Daily Quote, Thursday May 14, 2009.

Sorry about not having the quote up yesterday. The Blogger was down in the morning and I was busy all day. I had a friend in town from Syracuse and we spend a fun afternoon together catching up on news.

I also heard back from the Krishnamurti Foundation and thankfully the Ojai Valley was not affected by the wildfires near Santa Barbara. Also, the orange and avocado groves need regular watering and so they are not as dry and vulnerable to fire as other areas.

Also, Prof. Ravindra's talk on the Yoga Sutras is tomorrow night (Friday) at the Yoga Loft at 7:30pm. He was a friend and student of Krishnamurti for 20 years and his insights into yoga are incredibly eye-opening.

Here is Wednesday's quote and then today's:

Thought cannot do anything about it.

We must be aware of the nature of pleasure and what gives it strength and vitality, which again is thought. It's really very, very simple if one understands it: we see a woman, a car, a child, a house, a picture, or we listen to music; seeing, feeling, censoring that picture, that building, that woman, thought thinks about it and gives to that pleasure strength and continuity. When we understand this we see at the same time that, where there is pursuit of pleasure, there is always the shadow of pain, the avoidance, the resistance.

Thought creates resistance around itself so that it will have no pain at all. Thought lives in this artificial pleasure because of something that it has had or wants to have. If thought says, 'I understand this very well and I must act to get beyond it,' the beyond becomes another form of pleasure created by thought. Thought has built a psychological structure of pleasure. Seeing the nature of it, seeing that there is pain in it, thought says, 'I must do something else: I must act differently, I must behave differently. I mustn't think about pleasure; I must resist pleasure, I must do this and that.' The very action which thought creates about pleasure is still pleasure. Thought cannot do anything about it.

Collected Works, Vol. XVI - 146

A passion with a motive invariably ends in despair.

If passion is aroused sexually or for some purpose, if passion has a cause, if it has an end in view, then in that so-called passion there is frustration, there is pain, there is the demand for the continuity of pleasure and, therefore, the fear of not having it and the avoidance of pain. So, a passion with a motive, or a passion which is aroused, invariably ends in despair, pain, frustration, anxiety.

We are talking about passion without a motive, which is quite a different thing. Whether it exists or not is for you to find out, but we know that passion aroused ends in despair, in anxiety, in pain, or in the demand for a particular form of pleasure. And, in that there is conflict, there is contradiction, there is a constant demand. We are talking of a passion that is without motive. There is such a passion. It has nothing to do with personal gain or loss, or all the petty little demands of a particular pleasure and the avoidance of pain. Without that passion you cannot possibly cooperate, and cooperation is life, which is relationship.

Collected Works, Vol. XIV - 95