"...attention has no introspective or analytical quality; the conscious mind merely observes."

The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurt


"To be aware of inattention is attention. One cannot reasonably, sanely, say: 'I am going to be alert from the moment I wake up until the moment I go to sleep' - one cannot, unless one is neurotic and practises saying: 'I am going to be aware, I am going to be aware' - then it becomes words and has no meaning. But if one sees that attention, awareness, cannot be maintained all the time - which is a fact - then inattention, not being attentive, has its value, has its meaning; because in inattention you discover that you are not attentive."

Q&A, Saanen, July 1980


"Now, to go beyond...requires tremendous attention. This total attention, in which there is no choice, no sense of becoming, of changing, altering, wholly frees the mind from the process of self-consciousness; there is then no experiencer who is accumulating, and it is only then that the mind can be truly said to be free from sorrow.

It is accumulation that is the cause of sorrow. We do not die to everything from day to day; we do not die to the innumerable traditions, to the family; to our own experiences, to our own desire to hurt another. One has to die to all that from moment to moment, to that vast accumulative memory, and only then the mind is free from the self, which is the entity of accumulation."

The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti,Vol.9 p.100


"...concentration is a form of resistance. Concentration is not attention because in attention there is no resistance...In attention, there is complete emptiness."

The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurt


"To be aware that I am not aware is awareness...When there is attention in that unawareness the whole thing is over. When at that moment of unawareness, I am aware that I am not aware, then it is finished; because then I don't have to struggle nor say, 'I must be aware all the time, please tell me a method to be aware, I must practice' and so on - becoming more and more stupid. So you see when there is no awareness and I know I am not aware, the whole movement changes."

The Awakening of Intelligence, p.377-78.