Action: A Selection of Passages from the Teachings of J. Krishnamurti

by J. Krishnamurti

Krishnamurti offers radically different answers to questions about our relationship with others, and why we do not act with clarity and intelligence.

* What are the consequences of personal action based on a belief?

* Why does my effort not produce the results I expect?

* Why do I react to most things in life?

"For most of us action becomes a routine, a habit, something that one does not out of love or because it has deep significance for oneself, but because one has to do it. One is driven to it by circumstances, by a wrong kind of education, by the lack of that love out of which one does something real..." "Surely true action comes from clarity. When the mind is very clear, unconfused, not contradictory within itself, then action inevitably follows from the clarity... But it is very difficult to have undisturbed perception and to see things not as one would like to see them, but as they actually are, undistorted by one's like and dislikes. It is only out of such clarity that the fullness of action takes places." - J. Krishnamurti, New Delhi, India 1959 

Jiddu Krishnamurti, was a world renowned figure both in the West and in the East. He was born on May 11, 1895 and died on February 17, 1986. He remains today one of the most important philosophical and spiritual thinkers of the 20th century. In the West he is most commonly classified as a philosopher and an educator. Yet in a very real sense he is not easy to categorize as his unique work is truly trans disciplinary and is not grounded in any particular tradition or school of thought. His singular probing work into the nature and limits of thought and knowledge would touch many fields from philosophy to quantum physics to religion. In terms of philosophical questions proper he would have important contributions to make all the way from religion to ethics and even aspects of philosophy of mind.