The Flame of Attention
by
Jiddu Krishnamurti
THE FLAME OF ATTENTION INTRODUCTORY
PAGE
'Observation, like a flame of attention, it wipes away hate.'
'Observation is like a flame which is attention, and with that
capacity of observation, the wound, the feeling of hurt, the hate, all
that, is burnt away, gone.'
THE FLAME OF ATTENTION CHAPTER 1 1ST
PUBLIC TALK AT NEW DELHI 31ST OCTOBER
1981
I would like to point out that we are not making any kind of
propaganda, for any belief, for any ideal or for any organization.
Together we are considering what is taking place in the world
outside of us. We are looking at it not from an Indian point of
view, or from a European or American, or from any particular
national interest. Together we are going to observe what actually is
going on in the world. We are thinking together but not as having
one mind. There is a difference between having one mind and
thinking together. Having one mind implies that we have come to
some conclusion, that we have come to certain beliefs, certain
concepts. But thinking together is quite different. Thinking
together implies that you and the speaker have a responsibility to
look objectively, non-personally, at what is going on. So we are
thinking together. The speaker, though he is sitting on a platform
for convenience, has no authority. Please, we must be very clear on
this point. He is not trying to convince you of anything. He is not
asking you to follow him. He is not your guru. He is not
advocating a particular system, particular philosophy, but that we
observe together, as two friends who have known each other for
some time, who are concerned not merely about our private lives,
but are together looking at this world which seems to have gone
mad. The whole world is arming, spending incredible amounts of
money to destroy human beings, whether they live in America,
Europe, or Russia, or here. It is taking a disastrous course which
cannot possibly be solved by politicians. We cannot rely on them;
nor on the scientists they are helping to build up the military
technology, competing each against another. Nor can we rely on
the so-called religions; they have become merely verbal, repetitive,
absolutely without any meaning. They have become superstitions,
following mere tradition, whether of five thousand years or two
thousand years. So we cannot rely on the politicians who are
throughout the world seeking to maintain their position, their
power, their status; nor can we rely on the scientists, who each
year, or perhaps each week, are inventing new forms of
destruction. Nor can we look to any religion to solve this human
chaos.
What is a human being to do? Is the crisis intellectual,
economic, or national, with all the poverty, confusion, anarchy,
lawlessness, terrorism and always the threat of a bomb in the
street? Observing all that, what is our responsibility? Are you
concerned with what is happening in the world? Or are you merely
concerned with your own private salvation? Please consider all this
very seriously, so that you and the speaker observe objectively,
what is taking place, not only outwardly, but also in our
consciousness, in our thinking, in the way we live, in our actions. If
you are not at all concerned with the world but only with your
personal salvation, following certain beliefs and superstitions,
following gurus, then I am afraid it will be impossible for you and
the speaker to communicate with each other. We must be clear on
this point. We are not concerned at all with private personal
salvation but we are concerned, earnest- ly, seriously, with what
the human mind has become, what humanity is facing. We are
concerned as human beings, human beings who are not labelled
with any particular nationality. We are concerned in looking at this
world and what a human being living in this world has to do, what
is his role?
Every morning, in the newspapers, there is some kind of
murder, bomb outrage, destruction, terrorism, and kidnapping; you
read it every day and you pay little attention to it. But if it happens
to you personally then you are in a state of confusion, misery and
asking somebody else, the government or the policeman, to save
you, to protect you. And in this country, when you look, as the
speaker has for the last sixty years, watching all the phenomena in
this unfortunate country, you see the poverty, which never seems to
be solved, the over population, the linguistic differences, one
community wanting to break away from the rest, the religious
differences, the gurus who are becoming enormously rich, with
their private aeroplanes which you are accepting blindly you see
that you are not capable of doing anything about it. This is a fact.
We are not dealing with ideas, we are dealing with facts, with what
is actually taking place.
And, if we are to observe together, we must be free of our
nationalism. We human beings are interrelated, wherever we live.
please realize this, how serious, how urgent it all is. For in this
country people have become lethargic, totally indifferent to what is
going on, utterly careless, only concerned about their own little
salvation, little happiness.
We live by thought. What is the operation, or the process and
the content of thinking? All the temples result from thought; and
all that goes on inside the temples, the images, all the puja, all the
ceremonies, are the result of thought. All the sacred books
Upanishads, the Gita and so on are the result of thought, the
expression of thought in print, to convey what somebody else has
experienced or thought about. And the word is not sacred. No book
in the world is sacred, simply because it is the result of man's
thought. We worship the intellect. Those who are intellectual are
seen as apart from you and me who are not intellectual. We respect
their concepts, their intellect. Intellect, it is thought, will solve our
problems, but that is not possible, it is like developing one arm out
of proportion to the rest of the body. Neither the intellect, nor the
emotions, nor romantic sentimentality, are going to help us. We
have to face things as they are, to look at them very closely and see
the urgency of doing something immediately, not leaving it to the
scientist, the politician and the intellectual.
So, first of all, let us look at what the human consciousness has
become; because our consciousness is what we are. What you
think, what you feel, your fears, your pleasures, your anxieties and
insecurity, your unhappiness, depressions, love, pain, sorrow and
the ultimate fear of death are the content of your consciousness;
they are what you are they are what makes you, the human being.
Unless we understand that content and go beyond it if it is possible
we shall not be able to act seriously, fundamentally, basically, to
bring about a transformation, a mutation, in this consciousness.
