Public Talk 3, Berkeley, California, 5 February 1969

Krishnamurti: As we were saying yesterday, we are not concerned with theories, with doctrines or speculative philosophy. We are concerned with facts, with actually ‘what is’, and in understanding ‘what is’ non-sentimentally, non-emotionally, we can then go beyond, transcend ‘what is’. In all these talks, what is important is not the idea or the negation of the idea, but rather to be concerned, to be involved in the complexities of life, in the great sorrow, the utter hopelessness and the lack of passion. The word ‘passion’, the root of that word is sorrow. We are using that word not with the implication of sorrow or that energy that comes through anger, through hate, through resistance, but rather that passion that comes naturally, without effort, when there is love. And if I may, if you will permit this evening, we would like to talk about death, life and love.

We’re not merely concerned with the description, with the explanation, but rather with deep understanding of the problems so that we are totally involved in it, so that it is the very breath of our life, not a mere intellection, a thing of the mind, but rather, look, understand and see what this whole problem of living is. And I feel if one could really come to grips with the problem of living — not analytically, not intellectually, because that game one has played for so long, and it has no value whatsoever to theorise about life, to theorise about what love is, or what death is, and how to escape from death, what lies beyond death — all these seem to me so vain — but to really understand the whole significance of life. And for that one has to examine what living is. The intellectuals, the clever people throughout the world, both the religious and the non-religious, have sought significance not only in living but beyond the living. The religious people have said this life is only a means to an end. And those who are not religious but rather clever, intellectual, say that life has no meaning at all; this living is such a tawdry affair, a meaningless existence, and then they proceed to invent a significance according to their intellect, according to their conditioning, according to their environmental influence. And if you will, we are not going to do that this evening. We are going to look at the living as it is, not emotionally, not sentimentally or romantically, but see actually what it is. And I think it is very meaningful when one can look at the whole totality of living, not just one fragment of it. And then perhaps we shall find — not give a meaning to living or a significance to living but we will see the beauty of living, the very enormity of living. And that beauty, the extraordinary quality of living can only be seen or understood or felt deeply if we can examine profoundly what actually we are doing, which we call living. Because without understanding what living is, we shall not be able to understand what dying is, nor what love is.

One uses the words ‘love’, ‘death’ and ‘living’ so loosely. Every politician talks about love, and every priest has that word on his lips. But to understand what love is and what death is — with both of them being such immense importance, because I feel without understanding what death is there is no understanding what love is. And to understand what death is, one has to understand most profoundly, with great earnestness, what living is. And to understand what living is, we must examine freely, without any bias, without actually any hope. Which doesn’t mean we must be in a state of despair to examine. A mind that is in despair and examines, such a mind becomes cynical. And a mind that is burdened with hope cannot properly examine; it is already biased. Such a mind is already tortured by its own despair.

So, to examine that which we call living, the daily act of living, needs not only clarity — not of thought but clarity of perception, the clarity of seeing actually ‘what is’ — and in the seeing of ‘what is’, that every act is passion. To us, passion is either derived through hatred, through sorrow, through anger, through tension, or the passion that is brought about through pleasure, which becomes lust. Such passion is incapable of that energy that is required to understand this whole process of living. Really, understanding is passion. Without passion you can’t do anything. And the intellectual passion is no passion at all. But to examine this whole way of living needs not only the extraordinary clarity of perception but also the intensity of passion.

So, what is that we call living? Not what we would like it to be — what we would like it to be is just an idea, it has no reality, it’s just the opposite of ‘what is’, and the opposite of ‘what is’ creates a division, and in that division there is conflict. So, in looking at what is living, we should utterly banish what living should be, the idea ‘what might be’, because then you are escaping into the ideological field, which is totally unreal. So we are only going to examine what actually the living is, and the quality of examination is more important than the examination itself. Any clever person can examine, given certain sharpness of the mind, certain sensitivity, but the quality of exploration, examination, if it is merely intellectual then it loses that sensitiveness which comes when there is a certain quality of compassion, affection, care. And so to examine, to have that quality of a mind that looks very clearly, there must be this care, this quality of affection, compassion, which the intellect will deny. So we must be alert to the prompting of the intellect in the examination of what actually is going on in our daily life. So with that warning, if I may use that word, and knowing that the description is never the described, nor the word the thing, let us see what we call living. Because as we said, without understanding what living is, we shall never understand what dying is, and without understanding what death is, love then merely becomes pleasure and therefore pain.

