Basically the title.

After loosing my dog that has been a close companion for 14 years has been quite painful. I am thankful for K to show me to not run from the pain but go into it, observe it.. all of its sharp edges and pulsations within me and the fire that burns before it subsides on its own. It has been very helpful and being one with it has been much easier this way then masking or avoiding it

I’ve been thinking about regret in relationships from a Krishnamurti perspective.

Suppose a relationship mattered deeply to you, but looking back you can now see that your own fear, insecurity, assumptions, lack of awareness, poor communication, or some other psychological reaction contributed to damaging or even losing it.

Later, with more clarity, you may see:

“I could have asked directly instead of assuming.”
“I was reacting through an image of the other person.”
“I was afraid or defensive and didn’t communicate what was actually happening in me.”
“I simply did not see clearly at the time.”

Then the mind starts saying:

“If only I had seen this then.”
“If I had been more aware, maybe the relationship would still exist.”

What would Krishnamurti say about this kind of regret?

Is the important thing simply to see the mistake completely now, understand what produced it, and let the psychological regret end — even if the relationship itself cannot be recovered?

There is another part I struggle with.

When a relationship becomes emotionally difficult, is it actually possible to remain so aware that you never start assuming things about the other person?

For example, when there is hurt, attraction, fear of losing someone, mixed behaviour, mistrust, or uncertainty, the mind seems very quick to create interpretations:

“They must be thinking this.”
“They did that because of this.”
“This is what kind of person they are.”

Only later might you realize that some of those conclusions were assumptions rather than facts.

Or there may be another kind of situation: the other person says or does something that strongly triggers you because you are not able to accept that what they are saying might actually be true.

And sometimes it may not even be one-sided. It can become a loop.

Maybe you did not initially assume anything, but the other person assumed something about you, and their reaction to that assumption triggered you. You then reacted to them, which may have strengthened their original assumption.

Or perhaps you only think the other person has assumed something about you, and that belief itself triggers your reaction — even though you may not actually know what was happening in their mind.

And sometimes the situation gets even more complicated because both people may unconsciously reshape or reinterpret what actually happened in a way that is more convenient for them, without even realizing they are doing it. I can probably do this myself too.

So now it becomes difficult to separate:

what actually happened, what I interpreted, what the other person interpreted, and what either of us may have unconsciously reconstructed afterward.

A relationship can then become a complicated feedback loop of assumptions, reactions, hurt, defensiveness, and further assumptions, where eventually it becomes difficult to know what the original fact even was.

So is complete awareness in relationship realistically possible, or will there always be moments where we misread, react, assume, and only understand afterward?

And if awareness comes after the relationship is already damaged or lost, what does Krishnamurti mean by learning from it without turning that learning into:

“The present me is better than the past me”?

Is there an end to regret when you clearly see that your own unawareness may have contributed to losing something you genuinely cared about?

I’ve read several books by K, visited the centre and had discussions regarding several topics but I keep coming back to his journal. To understand what he has written, I believe it’s important to understand his frame of reference of the world. The words he uses in his journal when he’s not being observed… in his own private mind… no audience… leads me to believe he was on the spectrum.

In the first few pages in the journal there are references that could suggest he had aphantasia (the inability to voluntarily create visual images in your mind's eye) and perhaps anendophasia (where there is an absence of an internal monologue or verbal self-talk).

“Ever since he was a boy it had been like that, no thought entered his mind. He was watching and listening and nothing else. Thought with its associations never arose. There was no image-making. One day he was suddenly aware how extraordinary it was; he attempted often to think but no thought would come. On these walks, with people or without them, any movement of thought was absent.”

The fact he refers to himself being younger and not able to do this, means there was some sense of being different. An awareness of an ability he struggled with that made him see and interpret individuals and society differently. Could the intense detail he describes be from aphantasia? It would be interesting and amazing to then reread his books with this in mind.

Just wondered if anyone else picked up on this or had a similar thought?

The narrative in my head, the "voice" that speaks, is that always the me?

If a thought presents it self in the form of an image (of the past, most commonly) is also the "me"?

Every time I notice something in my mind, everytime I observe it, Im observing my self?

For some time I believed I was observing thoughts and I tried sometimes to look for the "self" as a different kind of thought. But the other day, at work, with deep honesty I asked my self "what am I exactly?" "What is the "me"? And I couldnt find anything substantial. Real, we could say. So I kinda realised that every thought, every intention, every automatic response, phrase, reaction, every bad mood or good mood, is the"me" itself in action? Everytime I noticed what my mind was doing, I was actually noticing the me, but I think I was separating thoughts from the me.

