examine together the whole question of violence, understand together fear,
pleasure, whether sorrow can ever end, what it means to love and what it means
to die, and the beauty and the truth of meditation, the quality of a mind that is
truly religious. The mind that has read all the sacred books is not a religious
mind. A mind that is crowded with the authority of others’ experience is not a
religious mind. A mind that is filled with the knowledge of what others have said
is not a religious mind. A mind that believes, that has dogmas, conclusions, that
plays with rituals, is not a religious mind. All this we are going to inquire into
together and into what truth is, the beauty of it, the quality of it, and what it
means for a mind that is completely quiet. It is only a very still, quiet, untortured
mind that sees the truth.
So we are going to examine all this together, and therefore you must have
patience and also you must be able to listen. You know, one of our great
difficulties is that we do not know how to listen. Part of investigation together is
to listen together; but you cannot possibly listen if you are comparing what is
being said with what you already know. You cannot possibly listen if you are
agreeing or disagreeing. If you are merely listening to the words and not relating
the word to the fact of yourself, and if you are listening with your conclusions,
with your hopes, with your problems, with your sorrows, with your agonies, then
you are not listening. Through listening together we shall be able to solve
completely all our problems. So a mind that is capable of listening, not only to
what the speaker is saying, but also to your reactions, your responses, your own
mutterings, will share together. Then we will walk together.
What we are doing is to understand the immense, complex human problem,
not how to change your government or how to feed the poor immediately, not
how to stop the appalling callousness and corruption immediately, but to see the
whole of the problem, not a particular, fragmentary problem. Because life is not
only going to the office for forty years—as you do, I don’t know why—but
understanding yourself, your wife, your family; understanding the thing called
sex, which has become so extraordinarily important; understanding the human
conflict, both within and without; understanding together whether it is at all
possible to live with peace in this world, not by retiring from it, not by becoming
a monk or a sannyasi, but to live in this marvelous world, which is ours, with
love, with beauty, with truth.
To find all this out you must be able to listen, not intellectually but with your
heart; listen to understand, to try to find out, because you have to learn from
yourself, not from another. No book can teach you about yourself, no Gita, no
Upanishad. None of the professors, the philosophers, the psychologists can teach
you about yourself. What they can teach you is what they think you are or what
they think you should be. That is their opinion, their conclusion, their perception,
which is not yours. You have for centuries upon centuries accepted the authority
of others, the authority of your gurus, the authority of your tradition, what other
people have said. That’s why you have no energy; that’s why you are so dull,
insensitive; that’s why you are secondhand human beings. I know you laugh, but
when you laugh it indicates that it really does not touch you. It’s like a young
man who goes through college, gets a degree, and gets a job, and forever after he
michael s
(Michael S)
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