why in this life people are so attached to sex

Spoken by Supreme Master Ching Hai, Hsihu Center, FormosaOct. 31, 1995 (Originally in English Many of us think that we know the precepts, we understand the precepts, and that we keep the precepts. But you must know that the precepts have three parts: physical, spiritual and mental. Most people are married and stay with a married partner for all life long, and they think they are faithful. But Jesus said that even if you look upon the neighbor's wife and have lust in your heart, you have already committed adultery. So make sure every precept we keep is even physically, astrally, intellectually all clean and pure. Of course, we can not help it if the habit rises up again. But we can help by stopping it, not following it, and making excuses for ourselves. If you get married and you stay with one person for a long time and all the time, you think you are faithful; but be careful. Some people use marriage certificate as a shield in order to play to the limit. Sometimes flirt around with people and then people can't say anything because I'm married. So people think that just because you are married, you can kind of flirt around all the time without worrying; because if you don't like that person, say, "Sorry I'm married." If you like then you can flirt a lot more and then use marriage as a limit, so that you can enjoy it to some certain extent; but then no one can do anything, no one can say anything. After all you go back to your husband, or to your wife. But that's not true faithfulness either. True Faithfulness So if you truly want to be faithful to your wife or husband the precept is from inside out. You don't even look at another person. You don't even care what the other person wears or does. You don't care what he or she looks like. And you don't even have one idea of comparing your wife or husband to another persons', or to look for a kind of pleasure in any form apart from your own partner. That is true faithfulness. That is very difficult. But difficult doesn't mean impossible. I did that during my marriage. It was just natural. It was not because I knew the precept or anything like that. It was just natural. When I was married, I was married. I knew that, and finish. So if you yourself make your will become strong and guide your own mind and passion into one direction only,  your life will become more peaceful, your marriage will become blissful and enjoyable. If you don't guide yourself, you will always make excuses, like, "Oh I'm just holding hands. I'm just looking. I'm not doing anything. I haven't gone to bed with her yet." Need you do that in order to be unfaithful? There is astral sex as well, not physical only. I'm sorry to tell you all this so bluntly and not very nobly, but what else can I tell you? Sex is not ignoble, if you have love between each other and between the bond of marriage and responsibility, only if you do it with love, then you should have sex with your partner. If you don't feel love, this is just a machine function, it is abusing each other's physical beauty, and there's nothing there. You will feel very empty, you will begin to look around, and then you'll be in a worse situation. Concentrate On The Love Between Each Other When you're married or love a person, you should concentrate only there, and it will bring you some kind of bliss as well. It will add flavor to your practicing life and this is also one kind of practice. If you concentrate on one thing, if you concentrate on the love between each other it is also a kind of concentration, and it brings you happiness. Whatever brings you true happiness and pure happiness is also adding to your spiritual practice. Whatever strays from that is negative. So the precept is not that you keep it physically only, because there are thoughts, deeds and speech. Everything springs from the thought as well. So if you don't think, you will not do. If you don't think first, you can't speak. Therefore you have to keep the precept from the thought already. Always guide your thought, carefully where it should go. Tell your thought that this is not possible to think that way, it's not proper, you should not even think about it; and slowly your mind will listen to your direction. That's how you master yourself. Not eager to become a master of the multitude and teach disciples and all that, but to master your own horses within, make them go where you want them to go. That's how your life becomes more powerful. You know yourself you are the master of your own destiny and direction. That's when you feel strong, powerful, confident; are able to look even God directly in the eyes and tell Hirm I have nothing to fear. (Applause) Give Your Partner Love And Encouragement If you give your life partner, beloved one or married person your true love and encouragement, day by day you will discover that person grows in different beauties and virtues. Then you will enjoy more and more that companionship, instead of diverting your attention to another direction, giving love to the wrong person. You are not supposed to love that person, or the neighbor's wife, giving all your virtues, attention and blessing to that person. Then you will see your partner more and more ugly everyday. You don't give her any blessing. You have no contact with each other. You have no supporting energy with each other. Of course, she will become less and less attractive, and further and further away from you. Keeping The Precepts From Your Heart I am telling you very bluntly that you must keep the precepts from inside your heart, not the physical. Physical is the least, and is the last thing. Sometime the physical precept was broken, but the true precept wasn't. It has happened too. Like you are forced to steal, or you are forced to do something, but act ually in your heart you are pure. That could be too, and that is excusable. That's why Jesus said: "Whoever steals for the family's bread, that person is not guilty." Now you understand. (Audience: Yes.) Respect Your Partner We practice because we want to be free from worry. We want to be free from anxiety and all kinds of binding in this world. So if a true love between woman or wife could afford you also happiness and forever everyday like this, this also is a kind of bonus. So don't look down upon your partners, but respect them like Gods and Goddesses. And that's the only God and Goddesses to worship beside the Supreme Master Ching Hai Supreme Master Tse. (Master laughs and audience applauds.) In India when Shiva was alive, he taught one hundred and twenty extra kinds of practices for lay people. One of them included love between husband and wife. Like when you embrace each other you should just merge yourself in the embrace, become one with it, with the feeling. Then you'll be oblivious to all kinds of trouble, at least at that time. That's why in this life people are so attached to sex; because it affords them temporary bliss, and affords them ability to forget all the troubles, sorrows and worries for the moment. What the people of this world do not realize is that it's not sex alone that brings you lasting happiness. It is the love before, between and after that, that makes this pleasure gift from God meaningful, and a responsibility with each other to raise children into other Gods and Goddesses to walk on this earth. Altogether, all this, all the shared happiness, joy and responsibility makes the life of a husband and wife beautiful. Treasure The Real Bliss Of True Love That's why the people who go out and seek all kinds of short time pleasure, they often end up in sorrow, empty; so they will not even respect women and do not know the real bliss of true love. Those people who have a lot of women or men, you ask them whether they're happy. No. The more they have, the less they're happy; because they do not know how to save the bliss to enjoy it in one time. They just spend it here and there -- one penny here, one penny there; and they have nothing left. If they saved their money, they could buy an airplane ticket, go somewhere, have a holiday, see something different, and learn and enjoy the whole relaxed two weeks, three weeks together, with their friends or alone, something like that. But everyday they spend, spend, spend. They have nothing left and they can not do anything. They can not buy a house, they cannot do anything at all. The capital is the same, but they spend it in a different way. So they never can enjoy the happiness of the concentrated love and pleasure. If you truly want to enjoy, say the pleasure gift of sex, then you must be very abstinent. You must respect abstinence, then you can enjoy better.