To find out what right action is we must understand the content
of our consciousness. If one`s consciousness is confused,
uncertain, pressurized, driven from one corner to another, from one
state to another, then one becomes more and more confused,
uncertain, and inse- cure; from that confusion one cannot act. So
one depends on somebody else which man has done for thousands
of years. It is of primary importance to bring about order in
ourselves; from that inward order there will be outward order. We
are always seeking outward order. We want order in the world
established through strong governments, or through totalitarian
dictatorships. We all want to be pressurized to behave rightly;
remove that pressure and we become rather what we are in the
present India. So it becomes more and more urgent on the part of
those who are serious, who are facing this terrible crisis, to find out
for ourselves what our consciousness is and to free that
consciousness of its content, so that we become truly religious
people. As it is we are not religious people, we are becoming more
and more materialistic.
The speaker is not going to tell you what you are, but together,
you and the speaker, are going to examine what we are and find out
whether it is possible to radically transform what we are. So we are
going to observe first the content of our consciousness. Are you
following all this? Or are you too tired at the end of the day? You
are under pressure all day long, all the week long pressure at home,
pressure in your job, economic and religious pressure, pressure
from government and from the gurus who impose their beliefs,
their idiocy, on you. But here we are not under pressure. Please
realize this. We are as two friends talking over together our
sorrows, our hurts, our anxieties, our uncertainty, insecurity and
how to find security, how to be free of fear and whether our
sorrows can ever end. We are concerned about that. Because if we
do not understand that and look at it very clearly, we will bring
about more confusion in the world, more destruction. perhaps all of
us will be vaporized by an atom bomb. So we have to act urgently,
seriously, with all our heart and mind. This is really very, very
important, for we are facing a tremendous crisis.
We have not created nature, the birds, the waters, the rivers, the
beautiful skies and the running streams, the tiger, the marvellous
tree; we have not created them. How that has come about is not for
the moment under review. And we are destroying the forests, we
are destroying the wild animals; we are killing millions and
millions of them every year certain species are disappearing. We
have not created nature the deer, the wolf but thought has created
everything else. Thought has created the marvellous cathedrals, the
ancient temples and mosques and the images that are in them.
Thought having created these images in the temples, the cathedrals,
the churches, and the inscriptions in the mosques, then that very
thought worships that which it has created.
So, is the content of our consciousness brought about by
thought which has become so all-important in our lives? Why has
the intellect, the capacity to invent, to write, to think, become
important? Why have not affection, care, sympathy, love, become
more important than thought?
So first let us examine together what thinking is. The structure
of the psyche is based on thought. We have to examine what
thinking is, what thought is. I may put it into words but you see it
for yourself; it is not that the speaker indicates and then you see it,
but in talking over together you see it for yourself. Unless we
understand very carefully what thinking is we shall not be able to
understand, or observe, or have an insight into the whole content of
our consciousness, that which we are. If I do not understand
myself, that is, my consciousness, why I think this way, why I
behave that way, my fears, my hurts, my anxieties, my various
attitudes and convictions, then, whatever I do will bring more
confusion.
What is thinking to you? When somebody challenges you with
that question, what is your response? What is thinking and why do
you think? Most of us have become secondhand people; we read a
great deal, go to a university and accumulate a great deal of
knowledge, information derived from what other people think,
from what other people have said. And we quote this knowledge
which we have acquired and compare it with what is being said.
There is nothing original; we only repeat, repeat, repeat. So that
when one asks: what is thought? what is thinking? we are
incapable of answering.
We live and behave according to our thinking. We have this
government because of our thinking, we have wars because of our
thinking all the guns, the aeroplanes, the shells, the bombs, all
result from our thinking. Thought has created the marvels of
surgery, the great technicians and experts, but we have not
investigated what thinking is.
Thinking is a process born out of experience and knowledge.
Listen to it quietly, see if that is not true, actual; then you discover
it for yourself as though the speaker is acting as a mirror in which
you see for yourself exactly what is, without distortion; then throw
the mirror away or break it up. Thinking starts from experience
which becomes knowledge stored up in the cells of the brain as
memory; then from memory there is thought and action. Please see
this for yourself, do not repeat what I say. This sequence is an
actual fact: experience, knowledge, memory, thought, action. Then
from that action you learn more; so there is a cycle and that is our
chain.
This is the way we live. And we have never moved away from
this field. You may call it action and reaction, but we never move
away from this field the field of the known. That is a fact. Now the
content of our consciousness is all the things which thought
generates. I may think, oh, so many ugly things; I may think there
is god in me; which is again the product of thought.
We must take the content of our consciousness and look at it.
Most of us from childhood are hurt, wounded, not only at home but
at school, college and university and later in life, we are hurt. And
when you are hurt you build a wall around yourself and the
consequence of that is to become more and more isolated and more
and more disturbed, frightened, seeking ways not to be hurt further;
your actions from that hurt are obviously neurotic. So that is one of
the contents of our consciousness. Now what is it that is hurt?
When you say, `I am hurt` not physically but inwardly,
psychologically, in the psyche what is it that is hurt? Is it not the
image you have, or the picture you have, about yourself? All of us
have images about ourselves, you are a great man, or a very
humble man; you are a great politician with all the pride, the
vanity, the power, the position, which create that image you have
of yourself. If you hold a doctorate or if you are a housewife, you
have a corresponding image of yourself. Everyone has an image of
himself, it is an indisputable fact. Thought has created that image
and that image gets hurt. So is it possible to have no image about
yourself at all?
When you have an image about yourself, you create a division
between yourself and another. It is important to understand very
deeply what relationship is; you are not only related to your wife,
to your neighbour, to your children, but you are related to the
whole human species. Is your relationship to your wife merely
sensory, sexual relationship, or is it a romantic, convenient
companionship? She cooks and you go the office. She bears
children and you work from morning until night for fifty years,
until you retire. And that is called living. So you must find out very
clearly, carefully, what relationship is. If your relationship is based
on hurt then you are using the other to escape from that hurt. Is
your relationship based on mutual images? You have created an
image about her and she has created an image about you; the
relationship then is between these two images which thought has
created. So, one asks; is thought love? Is desire love? Is pleasure
love? You may say no, and shake your head, but actually you never
find out, never investigate and go into it.
