Text: Krishnamurti Awareness is non-effort. Does not effort mean a struggle to change what is into what it is not, or what it should be, or what it should become? We are constantly escaping from what is, to transform or modify it... Only when there is no awareness of exactly what is, then effort to transform takes place. So, effort is non-awareness. Awareness reveals the significance of what is, and the complete acceptance of the significance brings freedom. So, awareness is non-effort; awareness is the perception of what is without distortion. Distortion exists whenever there is effort. Madras, 7th Public Talk, November 30, 1947 Collected Works, Vol. IV, pp. 117-18 Do it, and you will see. Questioner: Sir, if there is no effort, if there is no method, then any transition into the state of awareness, any shift into a new dimension, must be a completely random accident, and therefore unaffected by any thing you might say on the subject. Krishnamurti: Ah, no, sir! I didn't say that. [Laughter] I said one has to be aware. By being aware, one discovers how one is conditioned. By being aware, I know I am conditioned as a Hindu, as a Buddhist, as a Christian; I am conditioned as a nationalist: British, German, Russian, Indian, American, Chinese---I am conditioned. We never tackle that. That's the garbage we are, and we hope something marvelous will grow out of it, but I a! m afraid it is not possible. Being aware doesn't mean a chance happening, something irresponsible and vague. If one understands the implications of awareness, one's body not only becomes highly sensitive, but the whole entity is activated; there is a new energy given to it. Do it, and you will see. Don't sit on the bank and speculate about the river; jump in and follow the current of this awareness, and you will find out for yourself how extraordinarily limited our thoughts, our feelings, and our ideas are. Our projections of gods, saviors, and Masters---all that becomes so obvious, so infantile. London, 5th Public Dialogue, May 6, 1965 Collected Works, Vol. XV, p. 138 Awareness takes place when one observes. . . You know, concentration is effort: focusing upon a particular page, an idea, image, symbol, and so on and so on. Concentration is a process of exclusion. You tell a student, "Don't look out of the window; pay attention to the book." He wants to look out, but he forces himself to look, look at the page; so there is a conflict. This constant effort to concentrate is a process of exclusion, which has nothing to do with awareness. Awareness takes place when one observes---you can do it; everybody can do it---observes not only what is the outer, the tree, what people say, what one thinks, an! d so on, outwardly, but also inwardly to be aware without choice, just to observe without choosing. For when you choose, when choice takes place, only then is there confusion, not when there is clarity. Ojai, 5th Public Talk, November 12, 1966 Collected Works, Vol. xvn. pp. 82-3 Out of this awareness there comes a clarity that is not induced ... If you sit on the bank of a river after a storm, you see the stream going by, carrying a great deal of debris. Similarly, you have to watch the movement of yourself---following every thought, every feeling, every intention, every motive---just watch it. That watching is also listening; it is being aware with your eyes, with your ears, with your insight, of all the values that human beings have created, and by which you are condi?tioned, and it is only this state of total awareness that will end all seeking. Please do listen to this. Most of us think that awareness is a mysterious something to be practiced, and that we should get together day after day to talk about awareness. Now, you don't come to awareness that way at all. But if you are aware of outward things---the curve of a road, the shape of a tree, the color of another's dress, the outline of the mountains against a blue sky, the delicacy of a flower, the pain on the face of a pass?erby, the ignorance, the envy, the jealousy of others, the beauty of the earth---then, seeing all these outward things without condemnation, without choice, you can ride on the tide of in?ner awareness. Then you will become aware of your own reactions, of your own pettiness, of your own jealousies. From the outward awareness you come to the inward, but if you are not aware of the outer you cannot possibly come to the inner. When there is inward awareness of every activity of your mind and your body, when you are aware of your thoughts, of your feelings, both secret and open, conscious and unconscious, then out of this awareness there comes a clarity that is not in?duced, not put together by the mind. And without that clarity you may do what you will, you may search the heavens and the earth and the deeps, but you will never find out what is true. Saanen, 10th Public Talk, August 1, 1965 Collected Works, Vol. XV, pp. 242-3 The what is is what you are, not what you would like to be. The what is is what you are, not what you would like to be; it is not the ideal because the ideal is fictitious, but it is actually what you are doing, thinking, and feeling from moment to moment. What is is the actual, and to understand the actual requires awareness, a very alert, swift mind. Bangalore, 6th Public Talk, August 8,1948 Collected Works, Vol. V, p. 50 The beauty of listening. . . The beauty of listening lies in being highly sensitive to ev?erything about you: to the ugliness, to the dirt, to the squalor, to the poverty about you, and also to the dirt, to the disorder, to the poverty of one's own being. When you are aware of both, then there is no effort, that is, when there is an awareness which is without choice, then there is no effort. Bombay, 2nd Public Talk, February 14, 1965 Collected Works, Vol. XV, p. 61

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