Being Attached, We Pursue Detachment

From Krishnamurti’s Book INWARD REVOLUTION

One has to understand basically these two issues of fear and pleasure. To understand means to be free to look, to observe what pleasure means, where it has led us, what is involved in it, how it has brought about the extraordinary division between the observer and the thing observed, the division in religions, in nationalities, and so on. The economic, social, and religious fragmentation has been brought about through pleasure.

One must also understand—deeply, not verbally, not theoretically—the whole complex question of fear. When a mind is afraid, it cannot possibly see what truth is. It lives in darkness. Haven’t you noticed for yourself that when you are afraid of your neighbour, of your government, of your wife, husband, or the policeman, how dull your mind becomes, how it is incapable of thinking rationally, how confused the mind becomes? So to understand fear and pleasure one has to observe it in oneself, not theoretically, but actually see it operating in yourself.

So we are together going to investigate these two issues upon which all our actions are based. They may be superficial actions, hidden actions, conscious or unconscious actions. All our motives are based on these two fundamental principles of pleasure and fear. When you say you are seeking truth, what you are seeking is the permanent establishment of the thing you call pleasure. Observe it in your own life. And when the mind is frightened, fearful, it divides people. It makes people violent, disorderly. They may discipline themselves endlessly, but if there is fear, there is distortion, there is corruption, there is violence, there is mischief. Please do see it in yourself. You must, if you are at all serious—and I hope you are for your own sake—because the house is burning, not your particular little house but the fire is in the world. There is destruction in the world, there is murder, chaos, and that house is burning; although you may have a little life with a bank account and spin a lot of theories, the house is burning. Anyone who is really profoundly serious must understand these two principles. So we are together going to investigate what pleasure is and what fear is—not how to avoid fear, how to run away from fear, how to suppress fear or overcome fear, but to understand it; not how to further pleasure, expand pleasure, but to understand it. To understand, you need a sensitive, delicate, observing mind that is capable of looking without coming to any conclusions, because a mind that has conclusions cannot function sanely.

Learn from yourself, through observing yourself, through observing these two factors of human existence: fear and pleasure. What is fear and what is pleasure? Why has pleasure become so extraordinarily important? It expresses itself in so many subtle ways: self-importance, prestige, fame, success, knowledge, erudition all lie along the path of pleasure. Though you may go to temples and hear all the temple bells ringing, what you really worship is pleasure and money. A person who is really deeply, profoundly serious has to understand this, as well as fear. Fear doesn’t exist by itself. It exists in relation to something, to public opinion, what people might say about you. There is the fear of death; there is the fear of the unknown; there is the fear of the known, the fear of insecurity, the fear of losing a job, fear of your wife who may do something that you oppose, or of the husband doing something stupid. Fear breeds violence. Haven’t you noticed in a country that is becoming overpopulated, every year more and more millions arriving, there naturally must be the growth of fear because of unemployment, lack of food, the insoluble poverty, the corrupt government? When you see all this, you are bound to be afraid, not only for your own security but also for the security of the coming generation, for your sons and your daughters. There is fear of death. Aren’t you all afraid of something or other? You had a physical pain a week ago, and you don’t want that pain repeated. Somebody has hurt you and there is fear of that hurt. Fear breeds violence. So unless you really are free of fear, you are bound to create chaos in the world. And fear cannot be suppressed by an ideal, like the ideal of courage. See what happens. You are afraid, and you have an idea that by developing courage you can get rid of fear, which is avoiding what is and hoping through courage to get rid of fear. If you have an ideal, it acts as an impediment to the understanding of what is.

You must really understand very deeply that you as a human being are violent, aggressive. That’s a fact. It is a fact that people are violent and have had the ideal of nonviolence. So what has happened? You are pursuing the ideal and in the meantime you are sowing the seeds of violence. You say, ‘I am trying to be nonviolent; I will one day achieve a state in which there is nonviolence,’ and therefore you become a hypocrite. All idealists are essentially hypocrites. Right? Swallow that pill and observe it. So we are not dealing with the ideal of courage or how to get rid of fear or how to suppress it; we want to understand it, for the moment you understand something, you are free of it. And freedom does not come through ideals. Freedom and the beauty of freedom come when you understand what actually is, when you really understand your own confusion, your own callousness, your own brutality. Out of that observation, out of that awareness with care, with real attention, comes the beauty of freedom.

