18/08/2025
Silence is something which comes naturally when you are watching; when you are watching without motive, without any kind of demand; just to watch, and see the beauty of a single star in the sky, or to watch a single tree in a field, or to watch your wife or husband, or whatever you watch. To watch with a great silence and space. Then in that watching, in that alertness, then there is something which is beyond words, beyond all measure.
We use words to measure the immeasurable. So one must be aware also of the network of words, how words cheat us; how words mean so much - a Communist, to a capitalist, means something terrible; socialist, or some stranger. You follow? Words become extraordinarily important. But to be aware of those words and to weigh the words, to weigh, to live with the word 'silence', knowing that the word is not silence, but to live with that word and see the weight of that word, the content of the word, the beauty of that word. So one begins to realise, when thought is quietly watching, there is something beyond all imagination, doubt, seeking, and there is such a thing - at least for the speaker. But what the speaker says has no validity to another. Unless you listen, learn, watch, be totally free from all the anxieties of life, then only there is a religion which brings about a new, totally different culture.
J. Krishnamurti
Public Talk 4 Ojai, California, USA - 22 May 1983
