Feb 20, 2012

Passages from The Courage to Stand Alone

The Courage to Stand Alone - U.G. Krishnamurti
 

There is no permanent entity there at all. What is there (what you call "I") is only a first person singular pronoun. Nothing else. If you don't want to use that word "I" to prove that you are a man without "I", it is your privilege. That's all that is there. There is no permanent entity there at all. While you are living, the knowledge that is there does not belong to you. So, why are you concerned as to what will happen after what you call "you" is gone?



The Courage to Stand Alone - U.G. Krishnamurti
 

When thought is not there all the time, what is there is living from moment to moment. It's all frames, millions and millions and millions of frames, to put it in the language of film. There is no continuity there, there is no movement there. Thought can never, never capture the movement.



The Courage to Stand Alone - U.G. Krishnamurti

You see that is the way thought functions. There is no continuity of thought. The only way it can maintain its continuity is through the constant demand for experiencing the same thing over and over and over again. So, what is there is the knowledge you have about yourself and about the world around you. The world around you is not quite different from the world you have created for yourself inside of you. What you are frightened of (not you, but that movement of thought), is the continuity coming to an end.



The Courage to Stand Alone - U.G. Krishnamurti

The body knows that it is immortal. I very deliberately use the word immortal because nothing there comes to an end. When what you call clinical death takes place, the body breaks itself into its constituent elements. That's all that happens. It may not reconstitute again and create the same body, which you think is yours, but when it breaks itself into its constituent elements, it provides the basis for the continuity of life. It may not be of any consolation to the individual who is dying, but this body becomes food for the millions and millions of bacteria. So, even assuming for a moment that you resort to cremation, as they do in some countries, wherever you dump the ashes, the carbon which is the end result of the burned body, provides the basis for some tiny little flower coming out of the earth. So, nothing here is lost.

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