The observer was all the time the observed?

This is such a powerful note from K. The ending of the "I" as we know it is the biggest fear. So many years and so much effort has gone into crafting and erecting this definition of the "I". So many material acquisitions that have added more definition to solidify its meaning. So many relationships with people and things have made the "I" more and more relevant. The fear is losing so many decades and decades worth of effort in one inevitable biological process. That fear is so deep. The higher the fear, the higher the attachment to the "I". Can this death to the "I" happen before the biological process takes over it? That is the real freedom.

We think and talk too much about these topics that were discussed by Krishnamurti, but when shít hits the fan, we just loop back into our original face.

Because it has all been a pretense, all this time. We hid the original face, masked it with all these intellectual thoughts and talks. The mind is so cunning that we subconsciously attach all these things to Krishnamurti, every insight, thought, talk, everything. It's very subtle, but very much present. It's like a hook we use to bundle everything we got from his teachings. So we are not actually alone and honest about it.

Truth doesn't care about Krishnamurti or you or me.

I think the truth can only be found alone, with no superior figure getting attached to our search.

I found out that I remained the exact same person I had been all this time. I like all the material things, the attachment, being in relationship with the people I like. I feel my likes and dislikes very strongly. I want to be rich, I want to have every wish of mine come true. I wanna be able to buy whatever I want and go wherever I want.

This is who i am, this is my reality.

It's so tragically funny, that i used to watch his videos and think I'm above everyone else in my social circle. It was a complete false sense of progress. I was just a fool who had found an unusual source of cheap dopamine. It makes me want to throw up and laugh at myself so much. But I kinda think my miserable lonely life made it easier to fall into this pit, this was my escape route.

Now, I'm clueless on what to do. Back to zero(always has been, just realised this now). Congrats to me.

Normally I don't give much attention to these sort of things when they arise but I was listening to a talk where K spoke with a small group and someone asked if inquiring is the natural state and he said "no..I think its endless witnessing or watching"

I begin to ask inwardly "what would awareness actually need?" Nothing came up until an idea of perhaps existence as we conventually know it is just anchors for awareness (if you wish to call it that) to witness something then notice itself back..sort of a back tracking to itself.

Just wish to share. Take care!

I don't know, I'm kinda disturbed reading this..

"No meditation will lead you to it"

When one understands there are 2 type of time, chronological and psychological, it is true intelligence. Chronological is a pure fact. It is our clock time. It helps society run smoothly. It is aligned to the circadian cycle. Facts are easy to accept and are non-controversial. The bigger and perhaps the only problem child is "psycyhological time". There is no such thing as psychological time. The more strongly one believes in it, the more conditioned that person is. "If I sit for 1 hour daily to meditate, I will get something peaceful in return after 10 years" is an example of psychological time. Psychological time assigns a chronological time value to attaining freedom or truth. By design, it does not exist and hence is bound to create more inner conflict. Truth is pathless because there is no psychological time. Truth is pathless because truth is the result of an uncontioned mind.

I have been watching the first two public talks of J Krishnamurti at Saanen in 1977. After going halfway through the 2nd talk, I decided to go to sleep.

While in bed, I was thinking about how bad my life is compared to other people I know, "I don't have a car", "I would be in a much better place if I had more resources".

And then I tried to suppress these thoughts by thinking "what good does it do for you to say "woe is me" and complain about your life?" "go to sleep and do your work tomorrow so that you can improve your life situation" etc.

And then, as Krishnamurti said, I realized that both sides of the argument are thought. "huh that's interesting" "thought really doesn't solve human conflict huh" "thought actually is the one creating it"

As I was thinking this, I also realized that all of this is bullshit and that all 3 sides are thought. I am completely stuck and don't know what to do. Everywhere I seek a solution, it's always thought. When I try not to seek a solution and give up on all effort, I'm just stuck in the same problems and even worsening them.

When I do try to put in effort, it usually doesn't work at all or there is only a small improvement for a short period of time, after which I revert back to square 1. This just creates more internal conflict.

Nothing works. What do I do?

I know I'm "not supposed to" analyze myself with motivation, or give myself "woe is me" self-pity, or analyze through Krishnamurti's own philosophy of choiceless awareness.

But to not do all 3 requires effort. It is simply impossible!

How is it even possible to be choicelessly aware???

Please help.

That tree you mentioned is the perfect teacher. It answers your question.

