sociologically, morally there is a great deal of confusion, and when you look at
your own life you see that from the moment you are born till you die, it is a series
of conflicts. Life has become a battlefield. Please observe it. Not that you must
agree with the speaker, or disagree with him, but just observe it. Just watch your
actual daily living. When you do so observe, you cannot help seeing what is
actually going on, how we are in despair, lonely, unhappy, in conflict, caught in
competition, aggression, brutality, violence. That is actually our daily life, and
that we call living. And not being able to understand it or resolve it or go beyond
it, we escape from it into the ideology of some ancient philosophers, ancient
teachers, ancient wisdom. And we think that by escaping from the actual we have
solved everything. And that is why philosophy, ideals, all the very various forms
of networks of escape have not in any way resolved our problems. We are just as
we were five thousand or more years ago; we are dull, repetitive, bitter, angry,
violent, aggressive, with an occasional flash of some beauty, happiness, and are
always frightened of that one thing which we call death.
Your daily lives have no beauty. Your religious teachers and your books have
said, “Don’t have any desires; be desireless. Don’t look at a woman, because you
might be tempted. And to find God, truth, you must be celibate.” And our daily
life is contrary to all the sayings of the teachers. We are actually what we are—
very petty, small, narrow-minded, frightened human beings. And without
changing that, any amount of seeking truth, of talking valiantly and in most
scholarly ways, or interpreting the innumerable sacred books has no value at all.
So you might just as well throw away all the sacred books and start all over
again, because they, with their interpreters, their teachers, their gurus, have not
brought enlightenment to you. Their authority, their compulsive discipline, their
sanctions have no meaning at all. So you might just as well put them all aside and
learn from yourself, for therein lies truth, not in the “truth” of another.
So, is it possible to change our life? Your lives are in disorder; your lives are
in fragmentation—you are one thing at the office, another in the temple (if you
are still inclined that way), something entirely different with the family, and in
front of a big official you become a frightened, desperate, sycophantic human
being. Can we change all this? Because without changing our daily life, asking
what truth is, asking if there is a God or not, has no meaning whatsoever, because
we are fragmented, broken-up human beings. Only when one is a whole,
complete human entity, is there a possibility of coming upon something that is
timeless.
First we must look at our lives. Now how do you look at your life? This is a
very, very complex problem; and a very complex problem of existence must be
approached very simply, not with all the theories and opinions and judgments
you have because they have not helped at all. All your religious conclusions have
no meaning. You must be able to look at this life that you lead every day and be
able to see it exactly as it is.
The difficulty is to observe. Now, what does that word observe mean? There
is not only the sensory perception with the eye. You see a bougainvillea with
sensory perception. Then you observe its color. You already have an image of it;
you have a name for it; you like it or dislike it; you have a preference about it. So
michael s
(Michael S)
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