Is it possible for there to be no conflict at all in relationship? We
live in conflict from morning until night. Why? Is it part of our
nature, or part of our tradition, part of our religion? Each one has
an image about himself: you have an image about yourself and she
has an image about herself, and many other images her ambition,
her desire to be something or other. And also you have your
ambitions, your competitiveness. You are both running parallel,
like two railway lines, never meeting, except perhaps in bed, but
never meeting at any other level. What a tragedy it has become.
So it is very important to look at our relationships; not only
your intimate relationships but also your relationship with the rest
of the world. The world outside is interrelated, you are not separate
from the rest of the world. You are the rest of the world. People are
suffering, they have great anxieties, fears, they are threatened by
war, as you are threatened by war. They are accumulating vast
armaments to destroy each other and you never realize how
interrelated we are. I may be a Muslim and you may be Hindu; my
tradition says, `I am a Muslim' I have been programmed like a
computer to repeat `I am a Muslim' and you repeat `I am Hindu'.
You understand what thought has done? The rest of the world is
like you, modified, educated differently, with different superficial
manners, perhaps affluent or not, but with the same reactions, the
same pains, the same anxieties, the same fears. Please give your
mind, your heart, to find out what your relationship is with the
world, with your neighbour and with your wife or husband. If it is
based on images, pictures, remembrances, then there will
inevitably be conflict with your wife, with your husband, with your
neighbour, with the Muslim, with the Pakistani, with the Russian
you follow? And the content of your consciousness is the hurt
which you have not resolved, which has not been completely
wiped away; it has left scars and from those scars you have various
forms of fears which ultimately lead to isolation. Each one of us is
isolated, through religious traditions, through education, through
the idea that you must always succeed, succeed, succeed, become
something. And also beyond our relationship with each other,
intimate or otherwise, we are interrelated whether you live here or
anywhere else in the world. The world is you and you are the
world. You may have a different name, different form, different
kind of education, different position, but inwardly we all suffer, we
all go through great agonies, shed tears, are frightened of death,
and have a great sense of insecurity without any love or
compassion.
So how do you listen to this fact? That is, how do you listen to
what is being said? The speaker is saying that you are the rest of
mankind, deeply; you may be dark, you may be short, you may put
on saris, but those are all superficial; but inwardly the flow,
whether I am an American, a Russian or Indian, the flow is the
same. The movement of all human beings is similar. So you are the
world and the world is you, very profoundly. One has to realize
this relationship. You understand I am using the word `realize' in
the sense that you must be able to observe it and see the actual fact
of it.
So from that arises the question: how do you observe? How do
you look at your wife or your husband, or your Prime Minister?
How do you look at a tree? The art of observation has to be learnt.
How do you observe me? You are sitting there, how do you look at
me? What is your reaction? Do you look at the speaker, thinking he
has a reputation? What is your reaction when you see a man like
me? Are you merely satisfied by the reputation he has which may
be nonsensical, it generally is by how he has come to this place to
address so many people, by whether he is important and what you
can get out of him. He cannot give you any government jobs, he
cannot give you money because he has no money. He cannot give
you any honours, any status, any position, or guide you, or tell you
what to do. How do you look at him? Have you looked at anybody,
freely, openly, without any word, without any image? Have you
looked at the beauty of a tree, at the flutter of its leaves? So can we
learn together how to observe? You cannot observe, visually,
optically, if your mind is occupied as most of our minds are
occupied with the article you have to write next day, or with your
cooking, your job, or with sex, or occupied about how to meditate,
or with what other people might say. How can such a mind, being
occupied from morning until night, observe anything? If I am
occupied with becoming a master carpenter, then I have to know
the nature of various woods, I have to know the tools and how to
use them, I have to study how to put joints together without nails,
and so on. So my mind is occupied. Or, if I am neurotic, my mind
is occupied with sex, or with becoming a success politically or
otherwise. So how can I, being occupied, observe? Is it possible
not to have a mind so occupied all the time? I am occupied when I
have to talk, when I have to write something or other, but the rest
of the time why should my mind be occupied?
Computers can be programmed, as we human beings are
programmed. They can, for instance, learn, think faster and more
accurately, than man. They can play with a grand chess master.
After being defeated four times, the master beats the computer four
times, on the fifth or sixth time the computer beats the master. The
computer can do extraordinary things. It has been programmed you
understand? It can invent, create new machines, which will be
capable of better programming than the previous computer, or a
machine that will be ultimately `intelligent'. The machine will
itself, they say, create the ultimate `intelligent' machine. What is
going to happen to man when the computer takes the whole thing
over? The Encyclopaedia Britannica can be put in a little chip and
it contains all that knowledge. So what place will knowledge then
have in human life?
Our brains are occupied, never still. To learn how to observe
your wife, your neighbour, your government, the brutality of
poverty, the horrors of wars, there must be freedom to observe. Yet
we object to being free because we are frightened to be free, to
stand alone.
You have listened to the speaker; what have you heard, what
have you gathered words, ideas, which ultimately have no
meaning? Have you seen the importance for yourself of never
being hurt? That means never having an image about yourself.
Have you seen the importance, the urgency, of understanding
relationship and having a mind that is not occupied? When it is not
occupied it is extraordinarily free, it sees great beauty. But the
shoddy little mind, the secondhand little mind, is always occupied
about knowledge, about becoming something or other, enquiring,
discussing, arguing, never quiet, never a free unoccupied mind.
When there is such an unoccupied mind, out of that freedom comes
supreme intelligence but never out of thought.
