Thoughts on Thinking

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.

- Oscar Wilde

To understand the misery and confusion that exist within ourselves, and so in the world, we must first find clarity within ourselves, and that clarity comes about through right thinking. Clarity is not the result of verbal assertion, but of intense self-awareness and right thinking. Right thinking is not the outcome of or mere cultivation of the intellect, nor is it conformity to pattern, however worthy and noble. Right thinking comes with self-knowledge. Without understanding yourself you have no basis for thought; without self-knowledge, what you think is not true.

- J. Krishnamurti

The unexamined life is not worth living.

- Socrates

Our system of upbringing is based upon what to think, not on how to think.

- J. Krishnamurti

A consistent thinker is a thoughtless person, because he conforms to a pattern; he repeats phrases and thinks in a groove.

- J. Krishnamurti

In a certain sense we are nothing but a complex mass of mental, nervous and physical habits held together by a few ruling ideas, desires and associations--an amalgam of many small self-repeating forces with a few major vibrations.

- Sri Aurobindo

There is no refuge other than conquest of the mind.

- Katha Upanishad

Thought sees itself to be impermanent, in constant flux, so it creates the thinker as an entity apart and dissimilar from itself. Then the thinker operates on thought; the thinker says, “I must put an end to thought”. But there is only the process of thinking; there is no thinker apart from thought. The thinker and the thought are one.

- J. Krishnamurti

The world changes when the mind changes.

- Buddha

One makes all kinds of discoveries when the mental machine stops, and first of all one realizes that if the power to think is a remarkable gift, the power not to think is a far greater one; let the seeker try it for just a few minutes, and he will soon see what this means! He will realize that he lives in a surreptitious racket, an exhausting and ceaseless whirlwind exclusively filled with his thoughts, his feelings, his impulses, his reactions - him, always him, an oversized gnome intruding into everything, obscuring everything, hearing and seeing only himself, knowing only himself (if even that!), whose unchanging themes manage to give the illusion of novelty only through their alternation.

- Satprem (Bernard Enginger)

Thought has survived for millions and millions of years, and it knows every trick in the world. It will do anything to maintain its continuity.

- U.G.Krishnamurti

Thought is our enemy. However, we are not ready to accept the fact that thought can only create problems, but cannot help us to solve them.

- U.G.Krishnamurti

Thought is the movement of constant becoming... the moment we want to be something we are no longer free.

- J. Krishnamurti

Religion is the frozen thought of man out of which they build temples.

- J. Krishnamurti

What is jealousy? Can you look at jealousy without the word jealousy? The experiencing of a fact without thought and feeling is a profound event.

- J. Krishnamurti

Perception without the word, which is without thought, is one of the strangest phenomena. Then the perception is much more acute, not only with the brain, but also with all the senses. Such perception is not the fragmentary perception of the intellect nor the affair of the emotions. It can be called a total perception.

- J. Krishnamurti

The first task of yoga is to breathe freely, to shatter that mental screen, which allows only one type of vibration to get through, in order to discover the multicolored infinity of vibrations; that is, the world and people as they really are, and another "self" within ourselves, whose worth is beyond any mental appreciation.

- Satprem (Bernard Enginger)

But what makes you choose? What makes you say this is good, true, noble, and the rest is not? Obviously the choice is based on pleasure, reward or achievement; or it is merely a reaction of one's conditioning or tradition. Why do you choose at all? Why not examine every thought? When you are interested in the many, why choose one? Why not examine every interest? Instead of creating resistance, why not go into each interest as it arises, and not merely concentrate on one idea, one interest? After all, you are made up of many interests, you have many masks, consciously and unconsciously. Why choose one and discard all the others, in combating which you spend all your energies, thereby creating resistance, conflict and friction. Whereas if you consider every thought as it arises - every thought, not just a few thoughts - then there is no exclusion. But it is an arduous thing to examine every thought. Because, as you are looking at one thought, another slips in. But if you are aware without domination or justification, you will see that, by merely looking at that thought, no other thought intrudes. It is only when you condemn, compare, approximate, that other thoughts enter in.

- J. Krishnamurti

There is not a single movement of our being, at any level, not a single emotion, not a single desire, not the batting of an eyelash, that is not instantly snatched up by the mind and covered over with a layer of thought; in other words, we mentalize everything.

- Satprem (Bernard Enginger)

Thought is violence because it is trying to protect itself. There is no such thing as you and me. The totality has created you and me. You have no isolated existence. The demand of being an individual is the real cause of suffering. The how is absent for me. The hows dished out in the market-place are not for me. The one who is living doesn't ask how to live.

- U.G.Krishnamurti

This vast space which the mind, the I, cannot reach, is silence. The mind can never be silent within itself; it is silent only within the vast space which thought cannot touch. Out of this silence there is action which does not arise from thought. Meditation is this silence.

- J. Krishnamurti

Thought is time. Thought is born of experience and knowledge which are inseparable from time and the past. Time is the psychological enemy of man. Our action is based on knowledge and therefore time, so man is always a slave to the past. Thought is ever-limited and so we live in constant conflict and struggle. There is no psychological evolution. When man becomes aware of the movement of his own thoughts he will see the division between the thinker and the thought, the observer and the observed, the experiencer and the experience. He will discover that this division is an illusion. Then only is there pure observation which is insight without any shadow of the past or of time. This timeless insight brings about a deep radical mutation in the mind.

- J. Krishnamurti

If I really see what thought does, thought comes to an end. Whatever thought does it breeds misery, sorrow, conflict, and when thought realizes that, it will come to an end by itself, the vicious circle is broken; thought, which means time, has come to an end.

- J. Krishnamurti