What is Marriage ?

Jiddu Krishnamurti talk on Marriage
Questioner: Marriage is a necessary part of any organized society, but you seem to be against the institution of marriage. What do you say? Please also explain the problem of sex. Why has it become, next to war, the most urgent problem of our day?

Jiddu Krishnamurti: To ask a question is easy, but the difficulty is to look very carefully into the problem itself, which contains the answer. To understand this problem, we must see its enormous implications. That is difficult, because our time is very limited and I shall have to be brief; and if you don't follow very closely, you may not be able to understand. Let us investigate the problem, not the answer, because the answer is in the problem, not away from it. The more I understand the problem, the clearer I see the answer.

If you merely look for an answer, you will not find one, because you will be seeking an answer away from the problem. Let us look at marriage, but not theoretically or as an ideal, which is rather absurd; don't let us idealize marriage, let us look at it as it is, for then we can do something about it. If you make it rosy, then you can't act; but if you look at it and see it exactly as it is, then perhaps you will be able to act.

Now, what actually takes place? When one is young, the biological, sexual urge is very strong, and in order to set a limit to it you have the institution called marriage. There is the biological urge on both sides, so you marry and have children. You tie yourself to a man or to a woman for the rest of your life, and in doing so you have a permanent source of pleasure, a guaranteed security, with the result that you begin to disintegrate; you live in a cycle of habit, and habit is disintegration.

To understand this biological, this sexual urge, requires a great deal of intelligence, but we are not educated to be intelligent. We merely get on with a man or a woman with whom we have to live. I marry at 20 or 25, and I have to live for the rest of my life with a woman whom I have not known. I have-not known a thing about her, and yet you ask me to live with her for the rest of my life. Do you call that marriage?

As I grow and observe, I find her to be completely different from me, her interests are different from mine; she is interested in clubs, I am interested in being very serious, or vice versa. And yet we have children - that is the most extraordinary thing. Sirs, don't look at the ladies and smile; it is your problem. So, I have established a relationship the significance of which I do not know, I have neither discovered it nor understood it.

It is only for the very, very few who love that the married relationship has significance, and then it is unbreakable, then it is not mere habit or convenience, nor is it based on biological, sexual need. In that love which is unconditional the identities are fused, and in such a relationship there is a remedy, there is hope. But for most of you, the married relationship is not fused. To fuse the separate identities, you have to know yourself, and she has to know herself. That means to love.

But there is no love - which is am obvious fact. Love is fresh, new, not mere gratification, not mere habit. It is unconditional. You don't treat your husband or wife that way, do you? You live in your isolation, and she lives in her isolation, and you have established your habits of assured sexual pleasure. What happens to a man who has an assured income? Surely, he deteriorates. Have you not noticed it? Watch a man who has an assured income and you will soon see how rapidly his mind is withering away. He may have a big position, a reputation for cunning, but the full joy of life is gone out of him.

Similarly, you have a marriage in which you have a permanent source of pleasure, a habit without understanding, without love, and you are forced to live in that state. I am not saying what you should do; but look at the problem first. Do you think that is right? It does not mean that you must throw off your wife and pursue somebody else. What does this relationship mean? Surely, to love is to be in communion with somebody; but are you in communion with your wife, except physically? Do you know her, except physically?

Does she know you? Are you not both isolated, each pursuing his or her own interests, ambitions and needs, each seeking from the other gratification, economic or psychological security? Such a relationship is not a relationship at all: it is a mutually self-enclosing process of psychological, biological and economic necessity, and the obvious result is conflict, misery, nagging, possessive fear, jealousy, and so on. Do you think such a relationship is productive of anything except ugly babies and an ugly civilization?

