Recapturing the experience of yesterday

Look, sirs, you see a lovely sunset, a beautiful tree in a field, and when you first look at it, you enjoy it completely, wholly; but you go back to it with the desire to enjoy it again. What happens when you go back with the desire to enjoy it? There is no enjoyment, because it is the memory of yesterday’s sunset that is now making you return, that is pushing, urging you to enjoy. Yesterday there was no memory, only a spontaneous appreciation, a direct response; but today you are desirous of recapturing the experience of yesterday. That is, memory is intervening between you and the sunset; therefore, there is no enjoyment, no richness, fullness of beauty. Again, you have a friend who said something to you yesterday, an insult or a compliment, and you retain that memory; and with that memory you meet your friend today. You do not really meet your friend—you carry with you the memory of yesterday, which intervenes; and so we go on, surrounding ourselves and our actions with memory, and therefore there is no newnesss, no freshness. That is why memory makes life weary, dull, and empty.

J. Krishnamurti/The Collected Works vol V, p 119

Memory destroys that joy

When you see a beautiful thing, there is immediate joy; you see a sunset and there is an immediate reaction of joy. That joy, a few moments later, becomes a memory. That memory of the joy, is it a living thing? Is the memory of the sunset a living thing? No, it is a dead thing. So, with that dead imprint of a sunset, through that, you want to find joy. Memory has no joy; it is only the remembrance of something which created the joy. Memory in itself has no joy. There is joy, the immediate reaction to the beauty of a tree; and then memory comes in and destroys that joy. So, if there is a constant perception of beauty without the accumulation of memories, then there is the possibility of joy everlasting.

J. Krishnamurti/The Collected Works vol VII, p 100

Joy is different from pleasure

When you look at a cloud and a leaf it is a pleasure to look, the beauty of anything is a pleasure, but to carry it over to the next day, then pain begins. Joy is something entirely different from pleasure. You can invite pleasure, you can think about it, sustain it, nourish it, seek it out, pursue it, hold it; but you cannot with joy, with ecstasy, And that happens naturally, easily, without any invitation, this ecstasy, when you understand fear and pleasure.

J.Krishnamurti/Talks and Dialogues Sydney 1970, p 44

Can there be only sensation, and not thought?

Now, the question is whether there can be a hiatus, a gap; that is, have only sensation, and not let thought come and control sensation. That is the problem. Why does thought create the image and hold on to that sensation? Is it possible to look at the shirt, touch it—sensation—and stop, not allow thought to enter into it? Have you ever tried any of these? When thought enters into the field of sensation—and thought is also a sensation—then thought takes control of sensation, and desire begins. Is it possible to only observe, contact, sensation, and nothing else? And discipline has no place in this because the moment you begin to discipline, that is another form of desire to achieve something. So one has to discover the beginning of desire and see what happens. Don’t buy the shirt immediately, but see what happens. You can look at it; but we are so eager to get something, to possess a shirt, a man, a woman or some status that we never have the time, the quietness, to look at all this.

J. Krishnamurti/Mind Without Measure, pp 19-20

Thought gives a shape to sensation

You see a beautiful car, you touch the polish, see its shape and texture. Out of that there is sensation. Then thought comes and says, “How nice it would be if I got it, how nice it would be if I got into it and drove off.” So what has happened? Thought has intervened, has given shape to sensation. Thought has given to sensation the image of you sitting in the car and driving off. At that moment, as that second, when thought creates the image of you sitting in the car, desire is born. Desire is born when thought gives a shape, an image, to sensation. Now, sensation is the way of existence, it is part of existence. But you have learnt to suppress, conquer, or live with desire with all its problems. Now, if you understand this, not intellectually but actually, that when thought gives shape to sensation, at that second desire is born, then the question arises: Is it possible to see and touch the car—which is sensation—but not let thought create the image? So keep a gap.
J. Krishnamurti/That Benediction is Where You Are, p 54

Desire is part of pleasure

Desire is part of pleasure. The fulfillment of desire is the very nature of pleasure. Desire may be the cause of disorder--each one wanting to fulfill his own particular desire.

So together we are going to investigate whether desire is one of the major causes of disorder; we must explore desire, not condemn it, not escape from it, not try to suppress it. Most religions have said, “Suppress desire”—which is absurd. So let us look at it. What is desire? Put that question to yourself. Probably most of us have not thought about it at all. We have accepted it as a way of life, as the natural instinct of a man or a woman, and so we say, “Why bother about it?”. Those people who have renounced the world, those who have entered monasteries, and so on try to sublimate their desires in the worship of a symbol or a person. Please bear in mind that we are not condemning desire. We are trying to find out what is desire, why man has, for millions of years, been caught not only physically but also psychologically in the trap of desire, in the network of desire.
J. Krishnamurti/That Benediction is Where You Are, pp 50-51

