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By Jiddu Krishnamurti

We were walking in the open gardens near a huge hotel. There was

a golden blue in the western sky and the noise of the buses, cars

went by. There were young plants full of promise, watered daily.

They were still building, creating the gardens and a bird was

hovering in the sky, fluttering its wings rapidly before it plunged to

the earth; and in the east, there was the nearing of the full moon.

What was beautiful was none of these things but the vast emptiness

that seemed to hold the earth. What was beautiful was the poor

man with his head down, carrying a small bottle of oil.

Krishnamurti: What does sorrow mean in this country? How do

the people in this country meet sorrow? Do they escape from

sorrow through the explanation of karma? How does the mind in

India operate when it meets sorrow? The Buddhist meets it in one

way, the Christian in another way. How does the Hindu mind meet

it? Does it resist sorrow, or escape from it? Or does the Hindu

mind rationalize it?

Questioner P: Are there really many ways of meeting sorrow?

Sorrow is pain - the pain of someone dying, the pain of separation.

Is it possible to meet this pain in various ways?

Krishnamurti: There are various ways of escape but there is

only one way of meeting sorrow. The escapes with which we are

all familiar are really the ways of avoiding the greatness of sorrow.

You see, we use explanations to meet sorrow but these

explanations do not answer the question. The only way to meet

sorrow is to be without any resistance, to be without any movement

away from sorrow, outwardly or inwardly, to remain totally with

sorrow, without wanting to go beyond it.

P: What is the nature of sorrow?

Krishnamurti: There is personal sorrow, the sorrow that comes

with the loss of someone you love, the loneliness, the separation,

the anxiety for the other. With death there is also the feeling that

the other has ceased to be, and there was so much that he wanted to

do. All this is personal sorrow. Then there is that man, ill-clad,

dirty, with his head down; he is ignorant, ignorant not merely of

book knowledge, but deeply, really ignorant. The feeling that one

has for the man is not self-pity, nor is there an identification with

that man; it is not that you are placed in a better position than he is

and so you feel pity for him, but there is within one the sense of the

timeless weight of sorrow in man. This sorrow has nothing

personal about it. It exists.

P: While you have been speaking, the movement of sorrow has

been operating within me. There is no immediate cause for this

sorrow but it seems like a shadow, always with man. He lives, he

loves, he forms attachments and everything ends. Whatever the

truth of what you say, in this there is such an infinitude of sorrow.

How is it to end? There appears to be no answer. The other day

you said in sorrow is the whole movement of passion. What does it

mean?

Krishnamurti: Is there a relationship between sorrow and

passion? I wonder what sorrow is. Is there such a thing as sorrow

without cause? We know the sorrow which is cause and effect. My

son dies; in that is involved my identification with my son, my

wanting him to be something which I am not, my seeking

continuity through him; and when he dies all that is denied and I

find myself completely emptied of all hope. In that there is selfpity,

fear; in that there is pain which is the cause of sorrow. This is

the lot of everyone. This is what we mean by sorrow.

Then also there is the sorrow of time, the sorrow of ignorance,

not the ignorance of knowledge but the ignorance of one's own

destructive conditioning; the sorrow of not knowing oneself; the

sorrow of not knowing the beauty that lies at the depth of one's

being and the going beyond. Do we see that when we escape from

sorrow through various forms of explanation, we are really

frittering away an extraordinary happening?

P: Then what does one do?

Krishnamurti: You have not answered my question, "Is there, a

sorrow without cause and effect?" We know sorrow and the

movement away from sorrow.

P: You have talked of sorrow free of cause and effect. Is there

such a state?

Krishnamurti: Man has lived with sorrow from immemorial

times. He has never known how to deal with it. So he has either

worshipped it or run away from it. They are both the same

movement. My mind does not do either, nor does it use sorrow as a

means of awakening. Then what takes place?

P: All other things are the products of our senses. Sorrow is

more than that. It is a movement of the heart.

Krishnamurti: I am asking you what is the relationship between

sorrow and love.

P: They are both movements of the heart.

Krishnamurti: What is love and what is sorrow?

P: Both are movements of the heart, the one is identified as joy

and the other as pain.

Krishnamurti: Is love pleasure? Would you say joy and pleasure

are the same? Without understanding the nature of pleasure, there

is no depth to joy. You cannot invite joy. Joy happens. The

happening can be turned into pleasure. When that pleasure is

denied, there is the beginning of sorrow.

P: At one level it is so, but it is not so at another level.

Krishnamurti: As we said, joy is not a thing to be invited. It

happens. Pleasure I can invite, pleasure I can pursue. If pleasure is

love, then love can be cultivated.

P: We know pleasure is not love. Pleasure may be one

manifestation of love but it is not love. Both sorrow and love

emerge from the same source.

Krishnamurti: I asked what is the relationship between sorrow

and love? Can there be love if there is sorrow - sorrow being all the

things that we have talked about?

P: I would say "yes".

Krishnamurti: In sorrow, there is a factor of separation, of

fragmentation. Is there not a great deal of self-pity in sorrow? What

is the relationship of all this to love? Has love dependency? Has

love the quality of the "me" and the "you"?

P: But you talked of passion......

Krishnamurti: When there is no movement of escape from

sorrow then love is. Passion is the flame of sorrow and that flame

can only be awakened when there is no escape, no resistance.

Which means what? - Which means, sorrow has in it no quality of

division.

P: In that sense, is that state of sorrow any different from the

state of love? Sorrow is pain. You say when in that pain there is no

resistance, no movement away from pain, the flame of passion

emerges. Strangely in the ancient texts, kama (love), agni (fire),

and yama (death) are said to be the same; they are placed on the

same level; they are all identical; they create, purify and destroy to

create again. There has to be an ending.

Krishnamurti: You see, that is just it. What is the relationship of

a mind which has understood sorrow and therefore the ending of

sorrow? What is the quality of the mind that is no longer afraid of

ending, which is death?

When energy is not dissipated through escape, then that energy

becomes the flame of passion. Compassion means passion for all.

Compassion is passion for all.

TRADITION AND REVOLUTION DIALOGUE 1

NEW DELHI 12TH DECEMBER 1970 'THE

FLAME OF SORROW'