THE FLAME OF ATTENTION CHAPTER 2 4TH
PUBLIC TALK AT NEW DELHI 8TH
NOVEMBER 1981
Before we go into the question of meditation we ought to discuss,
or share together perhaps that is the right word the importance of
discipline. Most of us in the world are not disciplined, disciplined
in the sense that we are not learning. The word `discipline' comes
from the word disciple, the disciple whose mind is learning not
from a particular person, a guru, or from a teacher, or preacher, or
from books but learning through the observation of his own mind,
of his own heart, learning from his own actions. And that learning
requires a certain discipline, but not the conformity most
disciplines are understood to require. When there is conformity,
obedience and imitation, there is never the act of learning, there is
merely following. Discipline implies learning, learning from the
very complex mind one has, from the life of daily existence,
learning about relationship with each other, so that the mind is
always pliable, active.
To share together what meditation is, one must understand the
nature of discipline. Discipline as ordinarily understood implies
conflict; conforming to a pattern like a soldier, or conforming to an
ideal, conforming to a certain statement in the sacred books and so
on. Where there is conformity there must be friction, and therefore
wastage of energy. One`s mind and one's heart, if in conflict, can
never possibly meditate. We will go into that; it is not a mere
statement which you accept or deny, but something we are
enquiring into together.
We have lived for millennia upon millennia in conflict,
conforming, obeying, imitating, repeating, so that our minds have
become extraordinarily dull; we have become secondhand people,
always quoting somebody else, what he said or did not say. We
have lost the capacity, the energy, to learn from our own actions. It
is we who are utterly responsible for our own actions not society or
environment, nor the politicians we are responsible entirely for our
actions and for learning from them. In such learning we discover so
much because in every human being throughout the world there is
the story of mankind; in us is the anxiety of mankind and the fears,
loneliness, despair, sorrow and pain; all this complex history is in
us. If you know how to read that book then you do not have to read
any other book except, for example, books on technology. But we
are negligent, not diligent, in learning from ourselves, from our
actions, and so we do not see that we are responsible for our
actions and for what is happening throughout the world and for
what is happening in this unfortunate country.
One must put one's house in order, because nobody on earth, or
in heaven, is going to do it for one, neither one's gurus, nor one's
vows, nor one's devotion. The way one lives, the way one thinks,
the way one acts, is disorderly. How can a mind that is in disorder
perceive that which is total order as the universe is in total order?
What has beauty to do with a religious mind? You might ask
why all the religious traditions and the rituals never referred to
beauty. But the understanding of beauty is part of meditation, not
the beauty of a woman or a man or the beauty of a face, which has
its own beauty, but about beauty itself, the actual essence of
beauty. Most monks, sannyasis and the so-called religiously
inclined minds, totally disregard this and become hardened towards
their environment. Once it happened that we were staying in the
Himalayas with some friends; there was a group of sannyasis in
front of us, going down the path, chanting; they never looked at the
trees, never looked at the beauty of the earth, the beauty of the blue
sky, the birds, the flowers, the running waters; they were totally
concerned with their own salvation, with their own entertainment.
And that custom, that tradition, has been going on for a thousand
years. A man who is supposed to be religious, must shun, put aside,
all beauty, and his life becomes dull, without any aesthetic sense;
yet beauty is one of the delights of truth.
When you give a toy to a child who has been chattering,
naughty, playing around, shouting, when you give that child a
complicated toy he becomes totally absorbed in it, he becomes
very quiet, enjoying the mechanics of it. The child becomes
completely concentrated, completely involved with that toy; all the
mischief has been absorbed. And we have toys, the toys of ideals,
the toys of belief, which absorb us. If you worship an image of all
the images on earth none is sacred, they are all made by man's
mind, by his thought then we are absorbed, just as the child is
absorbed in a toy, and we become extraordinarily quiet and gentle.
When we see a marvellous mountain, snowcapped against the blue
sky and the deep shadowed valleys, that great grandeur and
majesty absorb us completely; for a moment we are completely
silent because its majesty takes us over, we forget ourselves.
Beauty is where `you' are not. The essence of beauty is the absence
of the self. The essence of meditation is to enquire into the
abnegation of the self.
One needs tremendous energy to meditate and friction is a
wastage of energy. When in one's daily life there is a great deal of
friction, of conflict between people, and dislike of the work which
one does, there is a wastage of energy. And to enquire really most
profoundly not superficially, not verbally one must go very deeply
into oneself, into one's own mind and see why we live as we do,
always wasting energy, for meditation is the release of creative
energy.
Religion has played an immense part in man's history. From the
beginning of time he has struggled to find truth. And now the
accepted religions of the modern world are not religions at all, they
are merely the vain repetition of phrases, gibberish and nonsense, a
form of personal entertainment without much meaning. All the
rituals, all the gods specially in this country where there are, I do
not know how many, thousands of gods are invented by thought.
All the rituals are put together by thought. What thought creates is
not sacred; but we attribute to the created image the qualities that
we like that image to have. And all the time we are worshipping,
albeit unconsciously, ourselves. All the rituals in the temples, the
pujas, and all that thought has invented in the Christian churches, is
invented by thought: and that which thought has created we
worship. Just see the irony, the deception, the dishonesty, of this.
The religions of the world have completely lost their meaning.
All the intellectuals in the world shun them, run away from them,
so that when one uses the words the `religious mind', which the
speaker does very often, they ask: `Why do you use that word
religious?' Etymologically the root meaning of that word is not
very clear. It originally meant a state of being bound to that which
is noble, to that which is great; and for that one had to live a very
diligent, scrupulous, honest life. But all that is gone; we have lost
our integrity. So, if you discard what all the present religious
traditions, with their images and their symbols, have become, then
what is religion? To find out what a religious mind is one must find
out what truth is; truth has no path to it. There is no path. When
one has compassion, with its intelligence, one will come upon that
which is eternally true. But there is no direction; there is no captain
to direct one in this ocean of life. As a human being, one has to
discover this. One cannot belong to any cult, to any group
whatever if one is to come upon truth. The religious mind does not
belong to any organization, to any group, to any sect; it has the
quality of a global mind.
