attached to the known

Now if you see how it is still the action of thought and is therefore based on fear,
 on imagination, on the past, that is the field of the known.  That is,
 I am attached to the field of the known, with all its varieties, changes,
 its activities, and what I demand is comfort.  Because I have found comfort
 in the past,  I have lived within the field of the known; that is my territory, 
 I know its borders, the frontiers.  

So I ask myself: my life has been the past; I live in the past; I act in the past;
 that is my life.  Listen to this!  My life, living in the past is a dead life. 
 You understand?  My mind, which lives in the past , is a dead mind.  

  I see this as something enormously real.  Therefore the mind, realizing that,
 actually dies to the past; it will use the past, but it has lost its grip;  
the past has lost its values, grip, its, vitality.  So the mind has its own energy,
 which is not derived from the past.  
Therefore living is dying - you understand? 

Therefore living is love, which is dying.  Because if there is no attachment, 
then there is love.  If there is no attachment to the past - the past has its value,
 which can be used, which must be used as knowledge - then my living
 is a constant renewal, is a constant movement in the field of the unknown
 in which there is learning, moving





J. Krishnamurti
from a talk in Saanen, July 27th, 1972
art by Van Gogh