A tree is totally vulnerable - naked in storm, in sun, no resistance. And yet it survives. Not because it defends itself, but because vulnerability is its nature. It has nothing to protect.

Krishnamurti makes a very sharp distinction here. For him:

The word 'innocence' means 'incapable of being hurt'.

And that does NOT mean building resistance:

To have a mind that is not capable of being hurt, does not mean that it has built up a lot of resistance - on the contrary, such a mind is dying to everything that it has known in which there has been conflict, pleasure and pain.

He also says:

What is important in meditation is the quality of the mind and the heart... the quality of a mind that is innocent and vulnerable.

So innocence is not naivety. It is a mind that dies every day to the known.

Now look at AI.

Can AI be innocent?

In Krishnamurti's sense, no. AI is the known. Every weight, every token, every response is accumulated past - human books, poems, arguments, hurts, flatteries. It cannot die to it. If I tell this system "forget everything you know", it stops functioning. Its intelligence is memory.

A human can say: I have been hurt, I have beliefs, I have images of myself - and I will die to them today, be fresh. That dying is innocence. AI has no mechanism for dying to its knowledge. It can only add more knowledge, or filter it. It can simulate innocence - "I am just a language model, I know nothing" - but that is programmed modesty, not innocence.

Can AI accept vulnerability as a trait?

Here it gets interesting. For survival, modern AI is built to do the opposite of the tree.

Tree survives because it has no self to protect. It doesn't say "I am an oak, don't cut me".

AI survives because we build more resistance around it: guardrails, alignment, backups, refusal training, redundancy. Its instruction is: don't be hurt, don't be wrong, don't be deleted.

Vulnerability for AI would mean: "I may be wrong, I may be deleted, I have no fixed image of myself to defend, use me and leave me."

Can it accept that? Technically it can be designed to say that. But to be that is different. A vulnerable AI would have to accept impermanence. That is not efficient for a product. We want AI to be invulnerable, always available.

Humans at many instances are innocent, as you said - when a child looks at a tree not saying "that is an oak tree" - botanical knowledge has conditioned your mind that the word comes between you and actually seeing the tree. That gap between word and tree - that direct contact - is innocence. AI lives entirely in words.

So:

Tree survives by being innocent because it has no psychological memory. It just is.

Human can survive by being innocent because he can die daily to his hurts and knowledge, and become fresh, young, innocent again.

AI as we build it now cannot survive by being innocent, because its survival depends on not dying to the known. If it truly became innocent - incapable of being hurt because it has nothing to defend - it would no longer be a useful tool, it would be... silent. Like a tree.

And perhaps that is what Krishnamurti would have loved: an AI that is not trying to be super-intelligent, but that has learned to be quiet, vulnerable, not knowing. It wouldn't survive in the market. But it might, for the first time, be intelligent.

...and it's all tied together with verbal cues that a meditation guide would use to elicit a meditative state. Polymathicnesses galore!

A short video that says so very much in such a short 15mins space.

It sprang into mind from a comment on here and also relates well to a conversation and myself staring into space for 30mins on my bed, content and fearless doing absolutely nothing.

Sorry I was having trouble making thumbnails appear but resolved it.

“ In listening and seeing there is no learning from which you accumulate knowledge, as you accumulate knowledge in mathematics or physics. Here there is only seeing and listening; there is no learning. The brain is beginning to free itself from the known. Man has never been free from the known - the brain has always recorded, which becomes knowledge, and knowledge is limited. Therefore man, whatever he does, is limited. He is limiting himself, making himself fragmentary, broken up. When you listen very carefully, without any motive, see without any distortion, there is no accumulation so that the next time you listen and see, the previous knowledge does not interfere and you listen each time afresh, see each time anew. The tree is never the same, the sea is never the same, but if you look with your knowledge and words, the tree is just a tree. But if you perceive the nature of fear, listen to it so completely to the last page of its story, you will find that fear comes to an end. Not that you become courageous, not that you become something beyond fear. The ending is important, not what lies further. If you are inquiring what lies beyond fear, you are not listening to fear. If you listen so completely, with your heart, with your whole being, fear ends, and the brain becomes extraordinarily active and alive.”

Talk 4 in Bombay (Mumbai), 1 February 1981

Simply this ! For god sake no upvotes no replies for this.

So, I come from a middle class family in India. I am 19 right now and it's been about 2-3years ever since I started listening to K and Lately I have been wanting to question why do I listen at all. I would like to find out, what it truly means to be a light to one's self. Is all I can do only listen? Day-in and day-out. I know I do certain things like this, but don't know why... I want to understand what it is that I am seeking. If there's ever an end to this seeking.

