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August
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August 1
Full heart, empty mind
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There
is no path to truth, it must come to you. Truth can come to you only when
your mind and heart are simple, clear, and there is love in your heart; not
if your heart is filled with the things of the mind. When there is love in
your heart, you do not talk about organizing for brotherhood; you do not talk
about belief, you do not talk about division or the powers that create
division, you need not seek reconciliation. Then you are a simply a human
being without a label, without a country. This means that you must strip
yourself of all those things and allow truth to come into being; and it can
come only when the mind is empty, when the mind ceases to create. Then it
will come without your invitation. Then it will come as swiftly as the wind
and unbeknown. It comes obscurely, not when you are watching, wanting. It is
there as sudden as sunlight, as pure as the night; but to receive it, the
heart must be full and the mind empty. Now you have the mind full and your
heart empty.
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August 2
Truth is a state of being
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So,
there is no path to truth, and there are not two truths. Truth is not of the
past or of the present, it is timeless; and the man who quotes the truth of
the Buddha, of Shankara, of the Christ, or who merely repeats what I am
saying, will not find truth, because repetition is not truth. Repetition is a
lie. Truth is a state of being which arises when the mind—which seeks to
divide, to be exclusive, which can think only in terms of results, of
achievement—has come to an end. Only then will there be truth. The mind that
is making effort, disciplining itself in order to achieve an end, cannot know
truth, because the end is its own projection, and the pursuit of that
projection, however noble, is a form of self -worship. Such a being is
worshipping himself, and therefore he cannot know truth. Truth is to be known
only when we understand the whole process of the mind, that is, when there is
no strife.
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August 3
Truth has no abiding place
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Truth
is a fact, and the fact can be understood only when the various things that
have been placed between the mind and the fact are removed. The fact is your
relationship to property, to your wife, to human beings, to nature, to ideas;
and as long as you do not understand the fact of relationship, your seeking
God merely increases the confusion because it is a substitution, an escape,
and therefore it has no meaning. As long as you dominate your wife or she
dominates you, as long as you possess and are possessed, you cannot know
love; as long as you are suppressing, substituting, as long as you are
ambitious, you cannot know truth.
He alone shall know truth who is not seeking, who is not striving, who is not
trying to achieve a result...Truth is not continuous, it has no abiding
place, it can be seen only from moment to moment. Truth is always new,
therefore timeless. What was truth yesterday is not truth today, what is truth
today is not truth tomorrow. Truth has no continuity. It is the mind which
wants to make the experience which it calls truth continuous, and such a mind
shall not know truth. Truth is always new; it is to see the same smile, and
see that smile newly, to see the same person, and see that person anew, to
see the waving palms anew, to meet life anew.
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August 4
There is no guide to truth
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Is
God to be found by seeking him out? Can you search after the unknowable? To
find, you must know what you are seeking. If you seek to find, what you find
will be a self-projection; it will be what you desire, and the creation of
desire is not truth. To seek truth is to deny it. Truth has no fixed abode;
there is no path, no guide to it, and the word is not truth. Is truth to be
found in a particular setting, in a special climate, among certain people? Is
it here and not there? Is that one the guide to truth, and not another? Is
there a guide at all? When truth is sought, what is found can only come out
of ignorance, for the search itself is born of ignorance. You cannot search
out reality; you must cease for reality to be.
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August 5
Truth is found moment to moment
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Truth
cannot be accumulated. What is accumulated is always being destroyed; it
withers away. Truth can never wither because it can only be found from moment
to moment in every thought, in every relationship, in every word, in every
gesture, in a smile, in tears. And if you and I can find that and live it—the
very living is the finding of it—then we shall not become propagandists; we
shall be creative human beings—not perfect human beings, but creative human
beings, which is vastly different.
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August 6
The true revolutionary
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Truth
is not for those who are respectable, nor for those who desire
self-extension, self-fulfillment. Truth is not for those who are seeking
security, permanency; for the permanency they seek is merely the opposite of
impermanency. Being caught in the net of time, they seek that which is
permanent, but the permanent they seek is not the real because what they seek
is the product of their thought. Therefore, a man who would discover reality
must cease to seek—which does not mean that he must be contented with what
is. On the contrary, a man who is intent upon the discovery of truth must be
inwardly a complete revolutionary. He cannot belong to any class, to any
nation, to any group or ideology, to any organized religion; for truth is not
in the temple or the church, truth is not to be found in the things made by
the hand or by the mind. Truth comes into being only when the things of the
mind and of the hand are put aside, and that putting aside of the things of
the mind and of the hand is not a matter of time. Truth comes to him who is
free of time, who is not using time as a means of self-extension. Time means
memory of yesterday, memory of your family, of your race, of your particular
character, of the accumulation of your experience which makes up the “me” and
the “mine”.
