Forgiveness

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Questioner: Can there be sex without this desire of thought?

 

Krishnamurti: You have to find out for yourself. Sex plays an

extraordinarily important part in our lives because it is perhaps the only deep,

firsthand experience we have. Intellectually and emotionally we conform,

imitate, follow, obey. There is pain and strife in all our relationships, except

in the act of sex. This act, being so different and beautiful, we become

addicted to, so it in turn becomes a bondage. The bondage is the demand for its

continuation - again the action of the centre which is divisive. One is so

hedged about - intellectually, in the family, in the community, through social

morality, through religious sanctions - so hedged about that there is only this

one relationship left in which there is freedom and intensity. Therefore we give

tremendous importance to it. But if there were freedom all around then this

would not be such a craving and such a problem. We make it a problem because we

can't get enough of it, or because we feel guilty at having got it, or because

in getting it we break the rules which society has laid down. It is the old

society which calls the new society permissive because for the new society sex

is a part of life. In freeing the mind from the bondage of imitation, authority,

conformity and religious prescriptions, sex has its own place, but it won't be

all-consuming. From this one can see that freedom is essential for love - not

the freedom of revolt, not the freedom of doing what one likes nor of indulging

openly or secretly one's cravings, but rather the freedom which comes in the

understanding of this whole structure and nature of the centre. Then freedom is

love.

 

Questioner: So freedom is not licence?

 

Krishnamurti: No. Licence is bondage. Love is not hate, nor jealousy, nor

ambition, nor the competitive spirit with its fear of failure. It is not the

love of god nor the love of man - which again is a division. Love is not of the

one or of the many. When there is love it is personal and impersonal, with and

without an object. It is like the perfume of a flower; one or many can smell it:

what matters is the perfume, not to whom it belongs.

 

Questioner: Where does forgiveness come in all this?

 

Krishnamurti: When there is love there can be no forgiveness. Forgiveness

comes only after you have accumulated rancour; forgiveness is resentment. Where

there is no wound there is no need for healing. It is inattention that breeds

resentment and hate, and you become aware of them and then forgive. Forgiveness

encourages division. When you are conscious that you are forgiving, then you are

sinning. When you are conscious that you are tolerant, then you are intolerant.

When you are conscious that you are silent, then there is no silence. When you

deliberately set about to love, then you are violent. As long as there is an

observer who says, " I am " or " I am not " , love cannot be.