April

April 1
There is only craving

There is no entity separate from craving; there is only craving, there is no one who craves. Craving takes on different masks at different times, depending on its interests. The memory of these varying interests meets the new, which brings about conflict, and so the chooser is born, establishing himself as an entity separate and distinct from craving. But the entity is not different from its qualities. The entity who tries to fill or run away from emptiness, incompleteness, loneliness, is not different from that which he is avoiding; he is it. He cannot run away from himself; all that he can do is to understand himself. He is his loneliness, his emptiness; and as long as he regards it as something separate from himself; he will be in illusion and endless conflict. When he directly experiences that he is his own loneliness, then only can there be freedom from fear. Fear exists only in relationship to an idea, and idea is the response of memory as thought. Thought is the result of experience; and though it can ponder over emptiness, have sensations with regard to it, it cannot know emptiness directly. The word loneliness, with its memories of pain and fear, prevents the experiencing of it afresh. The word is memory, and when the word is no longer significant, then the relationship between the experiencer and the experienced is wholly different; then that relationship is direct and not through a word, through memory; then the experiencer is the experience, which alone brings freedom from fear.

April 2
Understanding desire

We have to understand desire; and it is very difficult to understand something which is so vital, so demanding, so urgent because in the very fulfillment of desire passion is engendered, with the pleasure and the pain of it. And if one is to understand desire, obviously, there must be no choice. You cannot judge desire as being good or bad, noble or ignoble, or say, “I will keep this desire and deny that one.” All that must be set aside if we are to find out the truth of desire—the beauty of it, the ugliness or whatever it may be.

April 3
Desire has to be understood

Let us go on to consider desire. We know, do we not, the desire which contradicts itself, which is tortured, pulling in different directions; the pain, the turmoil, the anxiety of desire, and the disciplining, the controlling. And in the everlasting battle with it we twist it out of all shape and recognition; but it is there, constantly watching, waiting, pushing. Do what you will, sublimate it, escape from it, deny it or accept it, give it full rein—it is always there. And we know how the religious teachers and others have said that we should be desireless, cultivate detachment, be free from desire—which is really absurd, because desire has to be understood, not destroyed. If you destroy desire, you may destroy life itself. If you pervert desire, shape it, control it, dominate it, suppress it, you may be destroying something extraordinarily beautiful.

April 4
The quality of desire

....What happens if you do not condemn desire, do not judge it as being good or bad, but simply be aware of it? I wonder if you know what it means to be aware of something? Most of us are not aware because we have become so accustomed to condemning, judging, evaluating, identifying, choosing. Choice obviously prevents awareness because choice is always made as a result of conflict. To be aware when you enter a room, to see all the furniture, the carpet or its absence, and so on—just to see it, to be aware of it all without any sense of judgment—is very difficult. Have you ever tried to look at a person, a flower, at an idea, an emotion, without any choice, any judgment?

And if one does the same thing with desire, if one lives with it—not denying it or saying, “What shall I do with this desire? It is so ugly, so rampant, so violent,” not giving it a name, a symbol, not covering it with a word—then, is it any longer the cause of turmoil? Is desire then something to be put away, destroyed? We want to destroy it because one desire tears against another creating conflict, misery and contradiction; and one can see how one tries to escape from this everlasting conflict. So can one be aware of the totality of desire? What I mean by totality is not just one desire or many desires, but the total quality of desire itself.

April 5
Why shouldn’t one have pleasure?

You see a beautiful sunset, a lovely tree, a river that has a wide, curving movement, or a beautiful face, and to look at it gives great pleasure, delight. What is wrong with that? It seems to me the confusion and the misery begin when that face, that river, that cloud, that mountain becomes a memory, and this memory then demands a greater continuity of pleasure; we want such things repeated. We all know this. I have had a certain pleasure, or you have had a certain delight in something, and we want it repeated. Whether it be sexual, artistic, intellectual, or something not quite of this character, we want it repeated—and I think that is where pleasure begins to darken the mind and create values which are false, not actual.

