Jiddu Krishnamurti Quotes on Meditation

One has to be choicelessly attentive, fully aware; and this state of choiceless attention is meditation.
Meditation is one of the most important things in life; not how to meditate; not meditation according to a system; not the practice of meditation; but rather that which meditation is. If one can find out, very deeply, the significance, the necessity and the importance of it for oneself, then one puts aside all systems, methods, gurus, together with all the peculiar things that are involved in the Eastern type of meditation.
Meditation must enter into every corner of our life, otherwise don't meditate, it has no meaning.
Meditation is not the pursuit of pleasure and the search for happiness. Meditation, on the contrary, is a state of mind in which there is no concept or formula, and therefore total freedom. It is only to such a mind that this bliss comes unsought and uninvited.
If you observe your own mind in what you call meditation, you will see that there is always a division, a contradiction between the thinker and the thought. As long as there is a thinker apart from thought, meditation is merely a ceaseless effort to overcome this contradiction.
Awareness is observation without choice, condemnation, or justification. Awareness is silent observation from which there arises understanding without the experiencer and the experienced. In this awareness, which is passive, the problem or the cause is given an opportunity to unfold itself and so give its full significance. In awareness there is no end in view to be gained, and there is no becoming, the 'me' and the 'mine' not being given the continuity.
Meditation is not the play of the mind nor of desire and pleasure. All attempt to meditate is the very denial of it. Only be aware of what you are thinking and doing and nothing else. The seeing, the hearing, is the doing, without reward and punishment. The skill in doing lies in the skill of seeing, hearing. Every form of meditation leads inevitably to deception, to illusion, for desire blinds.
Meditation is not concerned with meditation but with the meditator - you see the difference? Most of you are concerned about meditation, what to do about meditation, how to meditate, step by step and all the rest of it - that's not the question at all. Meditator is the meditation. To understand the meditator is meditation.

Now if you have gone into this question of meditation, the meditator must come to an end, obviously, by understanding, not by suppressing, not by killing the thought - by understanding, which is, understanding himself is to understand the movement of thought, thought being the movement of the brain, with all its memories. And the movement of thought seeking security and all the rest of it.
To see what one actually is, it is vital that there be freedom, freedom from the whole content of one's consciousness; the content of consciousness being all the things put together by thought. Freedom from the content of one's consciousness, from one's angers and brutalities, from one's vanities and arrogance, from all the things that one is caught up in, is meditation. The very seeing of what one is, is the beginning of the transformation. Meditation implies the ending of all strife, of all conflict, inwardly and therefore outwardly. Actually, there is no inward or outward, it is like the sea, there is the ebb and flow.
When you learn about yourself, watch yourself, watch the way you walk, how you eat, what you say, the gossip, the hate, the jealousy - if you are aware of all that in yourself, without any choice, that is part of meditation. So meditation can take place when you are sitting in a bus or walking in the woods full of light and shadows, or listening to the singing of birds or looking at the face of your wife or child.
When there is the state of innocency, it is also the state of meditation. You cannot come to that state of innocency as long as you are ambitious, as long as your mind is petty, as long as you are caught in the psychological structure of society and are nothing but an embodied technique - which is what most of us are.
Meditation is a process of understanding. Understanding is not a result and it is not something you gain. It is a process of self-discovery. That means meditation is an awareness of your whole process of living. Meditation is a process of understanding, the process of your whole being, not only a part of it, and that means that you have to be aware of everything that you are doing. it is not concentration. You take a picture and you focus your attention on that.
To concentrate is not to meditate, even though that is what most of you do, calling it meditation. And if concentration is not meditation, then what is? Surely, meditation is to understand every thought that comes into being, and not to dwell upon one particular thought; it is to invite all thoughts so that you understand the whole process of thinking.
Meditation is the understanding of the whole structure of the 'me', the self, the ego, and whether it is possible to be totally free of the self, not seek some super-self. The super-self is still the self. So meditation is something which is not a cultivated, determined, activity.
All this is implied in meditation - to be aware, to be conscious of your environment, to be aware how you talk, how you walk, how you eat, what you eat; to be aware how you speak to another, how you treat another, as you are sitting there, to be aware of your neighbour, the colour of the coat, the way he looks. Without criticism just be aware. That gives you great sensitivity, empathy, so that your body is subtle, sensitive, aware of everything that is going on around you. To be aware without any choice, see where you are, looking at the speaker, looking all around you without a single choice, just look - to be aware.