so repetitive and stupid. But one has to live in this world. Even in the Himalayas
I need food, which people bring me; there is relationship.
A: In his first sermon the Buddha said that both detachment and attachment are
ignoble. The two represented the Hindu idea of running away from the world.
K: Why did they not consider relationship? When the sannyāsi renounces the
world, he cannot renounce relationship. He may not sleep with a woman, but he
cannot renounce relationship. I am asking myself: If I deny relationship, doesn’t
action become meaningless? What is action without relationship? Is it something
mechanical?
A: Action is relationship.
K: Relationship is the primary thing. Otherwise what exists? If my father had not
slept with my mother, I would not exist. So relationship is the basic movement of
life. But relationship within the field of knowledge is deadly, destructive, corrupt.
That is the worldly.
So, what is action? We have separated action from relationship: social action,
political action, but have not solved this problem of relationship. We discard it
because it is too dangerous to discuss. If I discussed my relationship with my
wife, untold things might happen. So I do not want to discuss it. All that I say is:
I must be detached.
If we accept that all living is relationship, then what is action? There is the
mechanical action of technology; to act mechanically is to reduce relationship to
turning a wheel. And that is why we have denied love.
A: Can we examine our relationship with nature?
K: What is my relationship with nature?—with the birds, with the sky, the trees,
the flowers and the moving waters. That is my life. We are discussing our
relationship to everything, not just the relationship between man and woman. All
this is part of life. I am talking of the relationship to everything.
I can be attached to the word, but not to the waters. You see, we miss the
whole thing because we confuse the word with the thing.
A: Is it a question of reawakening sensitivity?
K: No. The question is: What is relationship? What is it to be related to
everything? Relationship means care; care means attention; attention means love.
That is why relationship is the basis of everything. If you miss that, you miss the
whole thing. Yes, sir, this is the prison. To know is the prison, and to live in the
knowing is also the prison.
Madras
January 16, 1971