This is excerpts from his talks about the subject:
I am always perceiving things according to my opinion, my judgement, my conditioning: My opinion, my judgement, my conditioning - the conditioning being social, environmental, ethical, cultural, and also my own pleasures, fears and so on.
Am I aware of my conditioning and my responses of those conditionings?
And if I am aware who is it that is aware? The observer? So it is the observer and the observed - right?
Am I observing that conditioning as an observer watching a stream? Or is there no observer but only that state of conditioning?
Am I aware looking in from the outside or am I that conditioning? Am I aware that I live in the stream of selfishness? Judgement, evaluation, suffering, pain, everything is included in that word. Am I aware of this stream? Not the description, but the reality that I am selfish?
As long as you live in that stream there is no solution for human problems. For you to step out of it you must see the totality of this stream, the whole implications of that stream - politically, religiously, economically, socially, as a person, as a human being, ethically, morally, the injustice, you know, the world is monstrous!
Whatever I do to get out of the stream is still within this enormous stream which thought has built, or which thought as time and movement has created.
If I see the totality of that movement - political tyranny, the tyranny of the priests, everything is in that stream. If I see the totality of it, the brain then has a great shock, and therefore in that very shock there is a transformation of the cells, which then is out of the stream.
There is no center as the 'me' that steps out of the stream. When the 'me' steps out of the stream the 'me' is still the stream. If I see the truth of that and therefore the brain accepts the truth, then what shall I do, I as a human being?
When you are attached there is no love. Because attachment implies dependency, fear, jealousy, anxiety, a sense of loss. That is part of the stream. Attachment to the country, attachment to an idea, attachment to a conclusion, attachment to a belief, attachment to a principle, are all the same, they still belong to the stream. So I am saying, what shall a man do when he is no longer selfish? How shall he act politically, how shall he act in relationship with each other, man and woman, how shall he act with regard to labour? You follow? What shall he do?
See this as a reality, as something true, then you will see how it affects the brain cells. Because the brain won't accept anything which doesn't give it security. It has lived in the traditional world, which is the stream, and has accepted it and says, please, don't disturb me, let me live in that stream, with the followers, with the gurus, the whole business. My mind is caught in that stream of thought. And whatever thought does in that stream will pollute the stream further. That is the thing I have to be shocked into. Then the brain operates differently.
https://jkrishnamurti.org/content/stepping-out-stream-selfishness/selfish
If the mind can be completely free of conditioning, by understanding the whole nature and the structure of conditioning, all our problems may be resolved, both economic problems, social problems and psychological problems.
Without that conditioning what are you? If you have no name, don't identify with your body, no group, no nationality, no belief, no religion - the 'I' with all the selfishness, ambition is washed away. The entity that says: 'I am conditioned and I want to be free from it' is also conditioned. Therefore there is only conditioning, not 'I am conditioned'.
Is the experiencer different from experience? Is the thinker different from thought? If there is no thinker there is no thought. When there is a division between the experiencer and the experience, the thinker and the thought there must be conflict.
Is it possible to be free of that tremendous drive of wanting to be, wanting to become, wanting to possess? The drive is more and more to be separate.
https://jkrishnamurti.org/content/can-drive-selfishness-end/selfish
Where there is no identification there is no center. It is this constant identification with my senses, with my body, with my thoughts - the whole movement of identification, identification being attachment, inseparable attachment and with all its associations, and so this identification is a movement of energy and that energy becomes more and more and more limited, which is the center. The moment thought identifies itself with a particular sensation, or with all the sensations, that identification is the movement of building this vast energy into a narrow channel. Any form of identification is the beginning of narrowing down this vast energy and limiting itself, therefore resisting the vast movement of life.
