On Fear

by J. Krishnamurti

If you have ever looked at a sunset with all your heart and brain and mind, it is an extraordinary sight, as is the sight of an early morning. The other day we saw the sun rise. There was the waning moon and the morning star, clear light on the waters, and the snow-covered hills, and there was great beauty, which no painter, no poet, could describe. There was a delight in that. That delight is recorded in the brain. Then that pleasure is remembered and we want that pleasure to be repeated. The repetition is no longer pleasure; it becomes memory as pleasure. It is not the original perception of that waning moon, the clear sky with that low, single star and the beauty of that light on the water. That remembrance is pleasure; it was not at the moment of perception. At the moment of seeing there was no pleasure; there was that. But it has been recorded, then there is the remembrance of that, and that pleasure is the remembrance. And there is the demand for that pleasure to be repeated. At the moment when you see the beauty of a mountain, with the snow, with the clear, blue sky, there is no pleasure, there is only that immensity, that grandeur, that majesty; later on pleasure begins when you want it to be repeated, which means the remembrance, thought, time; the same thing as fear. I have seen the whole movement of that thing that has happened yesterday morning and that I want it again. It is exactly the same movement as fear and pleasure.