Four
Is truth fixed or something living?
I hope we shall understand each other because we are going to talk over together
a problem that needs a great deal of inquiry, a great deal of freedom to observe.
We are not going to talk about the religious mind only, we are also going to talk
about reality, meditation, and the quality of the mind that can perceive what is
true. It is going to be difficult because each one of us is going to translate
anything that is said according to our peculiar conditioning, our particular
culture. Especially when we are going to talk over religion and the quality of the
mind that is religious, we probably already have a conceptual, verbal definition
of what religion is. Really to find out, one must discard totally everything that
humanity has put together intellectually, emotionally, in escaping from the daily
reality. One has to be completely free of all that, one must totally negate all that
humanity has put together in our desire to find reality, and that’s going to be our
difficulty. This is not something that you can discuss intellectually, verbally.
What it demands is a mind that is very penetrating, inquiring.
We are not discussing what religion is and the quality of the mind that is
religious only for its own sake, but also for what relationship it has to our daily
living, because there must be a total psychological revolution that will bring
about a totally different kind of culture, a different way of living and observing.
It is in relation to living, daily life, not an abstraction, not an idea, not a formula,
that we are inquiring to find out whether it is possible to live in this world
harmoniously, without any conflict, without all the ugliness, brutality that
humanity has brought about.
What is religion? What is the mind that is asking this question? Religion has
played an extremely important part in all our lives. Probably it is the foundation
of our life; and without really inquiring into the structure and the nature of a
religious mind, merely bringing about a social outward revolution will have very
little meaning; violence is the most primitive reaction. But a mind that would
really seriously go into the question of bringing about a different kind of culture
requires a psychological revolution to try to find a way of living that is entirely
different from the way we live.
To understand the quality of a mind that is religious, one has first of all to
inquire into the whole problem of searching, seeking. What is implied in
searching? Please, as we said, we are sharing this together; we are trying to
understand the problem together and not merely listening to the speaker. We are
sharing the problem, so you have to inquire as ardently, as passionately, as
intensely as the speaker is going to. That demands not only a verbal examination
but also observing nonverbally, observing the mind that is seeking. After all, we
are all seeking, but what is implied in that word, what is the significance that is in