Jiddhu Krishnamurti (1895 - 1986)

The monkey in the tree feels hungry, and then the urge arises to take a fruit or a nut. Action comes first, and then the idea that you had better store it up. To put it in different words, does action come first, or the actor? Is there an actor without action? Do you understand? This is what we are always asking ourselves: Who is it that sees? Who is the watcher? Is the thinker apart from his thoughts, the observer apart from the observed, the experiencer apart from the experience, the actor apart from the action?

But, if you really examine the process, very carefully, closely and intelligently, you will see that there is always action first, and that action, with an end in view, creates the actor. Do you follow? If action has an end in view, the gaining of that end brings about the actor. If you think very clearly and without prejudice, without conformity, without trying to convince somebody, without an end in view, in that very thinking there is no thinker - there is only the thinking. It is only when you seek an end in your thinking that you become important, and not thought. Perhaps some of you have observed this. It is really an important thing to find out, because from that we shall know how to act. If the thinker comes first, then the thinker is more important than thought, and all the philosophies, customs and activities of the present civilization are based on this assumption; but if thought comes first then thought is more important than the thinker. So a mind that is concerned with the comprehension of what is compassion, love, and all the rest of it must surely understand what is fear and what is sorrow.