Summary of J. Krishnamurti's The Book of Life

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 If you can listen in this way, listen with ease and without strain, you will find a profound change taking place within you. This change comes without your volition or your asking.

#2 To listen is to hear what is being said and not to project your own desires and fears through which you hear only what you want to hear. To listen is to hear everything, including the noise in the streets, the chatter of birds, and the noise of the tramcar.

#3 Listening is an art that is not easily acquired, but in it there is great beauty and understanding. We listen with the various depths of our being, but our listening is always with a preconception or from a particular point of view.

#4 To listen to someone, you must be quiet. You cannot listen if you are thinking about something else. When you look at a flower, you do not name it, classify it, or say that it belongs to a certain species. When you listen without the idea of what you are going to say, you will be able to understand whether what they are saying is true or false.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Apr 23, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669393863

IRB Media

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Insights on J. Krishnamurti's The Book of Life

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 10

Insights from Chapter 11

Insights from Chapter 12

Insights from Chapter 13

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

If you can listen in this way, listen with ease and without strain, you will find a profound change taking place within you. This change comes without your volition or your asking.

#2

To listen is to hear what is being said and not to project your own desires and fears through which you hear only what you want to hear. To listen is to hear everything, including the noise in the streets, the chatter of birds, and the noise of the tramcar.

#3

Listening is an art that is not easily acquired, but in it there is great beauty and understanding. We listen with the various depths of our being, but our listening is always with a preconception or from a particular point of view.

#4

To listen to someone, you must be quiet. You cannot listen if you are thinking about something else. When you look at a flower, you do not name it, classify it, or say that it belongs to a certain species. When you listen without the idea of what you are going to say, you will be able to understand whether what they are saying is true or false.

#5

When you make an effort to listen, are you listening. Is not that very effort a distraction that prevents listening. Do you make an effort when you listen to something that gives you delight. If you would listen in the sense of being aware of your conflicts and contradictions without forcing them into any particular pattern of thought, they might altogether cease.

#6

You should listen to everything, not only to what I am saying, but also to what other people are saying, the birds, the whistle of a locomotive, and the noise of the bus going by. The more you listen, the more silence there will be, and silence is not broken by noise.

#7

When you listen to someone, you are not applying what they are saying. If you are listening to the speaker, they become your leader, your way to understanding. But if you are listening to yourself, you can understand and see your own reality.

#8

Learning is difficult, and listening is also difficult. You never listen to anything because your mind is not free; your ears are stuffed with those things that you already know, so listening becomes extremely difficult.

#9

To discover anything new, you must start on your own. You must start on a journey completely devoid of knowledge, since it is very easy through knowledge and belief to have experiences, but those experiences are merely the products of self-projection and therefore utterly unreal.

#10

There are two types of learning: psychological and physiological. The mind never learns psychologically. It has learned, and with what it has learned, it meets the challenge of life. It is always translating life or the new challenge according to what it has learned.

#11

The function of the mind is to inquire and learn. By learning, I do not mean the mere cultivation of memory or the accumulation of knowledge, but the capacity to think clearly and sanely without illusion.

#12

Learning is a continuous process, not a process of addition. It is never accumulative, and you cannot store up learning and then act from that storehouse. Learning occurs as you are going along.

#13

Wisdom is something that must be discovered by each individual, and it is not the result of knowledge. Knowledge and wisdom do not go together. Wisdom comes when there is the maturity of self-knowing. Without knowing yourself, order is not possible, and therefore no virtue can be found.

#14

There are two ways of learning: through study, through experience, or through being instructed. We generally learn through one of these four methods. But to learn in a different way, you must be free of authority. Otherwise, you will merely be instructed and repeat what you have heard.

#15

To be free, you must examine authority, the whole skeleton of authority, and tear it to pieces. This requires energy, actual physical energy, and psychological energy. But the energy is wasted when you are in conflict.

#16

The authority of the law, the policeman who keeps order, is not the only authority