Jiddu Krishnamurti Quotes on Love

Love is not pleasure; love is not desire. When there is love there is no image.
To understand what true love is, we must understand our present attitude, thought, and action towards love. If you truly thought about it you would see that our love is based on possessiveness, and our laws and ethics are founded on this desire to hold and to control. How can there be deep love when there is this desire to possess, to hold? When the mind is free from possessiveness, then there is that loveliness, the bliss of love.
Love is not identification; it is not thought about the loved. You do not think about love when it is there; you think about it only when it is absent, when there is distance between you and the object of your love. When there is direct communion, there is no thought, no image, no revival of memory; it is when the communion breaks, at any level, that the process of thought, of imagination, begins.
When we identify ourselves with another, is that an indication of love? Does identification imply experimentation? Does not identification put an end to love and to experiment? Identification, surely, is possession, the assertion of ownership; and ownership denies love, does it not? To own is to be secure; possession is defence, making oneself invulnerable. In identification there is resistance, whether gross or subtle; and is love a form of self-protective resistance? Is there love when there is defence?

Love is vulnerable, pliable, receptive; it is the highest form of sensitivity, and identification makes for insensitivity. Identification and love do not go together, for the one destroys the other. Identification is essentially a thought process by which the mind safeguards and expands itself; and in becoming something it must resist and defend, it must own and discard. In this process of becoming, the mind or the self grows tougher and more capable; but this is not love. Identification destroys freedom, and only in freedom can there be the highest form of sensitivity.
You can know yourself only when you love completely. This, again, is the whole process of life, not to be gathered in a few moments from a few words of mine. You cannot be yourself when love is dependent. It is not love when it is merely self-gratification, though it may be mutual. It is not love when there is a withholding; it is not love when it is merely a means to an end; when it is merely sensation. You cannot be yourself when love is at the behest of fear; it is then fear, not love, that is expressing itself in many ways, though you may cover it up by calling it love. Fear cannot allow you to be yourself. Intellect merely guides fear, controls it, but can never destroy it, for intellect is the very cause of fear.
Love is a state of being, and in that state, the 'me', with its identifications, anxieties, and possessions, is absent. Love cannot be, as long as the activities of the self, of the 'me', whether conscious or unconscious, continue to exist. That is why it is important to understand the process of the self, the center of recognition which is the 'me'.
What is important is to look at that tree against that light. Because, in most of our lives there is no beauty at all. We never look at a tree. We are never aware of the squalor and the dirt on the road. And, without beauty, there is no love. You cannot see that sunset and that marvelous tree against that light if you have no love. And love is not pleasure, love is not desire. Love is that act of seeing that beauty, that extraordinary light. And, to see it is to love it; and that is love. And, without it, you cannot do anything.
When there is love, there is no duty. When you love your wife, you share everything with her—your property, your trouble, your anxiety, your joy. You do not dominate. You are not the man and she the woman to be used and thrown aside, a sort of breeding machine to carry on your name. When there is love, the word duty disappears.
Love cannot be thought about, love cannot be cultivated, love cannot be practised. The practice of love, the practice of brotherhood, is still within the field of the mind, therefore it is not love. When all this has stopped, then love comes into being, then you will know what it is to love. Then love is not quantitative but qualitative.
Love is not of the mind, it is not in the net of thought, it cannot be sought out, cultivated, cherished; it is there when the mind is silent and the heart is empty of the things of the mind.
As long as we possess, we shall never love. We know love as sensation, do we not? When we say we love, we know jealousy, we know fear, we know anxiety. When you say you love someone, all that is implied: envy, the desire to possess, the desire to own, to dominate, the fear of loss, and so on. All this we call love, and we do not know love without fear, without envy, without possession; we merely verbalize that state of love which is without fear, we call it impersonal, pure, divine, or God knows what else; but the fact is that we are jealous, we are dominating, possessive.
Love implies great freedom—not to do what you like. But love comes only when the mind is very quiet, disinterested, not self-centered. These are not ideals. If you have no love, do what you will—go after all the gods on earth, do all the social activities, try to reform the poor, the politics, write books, write poems—you are a dead human being. And without love your problems will increase, multiply endlessly. And with love, do what you will, there is no risk; there is no conflict. Then love is the essence of virtue. And a mind that is not in a state of love is not a religious mind at all. And it is only the religious mind that is freed from problems, and that knows the beauty of love and truth.
Without love, there is no right action. We talk about action. We do so many kinds of social work. But when there is love in your heart, in your eyes, in your blood, in your face, you are a different human being. Whatever you do then has beauty, has grace, is a right action.
All our life is based on many, many causes. I love you because you give me something. I love you because you comfort me. I love you because I'm sexually fulfilling, and so on, so on, so on. That is a cause, and the effect is - the word I use is `love' which it is not, and any motive I have is a causation. So I'm asking my friend, is it possible to live without any cause? Not belong to any cause in the sense, organised cause or in myself, to have no cause. Knowing if there is a causation there is an ending, which is time. Now we're going to find out together if there is a life, daily living, in our daily relationship, in our daily activity, not some theoretical activity, actual - can one live without a cause? Look into it, my friend, don't look to me but look at it, look at the question first.

Knowing when I say, I love you because in return you give me something, in that relationship of causation there is always ending of that relationship. So we're asking each other, is there a life without cause? See the beauty of it, sir, first, see the depth, see the vitality of that question, not the mere words. We said, love has no cause - obviously. If I love your because you give me something, it's a merchandise, a thing of the market. So can I love you, can there be love, without wanting, nothing physically, nothing psychologically, inwardly, nothing in any form? So that is love, which has no cause, therefore it is infinite. You understand? Like intelligence, which has no cause, it is endless, timeless, so is compassion. Now if there is that quality in our life, the whole activity changes completely.