53:39 Then alone is it possible to find out if there is something beyond the measure of the mind, if there is such thing as reality, if there is such thing as God, if there is such thing as something which man has sought for millions of years, through gods, through temples, through sacrificing oneself, by becoming hermits, and all the absurdities and inventions that man has gone through.
54:38 You know, up to a certain point, up to now, verbal explanation, verbal communication is possible; beyond that there is no communication verbally – which does not mean some mysterious, metaphysical, para-psychological thing.
55:09 Words exist only for communicating purposes, something that may be expressed in word, or through a gesture, or through silence.
55:22 But to go beyond all this, it is not possible to put it into words.
55:38 To describe it becomes so utterly meaningless.
55:47 All that one can do is to open that door, that door being... that door kept open only when there is order – not the order of society which is disorder but the order that comes into being when you see ‘what is’ without any distortion, that distortion brought about by the observer.
56:28 When there is no distortion at all then there is order, which in itself brings its own extraordinary, subtle discipline.
56:49 And to leave that door open is all that one can do.
56:59 Whether that reality comes through that door, you can’t invite it. And if you are very lucky, by some strange chance, it may come and give its blessing. You can’t seek it.
57:22 After all, that is beauty. You can’t seek love.
57:29 If you seek it, it becomes merely the continuation of pleasure.
57:38 That pleasure is not love. There is bliss which is not pleasure, and when the mind is in that state of meditation there is immense bliss. And only then the ordinary things of life, the everyday living, with its contradiction, brutalities, violence, has no place. But one must work very hard every day to lay the foundation; and that is all that matters, nothing else.
58:37 Then out of that may come love, beauty, and that silence which is the very nature of a meditative mind.
59:15 We meet again on Sunday morning.