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August 7
See the truth in the false
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You
may superficially agree when you hear it said that nationalism, with all its
emotionalism and vested interest, leads to exploitation and the setting of
man against man; but to really free your mind from the pettiness of
nationalism is another matter. To be free, not only from nationalism but also
from all the conclusions of organized religions and political systems, is
essential if the mind is to be young, fresh, innocent, that is, in a state of
revolution; and it is only such a mind that can create a new world— not the
politicians, who are dead, nor the priests, who are caught in their own
religious systems.
So, fortunately or unfortunately for yourself, you have heard something which
is true; and if you merely hear it and are not actively disturbed so that
your mind begins to free itself from all the things which are making it
narrow and crooked, then the truth you have heard will become a poison.
Surely, truth becomes a poison if it is heard and does not act in the mind,
like the festering of a wound. But to discover for oneself what is true and
what is false, and to see the truth in the false, is to let that truth
operate and bring forth its own action.
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August 8
Understand the actual
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It
is really not complex, thought it may be arduous. You see, we don’t start
with the actual, with the fact, with what we are thinking, doing, desiring;
we start with assumptions, or with ideals, which are not actualities, and so
we are led astray. To start with facts, and not with assumptions, we need
close attention; and every form of thinking not originating from the actual
is a distraction. That’s why it is so important to understand what is
actually taking place both within and around one.
...If you are a Christian, your visions follow a certain pattern; if you are
a Hindu, a Buddhist, or a Muslim, they follow a different pattern. You see
Christ or Krishna, according to your conditioning; your education, the
culture in which you have been brought up, determines your visions. Which is
the actuality: the vision, or the mind which has been shaped in a certain
mold? The vision is the projection of the particular tradition which happens
to form the background of the mind. This conditioning, not the vision which
it projects, is the actuality, the fact. To understand the fact is simple;
but it is made difficult by our likes and dislikes, by our condemnation of
the fact, by the opinions or judgments we have about the fact. To be free of
these various forms of evaluation is to understand the actual, the what is.
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August 9
Translation of the facts prevents seeing
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A
mind that gives an opinion about a fact is a narrow, limited, destructive
mind...You can translate the fact in one way, and I can translate it in
another way. The translation of the fact is a curse which prevents us from
seeing the actual fact and doing something about the fact. When you and I
discuss our opinions about the fact, nothing is done about the fact; you can
add perhaps more to the fact, see more nuances, implications, significance
about the fact, and I may see less significance in the facts. But the fact
cannot be interpreted; I cannot offer an opinion about the fact. It is so,
and it is very difficult for a mind to accept the fact. We are always
translating, we are always giving different meanings to it, according to our
prejudices, conditionings, hopes, fears and all the rest of it. If you and I
could see the fact without offering an opinion, interpreting, giving a significance,
then the fact becomes much more alive—not more alive—the fact is there alone,
nothing else matters; then the fact has its own energy which drives you in
the right direction.
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August 10
There is only one fact: impermanence
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We
are trying to find out if there is, or is not, a permanent state—not what we
would like, but the actual fact, the truth of the matter. Everything about
us, within as well as without—our relationships, our thoughts, our
feelings—is impermanent, in a constant state of flux. Being aware of this,
the mind craves permanency, a perpetual state of peace, of love, of goodness,
a security that neither time nor events can destroy; therefore it creates the
soul, the Atman, and the visions of a permanent paradise. But this permanency
is born of impermanency, and so it has within it the seeds of the
impermanent. There is only one fact: impermanence.
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August 11
Hankering after the unknowable
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You
want me to tell you what reality is. Can the indescribable be put into words?
Can you measure something immeasurable? Can you catch the wind in your fist?