The fire of desire is burning

Man, throughout the historical period of man, has said that to find that reality or God—whatever name he may give to it—you must be a celibate; that is, you take a vow of chastity and suppress, control, battle with yourself endlessly all your life, to keep your vow. Look at the waste of energy! It is also a waste of energy to indulge. And it has far more significance when you suppress. The effort that has gone into suppression, into control, into this denial of your desire distorts your mind, and through that distortion you have a certain sense of austerity which becomes harsh. Please listen. Observe it in yourself, and observe the people around you. And observe this waste of energy, the battle. Not the implications of sex, not the actual act, but the ideals, the images, the pleasure—the constant thought about them is a waste of energy. And most people waste their energy either through denial, or through a vow of chastity, or in thinking about it endlessly.
J. Krishnamurti/The Collected Works vol XV, p 90

The vow of chastity

Man, throughout the historical period of man, has said that to find that reality or God—whatever name he may give to it—you must be a celibate; that is, you take a vow of chastity and suppress, control, battle with yourself endlessly all your life, to keep your vow. Look at the waste of energy! It is also a waste of energy to indulge. And it has far more significance when you suppress. The effort that has gone into suppression, into control, into this denial of your desire distorts your mind, and through that distortion you have a certain sense of austerity which becomes harsh. Please listen. Observe it in yourself, and observe the people around you. And observe this waste of energy, the battle. Not the implications of sex, not the actual act, but the ideals, the images, the pleasure—the constant thought about them is a waste of energy. And most people waste their energy either through denial, or through a vow of chastity, or in thinking about it endlessly.
J. Krishnamurti/The Collected Works vol XV, p 90

The only source of self-forgetfulness

Intellectually, you are suffocated; you never think for yourself originally, you repeat; you accumulate knowledge from books, and you can repeat endless phrases from the Gita or the Koran or from the latest writer, or this or that. So, intellectually, you are thwarted, suffocated, controlled, shaped, and there is no release intellectually. Nor emotionally—emotionally in the sense not sentimentally.… So the only thing that we have then is sex. Suppressed, intellectually, emotionally, there is no outlet, there is no sensitivity. And naturally the only thing that is left is sex. In the office, in daily life, you are insulted. The ugliness of modern existence where you are merely a cog in a vast social machine—do look at yourself, please. So the wife, and the husband and sex—sex becomes extraordinarily important and out of proportion, and therefore sex becomes a problem.
J. Krishnamurti/The Collected Works vol XIV, pp 289-90

The only thing that is left

Intellectually, you are suffocated; you never think for yourself originally, you repeat; you accumulate knowledge from books, and you can repeat endless phrases from the Gita or the Koran or from the latest writer, or this or that. So, intellectually, you are thwarted, suffocated, controlled, shaped, and there is no release intellectually. Nor emotionally—emotionally in the sense not sentimentally.… So the only thing that we have then is sex. Suppressed, intellectually, emotionally, there is no outlet, there is no sensitivity. And naturally the only thing that is left is sex. In the office, in daily life, you are insulted. The ugliness of modern existence where you are merely a cog in a vast social machine—do look at yourself, please. So the wife, and the husband and sex—sex becomes extraordinarily important and out of proportion, and therefore sex becomes a problem.

J. Krishnamurti/The Collected Works vol XIV, pp 289-90

Why does the mind think about sex at all?

Why does the mind think about sex at all? Why? Why has it become a central issue in your life? When there are so many things calling, demanding your attention, you give complete attention to the thought of sex.. What happens, why are your minds so occupied with it? Because that is the way of ultimate escape, is it not? It is a way of complete self-forgetfulness. For the time being, at least for the moment, you can forget yourself—and there is no other way of forgetting yourself. Everything else you do in life gives emphasis to the “me”, to the self. Your business, your religion, your gods, your leaders, your political and economic actions, your escapes, your social activities, your joining one party and rejecting another—all that is emphasizing and giving strength to the “me”. That is, there is only this one act in which there is no emphasis on the “me”, so it becomes a problem, does it not?
J. Krishnamurti/The First and Last Freedom, pp 228-229

Thought functioning between pleasure and pain

The question is: Why does thought always avoid the one which is fear and hold on to pleasure? That is one question. Why does thought interfere when there is an experience? You understand? I have an experience of the sunset and at that moment there is nothing to think at all; I am just looking at the beauty of that light. Then thought comes along and says, “I want that repeated again tomorrow”, which is, knowledge as experience, which is pleasure, wants it to be repeated again. I have had pain, which is the remembrance of that pain, which is knowledge, and according to that knowledge or depending upon that knowledge, thought says, “I do not want it.” You follow? Thought is doing it all the time, functioning between pleasure and pain. And thought is responsible for both.

J. Krishnamurti/Talks in India 1970-71, pp 164-65

The struggle to repeat pleasure

From the old you derive pleasure, never from the new. There is no time in the new. So, if you can look at all things without allowing pleasure to creep in—at a face, a bird, the colour of a sari, the beauty of a sheet of water shimmering in the sun, or anything that gives delight—if you can look at it without wanting the experience to be repeated, then there will be no pain, no fear and, therefore, tremendous joy. It is the struggle to repeat and perpetuate pleasure which turns it into pain. Watch it in yourself. The very demand for the repetition of pleasure brings about pain, because it is not the same as it was yesterday.