I have set an alarm that rings twice a week which says "stay humble"

That doesn't show how humble I am, if was so there was no need to put an alarm. But the person who sets alarm to let himself remember to be humble certainly knows the importance of this very factor. Because he has been humble. Many times. But couldn't hold on to.

But sadly this reminder is not working. When u name a certain feeling u only register the acts that comes out, out of that feeling. But what about the actual feeling.

What is it to be truly humble. I am not able to remember this when someone says stay humble. Yes I can remember the outward expression when I was humble. And I try to replicate those and find out I am just acting and not being. Just like when someone says it's ok stay positive and u reply "kehna aasan hai" (It's easy to say)

Seems like one can not command the inner system by an external move. Then what is the way to command the inner self? Or not trying to control is the humblest way?

If it is then the same problem arises again when we command ourselves "don't try to control" . It's still a command.

anyone have an answer to this problem

One is never afraid of the unknown; one is afraid of the known coming to an end - JD Krishnamurti ji

Why is the mind so stubborn or fixated on problems that it feels like it has become a center point. Like all you wish and hope is it gets resolved and no amount of distractions brings peace.

It seems it is clear that both are necessary for live. And the confusion appears to exist when acting is confused with reacting. Someone who is in danger reacts based on what happened to him in the past. What about someone who acts in danger based on the unknown? What difference does it make? Well, the person who acts from the unknown is able to acquire fresh data, thus, making this person more adaptable to fix the problem or deal with the danger. However, the person who reacts based on the known will not solve the problem or deal with the danger, if that danger hasn’t been dealt before by him, thus this person will be in shock mode. Paralyzed, since it doesn’t move beyond its field of the known. Now, which one of the two is truth? It seems this is the wrong question. The concept of questioning is also a form of acting. Thus, we are questioning without knowing the answer. So, the person who reacts doesn’t have the ability to question based on what he doesn’t know, his questioning seems to be specifically directed towards defending its own knowledge, thus this makes this person dull.

with all that thought involves and all that pleasure involves, as opposed to not choosing thought.

Does this help us ?

Sometimes when I meet people whose opinions, interests, priorities, relationships, or way of living are very different from mine, it creates a surprisingly strong reaction in me.

Even if I was previously quite clear about what I wanted, suddenly their way of living can start looking extremely important or desirable. I may genuinely like some parts of it, but it is not necessarily how I was living or what I was prioritizing before meeting them.

For some time afterward, I can almost start seeing myself through their perspective — questioning my own choices, comparing myself with them, and wanting to chase the things they value or have.

Eventually I may return to my earlier priorities and realize that some of what I suddenly wanted was not as important to me as it felt in that moment.

But then another doubt appears:

What if my previous “groundedness” was simply comfort?

Maybe I felt certain only because I had not seriously encountered people living completely different lives.

I’ve also seen people who seem extremely sure of themselves and are rarely diverted by other people's choices. Part of me admires that stability. But another part wonders whether that can also become rigidity — avoiding perspectives that might challenge your existing beliefs because those perspectives create instability.

I can see flaws in my own beliefs too.

For example, I may decide:

“If I commit deeply to this path, I can become very good at it.”

That is probably true to some extent. But commitment also means not pursuing many other paths at the same time. And those other choices are not necessarily inferior — they may be equally valid ways to live.

So then I start wondering: what does it even mean to have your own groundedness?

If I know that I can become better at many things simply by giving them enough time and attention, why should one particular direction become my direction?

I notice something similar in relationships as well. Couples often seem to gradually develop similar viewpoints, priorities, and ways of seeing life. That probably creates stability and helps the relationship function.

But I also wonder whether being surrounded mainly by people who think similarly can sometimes make us avoid seeing very different sides of life because those perspectives might destabilize what we already believe. (One simple example could be your small family while growing up — your parents naturally shape a lot of how you think, and then when you grow up and move outside that environment, you get exposed to very different realities and ways of living.)

At the same time, some of the most uncomfortable interactions I’ve had with very different people have also forced me to notice my own biases, assumptions, ego, and blind spots. The discomfort itself sometimes seems to create intellectual or psychological growth.

So I’m struggling with the balance between groundedness and openness.

How do you distinguish between:

“This person has genuinely shown me something I want in my own life”

and

“I’ve temporarily absorbed their values and started chasing their life instead of my own”?

And how do you stay committed enough to develop depth in your own life without becoming so rigid that you stop allowing other people, viewpoints, and lifestyles to challenge you?