Customer Reviews

FREEDOM, LOVE AND ACTION (Shambhala Pocket Classics)

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"Why are we such tortured human beings, with tears in our eyes and false laughter on our lips?" (p. 93), Krishnamurti asks in this 132-page collection of dialogues and reflections. "To have no resistance," he says, "to have no barriers inwardly toward anything, to be really free, completely, from all the minor urges, compulsions, and demands, with all their little conflicts and hypocrisies, is to walk in life with open arms" (p. 87). This book challenges us to free our minds from fragmented conditioning, to find enlightenment in everyday activities, and to transform ourselves through meditation practice. "Enlightenment means to be a light unto oneself," he observes, "but a light which is not self-projected or imagined, which is not some personal idiosyncrasy" (p. 39). He teaches us that we are responsible for our own destruction and misery, our own loneliness, our own moods, and our own "empty hollowness" (p. 70). If we move along in "a certain groove, a certain path, follow a certain system . . . that very path, that very system, that very activity" prevents us from blossoming (p. 102).

Reading Krishnamurti is always like listening to someone who knows something you should know. Although THINK ON THESE THINGS and TO BE HUMAN offer better introductions to his teachings, this collection provides all the wisdom and clarity one expects to find in Krishnamurti.

G. Merritt

Krishnamurti is one of the most important thinkers ever to have walked this planet (IMHO). His books should be required reading in high schools and colleges.