How am I to break down the narrow walls which I have created, which culture has created? Don't do anything. Positive action is totally inaction, whereas to be with it and not act: I know I am conditioned, I won't act, but I will watch. Watching, alert, aware, and I see every response is from that conditioning. I observe, I don't do anything. So when there is non-positive action you don't give energy to the conditioning. That dies by itself, when you don't give it a push, or suppress it, or run away from it, but when you are aware of it and don't act, because you realize non-action is intelligence. Action is unintelligence. If you see the stupidity of man, see it and leave it alone, then the leaving it alone is intelligence which will act, which is unconditioned.
https://jkrishnamurti.org/content/what-will-make-human-being-change/selfish
https://jkrishnamurti.org/content/structure-self-centred-concern/selfish
Status implies power, and when you are seeking this, consciously or unconsciously, you enter a world of cruelty. You have a great responsibility, my friend, and if you take this total responsibility, which is love, then the roots of the self are gone.
https://jkrishnamurti.org/content/chapter-20-selfishness-essential-problem-our-life/selfish
Passion means to have total energy in which there is no motive, no desire, but the sense of complete, total comprehension which is the essence of intelligence. And that passion can only come about with the ending of sorrow; and it is only passion that will create a new society, not ideas, not systems, not a new bureaucracy, or a new tyranny. That passion can only come about with the ending of sorrow. Sorrow will exist as long as there is self-centered occupation. Love implies great sensitivity, care for another, generosity, a sense of total unity with all mankind, and without love life has no meaning whatsoever.
When you pay attention there is no center from which you are attending. There is only a state of attention, not that 'I am attending'. Now when there is attention, the implications of that attention are care. Where there is attention there is absolute silence. That silence is necessary to enquire - that silence is necessary, in whose movement - silence is not static, it is a living thing - in that silence, that movement moves towards the source of all energy. And this origin, the beginning of all energy, the beginning of all things, and if you come to that, if the mind ever comes to that extraordinary state then from there action takes place. For that one must have a mind that is free from all problems - all problems, so that it is totally, completely free from the known. This is meditation.
https://jkrishnamurti.org/content/public-talk-5-bombay-mumbai-india-30-january-1980/selfish
Unless you really understand the process of thinking your life is always going to be very, very limited. If the brain is not free of problems, then how can it solve any problem? If each one of us could understand the problem of struggle and conflict, then I think we would be able to live effortlessly, happily, with a smile on our face. The man who is joyous, really happy, is not caught up in effort. To be without effort does not mean that you stagnate, that you are dull, stupid; On the contrary, it is only the extraordinarily intelligent who are really free of effort, of struggle. The mind feels inferior and that is why it struggles to be or become something, or to bridge over its various contradictory desires. When we struggle, the conflict is between what we are and what we should be or want to be. The pursuit of success is the desire for the 'more', and a mind that is constantly demanding the 'more' is not an intelligent mind.
We are so afraid to fail, to make mistakes. To make a mistake is considered terrible because we will be criticized for it, somebody will scold us. But, after all, why should you not make a mistake? By observing and questioning everything, by experimenting and making mistakes you may find out something for yourself and break away from the authority of your parents, of society, of tradition. If you love to do something with all your being you are then not concerned with success and failure.
The moment you love you are no longer inquiring whether or not somebody loves you. Why is it that we are always asking, begging, wanting, stealing? Because in ourselves there is nothing; Inwardly, psychologically we are like an empty drum. As long as the mind is seeking to fill itself it will always be empty. When the mind is no longer concerned with filling its own emptiness, then only does that emptiness cease to be.
https://jkrishnamurti.org/content/chapter-25/selfish
If you are not aware of the hurts hidden deep down in the recesses, in the dark corners of your mind you can not possibly know what it means to love, to be kind, to be generous.
If you can live without a single image about yourself you will never be hurt. Learn how to live surrounded by images and a life in which there is no single conclusion in relationships.
When joy occurs, it occurs always without invitation, and when you pursue that joy which has gone, then that joy becomes pleasure, and then you pursue that. And when pleasure is not completely fulfilled there is anger, there is bitterness, there is frustration and fear.
https://jkrishnamurti.org/content/public-talk-2-santa-monica-california-usa-17-march-1974/selfish