Therefore, the important thing is to see the whole process, not as something ugly, but as an actual fact which is taking place under your very nose; and realizing that, what are you going to do? You cannot just leave it at that; but because you do not want to look into it, you take to drink, to politics, to a lady around the corner, to anything that takes you away from the house and from that nagging wife or husband - and you think you have solved the problem.

That is your life, is it not? Therefore, you have to do something about it, which means you have to face it, and that means, if necessary, breaking up; because, when a father and mother are constantly nagging and quarrelling with each other, do you think that has not an effect on the children? And we have already considered, in the previous question, the education of children.

So, marriage as a habit, as a cultivation of habitual pleasure, is a deteriorating factor, because there is no love in habit. Love is not habitual; love is something joyous, creative, new. Therefore, habit is the contrary of love; but you are caught in habit, and naturally your habitual relationship with another is dead. So, we come back again to the fundamental issue, which is that the reformation of society depends on you, not on legislation. Legislation can only make for further habit or conformity.


Therefore, you as a responsible individual in relationship have to do something, you have to act, and you can act only when there is an awakening of your mind and heart. I see some of you nodding your heads in agreement with me, but the obvious fact is that you don't want to take the responsibility for transformation, for change; you don't want to face the upheaval of finding out how to live rightly.

And so the problem continues, you quarrel and carry on, and finally you die; and when you die somebody weeps, not for the other fellow, but for his or her own loneliness. You carry on unchanged and you think you are human beings capable of legislation, of occupying high positions, talking about God, finding a way to stop wars, and so on. None of these things mean anything, because you have not solved any of the fundamental issues.

Then, the other part of the problem is sex, and why sex has become so important. Why has this urge taken such a hold on you? Have you ever thought it out? You have not thought it out, because you have just indulged; you have not searched out why there is this problem. Sirs, why is there this problem? And what happens when you deal with it by suppressing it completely - you know, the ideal of Brahmacharya, and so on? What happens? It is still there. You resent anybody who talks about a woman, and you think that you can succeed in completely suppressing the sexual urge in yourself and solve your problem that way; but you are haunted by it.

It is like living in a house and putting all your ugly things in one room; but they are still there. So, discipline is not going to solve this problem - discipline being sublimation, suppression, substitution - , because you have tried it, and that is not the way out. So, what is the way out? The way out is to understand the problem, and to understand is not to condemn or justify. Let us look at it, then, in that way.

Why has sex become so important a problem in your life? Is not the sexual act, the feeling, a way of self-forgetfulness? Do you understand what I mean? In that act there is complete fusion; at that moment there is complete cessation of all conflict, you feel supremely happy because you no longer feel the need as a separate entity and you are not consumed with fear. That is, for a moment there is an ending of self-consciousness, and you feel the clarity of self-forgetfulness, the joy of self abnegation.

So, sex has become important because in every other direction you are living a life of conflict, of self-aggrandizement and frustration. Sirs, look at your lives, political, social, religious: you are striving to become something. Politically, you want to be somebody, powerful, to have position, prestige. Don't look at somebody else, don't look at the ministers. If you were given all that, you would do the same thing. So, politically, you are striving to become somebody, you are expanding yourself, are you not?

Therefore, you are creating conflict, there is no denial, there is no abnegation of the `me'. On the contrary, there is accentuation of the `me'. The same process goes on in your relationship with things, which is ownership of property, and again in the religion that you follow. There is no meaning in what you are doing, in your religious practices. You just believe, you cling to labels, words. If you observe, you will see that there too there is no freedom from the consciousness of the `me' as the centre.

Though your religion says, `Forget yourself', your very process is the assertion of yourself, you are still the important entity. You may read the Gita or the Bible, but you are still the minister, you are still the exploiter, sucking the people and building temples.

So, in every field, in every activity, you are indulging and emphasizing yourself, your importance, your prestige, your security. Therefore, there is only one source of self-forgetfulness, which is sex, and that is why the woman or the man becomes all-important to you, and why you must possess. So, you build a society which enforces that possession, guarantees you that possession; and naturally sex becomes the all-important problem when everywhere else the self is the important thing.

And do you think, Sirs, that one can live in that state without contradiction, without misery, without frustration? But when there is honestly and sincerely no self-emphasis, whether in religion or in social activity, then sex has very little meaning. It is because you are afraid to be as nothing, politically, socially, religiously, that sex becomes a problem; but if in all these things you allowed yourself to diminish, to be the less, you would see that sex becomes no problem at all.

There is chastity only when there is love. When there is love, the problem of sex ceases; and without love, to pursue the ideal of Brahmacharya is an absurdity, because the ideal is unreal. The real is that which you are; and if you don't understand your own mind, the workings of your own mind, you will not understand sex, because sex is a thing of the mind. The problem is not simple. It needs, not mere habit-forming practices, but tremendous thought and enquiry into your relationship with people, with property and with ideas. Sir, it means you have to undergo strenuous searching of your heart and mind, thereby bringing a transformation within yourself. Love is chaste; and when there is love, and not the mere idea of chastity created by the mind, then sex has lost its problem and has quite a different meaning.

Source: New Delhi, India, 3rd Public Talk, 19th December, 1948