A religious mind is a mind that is utterly free from all
attachment, from all conclusions and concepts; it is dealing only
with what actually is; not with what should be. It is dealing every
day of one's life with what is actually happening both outwardly
and inwardly; understanding the whole complex problem of living.
The religious mind is free from prejudice, from tradition, from all
sense of direction. To come upon truth you need great clarity of
mind, not a confused mind.
So, having put order in one's life, let us then examine what
meditation is not how to meditate, that is an absurd question. When
one asks how, one wants a system, a method, a design carefully
laid out. See what happens when one follows a method, a system.
Why does one want a method, a system? One thinks it is the easiest
way, does one not, to follow somebody who says, `I will tell you
how to meditate'. When somebody tells one how to meditate he
does not know what meditation is. He who says, `I know', does not
know. One must, first of all, see how destructive a system of
meditation is, whether it is any one of the many forms of
meditation that appear to have been invented, stipulating how you
should sit, how you should breathe, how you should do this, that
and the other. Because if one observes one will see that when one
practices something repeatedly, over and over again, one's mind
becomes mechanical; it is already mechanical and one adds further
mechanical routine to it; so gradually one's mind atrophies. It is
like a pianist continually practicing the wrong note; no music
comes of it. When one sees the truth that no system, no method, no
practice, will ever lead to truth, then one abandons them all as
fallacious, unnecessary.
One must also enquire into the whole problem of control. Most
of us try to control our responses, our reactions; we try to suppress
or to shape our desires. In this there is always the controller and the
controlled. One never asks: who is the controller, and what is that
which one is trying to control in so-called meditation? Who is the
controller who tries to control his thoughts, his ways of thinking
and so on? Who is the controller? The controller surely is that
entity which has determined to practice the method or system. Now
who is that entity? That entity is from the past, is thought based on
reward and punishment. So the controller is of the past and is
trying to control his thoughts; but the controller is the controlled.
Look: this is all so simple really. When you are envious you
separate envy from yourself. You say: `I must control envy, I must
suppress it' or you rationalize it. But you are not separate from
envy, you are envy. Envy is not separate from you. And yet we
play this trick of trying to control envy as though it was something
separate from us. So: can you live a life without a single control?
which does not mean indulging in whatever you want. Please put
this question to yourself: can you live a life which is at present so
disastrous, so mechanical, so repetitive without a single sense of
control? That can only happen when you perceive with complete
clarity; when you give your attention to every thought that arises
not just indulge in thought. When you give such complete attention
then you will find out that you can live without the conflict which
arises from control. Do you know what that means to have a mind
that has understood control and lives without a single shadow of
conflict? it means complete freedom. And one must have that
complete freedom to come upon that which is eternally true.
We should also understand the qualitative difference between
concentration and attention. Most of us know concentration. We
learn at school, in college, in university, to concentrate. The boy
looks out of the window and the teacher says, `Concentrate on your
book.' And so we learn what it means. To concentrate implies
bringing all your energy to focus on a certain point; but thought
wanders away and so you have a perpetual battle between the
desire to concentrate, to give all your energy to look at a page, and
the mind which is wandering, and which you try to control.
Whereas attention has no control, no concentration. It is complete
attention, which means giving all your energy, your nerves, the
capacity, the energy of the brain, your heart, everything, to
attending. Probably you have never so completely attended. When
you do attend so completely there is no recording and no action
from memory. When you are attending the brain does not record.
Whereas when you are concentrating, making an effort, you are
always acting from memory like a gramophone record repeating.
Understand the nature of a brain that has no need of recording
except that which is necessary. It is necessary to record where you
live, and the practical activities of life. But it is not necessary to
record psychologically, inwardly, either the insult, or the flattery
and so on. Have you ever tried it? It is probably all so new to you.
When you do, the brain, the mind, is entirely free from all
conditioning.
We are all slaves to tradition and we think we are also totally
different from each other. We are not. We all go through the same
great miseries, unhappiness, shed tears, we are all human beings,
not Hindus, Muslims, or Russians those are all labels without
meaning. The mind must be totally free; which means that one has
to stand completely alone; and we are so frightened to stand alone.
The mind must be free, utterly still, not controlled. When the
mind is completely religious it is not only free but capable of
enquiring into the nature of truth to which there is no guide, no
path. It is only the silent mind, the mind that is free, that can come
upon that which is beyond time.
Have you not noticed if you have observed yourself that your
mind is eternally chattering, eternally occupied with something or
other? If you are a Sannyasi your mind is occupied with god, with
prayers, with this and that. If you are a housewife, your mind is
occupied with what you are going to have for the next meal, how to
utilize this and that. The businessman is occupied with commerce;
the politician with party politics; and the priest is occupied with his
own nonsense. So our minds are all the time occupied and have no
space. And space is necessary.
Space also implies an emptiness, a silence, which has immense
energy. You can make your mind silent through taking a drug; you
can make your thought slow down and become quieter and quieter
by some chemical intake. But that silence is concerned with
suppressing sound. Have you ever enquired what it is to have a
mind that is naturally, absolutely, silent without a movement, that
is not recording except those things that are necessary, so that your
psyche, your inward nature, becomes absolutely still? Have you
enquired into that; or are you merely caught in the stream of
tradition, in the stream of work and worrying about tomorrow?
Where there is silence there is space not from one point to
another point as we usually think of it. Where there is silence there
is no point but only silence. And that silence has that extraordinary
energy of the universe.
The universe has no cause, it exists. That is a scientific fact. But
we human beings are involved with causes. Through analysis you
may discover the cause of poverty in this country, or in other
countries; you may find the cause of over population, the lack of
birth control; you may find the cause why human beings are
divided between themselves as Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims and so on.
