Krishnamurti on Passion

Love for most of us is passion and lust. And so for us, love goes. Not only is there fire, there is also smoke. The smoke destroys the flame – the smoke of jealousy, hate, envy, greed, ambition, and all the rest of it. But where there is love, there is beauty and passion. You must have passion. Don’t immediately translate it into sexual passion. I don’t mean only that, I mean passion, to burn, the passion of intensity, that energy that immediately sees things clearly. Without passion, there is no austerity.

J. Krishnamurti, From Public Talk 9, Paris, 24 September 1961