Fear and Pleasure
Recently I came across a book in the Barnes and Noble Bookstore in Atlanta. This was the life and teachings of Krishnamurti. Of late I had been confused about the right choices to make in life and had been under some stress due to work and as I ambled along through the aisles this book caught my eye. I said to myself "this might well be the antidote to my malady". Wishful thinking. Krishnamurti and all others like him, can at best hold a mirror in front of one and hope that one can look and observe and understand oneself. To think that by reading the book one can instantly enter a world of perpetual peace and quiet and "shanti" is just wishful thinking is totally impractical. Atleast for the 2 hours I spent reading the book I was peaceful but this placebo cannot be mistaken for the permanent panacea that I seek. So the quest for the eternal truth and peace continues.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiddu_KrishnamurtiFear and pleasure were lifelong themes in his public talks. The following is an excerpt from his talk in San Diego in 1970.
“Fear is always in relation to something; it does not exist by itself. There is fear of what happened yesterday in relation to the possibility of its repetition tomorrow; there is always a fixed point from which relationship takes place. How does fear come into this? I had pain yesterday; there is the memory of it and I do not want it again tomorrow. Thinking about the pain of yesterday, thinking which involves the memory of yesterday’s pain, projects the fear of having pain again tomorrow. So it is thought that brings about fear. Thought breeds fear; thought also cultivates pleasure. To understand fear you must also understand pleasure – they are interrelated; without understanding one you cannot understand the other. This means that one cannot say ‘I must only have pleasure and no fear’; fear is the other side of the coin which is called pleasure.
Thinking with the images of yesterday’s pleasure, thought imagines that you may not have that pleasure tomorrow; so thought engenders fear. Thought tries to sustain pleasure and thereby nourishes fear.
Thought has separated itself as the analyzer and the thing to be analyzed; they are both parts of thought playing tricks upon itself. In doing all this it is refusing to examine the unconscious fears; it brings in time as a means of escaping fear and yet at the same time sustains fear.”