“What is love without motive? Can there be love without any incentive, without wanting something for oneself out of love? Can there be love in which there is no sense of being wounded when love is not returned? If I offer you my friendship and you turn away, am I not hurt? Is that feeling of being hurt the outcome of friendship, of generosity, of sympathy? Surely, as long as I feel hurt, as long as there is fear, as
The Book of Life, Jiddu Krishnamurti
long as I help you hoping that you may help me—which is called service—there is no love.
If you understand this, the answer is there“
Can there be action without incentive?
I don’t think that’s a very good question to ask, because the discussion always comes down to a game of how you define incentive.
If one person dedicates his life to helping the poor, or another gives away all his wealth to charity – you can always argue that they ‘got something’ in return from their actions.
This is the ‘transactional’ view – the belief that people don’t do things for nothing, that they would derive some value, in whatever form, from their actions.
Perhaps they wanted attention and applause, perhaps they believed they received spiritual blessings, or maybe they simply felt good.
Can I really act without incentive, when my very existence is driven by and dependent on it?
Eat when you’re hungry, drink when you’re thirsty, sleep when you’re tired – hunger, thirst, tiredness are all ‘incentives’ to do something. To expect actions to be free of incentive is to ask too much.
Expectation
Which is not to say that I think Jiddu Krishnamurti’s words are mistaken; on the contrary. It’s only a minor quibble, perhaps pedantic and of no relevance to the main idea, that the word is expectation, not incentive.
It’s more worthwhile to ask – can there be action without expectation?
The difference is that expectation implies a dependency on someone else for making your action ‘worth it’; an incentive doesn’t.
More simply – if I go out of my way to help a friend at considerable discomfort, and he doesn’t even acknowledge it, let alone express any gratefulness – do I need to feel hurt, to ‘regret’ helping him out, to tell myself I should never make that ‘mistake’ again?
If I do feel that way, it’s because of expectations, not incentives.
You can help someone, and yet derive some value, perhaps mental or spiritual, even without receiving any thanks from them – that is not expectation, even if there is incentive.
Expectation is a specific case of incentive – when I want someone to reciprocate in some way and they don’t.
Expectation is the incentive of reciprocation by the receiver in some form.
Transaction
If I offer you my friendship and you turn away, am I not hurt? Is that feeling of being hurt the outcome of friendship, of generosity, of sympathy? Surely, as long as I feel hurt, as long as there is fear, as long as I help you hoping that you may help me—which is called service—there is no love.
People tend to associate the word ‘service’ with charity or help rather than ‘business’ or ‘work’, although it applies to those as well; to avoid that I’ll replace it with ‘transaction’, which is the context here.
A transaction by definition involves an exchange – something given in return for something else. From a party’s point of view – doing something for payment.
A payment can be anything, not just money, goods or services – words, deeds, emotions, anything.
If I expected gratefulness from someone I helped – it’s not really ‘help’, but a transaction, a service, which someone pays for – not in money, but a different currency – grateful words and actions.
Following the idea to its logical conclusion, the difference between sentiments like friendship, generosity, caring, love and ‘service’ or ‘transaction’ is whether you expect someone to pay you – in whatever form – for what you did.
Which tells me that when I do something, it might help to ask – “Is this a transaction”? In other words, am I expecting someone to do something because I’m doing this for them?
And if yes, then to dress it up as virtue – as caring, as helpfulness, as love or friendship or any such goodness, is deceit.