Indian authors have varieties to offer to their readers. However, when it comes to spiritual writing, there is a golden treasure that Indians have. We have the primary source of eternal knowledge in the form of Gita and then we have Vedas, Upnishads, Puranas and so on… coming down to our generation, we have authors like Sadhguru, Ravishankar, J. Krishnamurti and many others who have tried to simplify the knowledge of the unknown for common readers. Today, I am going to review a book by J Krishnamurti, Meditations. It was first published in the year 1979 and since then, there have been many editions of this book.

In this wonderful book, the collection of thoughts by J Krishnamurti, a reader will find the simplified version of meditation that ‘cannot be learnt from anybody’ but can be obtained by simply observing one’s life, the activities and it can be done anywhere. The author argues that Meditation is not difficult. It is simple but mastering the art of meditation is certainly difficult. One has to do it by giving up ‘thinking’; when one’s thoughts cease to occur, the meditation state is reached. Is it possible, though?

Meditation is “seeing the measure and going beyond the measure”. J Krishnamurti argues in this book that meditation is beyond the world we live because we live in the world of measurements and we measure everything around us – our relationship with people, with God, our thoughts, our efforts… and we try to perfect ourselves according to a standard that we set for ourselves. Is meditation possible in this world of measures? Perhaps no. And he argues that one has to see beyond this world to attain the true height of meditation.

The book Meditation is, in fact, certain random thoughts of J Krishnamurti collected together that delivers the wisdom to the readers. When one reads it, one can understand that Krishnamurti wants to convey a very simple message – meditation is about controlling your thoughts and making them cease when you want to. Meditation is a silence that is not opposed to the noise – it’s the silence that we achieve within our selves.

The book will not take more than an hour to be finished because the thought-trains are not so long. You navigate through various thoughts and reach the end which is no end at all. At the beginning itself, Krishnamurti argues that the art of meditation is not any technique and hence it cannot be taught. It has to come from within. So, you just read these thoughts and try to learn for yourself… however, reading these wonderful and interesting thoughts will certainly open the gates of thoughts within you and you will begin to think – you will begin to have thoughts about controlling your thoughts… you can get a copy from Amazon India by clicking the link below:

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review by Ashish for BooksToRead Book Blog