What is it that we call this living? In it, as one observes in daily life, with all the relationship it has, the relationship with people, with ideas, with property, with things, in this relationship there is great conflict. To us, all relationship has become a battlefield, a struggle. From the moment we are born till we die, the living is a process of accumulating problems, never resolving them, burdened with all kinds of issues. Basically, it is a field in which man is against man. So this living is conflict, and nobody can deny that. We are all in conflict, whether we like it or not. We want to escape from it, so we invent all kinds of escapes, from football to the image of God, to escape from this everlasting conflict of which each of us know — not only the burden of that conflict but also the sorrow, the loneliness, the despair, the anxiety, the ambition and the frustration, the utter boredom, the routine, the repetition. And that’s what we call living, with occasional flashes of joy, to which the mind immediately clings as something extraordinary and wants that joy to be repeated. Then that joy becomes a memory, ashes. And that is what we call living. And through it all there is fear, there is pleasure, there is frustration, there is agony and mounting confusion and sorrow. This is what we call living. And if we look at our own life, not verbally or intellectually but actually as it is, one sees how empty it is.

Think of spending forty, fifty years going to the office every day, to accumulate money, to sustain a family, to pay — you know, all the rest of it. That’s what we call living — disease, old age, death. And try to escape from this misery — escape through religion, escape through drink, escape through erudition, through sex, through every form of entertainment, religious or otherwise. And that is our life, a life of theories, ideals, speculative philosophy, with their teachers and philosophers, obeying, denying, but everlastingly in conflict and sorrow. That is what we call life, living.

And that living has brought about a culture, a society, which has become the trap in which we are caught. That trap is built by us; for that trap each one of us is responsible. Though we may revolt against the established order, that established order is what we have made, what we built. And to merely revolt against it has very little meaning, because you will create another established order, another bureaucracy. So all this, with the national differences, racial differences, linguistic differences, religious differences, wars, and the shedding of tears, this is what we call living. And we don’t know what to do. We are confronted with this. Not knowing what to do, we try to escape or we try to find somebody that will tell us what to do, some authority, some guru, some teacher, somebody who will say, ‘Look, this is the way.’ And again, the teachers, the gurus, the mahatmas, the philosophers have all led us astray, because actually we have not solved our problems. Actually our lives are not different; we are the same miserable, unhappy, sorrow-laden people.

So the first thing is never to follow another, including the speaker. Never try to find out from another how to behave, how to live, because what another tells you is not your life. If you rely on another, depend on another, you will be misled. But if you deny this authority, the guru, the philosopher, the theoretician, whether it be the communist theoretician, or the new type of communist theoretician, or the theologian. When you deny all these people, then you can look at yourself. Then you can find the answer. But as long as one relies and depends on another, however wise he may be, then you are lost. And the man who says he knows, he does not know. So the first thing is never to follow another; and that’s very difficult because we don’t know what to do. We have been so conditioned to believe, to obey, to follow another.

So can we, in examining this thing called living, can we put aside — actually not theoretically — actually put aside every form of psychological following, psychological urge to find somebody who will us what to do? How can a confused mind find somebody who will tell the truth? The confused mind will choose somebody according to its own confusion. So don’t, if we may suggest, don’t rely, depend, on another. Then you have put away a very heavy burden, the burden of dependence — on books, on all the theories of the world — that’s a tremendous burden. And if you can put that aside then you are free to observe, then you have no opinion, no conclusion, no ideology, but actually ‘what is’. Then you can look, then you can say: what is this conflict that one lives in? And as one observes — and I hope you are also observing actually, not depending on the words of the speaker — you will see this conflict exists as long as there is contradiction in oneself, opposing desires, as long as there is the opposite. That is, ‘what is’ and ‘what should be’. The ‘what should be’ is the opposite of ‘what is’, and ‘what should be’ is shaped by ‘what is’. So actually, the opposite is ‘what is’. And when you are concerned with only ‘what is’ and not with the opposite then you can deal with ‘what is’. That is, the actual living is a process of conflict in which there is violence. That is the ‘what is’, the fact. The opposite of that is non-violence, a state in which there is no conflict, no violence. Please do follow a little bit, this.

So, the man who is violent is trying to become non-violent. It may take him ten years or it may take him all the rest of his life to be non-violent, but in the meantime he is sowing the seed of violence. So, violence and the non-fact, which is non-violence, which is the opposite, in this contradiction there is conflict — the man trying to become something. When you can banish the opposite, that is this non-violence, not trying to become non-violent, then you can face actually what is violence; then you have energy, which is not dissipated through conflict of the opposite; then you have the energy, the passion, to find out ‘what is’. Right? Am I making this clear? Am I? You’re a bit shy, aren’t you, because I have said don’t answer too quickly. [Laughter]

You know, communication is quite arduous. But what is much more important than communication is communion; to commune together over this problem. That is, both of us at the same time, at the same level are intense to observe, to learn, to find out. It’s only then there is communion between two people, which goes beyond communication. So we are doing both — we are not only establishing communication but also at the same time, we are trying to commune together over this problem. So there is no propaganda. We are not trying to dominate you or persuade you or influence you, but merely to observe.