You may find the cause of your anxiety, or the cause of your
loneliness; you may find these causes through analysis but you are
never free from causation. All our actions are based on reward or
punishment, however finely subtle, which is a causation. To
understand the order of the universe, which is without cause, is it
possible to live a daily life without any cause? That is supreme
order. Out of that order you have creative energy. Meditation is to
release that creative energy.
It is immensely important to know and to understand, the depth
and beauty of meditation. Man has always been asking, from
timeless time, whether there is something beyond all thought,
beyond all romantic inventions, beyond all time. He has always
been asking: is there something beyond all this suffering, beyond
all this chaos, beyond wars, beyond the battle between human
beings? Is there something that is immovable, sacred, utterly pure,
untouched by any thought, by any experience? This has been the
enquiry of serious people, from the ancient of days. To find that
out, to come upon it, meditation is necessary. Not the repetitive
meditation, that is utterly meaningless. There is a creative energy
which is truly religious, when the mind is free from all conflict,
from all the travail of thought. To come upon that which has no
beginning, no end that is the real depth of meditation and the
beauty of it. That requires freedom from all conditioning.
There is complete security in compassionate intelligence total
security. But we want security in ideas, in beliefs, in concepts, in
ideals; we hold on to them, they are our security however false,
however irrational. Where there is compassion, with its supreme
intelligence, there is security if one is seeking security. Actually
where there is compassion, where there is that intelligence there is
no question of security. So there is an origin, an original ground,
from which all things arise, and that original ground is not the
word. The word is never the thing. And meditation is to come upon
that ground, which is the origin of all things and which is free from
all time. This is the way of meditation. And blessed is he who finds
it.
THE FLAME OF ATTENTION CHAPTER 3 2ND
PUBLIC TALK AT BENARAS 26TH NOVEMBER
1981
The speaker is not giving a lecture; you are not being talked at, or
being instructed. This is as a conversation between two friends,
two friends who have a certain affection for each other, a certain
care for each other, who will not betray each other and have certain
deep common interests. So they are conversing amicably, with a
sense of deep communication with each other, sitting under a tree
on a lovely cool morning with the dew on the grass, talking over
together the complexities of life. That is the relationship which you
and the speaker have we may not meet actually there are too many
of us but we are as if walking along a path, looking at the trees, the
birds, the flowers, breathing the scent of the air, and talking
seriously about our lives; not superficially, not casually, but
concerned with the resolution of our problems. The speaker means
what he says; he is not just being rhetorical, trying to create an
impression; we are dealing with problems of life much too serious
for that.
Having established a certain communication between ourselves
unfortunately it has to be verbal communication, but between the
lines, between the content of the words, there is, if one is at all
aware, much deeper, more profound relationship we ought to
consider the nature of our problems. We all have problems sexual,
intellectual, the problems of relationship, the problems which
humanity has created through wars, through nationalism, through
the so-called religions. What is a problem? A problem means
something thrown at you, something that you have to face, a
challenge, minor or major. A problem that is not resolved demands
that you face it, understand it, resolve it and act. A problem is
something thrown at you, often unexpectedly, either at the
conscious level or at the unconscious level; it is a challenge,
superficial or deep.
How does one approach a problem? The way you approach a
problem is more important than the problem itself. Generally, one
approaches a problem with fear or with a desire to resolve it, to go
beyond it, to fight against it, escape from it, or totally neglect it, or
else one puts up with it. The meaning of that word approach is to
come as close as possible, to approximate. Having a problem, how
does one approach it? Does one come near it, close to it, or does
one run away from it? Or does one have the desire to go beyond it?
So long as one has a motive, the motive dictates one's approach.
If one does not approach a problem freely one is always
directing the solution according to one's conditioning. Suppose one
is conditioned to suppress a certain problem, then one's approach is
conditioned and the problem is distorted; whereas, if one
approaches it without a motive and comes very close to it, then in
the problem itself is the answer, an answer which is not something
away from the problem.
It is very important to see how one approaches a problem,
whether it be a political problem, a religious problem or a problem
of intimate relationship. There are so many problems; one is
burdened with problems. Even meditation becomes a problem. One
never actually looks at one`s problems. Yet why should one live
burdened with problems? Problems which one has not understood
and dissolved, distort all one`s life. It is very important to be aware
of how one approaches a problem, observing it and not trying to
apply a solution; that is, to see in the problem itself, the answer.
And that depends upon how one approaches it, on how one looks at
it. It is very important to be aware of one`s conditioning when one
approaches it and to be free of that conditioning. What is
perception, what is seeing? How do you see that tree? Look at it for
the moment. With what sight do you see it? Is it solely an optical
observation, just looking at the tree with the optical reaction,
observing the form,
the pattern, the light on the leaf? Or do you, when you observe a
tree, name it, saying, `That is an oak' and walk by? By naming it
you are no longer seeing the tree the word denies the thing. Can
you look at it without the word?
So, are you aware how you approach, how you look at, the tree?
Do you observe it partially, with only one sense, the optical sense;
or do you see it, hear it, smell it, feel it, see the design of it, take
the whole of it in? Or, do you look at it as though you are different
from it of course, when you look at it you are not the tree. But can
you look at it without a word, with all your senses responding to
the totality of its beauty? So perception means not only observing
with all the senses, but also to see, or be aware of whether there is
a division between you and that which you observe. Probably you
have not thought anything about all this. It is important to
understand this, because we are going to discuss presently the
approach to fear and the perceiving of the whole content of fear. It
is important to be aware of how you approach this burden which
man has carried for millennia. It is easier to perceive something
outside of you, like a tree, like the river, or the blue sky, without
naming, merely observing, but can you look at yourself, the whole
content of your consciousness, the whole content of your mind,
your being, your walk, your thought, your feeling, your depression,
so that there is no division between all that and you?