If you do, is that the wind? If you measure that which is immeasurable, is
that the real? If you formulate it, is it the real? Surely not, for the
moment you describe something which is indescribable, it ceases to be the
real. The moment you translate the unknowable into the known, it ceases to be
the unknowable. Yet that is what we are hankering after. All the time we want
to know, because then we shall be able to continue, then we shall be able, we
think, to capture ultimate happiness, permanency. We want to know because we
are not happy, because we are striving miserably, because we are worn out,
degraded. Yet instead of realizing the simple fact—that we are degraded, that
we are dull, weary, in turmoil—we want to move away from what is the known into
the unknown, which again becomes the known and therefore we can never find
the real.
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August 12
Is suffering merely a word or an actuality?
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Is
suffering merely a word, or an actuality? If it is an actuality and not just
a word, then the word has no meaning now, so there is merely the feeling of
intense pain. With regard to what? With regard to an image, to an experience,
to something which you have or have not. If you have it, you call it
pleasure; if you haven’t it is pain. Therefore pain, sorrow, is in
relationship to something. Is that something merely verbalization, or an
actuality?—as fear cannot exist by itself but only in relationship to
something: to an individual, to an incident, to a feeling. Now, you are fully
aware of the suffering. Is that suffering apart from you and therefore you
are merely the observer who perceives the suffering, or is that suffering
you?
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August 13
You and nothingness are one
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You
are nothing. You may have your name and title, your property and bank
account, you may have power and be famous; but in spite of all these
safeguards, you are as nothing. You may be totally unaware of this emptiness,
this nothingness, or you may simply not want to be aware of it; but it is
there, do what you will to avoid it. You may try to escape from it in devious
ways, through personal or collective violence, through individual or
collective worship, through knowledge or amusement; but whether you are
asleep or awake, it is always there. You can come upon your relationship to
this nothingness and its fear only by being choicelessly aware of the
escapes. You are not related to it as a separate, individual entity; you are
not the observer watching it; without you, the thinker, the observer, it is
not. You and nothingness are one; you and nothingness are a joint phenomenon,
not two separate processes. If you, the thinker, are afraid of it and
approach it as something contrary and opposed to you, then any action you may
take towards it must inevitably lead to illusion and so to further conflict
and misery. When there is the discovery, the experiencing of that nothingness
as you, then fear—which exists only when the thinker is separate from his
thoughts and so tries to establish a relationship with them—completely drops
away.
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August 14
How do we end fear?
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We
are discussing something which needs your attention, not your agreement or
disagreement. We are looking at life most rigorously, objectively, clearly—
not according to your sentiment, your fancy, what you like or don’t like.
It’s what we like and don’t like that has created this misery. All that we
are saying is this: "How do we end fear?" That’s one of our great
problems, because if a human being can’t end it he lives in darkness
everlastingly, not everlastingly in the Christian sense but in the ordinary
sense; one life is good enough. For me, as a human being, there must be a way
out and not by creating a hope in some future. Can I as a human being end
fear, totally; not little bits of it? Probably you’ve never put this question
to yourself, and probably you’ve not put the question because you don’t know
how to get out of it. But if you did put that question most seriously, with
the intention of finding out not how to end it, but with the intention of
finding out the nature and the structure of fear, the moment you have found
out, fear itself comes to an end; you don’t have to do anything about it.
...When we are aware of it and come into contact with it directly, the
observer is the observed. There is no difference between the observer and the
thing observed. When fear is observed without the observer, there is action,
but not the action of the observer acting upon fear.
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August 15
The duality of thinker and thought
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As
you watch anything—a tree, your wife, your children, your neighbor, the stars
of a night, the light on the water, the bird in the sky, anything—there is
always the observer—the censor, the thinker the experiencer, the seeker—and
the thing he is observing; the observer and the observed; the thinker and the
thought. So, there is always a division. It is this division that is time. That
division is the very essence of conflict. And when there is conflict, there
is contradiction. There is “the observer and the observed”—that is a
contradiction; there is a separation. And hence where there is contradiction,
there is conflict. And when there is conflict, there is always the urgency to
get beyond it, to conquer it, to overcome it, to escape from it, to do
something about it, and all that activity involves time.... As long as there
is this division, time will go on, and time is sorrow.
