Kinfonet Quote of the Day: The self, the "me," is a network of complex desires, each desire having its own impetus and aim, often in opposition to other hopes and pursuits.

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Krishnamurti Quote of the Day

Commentaries on Living Series I | Chapter 43 'Consistency'

To be in self-contradiction is to live in conflict and sorrow. The self, in its very structure, is contradictory; it is made up of many entities with different masks, each in opposition to the other. The whole fabric of the self is the result of contradictory interests and values, of many varying desires at different levels of its being; and these desires all beget their own opposites. The self, the "me," is a network of complex desires, each desire having its own impetus and aim, often in opposition to other hopes and pursuits. These masks are taken on according to stimulating circumstances and sensations; so within the structure of the self, contradiction is inevitable. This contradiction within us breeds illusion and pain, and to escape from it we resort to all manner of self-deceptions which only increase our conflict and misery.

Tags: conflict, desire, the self

Related Quotes: Surely it must be possible to function in a sexual relationship with someone you love without the nightmare which usually follows.; From the known you cannot possibly see the unknown;; Only the mind that has emptied itself of the known is creative.; Man has invented heaven out of hope, for his life has become a hell, an endless conflict from birth to death, coming and going, making money, working endlessly.; All our life is spent in struggle, and we think that struggle is a necessary part of existence.; Conflict at any level, at any depth, indicates immaturity.; There is no essential difference between the old and the young, for both are slaves to their own desires and gratifications.; We are always caught in this misery of an everlasting battle with ourselves and with society. That is a fact.; There is no release from conflict until there is an understanding of what is.; Become aware of the cause that prevents you from living completely.; When we suffer we seek immediate consolation, comfort, and therefore there is no longer questioning; there is no longer doubt, but mere acceptance.; The moment we have solved one problem, another arises, and so we continue to the end of our lives seeking solutions to an endless series of problems.; You are not concerned with what causes suffering, but you are concerned with the way of escaping from that suffering into perfection.; Do not try to be spiritual, for you do not know what that signifies at all.; Heaven knows, we have conflicts all day long, but we have trained our mind to be cunning, and so pass over these conflicts lightly, escape from them.; Through friction, through continual conflict, memory is being created, memory as the "I" and the "mine", which becomes possessive.; Conflict can exist only between two false things, between that supposed reality which you call the "I", which to me is nothing else but the result of environment, and the environment itself.; You have not solved conflict, you have merely shifted it by substituting a new environment, a new condition, which will in turn produce further conflict.; If you look into your lives, you will see that conflict is continually twisting, perverting, shaping your lives;; There can be struggle only between two false things, conflict between the environment and the result of environment which is the "I".; Some people believe that the "I" has had a birth in the distant past and will continue in the future. It is irrelevant to me, it has no significance at all.; You know we have lost all sense of living normally, simply, directly.; Intelligence and conflict cannot exist together.; In times of peace and quietness, there takes place a gradual change of values, mostly unconscious, and this change, this gradual change, we term the struggle between the old and the young.; How is one to have this intelligence which destroys struggle and conflict and the ceaseless effort which wears out mind itself?; When the mind is not imparting values, which is mere conformity, when there is spontaneous understanding of the prison, which is environment, then there is the action of intelligence, which is freedom.; The turmoil, the end, and the "you" are the same; there is no division.; The illusion of economic security is shown throughout the world by these depressions, crises, wars, calamities, and chaos.; It is the very essence of stupidity to escape from conflict through a series of established values, or through forming a new set of values.; Life is chaotic, conflicting, full of pain, and we think that, if we can find an ideal, then we shall be able to guide ourselves across this aching turmoil.; If you desire to understand environment, not only the objective but the subjective which is so infinitely subtle, then you must individually come into conflict with it.; I wonder how many of you are vitally conscious of this conflict in the battlefield of the mind.; Conflict invariably must arise when there is a static centre within one, and about one there are changing values.; Hate is not dissolved through experience nor through any accumulation of virtue.; The conflict between the actual and the illusory must continue till either the unreal overcomes the actual or the actual breaks through all safeguards, all escapes, and begins to reveal its deep significance.; War is a symptom, however brutal and diseased, and to deal with the outer manifestation without regard to the deeper causes of it, is futile and purposeless;; There can only be peace and happiness