"Thought cannot solve any human problem, for thought itself is the problem."

Commenteries on Living


"Why has humanity given such extraordinary importance to thought? Is it because it is the only thing we have, even though it is activated through senses? Is it because thought has been able to dominate nature, dominate its surroundings, has brought about some physical security? Is it because it is the greatest instrument through which man operates, lives and benefits? Is it because thought has made the gods, the saviours, the super- consciousness, forgetting the anxiety, the fear, the sorrow, the envy, the guilt? Is it because it holds people together as a nation, as a group, as a sect? Is it because it offers hope to a dark life? Is it because it gives an opening to escape from the daily boring ways of our life? Is it because not knowing what the future is, it offers the security of the past, its arrogance, its insistence on experience? Is it because in knowledge there is stability, the avoidance of fear in the certainty of the known? Is it because thought in itself has assumed an invulnerable position, taken a stand against the unknown? Is it because love is unaccountable, not measurable, while thought is measured and resists the changeless movement of love?

We have never questioned the very nature of thought. We have accepted thought as inevitable, as our eyes and legs. We have never probed to the very depth of thought: and because we have never questioned it, it has assumed preeminence. It is the tyrant of our life and tyrants are rarely challenged."

Krishnamurti, Letters To The Schools, Volume 1, 15th March, 1979


"It is the same with sexual desire or any other form of desire. There is nothing wrong with desire. To react is per­fectly normal. If you stick a pin in me I shall react unless I am paralyzed. But then thought steps in and chews over the delight and turns into pleasure. Thought wants to repeat the experience, and the more you repeat the more mechanical it becomes; the more you think about it, the more strength thought gives to pleasure.

So thought creates and sustains pleasure through desire, and gives it continuity, and therefore the natural reaction of desire to any beautiful thing is perverted by thought. Thought turns it into a memory and memory is then nourished by thinking about it over and over again.

Of course, memory has a place at a certain level. In everyday life we could not function at all without it. In its own field it must be efficient but there is a state of mind where it has very little place. A mind which is not crippled by memory has real freedom."

Freedom From the Known, p.36


"Meditation demands an astonishingly alert mind; meditation is the understanding of the totality of life in which every form of fragmentation has ceased. Meditation is not control of thought, for when thought is controlled it breeds conflict in the mind, but when you understand the structure and origin of thought...then thought will not interfere. That very understanding of the structure of thinking is its own discipline which is meditation.

Meditation is to be aware of every thought and of every feeling, never to say it is right or wrong but just to watch it and move with it. In that watching you begin to understand the whole movement of thought and feeling. And out of this awareness comes silence.

Silence put together by thought is stagnation, is dead, but the silence that comes when thought has understood its own beginning, the nature of itself, understood how all thought is never free but always old – this silence is meditation in which the meditator is entirely absent, for the mind has emptied itself of the past. ...To understand this movement of thought and feeling there can be no condemnation in observing it..."

Freedom From the Known, p.115


"I wonder how many of you realize that we are put together by thought. Your gods are put together by thought."

Unkown source


"Seeing without thought, without the word, without the response of memory is wholly different from seeing with thought and feeling...Seeing without thought is total seeing. Seeing a cloud over a mountain, without thought and its responses, is the miracle of the new; it’s not 'beautiful,' it’s explosive in its immensity; it is something that has never been and never will be."

Krishnamurti’s Notebook, p.55


"To start with facts, and not with assumptions, we need close attention; and every form of thinking not originating from the actual is a distraction...To be free of these various forms of evaluation is to understand the actual, the what is."

The Book of Life, August 8


"Every thought and feeling must flower for them to live and die. Flowering of everything in you, the ambition, the greed, the hate, the joy, the passion - there is their death and freedom. It is only in freedom that anything can flourish, not in suppression, in control and discipline, these only pervert, corrupt. Flowering and freedom is goodness and all virtue".

Krishnamurti's Notebook


"...The mind moves from the known to the known, and it cannot reach out into the unknown. You cannot think of something you do not know; it is impossible. What you think about comes out of the known, the past, whether that past be remote, or the second that has just gone by. This past is thought, shaped and conditioned by many influences, modifying itself according to circumstances and pressures, but ever remaining a process of time. Thought can only deny or assert, it cannot discover or search out the new. Thought cannot come upon the new; but when thought is silent, then there may be the new - which is immediately transformed into the old, into the experienced, by thought. Thought is ever shaping, modifying, coloring according to a pattern of experience. The function of thought is to communicate but not to be in the state of experiencing. When experiencing ceases, then thought takes over and terms it within the category of the known. Thought cannot penetrate into the unknown, and so it can never discover or experience reality..."

Commentaries on Living


"Unfortunately for most of us thought has become so important. You say, 'How can I exist, be, without thinking? How can I have a blank mind?' To have a blank mind is to be in a state of stupor, idiocy or what you will, and your instinctive reaction is to reject it. But surely a mind that is very quiet, a mind that is not distracted by its own thought, a mind that is open, can look at the problem very directly and very simply.

And it is this capacity to look without any distraction at our problems that is the only solution...

Such a mind is not a result, is not an end-product of a practice, of meditation, of control...it comes into being when I understand the whole process of thinking - when I can see a fact without any distraction."

The First and Last Freedom, p.114


"...the ending of the process of thought is the beginning of silence."

The First and Last Freedom, p.207


"We cannot put an end to thinking but thought comes to an end when the thinker ceases and the thinker ceases only when there is an understanding of the whole process."

The First and Last Freedom, p.231


"Thoughts create the thinker, who isolates himself to give himself permanency; for thoughts are always impermanent."

Commentaries on Living, First Series, p.69


"You will say, 'How can I stop thinking?' You cannot. But one can think and not create the image."

The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti, Vol.16 p.46