Look at the sky, look at that tree, look at the beauty
of the light, look at the clouds with their curves, with their delicacy. If you look at them without any image, you
have understood your own life.
But you are looking at yourself, at your life, as an observer and your life as something to be observed; there is a division between the observer and the observed. This division is the essence of all conflict, the essence of all the struggle, pain, fear depair. Where there is a division between human beings, division of nationalities, division of religion, social division, wherever there is a division, there must be conflict. There is Pakistan on one side and India on the other battling with each other. You are a Brahmin and another is a non-Brahmin, and there is hate, divion. Now that externalized division with all its conflict is the same as the inward division, as the observer and the observed.
A mind that is in conflict cannot possibly ever understand what truth is. A mind in conflict is a tortured mind, a twisted mind. How can it be free to observe the beauty of the earth or a child or a beautiful woman or man or the beauty of extreme sensitivity and all that is involved in it?
Now we are going to find out for ourselves-- not from the speaker-- whether it is possible to end this division between the observer and the observed. Are you following all this?
Please, this is important if you are really to move any further. You are going to go into the question of what love is, what death is, what the beauty of truth is, what meditation is, and a mind that is completely and totally still. And to understand all this, one must begin with the ending of conflict, and this conflict exists wherever there is the observer and the observed.
The next question is: what is this observer, and the observer who has separated himself from the observed? We see that when we are angry, at the moment of anger, there is no observer. At the moment of experiencing anything, there is no observer. When you look at a sunset, that sunset is something immense; when you look at it, there is no observer saying, "I am seeing the sunset." A second later comes the observer. Supposing you are angry, at the moment of anger there is no observer, no experiencer, there is only a state of anger. A second later comes the observer who says, "I should not have been angry," or "I was justified in getting angry." This is the beginning of division.
How does this happen? Why, at the moment of experience, is there a total absence of the observer, and how does it happen that a second later the observer comes into being? When you look at this flower, at the moment you observe it closely, there is no observer, there is only a looking. Then you begin to name the flower. Then you say, "I wish I had it in my garden or in my house." Then you have already begun to build an image about that flower. The image and the image-maker are the observer, and the observer is the past, the "me" as the observer is the past, the "me" is the knowledge which I have accumulated, the knowledge of pain, sorrow, agony, suffering, despair, loneliness, jealousy. The observer looks at that flower with the eyes of the past. You do not know how to look without the observer, and therefore, you bring about conflict.
Now our question is: can you look not only at the flower but at your life, at your agony, at your despair, at your sorrow, without naming it, without saying to yourself, "I must go beyond it, I must suppress it"? Can you look at it without the observer? Take your particular form or particular tendency, or take what most people are -- envious. You know what envy is. You are very familiar with that. Envy is comparison, the measurement of thought, a comparing of what you are with what you should be or what you would like to become. When you are envious of your neighbor-- he has got a bigger car, a better house, and all the rest of it-- you certainly feel envy, that is, you compare yourself with him and envy him more. Now can you look at the feeling without saying it is right or wrong, without naming it? Can you look at it without an image?
Then you go beyond it. Instead of strangling with envy and trying to suppress it, observe your anger, your envy, without naming it.
The naming is the movement of the past memory while it justifies or condemns. If you can look at it without naming, then you will see that you go beyond it.
The moment you know the possibility of going beyond "what is", you are full of energy. The man who does not know how to go beyond "what is", because he does not know how to deal with it, is afraid, he wants to escape. Such a person loses energy. If you have a problem and you can solve it, then you have energy. A man who has a thousand problems and does not know what to do with them loses his energy. So in the same way, look at your life in which there is what you call love.
What is love? We are not discussing theories of what love should be. We are observing what we call love. Is love pleasure? Is love jealousy? Can a man love how is ambitious? Can a man love who is competitive? And you are all competitive, you want a better job, better position, better house, and image of yourself.
Can you love when you go through all this tyranny, when you dominate your husband, your wife, your children? When you are seeking power, is there a possibility of love?
In negating what is not love, there is love. You have to negate everything that is not love, which means no ambition, no competition, no aggression, no violence either in speech, act or thought. When you negate that which is not love, then you know what love is. And love is something that is intense, that you feel strongly; love is not pleasure.
Therefore, one must understand pleasure, and not attempt to love somebody.
~~ excerpt from To Be Human, by J. Krishnamurti
*
_________________________
Our truest life is
when we are in dreams awake.
~ Henry David Thoreau
Previous Topic
Index