We are going to observe and learn. Observe your own fear. Now, sitting there, you may not be aware of your fear. You are only aware when it comes. So perhaps we can take a thing like attachment. You are all attached to your families, to your jobs, to your opinions, to your conclusions, to what you think. Aren’t you? Now watch what you are attached to—it may be your wife, your children, the things you have invented as gods, or karma, reincarnation. Just observe that you are attached. Now, when you are attached to something, there is the desire to dominate it, to hold it, to possess it, either the wife, the husband, the children, or an opinion, or a judgment. When you dominate something and hold on, what takes place in your mind? There is always uncertainty about its permanence. Right? Where there is attachment, there must be the uncertainty that the attachment may die, or that the person to whom you are attached may turn to another, and out of that comes jealousy. So where there is attachment, there must be fear. And being attached, you say, ‘I must get detached,’ and you pursue detachment. Then you ask yourself how you are to be detached. Then that becomes a problem. Then people will tell you to do this, not to do that, to meditate, to gradually detach yourself, become a monk, become a saint, become a holy idiot. Whereas if you understood, observed the implications of attachment, you would see that there is fear. But instead of understanding fear, you cultivate detachment, which is most deadly, because when you cultivate detachment you become callous, you become indifferent, you withdraw, you resist, you never look at the beauty of a tree or the sky or the lovely sunset, because all that means attachment. So by a philosophy of detachment you become a terribly ugly human being. Therefore find out that where there is attachment there must be fear.

Now, we are going to understand what fear is, understand nonverbally, which means you have to look at your fear yourself, learn about it. So there is fear. What is fear—the fact, not the cause, of fear? One is afraid of death. Let’s take that as an instance. What is that fear of suddenly coming to an end, suddenly getting detached from your moorings, suddenly getting detached from your family, from all your knowledge, from your position, prestige, from your beastly little houses and cars? What causes fear? What is the process of fear? Please investigate with the speaker the way of fear. You have had physical pain a week ago or last year. You think about that pain, hoping that it won’t come back again. Don’t you?

Thinking about a past event that has caused physical pain results in not wanting it now or tomorrow. Therefore thought, thinking about something that was painful, is afraid that it might occur again. Right? So thought is responsible for the continuity of fear. Do you see this? I have done something wrong. It happened, let us say, yesterday or two weeks ago, and I am afraid that you might know it. I don’t want you to know it, and I am afraid that you might get to know it. So thought, thinking about something it has done that it doesn’t want discovered, hides it and is afraid that it might be discovered. There is a physical incident of pain and there is a psychological happening that mustn’t be revealed, mustn’t be shown, mustn’t occur again. So thought, thinking about the pain, thinking about what has happened, gives continuity to fear. Is that clear? Now please watch in yourself, not how to end fear, but what gives continuity to fear.

I have had pain last week. It’s over. It’s finished, but my mind thinks about it and is afraid. If thought doesn’t interfere, it can end immediately; it’s over. Pain happened two weeks ago and is over, but the brain has recorded that pain. The brain is a recording machine, and that memory, which is part of the structure of the brain, thinking about it, is afraid that it might happen again. Now, the speaker has not read any books, religious, psychological, biological, or any other books. The speaker is not saying this out of vanity, but to show you that you can learn all about yourself completely without a book, because in you is the totality of mankind, in you all history is buried, not the dates of kings and wars, but the historical movement of growth. So when we are talking of the brain, it is not the result of instructions by a professor about the brain cells. You can observe it yourself, and therefore it is authentic, real. And in that lies great beauty and independence, freedom.