What matters is to understand pleasure, not try to get rid of it—that is too stupid. Nobody can get rid of pleasure. But to understand the nature and the structure of pleasure is essential; because if life is only pleasure, and if that is what one wants, then with pleasure go the misery, the confusion, the illusions, the false values which we create, and therefore there is no clarity.

April 6
A healthy, normal reaction

...I have to find out why desire has such potency in my life. It may be right or it may not be right. I have to find out. I see that. Desire arises, which is a reaction, which is a healthy, normal reaction; otherwise, I would be dead. I see a beautiful thing and I say, “By Jove, I want that.” If I didn’t, I’d be dead. But in the constant pursuit of it there is pain. That’s my problem—there is pain as well as pleasure. I see a beautiful woman, and she is beautiful; it would be most absurd to say, “No, she’s not.” This is a fact. But what gives continuity to the pleasure? Obviously it is thought, thinking about it...

I think about it. It is no longer the direct relationship with the object, which is desire, but thought now increases that desire by thinking about it, by having images, pictures, ideas...

...Thought comes in and says, “Please, you must have it; that’s growth; that is important; that is not important; this is vital for your life; this is not vital for your life.”

But I can look at it and have a desire, and that’s the end of it, without interference of thought.

April 7
Dying to little things

Have you ever tried dying to a pleasure voluntarily, not forcibly? Ordinarily when you die you don’t want to; death comes and takes you away; it is not a voluntary act, except in suicide. But have you ever tried dying voluntarily, easily, felt that sense of the abandonment of pleasure? Obviously not! At present your ideals, your pleasures, your ambitions are the things which give so-called significance to them. Life is living, abundance, fullness, abandonment, not a sense of the “I” having significance. That is mere intellection. If you experiment with dying to little things—that is good enough. Just to die to little pleasures—with ease, with comfort, with a smile—is enough, for then you will see that your mind is capable of dying to many things, dying to all memories. Machines are taking over the functions of memory—the computers—but the human mind is something more than a merely mechanical habit of association and memory. But it cannot be that something else if it does not die to everything it knows.

Now to see the truth of all this, a young mind is essential, a mind that is not merely functioning in the field of time. The young mind dies to everything. Can you see the truth of that immediately, feel the truth of it instantly? You may not see the whole extraordinary significance of it, the immense subtlety, the beauty of that dying, the richness of it, but even to listen to it sows the seed, and the significance of these words takes root—not only at the superficial, conscious level, but right through all the unconscious.

April 8
Sex

Sex is a problem because it would seem that in that act there is complete absence of the self. In that moment you are happy, because there is the cessation of self-consciousness, of the “me”; and desiring more of it—more of the abnegation of the self in which there is complete happiness, without the past or the future demanding that complete happiness through full fusion, integration—naturally it becomes all-important. Isn’t that so? Because it is something that gives me unadulterated joy, complete self forgetfulness, I want more and more of it. Now, why do I want more of it? Because, everywhere else I am in conflict, everywhere else, at all the different levels of existence, there is the strengthening of the self. Economically, socially, religiously, there is the constant thickening of self-consciousness, which is conflict. After all, you are self-conscious only when there is conflict. Self-consciousness is in its very nature the result of conflict...

So, the problem is not sex, surely, but how to be free from the self. You have tasted that state of being in which the self is not, if only for a few seconds, if only for a day, or what you will; and where the self is, there is conflict, there is misery, there is strife. So, there is the constant longing for more of that self-free state.

April 9
The ultimate escape

What do we mean by the problem of sex? Is it the act, or is it a thought about the act? Surely, it is not the act. The sexual act is no problem to you any more than eating is a problem to you, but if you think about eating or anything else all day long because you have nothing else to think about, it becomes a problem to you...Why do you build it up, which you are obviously doing? The cinemas, the magazines, the stories, the way women dress, everything is building up your thought of sex. And why does the mind build it up, why does the mind think about sex at all? Why, sirs and ladies? It is your problem. Why? Why has it become a central issue in your life? When there are so many things calling, demanding your attention, you give complete attention to the thought of sex. What happens, why are your minds so occupied with it? Because that is a way of ultimate escape, is it not? It is a way of complete self-forgetfulness. For the time being, at least for the moment, you can forget yourself—and there is no other way of forgetting yourself. Everything else you do in life gives emphasis to the “me,” to the self. Your business, your religion, your gods, your leaders, your political and economic actions, your escapes, your social activities, your joining one party and rejecting another—all that is emphasizing and giving strength to the “me”...When there is only one thing in your life which is an avenue to ultimate escape, to complete forgetfulness of yourself if only for a few seconds, you cling to it because that is the only moment you are happy...