If there is no division there is no conflict. Wherever there is
division there must be conflict: that is a law. So in us, is there a
division as between the observer and the thing observed? If the
observer approaches fear, greed, or sorrow, as though it was
something different from himself which he has to resolve,
suppress, understand, go beyond, then division and all the struggle
comes into it.
Then how do you approach fear; do you perceive fear without
any distortion, without any reaction to escape, suppress, explain, or
even analyse? Most of us are afraid of something or of many
things; you may be afraid of your wife or your husband, afraid of
losing a job, afraid of not having security in old age, afraid of
public opinion which is the most silly form of fear afraid of so
many things darkness, death and so on. Now we are going to
examine together, not what we are afraid of, but what fear is in
itself. We are not talking about the object of fear, but about the
nature of fear, how fear arises, how you approach it. Is there a
motive behind one's approach to the problem of fear? Obviously
one usually has a motive; the motive to go beyond it, to suppress it,
to avoid it, to neglect it; and one has been used to fear for the
greater part of one's life so one puts up with it. If there is any kind
of motive one cannot see it clearly, cannot come near it. And when
one looks at fear does one consider that fear is separate from
oneself, as if one was an outsider looking inside, or an insider
looking out? But is fear different from oneself? Obviously not nor
is anger. But through education, through religion, one is made to
feel separate from it, so that one must fight it, must get over it. One
never asks if that thing called fear is actually separate from oneself.
It is not, and in understanding that, one understands that the
observer is the observed.
Supposing one is envious. One may think the envy is different
from oneself but the actual fact is that one is part of it. One is part
of the envy, as one is part of greed, anger, suffering, pain; so that
pain, suffering, greed, envy, anxiety or loneliness is oneself. One is
all that. First see that logically it is so. And seeing it logically, does
one make an abstraction of what one sees, so that it becomes an
idea, a mere semblance of the fact? One makes an abstraction, an
idea that one should escape from it, and then one works on the
basis of that idea; and that prevents one from observing very
closely what fear is. But if one does not make an abstraction but
sees it as a fact, then one approaches it without any motive. One
observes it as something not different from oneself; one
understands the combination. One observes it as part of oneself,
one is that, there is no division between oneself and that; therefore
one`s observation is that the observer is the observed; the observed
is not different from oneself.
So what is fear? Come very close to it. Because one can only
see it very clearly if one is very near. What is fear? Is it time as a
movement of the past, the present modified and continued? One is
the past, the present and also the future. One is the result of the
past, a thousand years and more; one is also the present with its
impressions, its present social conditions, its present climate, one is
all that and also the future. One is the past, modified in the present,
continued in the future; that is inward time. And also there is
outward time, time by the watch, by the rising and setting of the
sun; the succession of the morning, the afternoon, the evening. It
takes outward time to learn a language, to learn the skill to drive a
car, to become a carpenter, an engineer, or even a politician. There
is time outwardly, to cover the distance from here to there, and
there is also time as hope, inward time. One hopes to become nonviolent
which is absurd. One hopes to gain, or avoid, pain or
punishment, one hopes to have a reward. So there is not only time
outwardly, physically, but there is also time inwardly,
psychologically. One is not this but one will become that; which
means time. The physical time is actual, it is there, it is eleven
o`clock or twelve o`clock, now. But inwardly, psychologically one
has assumed there is time: that is, `I am not good but I will be good.
` Now one is questioning that inward time, questioning whether
there need be such inward time. When there is time inwardly there
is fear. One has a job, but one may lose that job, which is the
future, which is time. One has had pain and hopes one will never
have such pain again. That is the remembrance of the pain, and the
continuation of that memory, hoping there will be no future pain.
So one asks, is not time part of fear? Is not inward time fear?
And is not another factor of fear thought? One thinks about one's
pain, which one had last week, and which is now recorded in the
brain; one thinks one might have that pain again tomorrow. So
there is the operation of thought, which says: `I have had that pain,
I hope not to have it again.` So thought and time are part of fear.
Fear is a remembrance, which is thought and it is also time, the
future. I am secure now, I may be insecure tomorrow, fear arises.
So time plus thought equals fear. Now just see the truth of it in
yourself, not listening to me, to the speaker and verbalizing and
remembering it; but actually see that is a fact, not an abstraction as
an idea. You have to be aware of whether it is by hearing you have
made up an idea, made an abstraction of what you have heard into
an idea, or whether you are actually facing the fact of fear, which is
time and thought.
Now, it is important how you perceive the whole movement of
fear. Either you perceive by negating it, or you perceive it without
the division as me and fear, perceiving that you are fear, so you
remain with that fear.
There are two ways of negating fear; either by totally denying
it, saying, `I have no fear' which is absurd or negating it by
perceiving that the observer is the observed so that there is no
action. We normally want to negate fear, negate it in the sense of
getting over it, running away from it, destroying it, finding some
way of comforting ourselves against it all forms of negation; such
negation is acting upon it. Then there is a totally different form of
negation, which is the beginning of a new movement, in which the
observer is the observed, fear is `me'. The observer is fear.
Therefore he cannot do anything about it; therefore there is a
totally different kind of negation which means a totally different
beginning. Have you realized that when you act upon it you
strengthen it? Running away, suppressing, analysing, finding the
cause, is acting upon it. You are trying to negate something as if it
was not you. But when you realize you are that and that therefore
you cannot act or do anything about it, then there is non-action and
a totally different movement taking place.
Is pleasure different from fear? Or is fear pleasure? They are
like two sides of the same coin when you understand the nature of
pleasure, which is also time and thought. You have experienced
something very beautiful in the past and it is recorded as memory
and you want that pleasure repeated; just as you remember the fear
of a past event and want to avoid it. So both are movements of the
same kind although you call one pleasure and the other fear.
