Comment: We instinctively avoid pain and sorrow.

KRISHNAMURTI: The gentleman says that we instinctively avoid pain and sorrow. When you say you avoid pain and sorrow, then why do you suffer? Such a question has no meaning. If you say, “I instinctively avoid a snake,” then that has an answer; that is a fact. But when you say you instinctively want to avoid pain and suffering, you are living in suffering; you can’t avoid it. You are following all this, sirs? Why do you suffer? Go into it, sirs. That is your challenge. What is your response to that challenge, sirs? Why do you suffer?

Comment: Because we are not full, because our mind is not full. There is the utter emptiness of life.

KRISHNAMURTI: You have given explanations, and at the end of it you suffer—which means that you accept suffering as inevitable. A healthy mind does not accept suffering, sir. Now after explaining, do you want to go into it? How do you go into it so that when you leave this room, you are finished with suffering once and for all, you do not go back to the eternal wheel of sorrow?

Comment: Accept the fact that there is suffering. Attachment is the cause of sorrow.

KRISHNAMURTI: You say that attachment is the cause of sorrow. Therefore, you cultivate detachment, and in the meantime you are agonizing. You are in a state of agony, and you accept the fact that you are suffering. Why do you accept it? You don’t accept sunshine, do you? Suffering is there; you don’t have to accept it. Pain with its burning intensity is agonizing you, and you don’t say, “I must accept it.” It is there. You can explain, you can gradually push it away—that is what you are doing. You might say, “I accept it, I will bear with it,” but you can’t bear with an intense pain more than a few hours or so.

And the mind says sorrow is created by attachment—which means you will be free from sorrow if you are detached. So you begin to cultivate detachment which all the books talk about. Why are you attached first of all? You say that you are inwardly empty, and therefore you are attached to the wife, to the child, to an idea, to power, position, to fill that emptiness. You don’t tackle the emptiness, but you run away from the emptiness. So how do you face this fact of suffering?

The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti -Volume XII 1961: There Is No Thinker, Only Thought
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Action which springs from the self-preserving process of consciousness with its many layers of ignorance, tendencies, wants, fears cannot liberate the mind from its own self-created limitation, but merely intensifies sorrow and frustration. As long as this process continues, as long as there is no comprehension of this ‘I’ process, not only in its obvious form and expression, but also in its prodigious subtleties, there must be suffering and confusion. Yet this very suffering, from which we are ever trying to escape, can lead us to the comprehension of the ‘I’ process, to the profound knowledge of oneself, but all escapes into illusion must cease. The greater the suffering, the stronger is the indication of limitation. But if you do not suffer, it does not necessarily mean that you are free of limitations. On the contrary, it may be that your mind is stagnant within self-protective walls so that no provocations of life, no experiences, can stir it into activity and so awaken it to sorrow. Such a mind is incapable of discerning reality. Suffering can bring about the comprehension of oneself if you do not try to avoid it or to escape from it.

How can we bring to an end the ‘I’ process, so that our action does not create further limitations and sorrow? To bring this ‘I’ process to an end, there must be the consciousness of suffering, not the mere conception of suffering. Unless there is the vital provocation of life, most of us are apt to comfort ourselves to sleep and so allow unconsciously the ‘I’ process to continue. The essential requirement for the discernment of the ‘I’ process is to be fully conscious of suffering. Then there must be the utter certainty that there are no escapes whatsoever from suffering. All search for comfort and superficial remedies then wholly ceases. All ritualistic palliatives cease to have any significance. We then begin to perceive that no external agency can help us to bring this self-sustaining process of ignorance to an end. When the mind is in this state of openness, when it is wholly able to confront itself, then it becomes its own mirror, then there is undivided consciousness; it does not judge its actions by standards, nor is it controlled by the authority of ideal. It is then its own creator and destroyer. Environment with its conditioning influences, and heredity with its limiting characteristics, yield to the comprehension of the ‘I’ process. When the mind discerns this process integrally, it sees itself as the process, utilizing all action, all relationship to sustain itself. In the renewal of itself from moment to moment, through its own volitional activities, the ‘I’ process is perpetuating itself and merely engendering sorrow.

The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti – Volume III 1936-1944: The Mirror of Relationship
Jiddu Krishnamurti