So, sex becomes an extraordinary difficult and complex problem as long as you do not understand the mind which thinks about the problem.

April 10
We have made sex a problem

Why is it that whatever we touch we turn into a problem?...Why has sex become a problem? Why do we submit to living with problems; why do we not put an end to them? Why do we not die to our problems instead of carrying them day after day, year after year? Surely, sex is a relevant question, which I shall answer presently, but there is the primary question: why do we make life into a problem? Working, sex, earning money, thinking, feeling, experiencing, you know, the whole business of living—why is it a problem? Is it not essentially because we always think from a particular point of view, from a fixed point of view? We are always thinking from a center towards the periphery, but the periphery is the center for most of us, and so anything we touch is superficial. But life is not superficial; it demands living completely, and because we are living only superficially, we know only superficial reaction. Whatever we do on the periphery must inevitably create a problem, and that is our life—we live in the superficial and we are content to live there with all the problems of the superficial. So, problems exist as long as we live in the superficial, on the periphery—the periphery being the “me” and its sensations, which can be externalized or made subjective, which can be identified with the universe, with the country, or with some other thing made up by the mind. So, as long as we live within the field of the mind there must be complications, there must be problems; and that is all we know.

April 11
What do you mean by love?

Love is the unknowable. It can be realized only when the known is understood and transcended. Only when the mind is free of the known, then only there will be love. So, we must approach love negatively, not positively.

What is love to most of us? With us, when we love, in it there is possessiveness, dominance, or subservience. From this possession arises jealously and fear of loss, and we legalize this possessive instinct. From possessiveness arise jealousy and the innumerable conflicts with which each one is familiar. Possessiveness, then, is not love. Nor is love sentimental. To be sentimental, to be emotional, excludes love. Sensitivity and emotions are merely sensations.

...Love alone can transform insanity, confusion, and strife. No system, no theory of the left or of the right can bring peace and happiness to man. Where there is love, there is no possessiveness, no envy; there is mercy and compassion, not in theory, but actually—for your wife and for your children, for your neighbor and for your servant....Love alone can bring about mercy and beauty, order and peace. There is love with its blessing when “you” cease to be.

April 12
As long as we possess, we shall never love

We know love as sensation, do we not? When we say we love, we know jealousy, we know fear, we know anxiety. When you say you love someone, all that is implied: envy, the desire to possess, the desire to own, to dominate, the fear of loss, and so on. All this we call love, and we do not know love without fear, without envy, without possession; we merely verbalize that state of love which is without fear, we call it impersonal, pure, divine, or God knows what else; but the fact is that we are jealous, we are dominating, possessive. We shall know that state of love only when jealousy, envy, possessiveness, domination, come to an end; and as long as we possess, we shall never love...When do you think about the person whom you love? You think about her when she is gone, when she is away, when she has left you...So, you miss the person whom you say you love only when you are disturbed, when you are in suffering; and as long as you possess that person, you do not have to think about that person, because in possession there is no disturbance...

Thinking comes when you are disturbed—and you are bound to be disturbed as long as your thinking is what you call love. Surely, love is not a thing of the mind; and because the things of the mind have filled our hearts, we have no love. The things of the mind are jealousy, envy, ambition, the desire to be somebody, to achieve success. These things of the mind fill your hearts, and then you say you love; but how can you love when you have all these confusing elements in you? When there is smoke, how can there be a pure flame?