So thought, which is the response of memory of a physical or psychological incident, is recorded in the brain cells. The brain cells hold this memory and the brain cells say to be careful not to have pain any more, to watch it. Thought doesn’t want it, and therefore thought breeds fear. Now, what is pleasure? Please do understand this thing. It is really extraordinarily simple once you understand it. The complicated, intellectual mind wants a complicated thing and misses the very simplicity of it. What is pleasure? You see a beautiful tree or a lovely sunset with marvellous colours. You see a pond in the light of an evening or in the morning, see the beauty of it, the stillness of it, the extraordinary depth of light and shade. It happens. You are there, and you see it and say, ‘How marvellous that is.’ The brain cells have recorded it, and thought says, ‘I wish I could have that experience again tomorrow; it was so lovely, so beautiful, so enchanting.’ Thought gives continuity to the incident of the sunset and wants it repeated. Yesterday you had sexual pleasure—don’t be shy, observe it. You had sexual pleasure; that has been recorded, and thought goes over it, thinks about it, chews the cud, builds images, and thought says, ‘I must have it again.’ So thought breeds fear, and thought gives continuity to pleasure—not detachment from pleasure, not desirelessness at all. It is a shoddy way of looking at life to seek desirelessness as a way to truth, because then you have a mind that is tortured, fighting your own instincts, your own demands, your own longings. Then your mind becomes twisted, tortured, and a mind that is twisted cannot possibly see what truth is.

So you see now that thought gives continuity and nourishment to fear and that thought sustains and gives duration to pleasure. It is a simple fact. Then one asks, What is the function of thought? Thought breeds fear and sustains pleasure, in which there is invariably pain. Pleasure and pain are two sides of the same coin, and the division brought about between pleasure and pain is the function of thought. Thought divides pleasure and pain. Thought says, ‘I must have this and avoid that.’

So knowing that fear and pleasure are two sides of the same coin, we have to ask what the function of thought is. You cannot possibly get rid of pleasure, because the moment you see a lovely thing, there is pleasure. You see a beautiful child, a beautiful woman, a beautiful line in the sky, the bird on the wing, a lovely thought, a subtlety, and all that is immense delight, like joy. Joy is not pleasure, but having experienced joy, thought reduces it to pleasure, because it says, ‘I must have more of it.’

So what is the function of thought? What is thinking—not as you are used to thinking according to a pattern, according to some authority, but what is thinking? Surely thinking is the response of your collective experience, which is knowledge. Isn’t it? If you had no knowledge at all, you couldn’t think. If you had no knowledge of your name, of your house, of language, you couldn’t speak; it would be a state of amnesia. So thinking is the response of collected memory, both in the particular human being and in the collective human beings. Every thought is a response from memory, tradition, accumulated knowledge, the collective memory.

Then what is the function of thinking or thought? You must have scientific and psychological knowledge. That is the accumulated experience of humankind, the accumulated experience of science, the accumulated experience of using words, how to play a piano and so on. You must have complete, rational, sane knowledge; you cannot do without it. You also see what knowledge has done. You have accumulated knowledge as the experiences of yesterday, and you want that experience repeated. And it may not happen; therefore there is pain. So knowledge is necessary in one direction, and knowledge breeds fear and pain. Perhaps you are not used to all this, to think clearly for yourself and not according to anybody; to observe for yourself the beauty of a tree; to observe Venus in the morning; to observe the beauty of a child; to observe your wife and the beauty of your wife or the ugliness of your wife or the ugliness or the beauty of your husband. When you had the experience of sunset yesterday, it was new, fresh, full of joy, something incredible. The light, the texture of it, the feel of it has been recorded. That has become knowledge; therefore it’s already old. Therefore the old says, ‘I must have a new experience,’ and the new experience is translated in terms of pleasure.

So thought is the response of memory. Memory is accumulated knowledge, experience. You must have technological knowledge, but you also see that the knowledge of yesterday not only breeds pleasure and fear, but gives continuity to pleasure and fear. So you see that thought must function logically, sanely, effectively, objectively, in the technological world, and you also see the danger of thought.