Freedom from the known is death, and then you are living.

…such awareness is like living with a snake in the room; you watch its every movement, you are very, very sensitive to the slightest sound it makes. Such a state of attention is total energy; in such awareness the totality of yourself is revealed in an instant.

Truth has no path, and that is the beauty of truth, it is living.

…so all stimulation, whether of the church or of alcohol or of drugs or of the written or spoken word, will inevitably bring about dependence, and that dependence prevents us from seeing clearly for ourselves and therefore from having vital energy.

The man who is not frightened of life is not frightened of being completely insecure for he understands that inwardly, psychologically, there is no security. When there is no security there is an endless movement and then life and death are the same.

Living in the present is the instant perception of beauty and the great delight in it without seeking pleasure from it.

Do you use the opposite as a means of avoiding the actual which you don’t know how to deal with? Or is it because you have been told by thousands of years of propaganda that you must have an ideal – the opposite of ‘what is’ – in order to cope with the present? When you have an ideal you think it helps you to get rid of ‘what is’, but it never does. You may preach non-violence for the rest of your life and all the time be sowing the seeds of violence.

To divide anything into what should be and what is, is the most deceptive way of dealing with life.

You have a concept of what you should be and how you should act, and all the time you are in fact acting quite differently; so you see that principles, beliefs and ideals must inevitably lead to hypocrisy and a dishonest life. It is the ideal that creates the opposite to what is, so if you know how to be with ‘what is’, then the opposite is not necessary.

Life is very real – life is not an abstraction – and when you meet it with images there are problems.

Does a flower full of beauty, light and loveliness say, ‘I am giving, helping, serving’? It is! And because it is not trying to do anything it covers the earth.

Trying to become like somebody else, or like your ideal, is one of the main causes of contradiction, confusion and conflict. A mind that is confused, whatever it does, at any level, will remain confused; any action born of confusion leads to further confusion. I see this very clearly; I see it as clearly as I see an immediate physical danger. So what happens? I cease to act in terms of confusion any more. Therefore inaction is complete action ^1)↓.

 
The movement from certainty to uncertainty is what I call fear.

The man who is really serious, with the urge to find out what truth is, what love is, has no concept at all. He lives only in what is.

Love is something that is new, fresh, alive. It has no yesterday and no tomorrow. It is beyond the turmoil of thought.

…when you act according to what you think you ought to be you are not what you are.

A man who knows that he is silent, who knows that he loves, does not know what love is or what silence is.