April 13
Love is not a duty

...When there is love, there is no duty. When you love your wife, you share everything with her—your property, your trouble, your anxiety, your joy. You do not dominate. You are not the man and she the woman to be used and thrown aside, a sort of breeding machine to carry on your name. When there is love, the word duty disappears. It is the man with no love in his heart who talks of rights and duties, and in this country duties and rights have taken the place of love. Regulations have become more important than the warmth of affection. When there is love, the problem is simple; when there is no love, the problem becomes complex. When a man loves his wife and his children, he can never possibly think in terms of duty and rights. Sirs, examine your own hearts and minds. I know you laugh it off—that is one of the tricks of the thoughtless, to laugh at something and push it aside. Your wife does not share your responsibility, your wife does not share your property, she does not have the half of everything that you have because you consider the woman less than yourself, something to be kept and to be used sexually at your convenience when your appetite demands it. So you have invented the words rights and duty; and when the woman rebels, you throw at her these words. It is a static society, a deteriorating society, that talks of duty and rights. If you really examine your hearts and minds, you will find that you have no love.

April 14
A thing of the mind

What we call our love is a thing of the mind. Look at yourselves, Sirs, and Ladies, and you will see that what I am saying is obviously true; otherwise, our lives, our marriage, our relationships, would be entirely different, we would have a new society. We bind ourselves to another, not through fusion, but through contract, which is called love, marriage. Love does not fuse, adjust—it is neither personal nor impersonal, it is a state of being. The man who desires to fuse with something greater, to unite himself with another, is avoiding misery, confusion; but the mind is still in separation, which is disintegration. Love knows neither fusion nor diffusion, it is nether personal nor impersonal, it is a state of being which the mind can not find; it can describe it, give it a term, a name, but the word, the description, is not love. It is only when the mind is quiet that it shall know love, and that state of quietness is not a thing to be cultivated.

April 15
In considering marriage

We are trying to understand the problem of marriage, in which is implied sexual relationship, love, companionship, communion. Obviously if there is no love, marriage becomes a disgrace, does it not? Then it becomes mere gratification. To love is one of the most difficult things, is it not? Love can come into being, can exist only when the self is absent. Without love, relationship is a pain; however gratifying, or however superficial, it leads to boredom, to routine, to habit with all its implications. Then, sexual problems become all important. In considering marriage, whether it is necessary or not, one must first comprehend love. Surely, love is chaste, without love you cannot be chaste; you may be a celibate, whether a man or a woman, but that is not being chaste, that is not being pure, if there is no love. If you have an ideal of chastity, that is if you want to become chaste, there is no love in it either because it is merely the desire to become something which you think is noble, which you think will help you to find Reality; there is no love there at all. Licentiousness is not chaste, it leads only to degradation, to misery. So does the pursuit of an ideal. Both exclude love, both imply becoming something, indulging in something and therefore you become important and where you are important, love is not.

April 16
Love is incapable of adjustment

Love is not a thing of the mind, is it? Love is not merely the sexual act, is it? Love is something which the mind can not possibly conceive. Love is something which cannot be formulated. And without love, you become related; without love, you marry. Then, in that marriage, you “adjust yourselves” to each other. Lovely phrase! You adjust yourselves to each other, which is again an intellectual process, is it not?...This adjustment is obviously a mental process. All adjustments are. But, surely, love is incapable of adjustment. You know, Sirs, don’t you?, that if you love another, there is no “adjustment.” There is only complete fusion. Only when there is no love, do we begin to adjust. And this adjustment is called marriage. Hence, marriage fails, because it is the very source of conflict, a battle between two people. It is an extraordinarily complex problem, like all problems, but more so because the appetites, the urges, are so strong. So, a mind which is merely adjusting itself can never be chaste. A mind which is seeking happiness through sex can never be chaste. Though you may momentarily have, in that act, self-abnegation, self-forgetfulness, the very pursuit of that happiness, which is of the mind, makes the mind unchaste. Chastity comes into being only where there is love.

