Source Text
Even the best cookery book is no substitute for even the worst dinner. The fact seems sufficiently obvious. And yet, throughout the ages, the most profound philosophers, the most learned and acute theologians have constantly fallen into the error of identifying their purely verbal constructions with facts, or into the yet more enormous error of imagining that symbols are somehow more real than what they stand for.
the Mahayana sutras affirmed that “the truth was never preached by the Buddha, seeing that you have to realize it within yourself”.
Right thinking comes with self-knowledge. Without understanding yourself, you have no basis for thought; without self-knowledge, what you think is not true.”
A lie can be extended, propounded and repeated, but not truth; and when you repeat truth, it ceases to be truth, and therefore sacred books are unimportant. It is through self-knowledge, not through belief in somebody else’s symbols, that a man comes to the eternal reality, in which his being is grounded. Belief in the complete adequacy and superlative value of any given symbol-system leads not to liberation, but to history, to more of the same old disasters. “Belief inevitably separates. If you have a belief, or when you seek security in your particular belief, you become separated from those who seek security in some other form of belief. All organized beliefs are based on separation, though they may preach brotherhood.” The man who has successfully solved the problem of his relations with the two worlds of data and symbols, is a man who has no beliefs. With regard to the problems of practical life he entertains a series of working hypotheses, which serve his purposes, but are taken no more seriously than any other kind of tool or instrument.
But “men of good will should not have formulas”; for formulas lead, inevitably, only to “blind thinking”. Addiction to formulas is almost universal. Inevitably so; for “our system of upbringing is based upon what to think, not on how to think”.
This choiceless awareness—at every moment and in all the circumstances of life—is the only effective meditation.
This creativeness may not necessarily seek expression; it is not a talent that demands outward manifestation. You need not be a great artist or have an audience; if you seek these, you will miss the inward Reality. It is neither a gift, nor is it the outcome of talent; it is to be found, this imperishable treasure, where thought frees itself from lust, ill-will and ignorance, where thought frees itself from worldliness and personal craving to be. It is to be experienced through right thinking and meditation.” Choiceless self-awareness will bring us to the creative Reality which underlies all our destructive make-believes, to the tranquil wisdom which is always there, in spite of ignorance, in spite of the knowledge which is merely ignorance in another form. Knowledge is an affair of symbols and is, all too often, a hindrance to wisdom, to the uncovering of the self from moment to moment.
The more you know yourself, the more clarity there is. Self-knowledge has no end—you don’t come to an achievement, you don’t come to a conclusion. It is an endless river. As one studies it, as one goes into it more and more, one finds peace. Only when the mind is tranquil—through self-knowledge and not through imposed self-discipline—only then, in that tranquillity, in that silence, can reality come into being.
If we can understand ourselves as we are from moment to moment without the process of accumulation, then we shall see how there comes a tranquillity that is not a product of the mind, a tranquillity that is neither imagined nor cultivated; and only in that state of tranquillity can there be creativeness.
AI Summary
The First and Last Freedom by Jiddu Krishnamurti presents key insights from the contemplative tradition. The 9 passages above capture the essential teachings.
Core Themes:
- [To be expanded]
Key Passages: Highlights 1, 3, and 9 are particularly representative.
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