Picked First & Last freedom by J Krishnamurti 2 weeks back. The book is collection of his discourse on various topics.
These are some of my simplified Kindle notes from the book:
- Relationship invariably results in possession, in condemnation, in self-assertive demands for security, for comfort and for gratification, and in that there is naturally no love.
- Relationship means communion without fear, freedom to understand each other, to communicate directly.
- Society is the product of relationship, of yours and mine together. If we change in our relationship, society changes; merely to rely on legislation, on compulsion, for the transformation of outward society, while remaining inwardly corrupt, while continuing inwardly to seek power, position, domination, is to destroy the outward, however carefully and scientifically built.
- Self-knowledge cannot be gathered through anybody, through any book, through any confession, psychology, or psycho-analyst. It has to be found by yourself, because it is your life; without the widening and deepening of that knowledge of the self, do what you will.
- Peace will come only when you yourself are peaceful, when you yourself are at peace with your neighbour.
- A mind is not sensitive when it is crowded with ideas, prejudices, opinions, either for or against.
- Awareness is a state in which there is no condemnation, no justification or identification, and therefore there is understanding; in that state of passive, alert awareness there is neither the experiencer nor the experienced.
- A man who does not demand anything, who is not seeking an end, who is not searching out a result with all its implications, such a man is in a state of constant experiencing.
- Have you ever tried to be alone? When you do try, you will feel how extraordinarily difficult it is and how extraordinarily intelligent we must be to be alone, because the mind will not let us be alone. The mind becomes restless, it busies itself with escapes.
- To be creative in the truest sense of that word is to be free of the past from moment to moment, because it is the past that is continually shadowing the present.
- For the discovery of truth there is no path. You must enter the uncharted sea – which is not depressing, which is not being adventurous.
- There is no freedom if you are seeking an end, for you are tied to that end. You may be free from the past but the future holds you, and that is not freedom. It is only in freedom that one can discover anything.
- We gossip about others because we are not sufficiently interested in the process of our own thinking and of our own action. We want to see what others are doing and perhaps, to put it kindly, to imitate others.
- There are two facets to memory, the psychological and the factual. They are always interrelated, therefore not clear cut. We know that factual memory is essential as a means of livelihood but is psychological memory essential? What is the factor which retains the psychological memory? What makes one psychologically remember insult or praise? Why does one retain certain memories and reject others? Obviously one retains memories which are pleasant and avoids memories which are unpleasant.
- Meditation is the beginning of self-knowledge and without self-knowledge there is no meditation.