Paperback 254 Pages: Publisher Quest Books (IL): Published: January 1994
$14.95 USD
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ISBN-10: 0835603903
ISBN-13: 9780835603904
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Aldous Huxley encouraged J. Krishnamurti to write these commentaries on life, which consists of a series of a dialogues with ordinary human beings whom Krishnamurti met in different parts of the world. Set in India, Europe and America, against a wide variety of landscapes, the encounters recorded here are both intense and illuminating.
In these dialogues, the ways of the self are unreeled through Krishnamurti’s probing intelligence. Krishnamurti helps to restore in us the ancient faith that human beings can make themselves whole — not through any external agent, or through faith, but right attention and a listening ear.
The Commentaries on Living series represents an entirely new genre of writing — a blend of lyrical descriptions of nature, philosophical reflections and psychological insights, all informed by a deeply religious sensibility and couched in lucid, absorbing prose.
Customer Reviews
Timeless wisdom from the master…which you already possess by P. Johnson (UK)
Customers Rating:
I keep finding myself returning to this fairly straightforward and seemingly unsophisticated book. A series of topical vignettes by an Eastern teacher of wisdom–on the surface, just what the world DOESN’T need more of. In a society saturated by self-help would-be prophets and new-age dreck like Tony Robbins and Deepak Chopra, you would think a guy like this wouldn’t make waves…but he does. Big ones. His insights are so frustratingly simple they almost leave our minds going, “That’s IT?” for we usually assume that enlightenment is a stairway we have to climb. Krishnamurti has an uncanny ability to puncture this and many other illusions.
A mystic who can stand his own with the best, he’s also one of the most straightforward, non-flowery, non-blissed out authors you will ever read. He’s tangled with everyone from heads of state to quantum physicists like David Bohm, so the average reader is no match for his razor-sharp insight and effortless deflation of unsound ways of being. He very often says in one paragraph what Leo Tolstoy needs two 1000-page books to get at, diving straight to the heart of the human condition and the activities of the unconscious mind. Though probably not the best anthology of his work, it’s certainly a good way to clear your head which works MUCH better than any kind of chemical aids
His prose is spare, uncompromising, and incisive, trimming away the excess fat of so many useless attempts by smaller minds to fill their true emptiness with pointless questions..
Along with Marcus Borg’s “The God We Never Knew”, this book has essentially been my substitute for “Bible study” for quite some time now. That which we seek, we are. That which we would try to find is illusion. That which IS is not a process of linear time or human effort, but can only be understood when the observer “is not”. Though I come from a monotheistic background and find some of K’s work a tad impersonal, I cannot turn from the truth he offers–and that truth points a way to Truth, even though, as K himself would say, “Truth is a pathless land”.
Incomparable by T. Stickley (London)
Customers Rating:
Krishnamurti writes simpler, more descriptive prose than Hemingway; he dispenses more nondual wisdom in more depth than a score of Zen masters combined; he dissects the armour of the personality more quickly, more gently, more accurately than any psychologist ever has. These are not exaggerations.
These Commentaries are, along with his journals and notebook, the only major works in print (at least that I am aware of, and I am aware of most) that he actually wrote himself; the rest of his books are, of course, compilations of talks and conversations. Only a man of such surpassing conscious mastery could write so perfectly with so little effort; if there is any justice in the universe these books will stay in print for a thousand years.If you like Krishnamurti you need these.
Wishing to have a JK Meditation? Go Ahead !! by Krishnaswamy Venkatesan (Jersey City, NJ , USA)
Customers Rating:
An excellent window to the World of Jiddu Krishnamurthi’s thoughts. Every emotion that one can generate, every thought that may arise, every doubt that can arise in one’s self, unfold in this series of Commentaries. Each chapter is a spiritual treat and retreat !! Easily my book for a spiritual retreat what with all the loaded powerpacked ideas that mirrors nay reveals the real “you” and you feel it is a story of your life that is unfolding and that is how it must be !!
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