j krishnamurti_bombay, 12 march1950

bombay, 12 march 1950

everybody can know love, but you can know it only when you
are capable of looking at facts very clearly, without resistance, without
justification, without explaining them away---just look at things closely,
observe them very clearly and minutely. now, what is the thing that we
call love? the questioner says that it is exclusive, and that in it we know
pain and joy. is love exclusive? we shall find out when we examine
what we call love, that the so-called common man calls love.
there is no common man. there is only man, which is you and i.
the common man is a fictitious entity invented by the politicians.
there is only man, which is you and i who are in sorrow, in pain,
in anxiety, and fear.

now, what is our life? to find out what love is, let us begin
with what we know. what is our love? in the midst of pain and pleasure,
we know it is exclusive, personal: my wife, my children, my country,
my god. we know it as a flame in the midst of smoke, we know it through
jealousy, we know it through domination, we know it through possession,
we know it through loss when the other is gone. so we know love as
sensation, do we not? when we say we love, we know jealousy, we know
fear, we know anxiety. when you say you love someone, all that is implied:
envy, the desire to possess, the desire to own, to dominate, the fear of loss,
and so on. all this we call love, and we do not know love without fear,
without envy, without possession; we merely verbalize that the state of love
which is without fear; we call it impersonal, pure, divine, or god knows
what else, but the fact is that we are jealous, we are dominating,
possessive. we shall know that state of love only when jealousy, envy,
possessiveness, domination, come to an end; and as long as we possess,
we shall never love .

envy, possession, hatred, the desire to dominate the person
or thing called mine, the desire to possess and to be possessed---all that
is a process of thought, is it not? is love a process of thought? is love a thing
of the mind? actually, for most of us, it is. do not say it is not---it is nonsense
to say that. do not deny the fact that your love is a thing of the mind. surely it is;
otherwise, you would not possess, you would not dominate, you would not
say, 'it is mine'. since you do say it, your love is a thing of the mind; so love,
for you, is a process of thought. you can think about the person whom you love,
but is thinking about the person whom you love, love? when do you think about
the person whom you love? you think about her when she is gone, when she is
away, when she has left you. but when she no longer disturbs you, when you
can say, 'she is mine', then you do not have to think about her. you do not have
to think about your furniture, it is part of you---which is a possess of identification
so as not to be disturbed, to avoid trouble, anxiety, sorrow. so you miss the
person whom you say you love only when you are disturbed, when you are in
suffering; and as long as you possess that person, you do not have to think
about that person, because in possession there is no disturbance. but when
possession is disturbed, you begin to think, and then you say, 'i love that person'.
so your love is merely a sensation, and sensation is surely not love. do you think
about the person when you are close? when you possess, hold, dominate,
control, when you can say, 'she is mine' or 'he is mine', there is no problem.
and society, everything you have built around you, helps you possess so as
not to think about it. thinking comes when you are disturbed---and you are
bound to be disturbed as long as your thinking is what you call love.

surely, love is not a thing of the mind. it is because the things of
the mind have filled our hearts that we have no love. the things of the mind
are jealousy, envy, ambition, the desire to be somebody, to achieve success.
these things of the mind fill your heart, and then you say you love; but how
can you love when you have all these confusing elements in you? when there
is smoke, how can there be a pure flame? love is not a thing of mind, and
love is the only solution to our problems. love is not of the mind, and the man
who has accumulated money or knowledge can never know love, because
he lives with the things of the mind; his activities are of the mind, and what
ever he touches he makes into a problem, a misery.

so what we call our love is a thing of the mind. look at yourself and
you will see that what i am saying is obviously true; otherwise our lives, our
marriages our relationships, would be entirely different; we would have a
new society. we bind ourself to another, not through fusion, but through
contract, which is called love, marriage. love does not fuse, adjust---it is
neither personal nor impersonal; it is a state of being. the man who desires
to fuse with something greater, to unite himself with another, is avoiding
misery, confusion; but the mind is still separation, which is disintegration.
love knows neither fusion nor diffusion; it is neither personal nor impersonal;
it is state of being which the mind cannot find---it can describe it, give it a
term, a name, but the word, the description, is not love.

it is only when the mind is quiet that is shall know love, and the state
of quietness is not a thing to be cultivated. cultivation is still the action of the
mind; discipline is still a product of the mind, and a mind that is disciplined,
controlled subjugated, a mind that is resisting, explaining, cannot know love.
you may read, you may listen to what is being said about love, but that is not
love. only when you put away the things of the mind, only when your heart is
empty of the things of the mind, is there love. then you will know what it is to love
without separation, without distance, without time, without fear---and that is not
reserved to the few. love knows hierarchy; there is only love. there are the many and
the one, an exclusiveness, only when you do not love. when you love, there is neither
the 'you' nor the 'me' in that state there is only a flame without smoke.


jiddu krishnamurti