"If we can really understand the problem, the answer will come out of it, because the answer is not separate from the problem"
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Krishnamurti is quietly detonating the modern habit of treating life like a technical glitch: name the issue, outsource a fix, move on. His line insists that a “problem” isn’t an object sitting over there while a detached “solver” stands over here. The split is the problem. If you approach anxiety, conflict, desire, or fear as something to be conquered with a method, you’ve already smuggled in the very division that keeps it alive: a self trying to manage itself.
The intent is anti-technique. Krishnamurti spent decades arguing that systems of self-improvement, spiritual ladders, and borrowed authority (gurus, ideologies, even comforting routines of thought) anesthetize perception. “Really understand” in his vocabulary isn’t intellectual mastery; it’s direct seeing without the mind immediately translating experience into story, blame, or strategy. When that seeing is complete, the “answer” isn’t a bolt-on solution. It’s the problem dissolving because its fuel - misperception, resistance, identification - is removed.
Subtext: you can’t escape yourself by reorganizing your thoughts about yourself. The craving for an answer is often a craving to stop feeling. Krishnamurti implies that the demand for quick resolution is part of the same machinery that produced the conflict.
Context matters. Writing and speaking in the 20th century, in a world obsessed with ideology, expert authority, and psychological “methods,” he positioned freedom as immediate, not incremental. It’s a radical claim with a sharp edge: if the answer is “not separate,” then neither is responsibility. The work isn’t to accumulate better tools; it’s to look so clearly that the need for tools collapses.
The intent is anti-technique. Krishnamurti spent decades arguing that systems of self-improvement, spiritual ladders, and borrowed authority (gurus, ideologies, even comforting routines of thought) anesthetize perception. “Really understand” in his vocabulary isn’t intellectual mastery; it’s direct seeing without the mind immediately translating experience into story, blame, or strategy. When that seeing is complete, the “answer” isn’t a bolt-on solution. It’s the problem dissolving because its fuel - misperception, resistance, identification - is removed.
Subtext: you can’t escape yourself by reorganizing your thoughts about yourself. The craving for an answer is often a craving to stop feeling. Krishnamurti implies that the demand for quick resolution is part of the same machinery that produced the conflict.
Context matters. Writing and speaking in the 20th century, in a world obsessed with ideology, expert authority, and psychological “methods,” he positioned freedom as immediate, not incremental. It’s a radical claim with a sharp edge: if the answer is “not separate,” then neither is responsibility. The work isn’t to accumulate better tools; it’s to look so clearly that the need for tools collapses.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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