The Brain Is Quiet When There Is Attention | J. Krishnamurti

I do not know if you have ever enquired into this question of attention, which has nothing whatsoever to do with concentration. Concentration implies resistance. Thought wanders away and you try to control it in order to focus it on a particular thing. So there is a resistance. Whereas in attention there is no form of resistance. Therefore to be attentive in that sense completely, with your body, with your heart, with your mind, with your complete... everything that you have, you have to understand and be free of every form of resistance. Resistance arises when there is fear, or the fear of not gaining, achieving, becoming, experiencing, which prevents attention. Now when you give attention, there is no entity who attends. It may be rather obtuse, rather unclear, but we'll go into it a little bit. You are listening now. Are you attending? That is, giving attention without any form of resistance, not to what is being said, but attending, giving your heart, your mind, your body, everything, so that you are completely attentive. Then, if you are, you will see that there is no person or entity, a centre that is aware that it is attending. And we do this when we are profoundly interested in something. So the brain, which is capable of such extraordinary things – going to the moon, living under the sea, the miracle of a television, the telephone, the jet, the shell that goes to kill people – the brain is so astonishingly capable. And that brain, we have not been able to bring about such order, and brain demands order. But it rebels against disorder. I do not know if you have gone into this. Lord, there are so many things. You know, when you go to sleep, before going to sleep, if your day has been disorderly, confused, the brain, as it sleeps, quietens down, puts everything in order for itself, otherwise it becomes disturbed, uncertain, unclear. I don't know if you have done all these things, for the fun of it at least. Brain demands order, and that order can be brought about if you watch yourself in action throughout the day, and take a stock of what has happened, or take stock as you are going along, so that at the moment of sleep the brain has order, and therefore the brain becomes more sensitive, alive. It is a disorderly brain that begs for insensitivity. So the brain is quiet, completely without any reaction, when there is attention. And this attention is not a thing you practise. It is not a thing you are going to say, well, I will be more attentive tomorrow, I will practise it. That is our conditioning, to practise something which we don't know, which we want to get, which we think will bring us happiness. What is important is not the duration of attention, but the understanding and the observation of inattention. Right? Because when the brain is aware how inattentive it is, then that very awareness of inattention becomes attention. Are we all following all this thing? Because, you see, we are trying to come upon something that man has sought. Even the most confirmed communist must have an occasional glance at the sky, at the cloud, at the tree to find out the beauty of it. And beauty is not in the thing itself, in the building, in the... so on. Oh, I mustn't go into that, sorry. So when the brain is still, which is to be completely attentive, the totality of the mind in which the brain is becomes extraordinarily still. The quality of stillness matters, and that stillness can be brought about by superficial means or that stillness comes naturally, easily, without any effort, when you understand this whole process of knowing oneself so completely that there is no distortion. And there is distortion when there is any kind of effort. Then in that freedom, when the mind is completely still, then only is there a possibility of finding out – not finding out – possibility of something other than time, thought, the past coming in and distorting. It's only then there is a possibility of that immensity to be seen. That immensity cannot be invited. How can a little mind, however erudite, however scholarly, however austere with its harshness, brutality, how can such a mind receive that which has no frontier, which has no time? So what matters is not to seek but to understand. Wisdom is greater than saintliness, for wisdom comes with the ending of sorrow, and the understanding of sorrow is to understand oneself. Then in the understanding of oneself so completely there is quietness, there is beauty. And it is, after all, beauty is love, and without this, do what you will, that immensity, that nameless thing cannot be.