Speaking at Brockwood Park in 1980, Krishnamurti distinguishes real meditation from any twenty-minute practice or system — it is the ending of image-making by thought and of psychological knowledge entirely, leaving the mind free of the past. He closes with a parable of a preacher who lets a birdsong end his sermon.
Transcript
Is it ever possible to end this movement of not only creating images about the whole as well as the particular, can this movement of thought end? You know, meditation is essentially the ending of thought. Not the meditation that people practise twenty minutes every day, or twenty minutes in the morning and the evening, or meditation according to a system and so on, that is not meditation at all. Meditation is the ending of image-making by thought and the ending of psychological knowledge totally so that the mind is free from the past. That is real meditation. Not that one is seeking a result – I am not, the speaker is not. I don’t care if you do, or don’t. It is up to you. So after listening for an hour perhaps to this harangue, or to this sermon – you know that story of a preacher talking to his disciples every morning, that was his habit. He would get up on the rostrum, talk to his disciples for about ten minutes, or quarter of an hour or an hour, and begin the day that way. So one morning he was preaching, talking about the goodness of life, how to behave. A bird comes and sits on the windowsill and the preacher stops talking. And they all listen to that bird. And the bird flies away and the preacher says. ‘The sermon is over for this morning’. Right? Got it?