You don’t need a clever mind.

You don’t need a clever mind. What you really need, if I may point out, is the capacity to observe and to listen; to observe without all the clamour that lies behind the observation, the noise of opinions, rationalization, condemnation. You can observe very simply a leaf in the breeze; you can observe a fly in the room; and also you can observe your behaviour, why you do this and that, why you are hurt, why you store up the hurt, why you yield and why you are obstinate. Just to observe and to listen, without any muttering of your own like and dislike. You know, to do this you have to pay attention, and the learning of this is attention. And in this is a great deal of fun, much more than you realize. It is fun that comes of itself and that is real. The other kind fades away. —Krishnamurti

⠀

From The Whole Movement of Life is Learning 

We seek happiness through things, relationships, ideas or thought. So, things, relationship and ideas, and not happiness, become all-important. —Krishnamurti

We have become far too clever. Our brains have been trained to be verbally, intellectually, very bright. They are crammed with a great deal of information, and we use this for profitable careers. A clever, intellectual person is praised, shown honour. Such people seem to usurp all the important places in the world; they have power, position, prestige; but their cleverness betrays them at the end. In their hearts they never know what love is or deep charity and generosity, for they are enclosed in their vanity and arrogance. This has become the pattern of all highly endowed schools. A boy or girl in a conventional school, gets trapped in modern civilization and is lost to the whole beauty of life. When you wander through woods with heavy shadows and dappled light and suddenly come upon an open space, a green meadow surrounded by stately trees, or a sparkling stream, you wonder why man has lost his relationship to nature and the beauty of the earth, the fallen leaf and the broken branch. If you have lost touch with nature, then you will inevitably lose relationship with another. Nature is not just the flowers, the lovely green lawn or the flowing waters in your little garden, but the whole earth with all the things on it. We consider that nature exists for our use, for our convenience, and so lose communion with the earth. Sensitivity to the fallen leaf and to the tall tree on a hill is far more important than all the passing of examinations and having a bright career. Those are not the whole of life. Life is like a vast river with a great volume of water without a beginning or an ending. We take out of that fast running current a bucket of water, and that confined water becomes our life. This is our conditioning and our everlasting sorrow. —Krishnamurti

Truth is not something mysterious; truth is where you are. From there you can begin.

It is part of human tradition to accept fear. Both the older and younger generation live with fear. Most are not aware that we live in fear. It is only in a mild form of crisis or a shattering incident that we become aware of this abiding fear. It is there. Some are aware of it, others shy away from it. Tradition says to control fear, run away from it, suppress it, analyse it, act upon it, or accept it. We have lived with fear for millennia and we somehow manage to get along with it. It is the nature of tradition to act upon it or run away from it; or sentimentally to accept it and look to some outside agency to resolve it. Religions spring from this fear, and the politicians’ compelling urge for power is born out of this fear. Any form of domination over another is the nature of fear. When a man or a woman possesses another, there is fear in the background, and this fear destroys every form of relationship. —Krishnamurti

⠀

From The Whole Movement of Life is Learning