Is there an end to sorrow? Man has done everything possible to
transcend sorrow. He has worshipped sorrow, run away from
sorrow, has held sorrow to his heart, has tried to seek comfort away
from sorrow, has pursued the path of happiness, holding on to it,
clinging to it in order to avoid suffering. Yet man has suffered.
Human beings have suffered right through the world throughout
ages. They have had ten thousand wars think of the men and
women who have been maimed, killed and the tears that have been
shed, the agony of the mothers, wives, and all those people who
have lost their sons, their husbands, their friends through wars, for
millennia upon millennia, and we still continue, multiplying
armaments on a vast scale. There is this immense sorrow of
mankind. The poor man along that road will never know a good
clean bath, clean clothes or ride in an aeroplane; all the pleasures
that one has, he will never know. There is the sorrow of a man who
is very learned and of a man who is not very learned. There is the
sorrow of ignorance; there is the sorrow of loneliness. Most people
are lonely; they may have many friends, a lot of knowledge, but
they are also very lonely people. You know what that loneliness is,
if you are at all aware of yourself a sense of total isolation. You
may have a wife, children, a great many friends, but there comes a
day or an event that makes you feel utterly isolated, lonely. That is
tremendous sorrow. Then there is the sorrow of death; the sorrow
for someone you have lost. And there is the sorrow which has been
gathering, which has been collecting, through the millennia of
mankind's existence.
Then there is the sorrow of one's own personal degeneration,
personal loss, personal lack of intelligence, capacity. And we are
asking whether that sorrow can ever end? Or does one come to
sorrow with sorrow and die with sorrow? Logically, rationally,
intellectually, we can find many reasons for sorrow, there are all
the many explanations according to Buddhism, Hinduism,
Christianity or Islam. But in spite of the explanations, the causes,
the authorities that seek to explain it all away, sorrow still remains
with us. So, is it possible to end that sorrow? For if there is no end
to sorrow there is no love, there is no compassion. One has to go
into it very deeply and see if it can ever end.
The speaker says there is an end to sorrow, a total end to
sorrow; which does not mean that he does not care, that he is
indifferent or callous. With the ending of sorrow there is the
beginning of love. And you naturally ask the speaker: how? How is
sorrow to end? When you ask `how?' you want a system, a method,
a process. That is why you ask. `Tell me how to get there. I will
follow the path, the road.' You want direction, when you say: `How
am I to end sorrow?' That question, that demand, that enquiry says,
`Show me.' When you ask how, you are putting the wrong
question, if I may point out, because you are only concerned with
getting over it. Your approach to it is: tell me how to get over it. So
you never come near it. If you want to look at that tree you must
come near it to see the beauty of it, the shade, the colour of the
leaf, whether or not it has flowers you must come near it. But you
never come near sorrow. You never come near it because you are
always avoiding it, running away from it. So, how you approach
sorrow matters very greatly, whether you approach it with a motive
to escape, to seek comfort and avoid it, or whether you approach
and come very, very close to it. Find out whether you come very
close to it. You cannot come close to it if there is self pity or if
there is the desire to somehow find the cause, the explanation; then
you avoid it. So it matters very much how you approach it, come
near it, and how you see it, how you perceive sorrow.
Is it the word `sorrow' that makes you feel sorrow? Or is it a
fact? And if it is a fact do you want to come close to it so that
sorrow is you? You are not different from sorrow. That is the first
thing to see that you are not different from sorrow. You are sorrow.
You are anxiety, loneliness, pleasure, pain, fear, the sense of
isolation. You are all that. So you come very close to it, you are it,
therefore you remain with it.
When you want to look at that tree you come to it, you look at
every detail, you take time. You are looking, looking, looking, and
it tells you all its beauty. You do not tell the tree your story, it tells
you, if you watch it. In the same way if you come near sorrow,
hold it, look at it, not run away from it, see what it is trying to tell
you, its depth, its beauty, its immensity, then if you remain with it
entirely, with that single movement, sorrow ends. Do not just
remember that and then repeat it! That is what your brains are
accustomed to do: to memorize what has been said by the speaker
and then say, `How shall I carry that out?' Because you are it, you
are all that and therefore you cannot escape from yourself. You
look at it and there is no division between the observer and the
observed, you are that, there is no division. When there is no
division you remain entirely with it. It requires a great deal of
attention, a great deal of intensity, clarity, the clarity of the mind
that sees instantly the truth. Then out of that ending of sorrow
comes love. I wonder if you love anything. Do you? Do you love
anything? Your wife, your children, your so-called country; do you
love the earth, love the beauty of a tree, the beauty of a person? Or
are you so terribly self-centred that you never have any perception
of anything at all? Love brings compassion. Compassion is not
doing some social work. Compassion has its own intelligence. But
you do not know anything of all that. All that you know are your
desires, your ambitions, your deceptions, your dishonesty. When
you are asked most profound questions, which stir you up, you
become negligent. When I ask you a question of that kind, whether
you love somebody, your faces are blank. And this is the result of
your religion, of your devotion to your nonsensical gurus, your
devotion to your leaders not devotion, you are frightened, therefore
you follow. At the end of all these millennia you are what you are
now; just think of the tragedy of all this! That is the tragedy of
yourself, you understand. So ask yourself, if one may suggest it,
walking along that path with you as a friend: do you know what
love means? Love that does not demand a thing from another. Ask
yourselves. It does not demand a thing from your wife, from your
husband nothing, physically, emotionally, intellectually is
demanded from another. Not to follow another, not to have a
concept, and pursue that concept. Because love is not jealousy,
love has no power in the ordinary sense of that word. Love does
not seek position, status, power. But it has its own capacity, its own
skill, its own intelligence.
26 November 1981
(My humble salutations to the lotus feet of Sri Jiddu Krishnamurti and
gratitude to the great philosophers and followers of him.)
0 responses to "Jiddu Krishnamurti - The Flame of Attention - 1"