We may paint a little, write a poem or two occasionally, or on rare occasions enjoy beautiful scenery; but for the

most part our minds are so caught in the way, in habit, which is a form of technique, that we do not seem to be able to go beyond.

Ojai, 12th Public Talk 21st August 1949

Question: Is beauty to be cultivated or acquired? What does beauty mean to you? Krishnamurti: Beauty, surely, is something which is not of the mind, therefore beauty is not sensation. Most of us seek sensation, which we call beauty. The fashion, the style which can be changed, adjusted or dropped; the expensive furniture which you buy or have copied for your particular home, if you have money; the beautiful woman, the beautiful child, the beautiful picture, the beautiful house - surely, all that is really the response of sensation, which is the response of the mind, is it not? And is beauty sensation, is beauty merely of external form and shape? Putting on a sari in the right way, having one's lips carefully curved by lipstick, walking in a particular manner - is that beauty? And is beauty the denial of the ugly? Is virtue the denial of evil? Is there beauty in any denial? Surely, there is denial, the pleasing and the not pleasing, only when there is sensation. Just listen to it, do not contradict, do not oppose; just listen and you will discover what we mean by beauty. While the outward form must obviously be given certain respect and needs certain care, cleanliness, and all the rest of it, both as part of necessity and for esthetics reasons, surely that is not beauty, is it? Beauty which is a sensation is of the mind, and the mind can make anything beautiful or ugly; therefore beauty that depends on the mind is not beauty, is it? So, what is beauty? The mind is sensation, and if the mind judges beauty and gives it a name as goodness or truth, is that beauty? If beauty is perceived through the mind, it is sensation, and sensation comes to an end; and can that ever be beautiful? Do you understand what I mean? Is it beauty that comes to an end as sensation? I see a tree in the evening lights, the sun dancing and sparkling on the palm leaves, and it is very beautiful. The mind, becoming attached to it, says, `How beautiful it is', and holds to it, resuscitating and reviving that image. At the moment of perception it has great pleasure, a deep sense of satisfaction, which it calls the beautiful, but a second later it is over, it is only a memory; so the mind gives continuity to the sensation of what it calls beauty. The mind, then, is continually picturing, imagining the beautiful, which is always of the past. But is beauty of time? If it is not of time, then beauty is something illimitable, is it not; it is not within the frame of the word `beauty'. The mind can invent the beautiful, but the experience of the illimitable cannot be known by a mind that is pursuing the sensation of beauty. You and I can see beauty externally; but the mere appreciation of that expression is not beauty, is it? So, beauty is something beyond the mind, beyond sensation, beyond time-limits, beyond the time-binding quality of thought; and that measureless sense, in which all things are, is beauty - which is to be really infinitely sensitive. The man who denies evil, who denies the ugly, can never know what beauty is, because the very denial is the cultivation of the ugly. The illimitable is not to be found in a dictionary, in any religious or philosophical book. So, beauty is not something of the mind; but unfortunately, modern civilization is making beauty a thing of the mind. All the picture magazines, all the cinemas, are doing it; most of our efforts go to making wonderful paintings, marvellous furniture, building beautiful houses, buying the most fashionable dresses, the latest lipstick, or whatever is displayed in the advertisements. We are caught in the things of the mind, and that is why our lives are so ugly, so empty, that is why we decorate ourselves - which does not mean that we should not decorate ourselves. But there is an inner beauty, and when you see it, then it gives significance to the outer; but merely decorating the outer while ignoring the inner is just like beating a drum - it is still empty. Beauty is a thing beyond the mind; and to find that which is beautiful - call it truth, God, or what you will - , there must be freedom from the thought process. But that is another problem which we can discuss some other time.
BOMBAY 2ND PUBLIC TALK 19TH FEBRUARY 1950

Question: There is an urge in every one of us to see God, Reality, Truth. Is not the search for beauty the same as the search for reality? Is ugliness evil? Krishnamurti: Sirs, do realize you cannot seek God. You cannot seek Truth. Because, if you seek, what you will find is not Truth. Your search is the desire to find that which you want. How can you seek something of which you do not know? You seek something of which you have read, which you call Truth; or you are seeking something which inwardly you have a feeling for. Therefore, you must understand the motive of your search, which is far more important than the search for Truth. Why are you seeking, and what are you seeking? You would not seek if you are happy, if there was joy in your heart. Because we are empty we are seeking. We are frustrated, miserable, violent, full of antagonism; that is why we want to go away from that and seek some thing which would be more. Do watch yourselves and realize what I am saying to you, not merely listening to words. In order to escape from your present psychological conflicts, miseries, antagonisms, you say `I am seeking Truth'. You will not find Truth because Truth does not come when you are escaping from reality, from that which is. You have to understand that. To understand that, you must not go to seek the answer outside. So you cannot seek Truth. It must come to you. You cannot beckon God, you cannot go to Him. Your worship, devotion, is utterly valueless because you want something, you put up the begging bowl for Him to fill. So, you are seeking someone to fill your emptiness. And you are interested more in the word than in the thing. But if you are content with that extraordinary state of loneliness without any deviation or distraction, then only that which is eternal comes into being. Most of us are so conditioned, so trained, that we want to escape; and the thing to which we escape, we call beauty. We are seeking beauty through something - through dance, through rituals, through prayer, through discipline, through various forms of formulations, through painting, through sensation. Are we not? So as long as we are seeking beauty through something, through man, woman or child, through some sensation, we shall never have beauty because the thing through which we seek, becomes all important. Not beauty, but the object through which we seek it, becomes all important, and then we cling to that. Beauty is not found through something; that would be merely a sensation which is exploited by the cunning. Beauty comes into being through inward regeneration, when there is complete, radical transformation of the mind. For that, you require an extraordinary state of sensitivity. Ugliness is an evil only when there is no sensitivity. If you are sensitive to the beautiful, denying the ugly, then you are not sensitive to the beautiful. What is important is not ugliness or beauty, but that there should be sensitivity which sees, which reacts to the so-called ugly as well as to the beautiful. But if you are only aware of the beautiful and deny the ugly, then it is like cutting off one arm; then your whole existence is unbalanced. Don't you shut out the evil, deny it, call it ugly, fight it, be violent about it? You are only concerned with the beautiful, you want it. In that process, you lose the sensitivity.The man that is sensitive to both the ugly and the beautiful, goes beyond, far away from the things through which he seeks Truth. But, we are not sensitive to either beauty or ugliness; we are so enclosed by our own thoughts, by our own prejudices, by our own ambitions, greed's, envies. How can a mind be sensitive, that is ambitious spiritually or in any other direction? There can be sensitivity only when the whole process of desire is completely understood; for, desire is a self-enclosing process, and through enclosing, you cannot see the horizon. The mind then is stifled by its own `becoming'. Such a mind can only appreciate beauty through something. Such a mind is not a beautiful mind. Such a mind is not a good mind, it is an ugly mind which is enclosed and is seeking its own perpetuation. Such a mind can never find beauty. Only when the mind ceases to enclose itself by its own ideals and pursuits and ambitions, such a mind is beautiful.
MADRAS 8TH PUBLIC TALK 27TH JANUARY 1952