Theos-Talk Archives (March 2003 Message tt00387)

Hi all, 

I sent a quote to these lists a week ago, on meditation and
slowing thought. Various people commented on the method
that Krishnamurti advised here. The question became: does
Krishnamurti think the method important - or is it
secondary to him. 
So, instead of just giving my personal take on this, though
I've done so on various lists as well, I will let Jiddu
Krishnamurti speak for himself. I looked up the combination
of the terms "meditation" and "method" on the Krishnamurti
cd-rom. 
The following quotes are from the first 5 documents that
the search turned up. All in all enough, I think, to show
that a certain method was the last of his concerns, in most
of his talks.

Here goes:
Quotes to show Krishnamurti was not interested in
meditation as a method. 

“So, could we start with saying I do not know what
meditation is?”
17th Conversation with Dr. Allen W. Anderson, San Diego,
1974

“And waking towards dawn, meditation was the splendour of
light for the otherness was there, in an unfamiliar room.
Again it was an imminent and urgent peace, not the peace of
politicians or of the priests nor of the contented; it was
too vast to be contained in space and time, to be
formulated by thought or feeling.
…
meditation was the very essence of life.”
Krishnamurti’s Notebook Part 6. Bombay and Rishi Valley,
20th October to 20th November 1961.

“Now, let us see if we can together feel the importance of
meditation, and also perceive the beauty, the implications,
the subtleties of it. To begin with, that word ‘meditation’
has a very special significance to you, has it not? You
immediately think of sitting in a certain posture,
breathing in a certain way, forcing the mind to concentrate
on something, and so on. But to me that is not meditation
at all. To me meditation is entirely different; and if you
and I are to share this inquiry into what is meditation,
you will obviously have to put aside your prejudices, your
conditioned thinking about meditation. That is true, I
think, whether we discuss politics, or a particular system
of economics, or our relationship with each other. 
…
If you are given to a particular form of so-called
meditation, and the other is not, there can obviously be no
sharing. You must let go of your prejudices and
experiences, and he must also let go of his, so that both
of you can look into the problem and find out together what
is meditation.”
1959 8th Public Talk, New Delhi

“The flowering of meditation is goodness, and the
generosity of the heart is the beginning of meditation.”
“You cannot meditate if you are ambitious – you may play
with the idea of meditation. You your mind is
authority-ridden, bound by tradition, accepting, following,
you will never know what it is to meditate on this
extraordinary beauty.”

“You have to find out what meditation is. It is a most
extraordinary thing to know what meditation is – not how to
meditate, not the system, not the practice, but the content
of meditation. To be in the meditative mood and to go into
that meditation requires a very generous mind, a mind that
has no border, a mind that is not caught in the process of
time. A mind that has not committed itself to anything, to
any activity, to any thought, to any dogma, to any family,
to a name – it is only such a mind that can be generous;
and it is only such a mind that can begin to understand the
depth, the beauty and the extraordinary loveliness of
meditation.”
1962 7th Public Talk, Bombay, CD-Rom code bo62t7. 


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Katinka Hesselink
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-Those who observe, learn, a whole life long.
-Wie observeert, leert , een heel leven lang.
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http://www.katinkahesselink.net