What is Jealousy?

Questioner:  What is Jealousy?

KRISHNAMURTI:  Jealousy implies dissatisfaction with what you are and envy of others, does it not?  To be discontented with what you are is the very beginning of envy.  You want to be like somebody else who has more knowledge, or is more beautiful, or who has a bigger house, more power, a better position than you have.  You want to be more virtuous, you want to know how to meditate better, you want to reach God, you want to be something different from what you are: therefore you are envious, jealous.  To understand what you are is immensely difficult, because it requires complete freedom from all desire to change what you are into something else.  The desire to change yourself breeds envy, jealousy; whereas, in the understanding of what you are, there is a transformation of what you are.  But, you see, your whole education urges you to try to be different from what you are.  When you are told: "Now, don't be jealous, it is a terrible thing."  So you strive not to be jealous; but that very striving is part of jealousy, because you want to be different.

 

You know, a lovely rose is a lovely rose; but we human beings have been given the capacity to think, and we think wrongly.  To know HOW to think requires a great deal of penetration, understanding, but to know WHAT to think is comparatively easy.  Our present education consists in telling us WHAT to think, it does not teach us HOW to think, how to penetrate, explore; and it is only when the teacher as well as the student knows how to think that the school is worthy of its name.

KRISHNAMURTI-THINK ON THESE THINGS (P. 23)