A synthesis of Krishnamurti's thought on the human predicament.

A tricky little read. I think I was able to discern what he was getting at because I'd read a nice illustrated guide to his thought called Krishnamurti for Beginners. But this book rewarded the effort. It's like an advanced course for developing ego-less non-attachment.

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I really didn't understand what Jiddu Krishnamurti was saying. I think I have to read it many times before I have a better understanding of the book. ( )

I read this book because it was part of a project I was working on.

Occasionally I read a sentence or paragraph and a smile appeared on my face and I felt like the author really understood. Other times, I felt that he was trying too hard to convince. His whole premise is that we should discover for ourselves, not follow convention or authority, but yet he's constantly telling rather than discussing. Starting a paragraph with a series of questions doesn't stop the voice sounding like a lecture.

I am not stupid and I am not dull, yet Krishnamurti seems determined to convince me that I am and the reason is that I'm so caught up with my own thinking, my own analysis that I can't see anything for real. I don't actually have a problem with the fact that I'll always see the world through my conditioning, because I don't believe that there is any other way of my seeing the world. Here, I feel Krishnamurti is determined to make me believe that my conditioning is a problem, but identifying is as problematic suggests a solution. There is no solution for 'conditioning' because the past is just the past and cannot be 'solved'. Even sitting quietly and being entirely attentive doesn't remove my societal conditioning. I might have a momentarily calmed mind, but how I respond to the experience is dictated by my same past.

That said, buried in this book are some ideas that many people could benefit from by mulling over a little.

At the end of the book, he sums it up by saying anyone who claims to know love or to know silence doesn't. That of course includes himself. ( )

un-know thyself
"To find out actually what takes place when you die you must die. This isn't a joke. You must die - not physically but psychologically, inwardly, die to the things you have cherished and to the things you are bitter about. If you have died to one of your pleasures, the smallest or the greatest, naturally, without any enforcement or argument, then you will know what it means to die. To die is to have a mind that is completely empty of itself, empty of its daily longings, pleasures and agonies. Death is a renewal, a mutation, in which thought does not function at all because thought is old. When there is death there is something totally new. Freedom from the known is death, and then you are living." (Jiddu Krishnamurti.) - This vast, little book could well transform your life. ( )