Sorrow Without a Cause

Krishnamurti asks:

Is there a relationship between sorrow and passion? Is there such a thing as sorrow without a cause? We know the sorrow which is cause and effect. My son dies; in that is involved my identification with my son: my wanting him to be something which I am not, my seeking continuity through him. When he dies all that is denied, and I find myself completely emptied of all hope. In that there is self-pity, fear; in that there is pain which is the cause of sorrow. This is the lot of everyone. This is what we mean by sorrow.

Then there is also the sorrow of time, the sorrow of ignorance, the ignorance of one’s own destructive conditioning; the sorrow of not knowing oneself, the sorrow of not knowing the beauty that lies at the depth of one’s being and the going beyond.

Do we see that when we escape from sorrow through various forms of explanation, we are really frittering away an extraordinary happening?

….

When there is no movement of escape from sorrow, then love is. Passion is the flame of sorrow, and that flame can only be awakened when there is no escape, no resistance — which means, sorrow has in it no quality of division.