Sharing excerpt from ‘Think On These Things’ ~ J Krishnamurti

Questioner: Why are our desires never fully realized? Why are there always hindrances that prevent us from doing completely as we wish?

Krishnamurti: If your desire to do something is complete, if your whole being is in it without seeking a result, without wanting to fulfill – which means without fear – then there is no hindrance. There is a hindrance, a contradiction only when your desire is incomplete, broken up: you want to do something and at the same time you are afraid to do it, or you half want to do something else. Besides, can you ever fully realize your desires? Do you understand? I will explain.

Society, which is the collective relationship between man and man, does not want you to have a complete desire, because if you did you would be a nuisance, a danger to society. You are permitted to have respectable desires like ambition, envy – that is perfectly all right. Being made up of human beings who are envious, ambitious, who believe and imitate, society accepts envy, ambition, belief, imitation, even though these are all intimations of fear. As long as your desires fit into the established pattern, you are a respectable citizen. But the moment you have a complete desire, which is not of the pattern, you become a danger; so society is always watching to prevent you from having a complete desire, a desire which would be the expression of your total being and therefore bring about a revolutionary action.

The action of being is entirely different from the action of becoming. The action of being is so revolutionary that society rejects it and concerns itself exclusively with the action of becoming, which is respectable because it fits into the pattern. But any desire that expresses itself in the action of becoming, which is a form of ambition, has no fulfillment. Sooner or later it is thwarted, impeded, frustrated, and we revolt against that frustration in mischievous ways.

This is a very important question to go into, because as you grow older you will find that your desires are never really fulfilled. In fulfillment there is always the shadow of frustration, and in your heart there is not a song but a cry. The desire to become to become a great man, a great saint, a great this or that – has no end and therefore no fulfillment; its demand is ever for the `more’, and such desire always breeds agony, misery, wars. But when one is free of all desire to become there is a state of being whose action is totally different. It is. That which is has no time. it does not think in terms of fulfillment. Its very being is its fulfillment.

~ J Krishnamurti