Question : What is the shortest way to get rid of our worries and troubles and our hard feelings and reach happiness and freedom ?

Krishnamurti : There is no shortest way ; but hard feelings, worries and troubles themselves liberate you if you are not trying to escape from them through the desire for freedom and happiness. You say that you want freedom and happiness, because hard feelings and troubles are difficult to bear. So you are merely running away from them, you don’t understand why they exist ; you don’t understand why you have worries, why you have troubles, hard feelings, bitterness, suffering, and passing joy. And since you don’t understand, you want to know the shortest way out of the confusion. I say, beware of the man who shows you the shortest way out. There is no way out of suffering and trouble except through that suffering and trouble itself. This is not a hard saying ; you will understand it if you think it over. The moment you stop trying to escape you will understand ; you cannot but understand, for then you are no longer entangled in explanations. When all explanations have ceased, when they no longer have any meaning, then truth is. Now you are seeking explanations ; you are seeking the shortest way, the quickest method ; you are looking to practices, to ceremonials, to the newest theory of science. These are all escapes. But when you really understand the illusion of escape, when you are wholly confronting the thing that creates conflict within you, then that very thing will release you.

Now life creates great disturbance in you, problems of possession, sex, hatred. So you say, "Let me find a higher life, a divine life, a life of non-possession, a life of love." But your very striving for such a life is but an escape from these disturbances. If you become aware of the falseness of escape, which you can understand only when there is conflict, then you will see how your mind is accustomed to escape. And when you have ceased to escape, when your mind is no longer seeking an explanation, which is but a drug, then that very thing from which you have been trying to escape reveals its full significance. This understanding frees the mind and heart from sorrow.