April 17
To love is to be chaste

This problem of sex is not simple and it cannot be solved on its own level. To try to solve it purely biologically is absurd; and to approach it through religion or to try to solve it as though it were a mere matter of physical adjustment, of glandular action, or to hedge it in with taboos and condemnations is all too immature, childish, and stupid. It requires intelligence of the highest order. To understand ourselves in our relationship with another requires intelligence far more swift and subtle than to understand nature. But we seek to understand without intelligence; we want immediate action, an immediate solution, and the problem becomes more and more important...Love is not mere thought; thoughts are only the external action of the brain. Love is much deeper, much more profound, and the profundity of life can be discovered only in love. Without love, life has no meaning and that is the sad part of our existence. We grow old while still immature; our bodies become old, fat, and ugly, and we remain thoughtless. Though we read and talk about it, we have never known the perfume of life. Mere reading and verbalizing indicates an utter lack of the warmth of heart that enriches life; and without that quality of love, do what you will, join any society, bring about any law, you will not solve this problem. To love is to be chaste. Mere intellect is not chastity. The man who tries to be chaste in thought, is unchaste, because he has no love. Only the man who loves is chaste, pure, incorruptible.

April 18
Constant thought is a waste of energy

Most of us spend our life in effort, in struggle; and the effort, the struggle, the striving, is a dissipation of that energy. Man, throughout the historical period of man, has said that to find that reality or God—whatever name he may give to it—you must be celibate; that is, you take a vow of chastity and suppress, control, battle with yourself endlessly all your life, to keep your vow. Look at the waste of energy! It is also a waste of energy to indulge. And it has far more significance when you suppress. The effort that has gone into suppression, into control, into this denial of your desire distorts your mind, and through that distortion you have a certain sense of austerity which becomes harsh. Please listen. Observe it in yourself and observe the people around you. And observe this waste of energy, the battle. Not the implications of sex, not the actual act, but the ideals, the images, the pleasure—the constant thought about them is a waste of energy. And most people waste their energy either through denial, or through a vow of chastity, or in thinking about it endlessly.

April 19
The idealist cannot know love

Those who are trying to be celibate in order to achieve God are unchaste for they are seeking a result or gain and so substituting the end, the result, for sex—which is fear. Their hearts are without love, and there can be no purity, and a pure heart alone can find reality. A disciplined heart, a suppressed heart, cannot know what love is. It cannot know love if it is caught in habit, in sensation—religious or physical, psychological or sensate. The idealist is an imitator and therefore he cannot know love. He cannot be generous, give himself over completely without the thought of himself. Only when the mind and heart are unburdened of fear, of the routine of sensational habits, when there is generosity and compassion, there is love. Such love is chaste.

April 20
Understanding passion

Is it a religious life to punish oneself? Is mortification of the body or of the mind a sign of understanding? Is self-torture a way to reality? Is chastity denial? Do you think you can go far through renunciation? Do you really think there can be peace through conflict? Does not the means matter infinitely more than the end? The end may be, but the means is. The actual, the what is, must be understood and not smothered by determinations, ideals and clever rationalizations. Sorrow is not the way of happiness. The thing called passion has to be understood and not suppressed or sublimated, and it is no good finding a substitute for it. Whatever you may do, any device that you invent, will only strengthen that which has not been loved and understood. To love what we call passion is to understand it. To love is to be in direct communion; and you cannot love something if you resent it, if you have ideas, conclusions about it. How can you love and understand passion if you have taken a vow against it? A vow is a form of resistance, and what you resist ultimately conquers you. Truth is not to be conquered; you cannot storm it; it will slip through your hands if you try to grasp it. Truth comes silently, without your knowing. What you know is not truth, it is only an idea, a symbol. The shadow is not the real.

April 21
Means and end are one

For the attainment of liberation, nothing is necessary. You cannot attain it through bargaining, through sacrifice, through elimination; it is not a thing that you can buy. If you do these things, you will get a thing of the marketplace, therefore not real. Truth cannot be bought, there is no means to truth; if there is a means, the end would not be truth, because means and end are one, they are not separate. Chastity as a means to liberation, to truth, is a denial of truth. Chastity is not a coin with which you buy it...

