J. Krishnamurti, Public Talk 4 Brockwood Park, England - 05 September 1982
Can death take place while living? Please understand what we mean. I am attached to my family, to my wife, to my house, to the beautiful furniture I just bought the other day—I haven't bought it but—and I'm attached to all that. Death is the ending of that. Now can I, living in this life with all my vitality, end the attachment, which is death?
I am attached to my wife, or to my children, more to my bank account, and death wipes all that away. While living with my clear mind, with her clarities, with my vitality, end that attachment. So I am living with death all the time. Do you understand the beauty of it? Do you understand?
That is, ending that which psychologically I have accumulated.
Therefore the living and the dying go together. Do you understand what it means? Have you ever tried, if one may ask most respectfully, have you ever tried to end something without any cause? Ordinary things—smoking, drinking, chattering, end following somebody, your leader, your guru, your priest, your specialist. The specialist psychologically. We are not talking of the specialist, physical specialist, the doctors and so on. Have you voluntarily, without any cause, end something? You may dislike somebody, hate somebody—end it. That is death.
So one begins to understand, if one goes into it very deeply, that death is not something at the end of one's life, however brief, however long, but death is a movement of life. Death is closely related to life. And so where there is an ending, complete ending, without causation, then there is a beginning without end, that is immortality. That is a state of timelessness. But if I am frightened of death, which is frightened of losing, to end that fear, lose now. You understand? In that there is great beauty.
J. Krishnamurti, Public Talk 4 Brockwood Park, England - 05 September 1982