The reality of truth is not to be bought, to be sold, to be repeated; it cannot be caught in books. It has to be found from moment to moment, in the smile, in the tear, under the dead leaf, in the vagrant thought, in the fullness of love.
Interpretation
Truth is a personal experience that cannot be contained or commodified.
This quote by Jiddu Krishnamurti emphasizes that truth is not something that can be exchanged or learned in a conventional sense, such as through books or teachings. Instead, it is an intimate and ongoing discovery that occurs in the everyday moments of life, reflected in simple experiences like smiles, tears, and emotional connections, urging us to seek genuine understanding in the present.
In practice
In a discussion about the nature of reality, this quote can illustrate the idea that truth is personal and subjective.
The following of authority is the denial of intelligence. [It] may help us temporarily to cover up our difficulties and problems; but to avoid a problem is only to intensify it, and in the process, self-knowledge and freedom are abandoned.
In seeking comfort, we generally find a quiet corner in life where there is a minimum of conflict, and then we are afraid to step out of that seclusion.
If you listen through the screen of your desires, then you obviously listen to your own voice; you are listening to your own desires.
If you have this extraordinary thing going in your life, then it is everything; then you become the teacher, the disciple, the neighbour, the beauty of the cloud - you are all that, and that is love.
Meditation is one of the greatest arts in life - perhaps the greatest, and one cannot possibly learn it from anybody, that is the beauty of it.
All of us have been trained by education and environment to seek personal gain and security and to fight for ourselves. Though we cover it over with pleasant phrases, we have been educated for various professions within a system which is based on exploitation and acquisitive fear.
I asked Tom if countries always apologized when they had done wrong, and he says - "Yes; the little ones does".
Our dignity is not in what we do, but what we understand.
In the stories of extravagant grace given to us by Jesus, there are no loopholes disqualifying us from God's love.
Build a cell inside your mind, from which you can never flee.
It's not the honors and the prizes and the fancy outsides of life which ultimately nourish our souls. It's the knowing that we can be trusted, that we never have to fear the truth, that the bedrock of our very being is good stuff.
It is easy to be pleasant when life flows by like a song, but the man worth while is the one who will smile when everything goes dead wrong. For the test of the heart is trouble, and it always comes with years, and the smile that is worth the praises of earth is the smile that shines through the tears.
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