Why do we think chastity is essential?...What do we mean by sex? Not merely the act but thinking about it, feeling about it, anticipating it, escaping from it — that is our problem. Our problem is sensation, wanting more and more. Watch yourself, don’t watch your neighbor. Why are your thoughts so occupied with sex? Chastity can exist only when there is love, and without love there is no chastity. Without love, chastity is merely lust in a different form. To become chaste is to become something else; it is like a man becoming powerful, succeeding as a prominent lawyer, politician, or whatever else—the change is on the same level. That is not chastity but merely the end result of a dream, the outcome of the continual resistance to a particular desire...So, chastity ceases to be a problem where there is love. Then life is not a problem, life is to be lived completely in the fullness of love, and that revolution will bring about a new world.

April 22
Total abandonment

Perhaps you have never experienced that state of mind in which there is total abandonment of everything, a complete letting go. And you cannot abandon everything without deep passion, can you? You cannot abandon everything intellectually or emotionally. There is total abandonment, surely, only when there is intense passion. Don’t be alarmed by that word because a man who is not passionate, who is not intense, can never understand or feel the quality of beauty. The mind that holds something in reserve, the mind that has a vested interest, the mind that clings to position, power, prestige, the mind that is respectable, which is a horror—such a mind can never abandon itself.

April 23
This pure flame of passion

In most of us there is very little passion. We may be lustful, we may be longing for something, we may be wanting to escape from something, and all this does give one a certain intensity. But unless we awaken and feel our way into this flame of passion without a cause, we shall not be able to understand that which we call sorrow. To understand something you must have passion, the intensity of complete attention. Where there is the passion for something, which produces contradiction, conflict, this pure flame of passion cannot be; and this pure flame of passion must exist in order to end sorrow, dissipate it completely.

April 24
Beauty beyond feeling

Without passion how can there be beauty? I do not mean the beauty of pictures, buildings, painted women, and all the rest of it. They have their own forms of beauty. A thing put together by man, like a cathedral, a temple, a picture, a poem, or a statue may or may not be beautiful. But there is a beauty which is beyond feeling and thought and which cannot be realized, understood, or known if there is not passion. So do not misunderstand the word passion. It is not an ugly word; it is not a thing you can buy in the market or talk about romantically. It has nothing whatever to do with emotion, feeling. It is not a respectable thing; it is a flame that destroys anything that is false. And we are always so afraid to allow that flame to devour the things that we hold dear, the things that we call important.

April 25
A passion for everything

For most of us, passion is employed only with regard to one thing, sex; or you suffer passionately and try to resolve that suffering. But I am using the word passion in the sense of a state of mind, a state of being, a state of your inward core, if there is such a thing, that feels very strongly, that is highly sensitive—sensitive alike to dirt, to squalor, to poverty, and to enormous riches and corruption, to the beauty of a tree, of a bird, to the flow of water, and to a pond that has the evening sky reflected upon it. To feel all this intensely, strongly, is necessary. Because without passion life becomes empty, shallow , and without much meaning. If you cannot see the beauty of a tree and love that tree, if you cannot care for it intensely, you are not living.

April 26
Love, I assure you, is passion

You cannot be sensitive if you are not passionate. Do not be afraid of that word passion. Most religious books, most gurus, swamis, leaders, and all the rest of them, say, “Don’t have passion.” But if you have no passion, how can you be sensitive to the ugly, to the beautiful, to the whispering leaves, to the sunset, to a smile, to a cry? How can you be sensitive without a sense of passion in which there is abandonment? Sirs, please listen to me, and do not ask how to acquire passion. I know you are all passionate enough in getting a good job, or hating some poor chap, or being jealous of someone; but I am talking of something entirely different—a passion that loves. Love is a state in which there is no “me”; love is a state in which there is no condemnation, no saying that sex is right or wrong, that this is good and something else is bad. Love is none of these contradictory things. Contradiction does not exist in love. And how can one love if one is not passionate? Without passion, how can one be sensitive? To be sensitive is to feel your neighbor sitting next to you; it is to see the ugliness of the town with its squalor, its filth, its poverty, and to see the beauty of the river, the sea, the sky. If you are not passionate, how can you be sensitive to all that? How can you feel a smile, a tear? Love, I assure you, is passion.