So we see that to observe, to see actually ‘what is’, is not possible when there is its opposite. So the ideal is the cause of the contradiction and therefore conflict. When you say, ‘I should not be angry,’ when you actually are angry, the ‘should not’ brings about a contradiction, and therefore there is a division between the actual anger and the pretension that one should not be. So when you admit you’re angry, and to be aware, to see the significance of that anger, you need energy. And that energy is dissipated through conflict and through the pursuit of its opposite. Right? Is that fairly clear?

So, can you leave the opposite altogether? Please, it’s very difficult this, because the opposite is not only the ideal but also all this process of measurement, comparing. That is, the actual violence, to be free of its opposite, and also to be free of measuring the depth or the height of violence — which is to be free of comparison. When there is no comparison then there is no opposite. You know, we are trained and conditioned to compare. To measure ourselves against the hero, the saint, the big man.

So to observe ‘what is’, the mind must be free of all comparison, of the ideal, the opposite. Then you will see that what actually is is far more important than ‘what should be’. Then you have the vitality, the energy, the intensity to observe very closely ‘what is’. Now, when you have… to put aside the opposite, to put aside the contradiction which is brought about by the opposite, to be free of the process of comparison, requires discipline. And the discipline is in the very act of understanding the futility of the opposite. Right? Because to observe this so closely, to see all the structure and nature of this conflict, to look at it very closely, the very act of looking demands discipline. It is discipline, because discipline means learning. And we are learning — not suppressing, not trying to become something, not trying to imitate, not trying to conform. So there is a discipline which is extraordinary pliable, sensitive.

So, what is this violence? You understand now? I am examining, each of us are examining this conflict. We said this conflict arises through the opposite. The opposite is part of ‘what is’. The opposite is actually ‘what is’. And as the mind cannot understand or resolve ‘what is’, it escapes into what it should be. When you have put aside all that, then the mind is observing closely ‘what is’, which is violence. We are taking that as an example. Now, what is this thing called violence? When there is no comparison — please follow all this — when there is no opposite to violence, when you are actually faced with that fact of anger, the feeling of hatred, then is there violence, is there then anger? You go into it, if I may suggest — in yourself you will see. I can’t go into it in any details because we have got to go into… understand what death is, what love is. So we must go, proceed rather rapidly.

So there it is. What we call living is a conflict. And we see what that conflict is. So when we understand that conflict, ‘what is’ is the truth. And it is the observation of ‘what is’ which is the truth that frees the mind from ‘what is’. Right? Right.

So, our life is also sorrow, and we do not know how to end sorrow. The ending of sorrow is the beginning of wisdom. Without knowing what sorrow is, understanding its nature and structure, we shall not know what love is. Because for us love is sorrow, because for us love is pain, pleasure, jealousy. When a husband says to his wife that he loves her, and is ambitious, has that love any meaning? Can an ambitious man love? Can a competitive man love? And yet we talk about love, talk about tenderness, ending war when we are competitive, ambitious, seeking our own personal position, advancement and all the rest of the shoddy affair.

All this brings sorrow; and can sorrow end? It can only come to an end when you understand yourself actually ‘what is’, when you understand why you have sorrow — whether that sorrow is self-pity, whether that sorrow is the fear of being alone, whether that sorrow is the emptiness of one’s own life, the sorrow that comes about when you depend on another. And all this is part of our living. So when we understand all this, then we come to a much greater problem too, which is death. Please bear in mind, if you will, that we are not talking about reincarnation, what happens after; we are not talking or giving hope to those people who are afraid of death. We went into the question of fear yesterday. When the mind is free of fear then what is death? There is old age, with all its trouble, disease, loss of memory, thousand ailments, the fear of becoming old. And in this country all the old people are called young — the young lady when she’s about eighty. People are frightened, and when there is fear there is no understanding. And when there is self-pity there is no end to sorrow.

