Can The Mind Be Quiet?: Living, Learning and Meditation

by Jiddu Krishnamurti

Overview

One of the great thinkers of the 20th century discusses the nature of the lived experience, the details of profound self-inquiry, and how to live a fulfilled life with spiritual seekers from around the world

These 60 chapters—with titles like “Solitude Means Freedom”, “All Seeking is from Emptiness and Fear”, and “Life is an Extraordinarily Beautiful Movement”—carry the essence of Krishnamurti’s teaching style and profoundest wisdom.

Each one reflects an encounter “K” had at different times during the sixties and seventies. It opens with a poetic account of the location where the encounter took place, plus occasionally a description of the seeker that K has met. The chapter then moves back and forth between the seeker and the teacher, giving the reader plenty to reflect upon.

This is previously unpublished material. Readers will be captivated by the luminous prose and the piercing insight. The style is enigmatic and poetic but each chapter contains more than enough for the reader to consider, perhaps as a daily practice. In the style of Paulo Coelho, they have the quality of fables, but the teaching is far more profound and challenging.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781786782755
Publisher:	Watkins Media
Publication date:	08/13/2019
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	1,093,919
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.70(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Jiddu Krishnamurti lived from 1895 to 1986, and is regarded as one of the greatest philosophical and spiritual figures of the twentieth century. He claimed no allegiance to any caste, nationality or religion and was bound by no tradition. For nearly sixty years he traveled the world and spoke spontaneously to large audiences until the end of his life in 1986 at the age of ninety.

Table of Contents

Explorations with Krishnamurti viii

Foreword Terence Stamp ix

Part 1 Explorations Into Living

1 We do not see, we do not hear 2

2 How can the centre end? 7

3 The stream of life 10

4 Ignorance of oneself is the cause of conflict 13

5 Why do we divide the outer and the inner? 17

6 Conflict in any form is destruction of energy 21

7 How do I bring up my children? 27

8 What can stop degeneration in the world? 31

9 You have made the mind a slave to words 34

10 Pleasure soon becomes pain 38

11 Comparison breeds discontent 41

12 What brings about perception? 46

13 Can my child's brain cells be changed? 49

14 Choice exists only when the mind is confused 53

15 Control in any form is distortion 58

16 Solitude means freedom 62

17 Can the mind unburden itself? 65

18 We take a wrong turn and get lost 73

19 The intellect is very limited 77

20 The positive approach is destructive 81

21 Life cannot be ruled by ideas 84

22 Is creation different from expression? 87

23 How we waste our life! 90

24 All seeking is from emptiness and fear 93

25 Can I stop decline in myself? 98

26 At what depth do you want order? 102

27 Wisdom does not come through practice 107

28 The brain needs complete security 112

29 Intense watchfulness 120

Part 2 Explorations Into Learning

30 Education is to bring about the extraordinary beauty of order 124

31 Teach through dialogue rather than merely impart knowledge 131

32 To learn cooperation is part of education 138

33 Thought divides 143

34 The intellect can never be free 149

35 Knowledge is detrimental to learning 155

36 Knowledge is static 161

37 Knowledge becomes an impediment to relationship 167

38 Freedom from the known is the highest intelligence 172

39 Sex becomes an obsessive god 178

40 What does virtue mean? 186

41 Only the undistorted mind can see truth 193

Part 3 Explorations Into Meditation

42 What really is sacred? 200

43 Choiceless awareness and attention 205

44 Why do you meditate? 208

45 The religious mind is the meditative mind 211

46 Opinion is not truth 215

47 Meditation is intelligence 218

48 Meditation is the essence of energy 222

49 Life is an extraordinarily beautiful movement 230

50 What is it to be aware? 236

51 The strange sense of otherness 250

52 Meditation is to see the fact of distortion 252

53 We don't see the whole 255

54 Meditation is the movement of great sensitivity 257

55 Can the brain ever be quiet? 260

56 Love is not an abstraction 263

57 Meditation is emptying the mind of word and symbol 265

58 The ending of time is the ending of change 267

59 Thought cannot empty the mind 269

60 Silence 272