Krishnamurti is one of the greatest thinkers ever on spiritual topics. He is totally against mechanical approaches, against dogma’s and against following masters. Here the essence of why he thinks meditation does not make sense at all.

In one of his most incisive dialogues, Jiddu Krishnamurti turns a piercing gaze upon the widely accepted practices of meditation, stripping them of their conceptual adornments to reveal a startlingly simple truth: meditation, as commonly understood and practiced, often reinforces the very struggles it seeks to transcend.

Krishnamurti begins by questioning the naturalness of meditation. Is it an inherent aspect of life, like breathing or seeing, or has it become a contrived process laden with systems, postures, and rituals? He challenges the proliferation of meditative practices—Buddhist, Christian, Tantric, and the methodologies of modern gurus—asking why such practices are necessary and what they truly achieve. The inquiry is not meant to dismiss these traditions outright but to provoke a deeper understanding of their purpose and impact.

Meditation as a System: The Trap of Mechanization

For Krishnamurti, meditation that adheres to a prescribed system—timed sessions, specific postures, or repetitive practices—is fundamentally flawed. These systems, he argues, reduce meditation to a mechanical process, making the mind even more rigid and dull. The practitioner, intent on achieving a quiet mind or profound experience, becomes ensnared in a cycle of effort and control. This striving, paradoxically, perpetuates the very conflict it aims to resolve.

The crux of Krishnamurti’s critique lies in the notion of control: the division of the self into the controller and the controlled. In the struggle to suppress thoughts or emotions, we create an artificial split within ourselves, a conflict that mirrors the broader struggles of daily life. This effort to conquer the mind is, in his view, a futile endeavor that only strengthens the ego—the very source of our turmoil.

The Demand for Experience: A Misguided Craving

Krishnamurti also interrogates the human tendency to seek experiences through meditation, whether mystical insights, altered states, or enlightenment itself. This craving, he suggests, stems from a mind that is either bored or asleep, yearning for stimulation to jolt it into awareness. However, a truly awake mind, he contends, requires no such provocation. It is a light unto itself, free from the need for external validation or enhancement.

The idea of experiencing enlightenment, Krishnamurti asserts, is fundamentally flawed. Enlightenment, truth, or the ultimate reality cannot be “experienced” because the very act of experiencing implies a division between the experiencer and the experienced. In the absence of this division, there is no experiencer and no experience—only the seamless flow of being.

Meditation Without Struggle: A Radical Simplicity

Krishnamurti’s vision of meditation is not about following a method or attaining a state. It is about the total cessation of struggle. He points out the absurdity of struggling endlessly in meditation with the hope of one day ending all struggles. This perpetual effort, anchored in time, keeps us trapped in a cycle of conflict and postponement. This whole struggle happens because we let the Ego rising in our field of awareness with its total agenda, including how to reach enlightenment. I explain how this proces happens in the above video.

To Krishnamurti, true meditation is the complete absence of conflict. It is not something to be achieved in the future but a state to be realized immediately, in the present. This state arises not through effort but through the simple act of seeing—seeing the futility of control, the illusion of the experiencer, and the contradictions inherent in our striving.

A Phenomenological Perspective

Approaching meditation phenomenologically, as Krishnamurti suggests, involves observing the mind without judgment, analysis, or control. This observation is not passive but deeply engaged, rooted in awareness of the present moment. It is a surrender—not to a system or teacher but to the flow of life itself.

This perspective aligns with his broader philosophy, which emphasizes the dissolution of psychological time. When we are no longer caught in the duality of past and future, we encounter the timeless now—a space where the mind is free from its habitual entanglements and can see reality as it is.

Reimagining Meditation in Daily Life

Krishnamurti invites us to reimagine meditation as an integral part of daily living rather than a separate, structured practice. He speaks of being attentive to everything—our thoughts, sensations, and the world around us—without seeking to change or control it. In this state of choiceless awareness, the mind is both silent and vibrant, capable of perceiving the vastness of existence without distortion.

To meditate, in Krishnamurti’s sense, is not to sit in a particular posture or chant a mantra but to live fully, without resistance or attachment. It is to see the world and oneself with clarity, unclouded by the constructs of the mind.

The Root of the Conflict

At the heart of Krishnamurti’s teaching on meditation is the insight that conflict arises from division—between the controller and the controlled, the experiencer and the experienced, the self and the other. To end this conflict is to end the illusion of separation. In this state of unity, there is no struggle, no seeking, no becoming—only being.

Meditation, then, is not a means to an end but an expression of the end itself. It is the realization that the light we seek is already within us, waiting to shine when the shadows of conflict are dissolved.

Krishnamurti always stirs people up to think for them selves. That is why I love this great master.

Shunyam Adhibhu