When you give your whole attention, is there a directive, a new outlook? Is there a centre from which you are looking and listening? Surely when you are totally listening, giving your complete attention, there is no centre, no entity that is listening. It is only inattention that creates the entity that listens.⁠

⁠
J. Krishnamurti⁠
From Public Discussion 2, Saanen, 5 August 1964

We never give anything our complete attention because we have been trained to think with a motive. You pay attention because you want to be someone big, have more money, a better job, you want to be a greater painter, a greater poet, a well-known person, and therefore you give attention. That is not attention; you have a motive behind it that makes you attend. Which is, the motive is much more important than the attention, so there is a contradiction, so there is conflict, and therefore you will never give complete attention to anything. When you give your complete attention to something, you have no problem, and therefore your mind is capable of paying complete attention to the fact of sorrow. —Krishnamurti

From Public Talk 4, New Delhi, 31 January 1962