So, what is it to die? The organism comes to an end, obviously. It may live ninety years or if the scientists discover some medicine, they might live one hundred and fifty. And God knows why one wants to live to one hundred and fifty, the way we live. [Laughter] But even then, even if you live for a hundred years, or fifty years, the organism wears out, because we live so utterly wrongly — conflict, fear, tension, killing things, animals, human beings — what a mess we make of our life! And so old age becomes a terrible thing. And there is always death, for the young, for the middle-aged or for the old. What is this death? What do we mean by dying, apart from the physical? — that is inevitable. But there is a deeper meaning to death than merely the physical organism coming to an end. That is, psychologically coming to an end. The ‘me’, the ‘you’, coming abruptly to an end. The ‘you’, the ‘me’ that has accumulated knowledge, suffered, lived with memories, pleasurable and aching, with all the travail of the known, the psychological conflicts, the things that one has not understood, the things that one wants to do and has not done, all the psychological struggles, the memories, the pleasures, the pains, the remembrances, all that coming to an end. That is actually what one is afraid of, not what lies beyond the death. One is never afraid of the unknown; one is afraid of the known coming to an end. The known — your house, your family, your wife, your children, your ideas, your furniture, your books, your things with which you have identified yourself — and when that is broken you feel completely alone, isolated, lonely. That’s what you’re afraid of. And that is a form of death. That is the only death.

And seeing that, not theoretically but actually, seeing that one is afraid of losing everything that one has built or created or worked for, or whatever you have, the family and all the rest of that business — seeing all that, one asks: is it not possible to die every day to everything that one has known? Psychologically, not in the field of technology — the identification with the house, with the family, with your memories, with your — you know, all that business. So that to die every day so the mind is fresh, young and innocent each day. You do it, actually do it and you’ll find out what extraordinary things happen. The mind then becomes very young, fresh, and that is innocency. An old mind, however experienced, is never innocent. It’s only the mind that has shed all its burdens every day, every problem ended every day, such a mind is an innocent mind. Then life has a different meaning altogether. Then one can find out what love is.

Obviously love is not pleasure. Because as we said yesterday, if you listened and if you were here, pleasure brings pain, because pleasure is the process of thought, as fear is the process of thought. If love is the process of thought, then is it love? If there is jealousy, as most of us have with regard to the wife, to the family, to the job, you know, all that business — we are jealous, envious, and yet we talk about love. Can an envious mind love? And when it says it loves, is it love? Or it is protecting its own pleasure and therefore cultivating fear. Therefore can love be when there is fear and pleasure, which is thought? Can love then be cultivated? And with it comes the question, the problem of sex. [Sighs] [Laughter] Why do you laugh? I’m glad you laugh, but why? Because, sir, one has to explore into this question, as you have explored into fear, into what living is, and why we have made sex into such a big issue and make it such a problem.

Is there time to go into it now? I’m afraid one must go into it now because the last talk is tomorrow, so we must now go into this question.

Why has sex become such a problem? Every advertisement, everything revolves, apparently not only now, in the past, during the Victorian age and before — this has become such an extraordinarily important thing in life — why? Would you please find out? I am not, we are not offering an opinion, we are examining it. It has become so colossally important, first because intellectually we are second-hand people. We know what others have said and done and do. We repeat what others have said — the Buddha, the Christ, all the rest of it — repeat, repeat, repeat, theorise. And there is no actual intellectual freedom, which is, freedom from thought. And because we are so bound by thought, and thought being old, always old, thought is never new. So intellectually there is no freedom in the deep sense of that word, because thought can never bring about freedom. So intellectually we are bound, and emotionally we are so shoddy, ugly, sentimental, romantic, false, hypocritical. So we have in life blocked all freedom except in sex. That is the only, probably, the freest thing that you have. And with it goes pleasure, the image which thought has created about the act, and you chew like a cow over the cud, over and over again that image, the pleasure.

So that is the only thing you have in which you are really free as a human being. Everywhere else you are not free, because we are slaves to propaganda — you’re a Christian, Catholic, communist or a neo-communist and so on. So, lacking freedom everywhere there is only this freedom. And in that too there is no freedom because you are caught by pleasure and the responsibility of pleasure, which is the family. And if you really loved the family, the children, do you think you would have wars? If you really loved with your heart, do you think you would have a single day of war? You would stop it tomorrow. But your security is in pleasure, and therefore in that security there is pain, sorrow and confusion. And so in everything, including sex, there is pain, torture, doubt, violence, jealousy, dependence. And the one thing which you have, in which you feel free has also become a bondage.

So seeing all this actually not verbally, not carried away by description, because the description is never the thing that is the described. Seeing all this actually with your eyes, with your heart, with your mind, with complete attention, then you will know what love is. And also you will know what love is… what death is and what living is.

[Applause]