Self Knowledge

"How can I get it, for how much can I buy it? What must I do, what sacrifice must I make, what discipline or meditation must I practice in order to have it?" - student

"It is this machine-like, mediocre mind which says, "I shall do this in order to get that." The so-called religious people think in these terms; but self-knowledge is not come by in this way. You cannot buy it through some effort or practice. Self-knowledge comes when you observe yourself in your relationships with all the people around you; it comes when you observe the manner of another, his gestures, the way he talks, his contempt, his flattery and your response; it comes when you watch everything in you and about you and see yourself as you see yourself in the mirror. When you look into the mirror you see yourself as you are, don't you? You may wish your head were a different shape, with a little more hair, and your face a little less ugly; but the fact is there, clearly reflected in the mirror, and you can't push it aside and say, "How beautiful I am!"

"If you can look into the mirror of relationship exactly as you look into the ordinary mirror, then there is no end to self-knowledge. It is like entering a fathomless ocean which has no shore. Most of us want to reach an end, we want to be able to say, "I have arrived at self-knowledge and I am happy;" but it is not like that at all. If you can look at yourself without condeming what you see, without comparing yourself with somebody else, without wishing to be more beautiful or more virtuous; if you can just observe what you are and move with it, then you will find that it is possible to go infinitely far. Then there is no end to the journey, and that is the mystery, the beauty of it."

-Krishnamurti