Can the Mind Be Quiet? by J. Krishnamurti

The hearing and seeing of the ego is one thing, the seeing and hearing without the ego is another. The one perverts and distorts, the other simply sees and hears. This hearing is from the silence of nothingness. The total denial is the total action.

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First of all, we don’t see, we really don’t hear. We hear and see with the limitation, the conditioning of the ego, of the ‘me’—the ‘me’ being the society, the fear and so on. One must realise the fact that one does not see, one does not hear. When one recognises that fact you move to a different level.

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One must see it as a whole and put it away as a whole. The seeing it as a whole is the ending of it.

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Seeing or hearing is not possible when there is any interpretation, when there is any attachment.

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So there are these three points: there is absorption by a ‘toy’, being absorbed by a conflict, and thirdly both these things are resistance to that state of mind which is empty, fear of that state of mind which is not occupied at all. The petty, shallow mind wants to be absorbed by the toy or by its own conflict. The conflict is self-concern, and absorption by the toy is apparent non-self-concern. But the self-concern and the apparent non-self-concern are both the same. The understanding of these three things is the understanding of oneself. It is the ignorance of oneself that is the cause of conflict.

When you understand yourself, conflict ends. So conflict is ignorance of the design in which it exists, and the very design is its very existence. Seeing this nonverbally is to end it.

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The man who enjoys what he is doing is not possessed by what he is doing. The man who loves is anonymous. The man who possesses is clamorous; for him there is conflict, and not for the other. The important thing in all this is not being possessed by that which occupies you. Freedom is the ending of conflict. When you are attached there is pain. Knowing that you say, ‘I must be detached,’ and this attempt to become detached is conflict, which is the same as being attached.

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Please don’t say, ‘I can’t.’ When you use such words you are already creating a barrier. You are falling back into the old habit of saying to yourself that it is not possible or it is possible. One blocks oneself, one prevents oneself from looking. Can you look out of silence? Then this movement is part of the silence. Can you look out of this silence at fear? Not asking what to do with it, or how to suppress or go beyond it, but looking at it out of the depth of silence? To look at the tree, the cloud, your neighbour, at yourself out of this vast silence.

Sir, we just told you not to use the words impossible or possible, can or cannot. Put those words away from you. Don’t be caught by words. Listen to what is being said. Listen with your heart, with your mind, not with the little part of the intellect. Listen to what you have said, that it is not possible. You have hindered yourself by using those words. You have made the mind a slave to the words.

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蘑菇  

[mó gu]

mushroom

katydid  

ka.ty.did  

AHD:  [k³“t¶-d¹d”]

D.J.  [6ke!ti87d!d]

K.K.  [6keti7d!d]

n.（名词）

Any of various green insects of the family Tettigoniidae related to the grasshoppers and the crickets, the male of which produces a shrill sound by rubbing together specialized organs on the forewings.

树螽：与蚱蜢、蟋蟀同属叶蝉科的一种绿色昆虫，雄螽的前翅上有一种独特器官，摩擦时产生一种尖锐声音

螽  

[zhōng]

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A mind that is free of the censor no longer has any problem with what is. It tells its own story, and the listening to the story is the action of that story. So action comes in the act of listening, not in the action of the censor or the controller. The activity of the censor or the controller becomes empty and futile, but the action of listening to the story of what is is the love of doing, without reward or punishment.

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You have blamed the world and others. This has taken great energy and ruined you. You stop blaming others. This energy is there now. This concentration of energy is the beginning of the end of decline. This energy is not mine or the world’s. It is intelligence.

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If I may interrupt you, possibility is rather an odd word. What is possible can be done or has already been done. That is fairly simple. If a man has climbed a mountain, another can climb it. It is possible. The possible has already been accomplished, done. If you are thinking in terms of possibility, the possibility becomes very small, very limited. We surround ourselves with what is possible and so we remain with easy achievement, success, gain and so on. What is of far greater importance is to see what is impossible; then in relation to that impossibility the possible becomes far greater and therefore far more demanding, far more urgent. The impossible is possible, but the possibility becomes a thing of the little mind.

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Discipline in the sense of control, suppression, imitation, conformity with its reward and punishment, makes for violence.

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When you learn from another, if that is at all possible, you do not learn about yourself; you learn what the other thinks. If you learn from another as you learn from a scientist, it becomes mechanical, it becomes merely knowledge, and knowledge is detrimental to learning. You can add to knowledge or take away from it but when you act from knowledge you are acting with the burden of the past. It is the very negation of action. Learning is not accumulating, as knowledge is. Learning and action are synonymous, they are not two separate things. Whereas acting from knowledge brings about a contradiction in the doing.

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Life is a movement, ever changing. A man caught in the past, living in the past with all his thinking based on the past, will inevitably lead a life of conflict.

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Intelligence is the understanding of knowledge and its dangers.

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Thought is wasted energy; perception never is. Seeing is not a determined effort and in this there is no ‘I will see’ but only seeing. Observation puts aside the observer and in this there is no waste of energy. But the thinker, who attempts to observe, spoils energy. Love is not wasted energy but when thought makes it into pleasure then pain dissipates energy.

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When intelligence operates then the roots do not operate. That is the end of it.

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All conflict is among the roots themselves, so there is either intelligence or the action of the roots, which is conflict.

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The observer is always interfering, always casting its own shadow upon the thing it observes. So one must understand the nature and the structure of the observer. Not how to bring about a union between the observer and the observed but rather understand the movement of the observer. In that understanding, perhaps the observer comes to an end. So we must examine what the observer is. The observer is the past with all its memories, conscious or unconscious, its racial inheritance, its accumulated experiences which are called knowledge, its reactions. In essence the reality is that the observer is the conditioned entity, the one that asserts always that ‘I am’. And in protecting itself, it resists, dominates, seeks comfort and so on. The observer then sets itself apart as something different from that which is observed, outwardly or inwardly. This brings about a duality and from this duality there is conflict, which we said is a wastage of energy.

To be aware of the observer, the movements of the observer—the self-centred activity, assertions, prejudices—to be aware of all these conscious and unconscious movements which build the separation, the feeling that the observer is different. To be aware without any form of evaluation, without like and dislike; just to observe it in daily life, in its relationships. When this observation is clear, is there not a freedom from the observer?

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That is the whole point. As long as there is a withdrawal, as long as there is the observer different from the thing observed, then pain, contradiction and conflict will exist. See the truth of this, that division will inevitably cause pain. And you saw the truth of it by being aware of actually what is.

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