Jiddu Krishnamurti Quotes on Sorrow

• Without understanding sorrow, there is no wisdom; the ending of sorrow is the beginning of wisdom. To understand sorrow and to be completely free of it demands an understanding, not only of the particular individualistic sorrows, but also of the enormous sorrow of man. To me, without being totally free of sorrow, there can be no wisdom, nor is the mind capable of really inquiring into that immeasurable something which may be called God, or by any other name.
   
• The superficial mind cannot solve this problem of sorrow because what it tries is to avoid sorrow. It escapes from the fact of sorrow through an easy and immediate response.
   
• Now, if in facing sorrow the mind has a motive, that is, if it wants to do something about sorrow, there can be no understanding of sorrow any more than there can be love if there is a motive for love. Do you understand? Most of us have a motive when we look at sorrow; we want to do something about it.
   
• Please, what is important is not how to transform sorrow into joy, or whether sorrow changes into joy, or whether you should suffer when you see others suffering - all those questions have no importance at all. What is important is to understand sorrow for yourself, and thereby to end sorrow. Only then will you find out what lies beyond sorrow.
   
• To remain, not to escape, not to seek comfort, not to run off to some form of entertainment, religious or otherwise, but to look at it, live with it, understand the nature of it - when you do that, sorrow opens the door to passion. You are not passionate people because you have never understood the nature of sorrow and the ending of sorrow. You have become very dull. You accept anything, accept sorrow, accept fear, you accept being dominated by politicians, by your guru, by all the books and traditions. That means you never want to be free and you are frightened to be free, frightened of the unknown. You invent various forms of consoling, illusory images and hopes.
   
• Our response to sorrow is a reaction. We respond by trying to explain the cause of sorrow, or by escaping from sorrow, but our sorrow doesn't end. Sorrow ends only when we face the fact of sorrow, when we understand and go beyond both the cause and the effect. To try to be free of sorrow through a particular practice, or by deliberate thought, or by indulging in any of the various ways of escaping from sorrow, doesn't awaken in the mind the extraordinary beauty, the vitality, the intensity of that passion which includes and transcends sorrow.
   
• If you run away from it, you will never solve sorrow. The very word 'sorrow' etymologically means passion. Most of us have no passion. We may have lust, we may have ambition, we may want to become rich; we donate our energies to all that. But that does not bring about passion. Only with the ending of sorrow there is passion. That is total energy, not limited by thought. So it is important to understand the nature of suffering and the ending of it. The ending of it is to hold that sorrow, that pain, too. Look at it. It is a marvellous thing to know how to hold the pain and look at it, be with it, live with it, not get bitter, cynical, but to see the nature of sorrow. There is beauty in that sorrow, depth in that sorrow.
   
• Why should I accept sorrow? That is merely another superficial activity of the mind. I don't want to accept sorrow, or to attenuate it, or to run away from it. I want to understand sorrow, I want to see what it means; I want to know the beauty, the ugliness, the extraordinary vitality it has. I don't want to make it into something it is not. By accepting sorrow, or by running away from it, or by approaching it with a concept, a formula, I am not dealing with it. So a mind that would understand sorrow cannot do anything about it; it cannot transform sorrow or make it gentle. To be free of sorrow, you cannot do a thing about it. It is because we have always done something about it that we are still in sorrow.
   
• To end sorrow is to face the fact of one's loneliness, one's attachment, one's petty little demand for fame, one's hunger to be loved; it is to be free of self-concern and the puerility of self-pity.
   
• I did not say that you must get rid of sorrow. I said that you have to look at sorrow; go into it, understand it. You can't get rid of sorrow; you can't just put it away. When does one have sorrow? If you love somebody and that person doesn't love you in return, you suffer. Why? Why should you suffer? What does your suffering mean? It means you are thinking about yourself - that is the actual fact. And as long as you are thinking about your own little self, wanting to be loved and being afraid that you will not be loved, with all the ugliness involved in that, naturally you are going to have what you call sorrow.
   
• Knowledge does not end sorrow. The ending of sorrow begins with the facing of psychological facts within oneself and being totally aware of all the implications of those facts from moment to moment. This means never escaping from the fact that one is in sorrow, never rationalizing it, never offering an opinion about it, but living with that fact completely.
   
• To live with beauty, or to live with an ugly thing, and not become habituated to it requires enormous energy - an awareness that does not allow your mind to grow dull. In the same way, sorrow dulls the mind if you merely get used to it - and most of us do get used to it. But you need not get used to sorrow. You can live with sorrow, understand it, go into it - but not in order to know about it. You know that sorrow is there; it is a fact, and there is nothing more to know. You have to live with sorrow, and to live with it you must love it; and then you will find, as I said earlier, that love and sorrow and death are one.
   
• 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.
   
• 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.