apt to escape into words, explanations. But one has to put aside all explanations;
they have no meaning, really. So what is the quality of the mind, that is, what is
the nature of the mind that sees the truth? We will leave it there for the moment,
because we have to touch on so many things. We will come back to it.
We all know what sorrow is, physical pain and psychological grief. All of us
know this. If you are a Hindu, you explain it away through karma; if you are a
Christian, you also have various forms of rationalization. Please follow all this,
not the speaker, but yourself. Watch your own sorrow. We are asking whether
that sorrow can ever end. And we are going to find out. You explain it away in
your own way, according to the particular culture you have been brought up in.
There is pain, the sorrow of loneliness, the sorrow of isolation, the sorrow of not
achieving something or other, the sorrow of losing somebody whom you think
you love. It is not only personal but there is the sorrow of the world that has lived
for so many millennia, and goes on killing, destroying its own species, man being
appalling toward man. When you see a man walking across the park, lonely, in
torn clothes, dirty, with no happiness, who knows he can never be the prime
minister, he can never enjoy life—when you see all that—there is great sorrow,
not for yourself, but that such human beings exist in the world and that society
has brought about such conditions.
Then there is the sorrow, the neurological pain in the face of one’s own loss.
One escapes; one doesn’t know what to do. Words, theories, explanations, beliefs
act as a way of escape. Have you noticed this? Do please watch it in yourself. If
my son dies, I have a dozen explanations; I escape through my fear of loneliness.
So what happens? I go back to sleep again. Sorrow is a way of challenge, asking
us to look at what has happened to us, to observe. And we don’t; we run away.
Now, when you remain with sorrow without running away, without escaping,
without verbalizing, completely remain with it without any outward or inward
movement, what happens? Have you ever done it? No, I am afraid not. Have you
ever remained with sorrow, not resisting it, not trying to run away from it, not
identifying yourself with it but seeing what happens? If you remain with it
completely, what takes place? What takes place when you remain completely
with it without any movement of thought at all, any movement of thought that
says, “I don’t like it; I must run away; I want pleasure; I must avoid this”? When
thought doesn’t move away at all, but recognizes the whole structure of what
sorrow is, then what takes place? Out of that sorrow comes passion. The word
passion has the root of its meaning in suffering. Do you see the connection? If
you remain with the fact of anything, especially with the fact of sorrow, not let
thought wander away or explain it away or identify itself with it, but completely
remain with it, then there is tremendous energy. And out of that energy there is
the flame of passion. So sorrow brings passion—not lust—and you need passion
to find out the truth. Are you doing it?
So there is an ending of sorrow. This doesn’t mean that you become
indifferent, callous. There is an ending of sorrow when there is no escape from it,
and that very sorrow becomes the flame of passion, and passion is compassion.
Compassion means passion for all, which you can find out only through this
flame of sorrow. So then, with that intensity, with that passion, one can find out
michael s
(Michael S)
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