in the world when the individual - who is the world - sets about definitely to alter the causes within himself which produce confusion, sorrow, hate, and so on.; Relationship is now based on dependence, that is, one depends on another for one's psychological satisfaction, happiness and well-being.; Do not think by merely wishing for peace, you will have peace, when in your daily life of relationship you are aggressive, acquisitive, seeking psychological security here or in the hereafter.; There is conflict in relationship, but instead of understanding its cause and so transcending it, we try to escape from it and seek gratification elsewhere.; Why cannot the mind experience something that is true, beyond its own projections?; Can there be honesty - that is, clear insight, seeing things as they are - if there is a principle, an ideal, an ennobled formula?; Freedom is to stand alone, unattached and unafraid, free in the understanding of desire which breeds illusion.; To go beyond the self-enclosing activities of the mind, you must understand them;; Mere reformation of the pattern of society only alters the surface, it brings about a more respectable form of ambition.; To walk alone, unimpeded by thought, by the trail of our desires, is to go beyond the reaches of the mind.; Is silence to be cultivated, carefully nurtured and strengthened? And who is the cultivator? Is he different from the totality of your being?; Creativeness is not a process of becoming or achieving, but a state of being in which self-seeking effort is totally absent.; Desire, which has been the driving force in man, has created a great many pleasant and useful things; desire also, in man's relationships, has created a great many problems and turmoil and misery - the desire for pleasure.; The religious mind does not depend on time for its development.; Until you are committed, dedicated, to eradicating this national, economic, religious division, you are perpetuating war; You can't empty the mind, do what you will you can't empty it, because the desire to empty it is part of the activity of the self.; Until you and I understand the 'me', which is the center of discontent, until we go into it and understand this whole process of becoming, achieving, there must always be discontent.; How can a man that is in prison stimulate the desire for freedom?; There is illusion as long as there is a want, which is different from needs.; To understand what I am saying is not very difficult. The difficulty lies in putting what I am saying into action.; Where there is no creative expression of life, we give undue importance to sex, which becomes an acute problem.; Question: I desire many things from life which I do not have. Can you tell me how to get them?; If we destroy desire, there is death;; When you are really able to think without any craving, without any desire to choose - for choice implies opposites - there is discernment.; The very desire to be free creates its own limitation.; Confusion arises only when you are made incapable of adjustment by your fantastic and harmful conceptions, ideals and beliefs.; Before we can understand what is truth, reality, or know if there be such a thing, we must discern what it is that is constantly seeking.; Through want we create confusion, ignorance and suffering, and then we set in movement the process of escape.; If you can deeply comprehend [this] self-sustaining process of ignorance which gives a solidity to the "I", from which arise all confusion and suffering, then life can be lived fully, without the various subtle escapes and pursuits that, unknowingly, you have created for yourself.; The reality of the permanent can only happen, take place, and is not to be cultivated.; [The] process of escape from actuality, from uncertainty, must lead to illusion, abnormality, neurosis and unbalance.; There is the will of want, which is effort, and the will of comprehension, which is discernment.; The process of choice is merely one want overcoming another, one illusion dispelling another, one set of values substituting itself for another.; I have tried to explain that conduct born of compulsion, whether it be the compulsion of reward or of punishment, of fear or of love, is not right conduct.; Desire cannot exist by itself, it must always be in relation to something.; Desire is not emotion; desire is the result of a mind that is ever seeking satisfaction, whose values are based on satisfaction.; The desire to be satisfied creates will, which maintains itself by its own continual effort.; The very question of how to be free of desire is prompted by desire itself.; Only in deep emotion is there no craving for satisfaction.; Desire and emotion are two different and distinct processes; desire being entirely of the mind, and emotion the integral expression of one's whole being.; Desire can only recondition itself, reshape itself to a new pattern, but it will still be desire, giving birth to fear.; Question: Are desire and interest, as we know them now, the same?; Question: How can I attain the quality of desirelessness without having the desire to attain it?; What we are trying to do here is to understand the process of desire, not to put a boundary to craving.; To understand the complex causes of conflict and the desire to be free from it, requires not the mere will to be free, but constant awareness in our daily life.; The motive for cultivating the opposite matters greatly; if it is a desire to escape from the struggle and pain of envy, then its opposite becomes identical with itself and so there is no freedom from envy.; The self is dividing; the self is self-enclosing; its activities, however noble, are separated and isolated.