J. Krishnamurti/Freedom from the Known, p 37

Thought revives the dead past

By thinking about the pleasure which I had yesterday, the pleasure which is dead, which is a memory, I am giving to that dead memory a new life. Please watch this in yourself. Thought is reviving the dead past, the dead pleasure, the dead memory, and from that very dead memory, thought has come into being. This is what is going on all our life. So thought not only breeds this contradiction in our lives—as pleasure and fear—but also thought has accumulated the memory of the innumerable pleasures we have had and from those memories thought is reborn.

J. Krishnamurti/Talks and Dialogues Saanen 1967, p 220

Thought and pleasure

Thought has a great deal to do with pleasure. I can look at that sunset and the next moment it is gone—thought comes in and begins to think about it, says how beautiful it was when, for a moment, “I” was absent, with all my problems, tortures, miseries; there was only that marvellous thing. And that remains as thought, is sustained by thought. The same thing with regard to sexual pleasure—thought chews it over, thinks about it endlessly, builds up images which sustain the sensation and the demand for fulfilment tomorrow. It is the same with regard to ambition, fame, success, and being important.
J. Krishnamurti/Talks and Dialogues Saanen 1967, p 50

When the industry of entertainment takes over

When the industry of entertainment takes over, as it is gradually doing now, when the young people, the students, the children, are constantly instigated to pleasure, to fancy, to romantic sensuality, the words restraint and austerity are pushed away, never even given a thought. The austerity of the monks, the sannyasis, who deny the world, who clothe their bodies with some kind of uniform or just a cloth—this denial of the material world is surely not austerity. You probably won’t even listen to this, to what the implications of austerity are. When you have been brought up from childhood to amuse yourself and escape from yourself through entertainment, religious or otherwise, and when most of the psychologists say that you must express everything you feel and that any form of holding back or restraint is detrimental, leading to various forms of neuroticism, you naturally enter more and more into the world of sport, amusement, entertainment, all helping you to escape from yourself, from what you are. The understanding of the nature of what you are, without any distortions, without any bias, without any reactions to what you discover you are, is the beginning of austerity.

J. Krishnamurti/Krishnamurti to Himself, pp 47-48

When pleasure becomes the dominant interest

All over the world human beings are degenerating to a greater or lesser extent. When pleasure, personal or collective, becomes the dominant interest in life—the pleasure of sex, the pleasure of asserting one’s own will, the pleasure of excitement, the pleasure of self-interest, the pleasure of power and status, the insistent demand to have one’s own pleasure fulfilled—there is degeneration. When human relationships become casual, based on pleasure, there is degeneration. When responsibility has lost its total meaning, when there is no care for another, or for the earth and the things of the sea, this disregard of heaven and earth is another form of degeneration. When there is hypocrisy in high places, when there is dishonesty in commerce, when lies are part of everyday speech, when there is the tyranny of the few, when only things predominate—there is the betrayal of all life. Then killing becomes the only language of life. When love is taken as pleasure, then man cuts himself off from beauty and the sacredness of life.
J. Krishnamurti/Letters to the Schools vol I, p 83

Pleasure is the structure of society

Most of us are pursuing, outwardly and inwardly, pleasure, and pleasure is the structure of society. I think it is important to find this out, because from childhood till death, deeply, surreptitiously, cunningly and also obviously, we are pursuing pleasure, whether it be in the name of God, in the name of society, or in the name of our own demands and urgencies. And if we are pursuing pleasure, which most of us are, which we can observe very simply, what is implied in that pursuit? I may want pleasure, I may want the fulfilment of that pleasure, through ambition, through hate, through jealousy, and so on—if I know, or observe, for myself, the nature and structure of pleasure then in the understanding of it I can either pursue it logically, ruthlessly, acting with fully open eyes though it involves a great deal of fear and pain—or come upon a state in which I can live in peace.

J. Krishnamurti/Talks and Dialogues Saanen 1967, p 48

Relationship between pleasure and fear

Questioner: What is the relationship between pleasure and fear?

Krishnamurti: Don’t you know it, do you want an explanation of that? When I can’t get my pleasure what happens? Have you not noticed it? I want something which is going to give me tremendous pleasure—what takes place when I am thwarted, denied it? There is antagonism, there is violence, there is a sense of frustration, all of which is a form of fear.

J. Krishnamurti/Talks and Dialogues Saanen 1967, p 53

Two sides of a coin

Fear and pleasure are the two sides of a coin: you cannot be free of one without being free of the other also. You want to have pleasure all your life and yet be free of fear—that is all you are concerned about. But you do not see that you feel frustrated if tomorrow’s pleasure is denied, you feel unfulfilled, angry, anxious and guilty, and all the psychological miseries arise. So you have to look at fear and pleasure together.
J. Krishnamurti/The Impossible Question, pp 50-51