"I’m in sorrow. Psychologically I’m terribly disturbed; and I have
an idea about it: what I should do, what I should not do, how it should
be changed. That idea, that formula, that concept prevents me from
looking at the fact of what is. Ideation and the formula are escapes
from what is. There is immediate action when there is great danger. Then
you have no idea. You don’t formulate an idea and then act according to
that idea. The mind has become lazy, indolent through a formula which
has given it a means of escape from action with regard to what is.
Seeing for ourselves the whole structure of what has been said, not
because it has been pointed out to us, is it possible to face the fact:
the fact that we are violent, as an example? We are violent human
beings, and we have chosen violence as the way of life—war and all the
rest of it. Though we talk everlastingly, especially in the East, of
non-violence, we are not non-violent people; we are violent people. The
idea of non-violence is an idea, which can be used politically. That’s a
different meaning, but it is an idea, and not a fact. Because the human
being is incapable of meeting the fact of violence, he has invented the
ideal of non-violence, which prevents him from dealing with the fact.
After all, the fact is that I’m violent; I’m angry.
What is the need of
an idea? It is not the idea of being angry; it’s the actual fact of
being angry that is important, like the actual fact of being hungry.
There’s no idea about being hungry. The idea then comes as to what you
should eat, and then according to the dictates of pleasure, you eat.
There is only action with regard to what is when there is no idea of
what should be done about that which confronts you, which is what is."
The Book of Life, August 23, HarperSanFrancisco, 1995
https://jkrishnamurti.org/content/face-fact
