Observations placeholder
Krishnamurti - The Network of Thought - Sorrow
Identifier
013627
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Sorrow is a form of pain, but this time the experience is real, here and now, not anticipated or feared, it is actual. Krishnamurti provides a few examples, but of course there are numerous examples of an event or set of circumstances which can cause sorrow, sadness, grief.
Some religions explain that the reason we feel sorrow when we lose something is because we have built up attachments to that thing. Their solution is to remove all 'attachments'. If you don't care for things, never become 'attached' to them, you will never feel any sorrow when they are gone, but this I feel is a sort of approach akin to cutting off your nose to spite your face.
I think it is helpful, however, to examine what form of attachment you have to the things you say you love.
The objective in doing this is to build up love for things, but not to be dependent on them. In effect to love what they are without ever basing this love or liking on what they can do for you.
This is hugely difficult because much of our so called 'loves' in present day society are in reality dependencies. This man/woman buys me presents, pays the bills, makes the house I live in look nice and homely, is kind to me, gives me pleasure from sex, provides me with a home and money, gives me nice meals, flatters me, looks after me, does my washing, makes me feel good, makes me look good, and so on. We mistake attachment based on what a person or thing can do for you to love which is based purely on who the person or thing [or animal] is. If we 'love' them based on what they can do for us we anticipate pleasure from them.
If we love them for who or what they were then there is real 'sorrow' when they are gone, because there is no dependence, but sorrow based on dependence is in reality simply fear caused by vulnerability – not true sorrow at all. This will be explained in more detail below.
A description of the experience
J. Krishnamurti – The Network of Thought
There is the sorrow of my brother, son, wife running away, or dying; the sorrow of separation, the sorrow that comes about when one is deeply interested in something and the other is not. ….......
I may have great sorrow for the death of someone with whom I have lived many years. Then there is the sorrow of isolation; we feel totally isolated, completely alone....................
Devotion to a person, to a symbol, to the family, is not love. If I am devoted to you for various reasons, there is a motive, it is not love, obviously. If you give me pleasure sexually, or various forms of comfort, then there is dependency; the motive is my dependence on you because you give me something in return, and as we live together I call that love.
Is it?
So one questions the whole thing and asks oneself; where there is motive can love exist?
So love cannot exist where there is a motive, where there is attachment, where there is ambition and competitiveness, love is not desire and pleasure.
Just feel that, see it.