April 27
A passionate mind is inquiring

Obviously there must be passion, and the question is how to revive that passion. Do not let us misunderstand each other. I mean passion in every sense, not merely sexual passion which is a very small thing. And most of us are satisfied with that because every other passion has been destroyed—in the office, in the factory, through following a certain job, routine, learning techniques—so there is no passion left; there is no creative sense of urgency and release. Therefore sex becomes important to us, and there we get lost in petty passion which becomes an enormous problem to the narrow, virtuous mind, or else it soon becomes a habit and dies. I am using the word passion as a total thing. A passionate man who feels strongly is not satisfied merely with some little job—whether it be the job of a prime minister, or of a cook, or what you will. A mind that is passionate is inquiring, searching, looking, asking, demanding, not merely trying to find for its discontent some object in which it can fulfill itself and go to sleep. A passionate mind is groping, seeking, breaking through, not accepting any tradition; it is not a decided mind, not a mind that has arrived, but it is a young mind that is ever arriving.

April 28
Petty mind

A passionate mind is groping, seeking, breaking through, not accepting any tradition; it is not a decided mind, not a mind that has arrived, but it is a young mind that is ever arriving.

Now, how is such a mind to come into being? It must happen. Obviously, a petty mind cannot work at it. A petty mind trying to become passionate will merely reduce everything to its own pettiness. It must happen, and it can only happen when the mind sees its own pettiness and yet does not try to do anything about it. Am I making myself clear? Probably not. But as I said earlier, any restricted mind, however eager it is, will still be petty, and surely that is obvious. A small mind, though it can go to the moon, though it can acquire a technique, though it can cleverly argue and defend, is still a small mind. So when the small mind says, “I must be passionate in order to do something worthwhile,” obviously its passion will be very petty, will it not—like getting angry about some petty injustice or thinking that the whole world is changing because of some petty, little reform done in a potty, little village by a potty, little mind. If the little mind sees all that, then the very perception that it is small is enough; then its whole activity undergoes a change.

April 29
Lost passion

The word is not the thing. The word passion is not passion. To feel that and to be caught in it without any volition or directive or purpose, to listen to this thing called desire, to listen to your own desires which you have, plenty of them, weak or strong—when you do that, you will see what a tremendous damage you do when you suppress desire, when you distort it, when you want to fulfill it, when you want to do something about it, when you have an opinion about it.

Most people have lost this passion. Probably one has had it once in one’s youth—to become a rich man, to have fame and to live a bourgeois or a respectable life; perhaps a vague muttering of that. And society—which is what you are—suppresses that. And so one has to adjust oneself to you who are dead, who are respectable, who have not even a spark of passion; and then one becomes a part of you, and thereby loses this passion.

April 30
Passion without a cause

In the state of passion without a cause there is intensity free of all attachment; but when passion has a cause, there is attachment, and attachment is the beginning of sorrow. Most of us are attached, we cling to a person, to a country, to a belief to an idea, and when the object of our attachment is taken away or otherwise loses its significance, we find ourselves empty, insufficient. This emptiness we try to fill by clinging to something else, which again becomes the object of our passion.

Examine your own heart and mind. I am merely a mirror in which you are looking at yourself. If you don’t want to look, that is quite all right; but if you do want to look, then look at yourself clearly, ruthlessly, with intensity—not in the hope of dissolving your miseries, your anxieties, your sense of guilt, but in order to understand this extraordinary passion which always leads to sorrow.

When passion has a cause it becomes lust. When there is a passion for something—for a person, for an idea, for some kind of fulfillment—then out of that passion there comes contradiction, conflict, effort. You strive to achieve or maintain a particular state, or to recapture one that has been and is gone. But the passion of which I am speaking does not give rise to contradiction, conflict. It is totally unrelated to a cause, and therefore it is not an effect.