Talk to teachers, Chapter 10, part 2

There are only two ways of doing it: either there is something within you which is so urgent that it burns away all contradiction; or you have to find an approach which will watch all the time, which will deliberately set about investigating everything you are doing, an awareness which will ceaselessly ask the question to find out in yourself so that a new quality comes into being which keeps all the dirt out.

Now, which is it that you are doing as a human being as well as a teacher?

Teacher: Is one to question constantly, or is there a questioning which has its own momentum?

Krishnamurti: If there is no momentum, then you have to start with little things, haven't you? Start with the little things, not the big things. Start observing how you dress, what you say, how you watch the road, without the operation of criticism. And, watching, listening, how are you going to get to the other, which will be the momentum, which carries all by itself?
There is a momentum to which you do not have to pay attention, but you cannot come to it except by watching little things; and yet you have to see that you are not caught in this everlasting watching. To watch one's dress, the sky, and yet be out of it, so that your mind is not only watching little things but absorbing the wider issues, such as the good of the country, and the much wider issues also, such as authority, such as this perpetual desire to fulfil, this constant concern whether one is right or wrong, and fear. So, can the mind observe the little things and without being caught in the little things, can it move out so that it can record much greater issues?

Teacher: What is the state of mind, the approach in which there is this everlasting watching, the understanding of little things, without being caught in the little things?

Krishnamurti: Why are you caught in the little things? What is the thing that makes you a prisoner of the little?

Teacher: My opinions. And yet I do not want to be caught in little things.

Krishnamurti: But I have to pay attention to little things. Most people are caught in them the moment they pay attention. To pay attention and yet not to be prisoner to little things, is the issue. Now, what makes the mind or the brain a prisoner?

Teacher: Concern with the immediate.

Krishnamurti: What do you mean, sir? Do you mean not having a long vision? You are not looking at the problem.

Teacher: My attachment to little things.

Krishnamurti: Are you not a prisoner of little things?

Teacher: I am. With me it is probably a deep unconscious sense, that I am preparing myself for something great, an illusion like that.

Krishnamurti: Are you aware that you are a prisoner of little things? Examine why you are a prisoner. Take the fact that you are a prisoner of little things, and possibly of many little things, ask why, go into it, question it, find out. Do not give an explanation and run with the explanation which you did just now. You must actually take one thing and look at it. In tackling inwardly the frustration, the conflict, the resistance, you correct the outer.

The psychological conflict within expresses itself outwardly in your becoming a prisoner of little things and then you try to correct them. Without understanding the inward conflict, the misery, life has no meaning. If you discover that you are frustrated, then go into it; and if you have gone deeply into it, it will correct the anger, the overeating, the over-dressing.

The way you question frustration is important. How do you question? So that frustration unfolds, so that frustration flowers? It is only when thought flowers that it can naturally die. Like the flower in a garden, thought must blossom, it must come to fruition and then it dies. Thought must be given freedom to die. In the same way there must be freedom for frustration to flower and die. And the right question is whether can there be freedom for frustration to flower and to die?

Teacher: What do you mean by flowering, sir?

Krishnamurti: Look at the garden, the flowers in front over there! They come to bloom and after a few days they wither away because it is their nature. Now, frustration must be given freedom so that it blossoms. You have to understand the reason of frustration, but not in order to suppress it, not to say, "I must fulfil". Why should I fulfil? If I am a liar I can try to stop lying, which is what people generally do. But can I allow that lie to flower and die? Can I refuse to say it is right or wrong, good or bad? Can I see what is behind the lie? I can only find out spontaneously why I lie if there is freedom to find out. In the same way, in order not to be a prisoner of little things, can I find out why I am a prisoner? I want that fact to flower. I want it to grow and to expand, so that it withers and dies without my touching it. Then I am no longer a prisoner though I watch the little things.

Your question was: "Is there a momentum which keeps moving, keeping itself clean, healthy?" That momentum, that flame which burns, can only be when there is freedom for everything to flower - the ugly, the beautiful, the evil, the good and the stupid - so that there is not a thing suppressed, so that there is not a thing which has not been brought up and examined and burnt out. And I cannot do that if through the little things I do not discover frustration, misery, sorrow, conflict, stupidity, dullness. If I only discover frustration through reasoning I do not know what frustration means. So, from little things I go to something, wider and in understanding the wider, the other things flower without intervention.