Thinking without the thinker

[Guest guest]

The monkey in the tree feels hungry, and then the urge

arises to take a fruit or a nut. Action comes first,

and then the idea that you had better store it up. To

put it in different words, does action come first, or

the actor? Is there an actor without action? Do you

understand? This is what we are always asking

ourselves: Who is it that sees? Who is the watcher? Is

the thinker apart from his thoughts, the observer apart

from the observed, the experiencer apart from the

experience, the actor apart from the action?...But if

you really examine the process, very carefully,

closely and intelligently, you will see that there is

always action first, and that action with an end in

view creates the actor. Do you follow? If action has an

end in view, the gaining of that end brings about the

actor. If you think very clearly and without prejudice,

without conformity, without trying to convince

somebody, without an end in view, in that very thinking

there is no thinker¡Xthere is only the thinking. It is

only when you seek an end in your thinking that you

become important, and not thought. Perhaps some of you

have observed this. It is really an important thing to

find out, because from that we shall know how to act.

If the thinker comes first, then the thinker is more

important than thought, and all the philosophies,

customs and activities of the present civilization are

based on this assumption; but if thought comes first

then thought is more important than the thinker.

 

J. Krishnamurti