Most teachers all point to an ideal, to someone to become, to areas of ourselves that we must “transcend”, to ways we can “improve” on who we are. But these are all escapes and attachments. Even to try to be without attachment is an attachment. The answer is to have a still mind. And yet, to try to have a still mind is to introduce more conflict.
Hmmmm….
“How can one be free from conditioning?”
Krishnamurti responds:
“Only by understanding, being aware of our escapes. Our attachment to a person, to work, to an ideology, is the conditioning factor; this is the thing we have to understand, and not seek a better or more intelligent escape. All escapes are unintelligent as they inevitably bring about conflict. To cultivate detachment is another form of escape, of isolation; it is attachment to an abstraction, to an ideal called detachment. The ideal is fictitious, ego-made, and becoming the ideal is an escape from what is. There is the understanding of what is, and adequate action towards what is, only when the mind is not longer seeking an escape. The very thinking about what is is an escape from what is. Thinking about the problem is escape from the problem, and the only problem. The mind, unwilling to be what it is, fearful of what it is, seeks these various escapes; and the way of escape is thought. As long as there is thinking, there must be escapes, attachments, which only strengthen conditioning.
“Freedom from conditioning comes with the freedom from thinking. When the mind is utterly still, only then is there freedom for the real to be.”
