Two
Can thought find a harmonious
way of living?
Most of us do not ask fundamental questions, and if we do, we expect others to
answer. If we may this evening, we are going to consider several problems, and I
think they are fundamental questions. One of them is, Observing the many
fragments of life, the various activities opposing, contradicting each other and
bringing about a great deal of confusion, one asks if there is an action which can
cover totally all the divergent, contradictory, fragmentary activities. In our own
lives we can observe how we are broken up with contradictory desires, with
opposing political, religious, artistic, scientific, and business activities. Is there an
action that can respond totally to every demand of life without being
contradictory in itself? I do not know if you have ever asked such a question.
Most of us live in our own particular little activity and try to make the best of
it. If you are a politician—and I hope you aren’t—then your world is very
dependent on votes and all the nonsense that goes on in the name of politics. If
you are a religious person, you will have a number of beliefs, a way of
meditation contradicting everything in your daily life. If you are an artist, you
live totally apart from all this, absorbed in your own particular fancy, in your
own perception of beauty, and so on. And if you are a scientist, you live in your
laboratory and are just a normal human being elsewhere, rather shoddy and
competitive. So seeing all this, with which most of us must be quite familiar,
what is an action that can respond totally to every demand and yet remain
noncontradictory, whole?
Now, if you put that question to yourself, as we are doing now, what would
be your answer? As we said the other day when we met, we are sharing together
the problems of our life, not intellectually, but actually. We said that that is the
meaning of communication—to consider together a common issue. Now the
common issue is this question of whether there is an action, a way of living every
day, whether you are an artist, a scientist, a businessman, so that your life can be
whole, so that there is no fragmentation and therefore no contradictory action.
If the question is clear, then how shall we find such an action? By what
method, by what system? If we are trying to find a method, a way of living by a
system, according to a certain pattern, then that very pattern, that very system is
contradictory. Please, do let’s understand this very clearly. If I follow a particular
system in order to bring about an action which will be whole, complete, full, rich
and beautiful, the method, system becomes mechanical. My actions will be
mechanical and therefore totally incomplete. Therefore I must set aside all ideas
of following a mechanical, repetitive activity.