Escapes...

There is this desire to escape from daily routine, from a relationship no longer alive, and from knowledge which is always becoming stale. You choose one kind of escape, I another, and my particular brand is always assumed to be more worthwhile than yours; but all escape, whether in the form of an ideal, the cinema, or the church, is harmful, leading to illusion and mischief. Psychological escapes are more harmful than the obvious ones, being more subtle and complex and therefore more difficult to discover. The silence that is made up through disciplines, controls, resistances, positive or negative, is a result, an effect and so not creative; it is dead.

There is a silence which is not a reaction, a result; a silence which is not the outcome of stimulation, of sensation; a silence which is not put together, not a conclusion. It comes into being when the process of thought is understood. Thought is the response of memory, of determined conclusions, conscious or unconscious; this memory dictates action according to pleasure and pain. So ideas control action and hence there is conflict between action and idea. This conflict is always with us, and as it intensifies there is an urge to be free from it; but until this conflict is understood and resolved, any attempt to be free from it is an escape. As long as action is approximating to an idea, conflict is inevitable. Only when action is free from idea does conflict cease.

' But how can action ever be free from idea? Surely, there can be action without there being ideation first. Action follows idea, and I cannot possibly imagine any action which is not the result of idea.'

Idea is the outcome of memory; Idea is the verbalization of memory; idea is an inadequate reaction to challenge, to life. Adequate response to life is action. We respond ideationally in order to safeguard ourselves against action. Ideas limit action. There is safety in the field of ideas, but not in action; so action is made subservient to idea. Idea is the self-protective pattern for action. In intense crisis there is direct action, freed from idea. It is against this spontaneous action that the mind is disciplined itself; and as with most of us the mind is dominant, ideas act as a brake on action and hence there is friction between action and ideation.

' I find my mind wandering off to that happy experience of the Engadine (or the Himalayas as we often say). Is it an escape to relive that experience in memory?'

Obviously. The actual is your life in the present; this crowded street, your business, your immediate relationships. If these were pleasing and gratifying, the Engadine( is a long valley in the Swiss Alpss located in the canton of Graubünden in southeast Switzerland.) would fade away; but as the actual is confusing and painful, you turn to an experience, but it is finished; you give it life only through memory. The present being dull, shallow, we turn to the past or look at a self-projected future. To escape from the present inevitably leads to illusion. To see the present as it actually is, without condemnation or justification, is to understand 'what is', and then there is action which brings about a transformation in 'what is'.

- An excerpt from "Commentaries on living" - J Krishnamurthi. I felt this is one common thing everyone experiences. So I thought if the problem is understood, There won't be a need to escape..