3. PLEASURE

Continuing on the summarizing through excerpts from “Talks and Dialogues” JD Krishnamurti.

We are all pursuing pleasures of our own, not only through our relationships, achievements and entertainments – but also, seeking greater experience, greater knowledge, greater understanding of life are also pursuits of pleasure in different forms. Even this search for faith, and belief in God – is that too not a pursuit which is tinged with pleasure?

Let us look at pleasure without justifying it or condemning it or ignoring it. Pleasure is a basic demand of our life – finding it, continuing that pleasure, nourishing it, sustaining it, and when there is no pleasure, life becomes dull, stupid and meaningless. Tiresome too.

But why does the mind seek pleasure always? Of course pleasure is sensory reactions – to a beautiful face or the clear blue sky or the flow of a river. But then there comes the memory. And we want yesterday’s pleasure repeated in the form a sensory reaction because we remember how it was. So the mind basically demands further experience of that sensory reaction. So thought plays a big role in pleasure.

It is like this. I see a beautiful sunset. It is captured in my memory. Thought comes in and begins to think about it and says ‘how beautiful it was when for a moment ‘I was absent, along with all my problems, tortures etc. And that remains, as thought is sustained by thought. So desire is sustained and nourished by thought. And when we are denied what the thought wants, there is pain, conflict and fear.

Fear and pleasure are two sides of the same coin. We want pleasure. And when we don’t get that pleasure we get pain. And this pain brings with it - fear. Fear of the pain of not getting what we want. This fear is not only the fear of death, of not being at all, of isolation, but also fear about what others think of you, and the fear of not living up to the images one has created for himself. Fear of not just the unknown but also of the known. Simple example is - if I want to be famous and I don’t get to be – what happens to me? A more complex example would be if I believed in an ideology for years, and then that ideology is shaken, torn away from me by logic or life – then I feel alone, empty handed, stranded and then fear begins. Till I find another belief, another pleasure.

How does one resolve this fear? By suppressing it? By denying it? There is only one way to resolve fear – that is to know oneself. Only self knowledge can provide freedom from pleasure and fear.

To know oneself is a complex, continuous moving thing. To know yourself you must have a mind in which there is no sense of comparision or judgement or justifying or condemning. A mind that has understood the nature of pleasure and fear can live at peace with itself and the world.