At the Root of Conflict

You are multiplying the conflict...
Please observe your own state. Now, how do you observe yourself? Do you observe as a watcher looking at something apart from himself, which means that there is a division, a contradiction between the observer and the observed? Or do you observe without the observer? Please follow this, it is important. When we are looking into the enormously complex process of our own consciousness, whose very essence is conflict, we must understand what we mean by looking, observing. I am sure most of us observe as someone from the outside looking inward. You are aware of your conflicts, and you are watching them as a censor, as a judge, as an observer apart from the observed. That is what most of us do, and that prevents us from understanding this very complex thing called conflict - the enormous weight, the content, the varieties of it. When you observe as an outsider looking in, you actually create conflict, do you not? You are not understanding conflict but only increasing it. Being aware of conflict within himself, the observer says, ''I must change that; I do not like conflict, I like pleasure.'' So the observer always has this attitude of judging, censoring, and when you so observe, you are not understanding conflict; on the contrary, you are multiplying it. Have I made myself clear on that point? - Talks by Krishnamurti in Saanen, 1963

The conflict of the opposites
Being caught in the process of becoming, of acquisition, and realizing its strife and pain, the desire to get out of it gives birth to the conflict of duality. Gain always engenders fear, and fear gives birth to the conflict of opposites - the overcoming of what is and transforming it into that which is desired. Does not an opposite contain the germ of its own opposite? Is virtue the opposite of vice? If it is, then it ceases to be virtue. If virtue is the opposite of vice, then virtue is the outcome of vice. Beauty is not the denial of the ugly. Virtue has no opposite. Greed can never become nongreed, any more than ignorance can become enlightenment. If enlightenment is the opposite of ignorance, then it is no longer enlightenment. Greed is still greed when it tries to become nongreed, for the becoming itself is greed. The conflict of the opposites is not the conflict of dissimilars, but of changing and opposing desires. Conflict exists only when what is is not understood. If we can understand what is, then there is no conflict of its opposite. What is can be understood only through choiceless awareness in which there is neither condemnation, justification, nor identification. - Eighth Talk in Madras, 1947