And a man who will understand the end of sorrow must understand this, must
find, must go beyond this duality between the thinker and the thought, the
experiencer and the experienced. That is, when there is a division between
the observer and the observed, there is time, and therefore there is no
ending of sorrow. Then, what is one to do? You understand the question? I
see, within myself, the observer is always watching, judging, censoring,
accepting, rejecting, disciplining, controlling, shaping. That observer, that
thinker, is the result of thought, obviously. Thought is first; not the
observer, not the thinker. If there was no thinking at all, there would be no
observer, no thinker; then there would only be complete, total attention.
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August 16
Thought creates the thinker
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Thought
is verbalized sensation; thought is the response of memory, the word, the
experience, the image. Thought is transient, changing, impermanent, and it is
seeking permanency. So thought creates the thinker, who then becomes the
permanent; he assumes the role of the censor, the guide, the controller, the
molder of thought. This illusory permanent entity is the product of thought,
of the transient. This entity is thought; without thought he is not. The
thinker is made up of qualities; his qualities cannot be separated from
himself. The controller is the controlled, he is merely playing a deceptive
game with himself. Till the false is seen as the false, truth is not.
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August 17
A wall of impregnable thought
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“How
can there be a fusion of the thinker with his thoughts?” Not through the
action of will, nor through discipline, nor through any form of effort,
control or concentration, nor through any other means. The use of a means
implies an agent who is acting, does it not? As long as there is an actor,
there will be a division. The fusion takes place only when the mind is
utterly still without trying to be still. There is this stillness, not when
the thinker comes to an end, but only when thought itself has come to an end.
There must be freedom from the response of conditioning, which is thought.
Each problem is solved only when idea, conclusion is not; conclusions, idea,
thought, are the agitations of the mind. How can there be understanding when
the mind is agitated? Earnestness must be tempered with the swift play of
spontaneity. You will find, if you have heard all that has been said, that
truth will come in moments when you are not expecting it. If I may say so, be
open, sensitive, be fully aware of what is from moment to moment. Don’t build
around yourself a wall of impregnable thought. The bliss of truth comes when
the mind is not occupied with its own activities and struggles.
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August 18
When the observer is the observed
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Space
is necessary. Without space there is no freedom. We are talking
psychologically...It is only when one is in contact, when there is no space
between the observer and the observed that one is in total relationship —with
a tree for instance. One is not identified with the tree, the flower, a
woman, a man or whatever it is, but when there is this complete absence of
space as the observer and the observed, then there is vast space. In that
space there is no conflict; in that space there is freedom.
Freedom is not a reaction. You cannot say, “Well, I am free.” The moment you
say you are free you are not free, because you are conscious of yourself as
being free from something, and therefore you have the same situation as an
observer observing a tree. He has created a space, and in that space he
breeds conflict. To understand this requires not intellectual agreement or
disagreement, or saying, “I don’t understand,” but rather it requires coming
directly into contact with what is. It means seeing that all your actions,
every moment of action is of the observer and the observed, and within that
space there is pleasure, pain and suffering the desire to fulfill, to become
famous. Within that space there is no contact with anything. Contact,
relationship has a quite different meaning when the observer is no longer
apart from the observed. There is this extraordinary space, and there is
freedom.
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August 19
Is there an observer watching loneliness?
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My
mind observes loneliness, and avoids it, runs away from it. But if I do not
run away from it, is there a division, is there a separation, is there an
observer watching loneliness? Or, is there only a state of loneliness, my
mind itself being empty, lonely? Not that there is an observer who knows that
there is loneliness. I think this is important to grasp, swiftly, not
verbalizing too much. We say now “I am envious, and I want to get rid of
envy,” so there is an observer and the observed; the observer wishes to get
rid of that which he observes. But is the observer not the same as the
observed? It is the mind itself that has created the envy, and so the mind
cannot do anything about envy. So, my mind observes loneliness; the thinker
is aware that he is lonely But by remaining with it, being fully in contact,
which is, not to run away from it, not to translate and all the rest of it,
then, is there a difference between the observer and the observed? Or is
there only one state, which is, the mind itself is lonely, empty? Not that
the mind observes itself as being empty, but mind itself is empty. Then, can
the mind, being aware that it itself is empty, and that whatever its
endeavor, any movement away from that emptiness is merely an escape, a
dependence, can the mind put away all dependence and be what it is,
completely empty, completely lonely? And if it is in that state, is there not
freedom from all dependence, from all attachment?
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August 20
What is accumulated is not truth
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As
long as there is the experiencer remembering the experience, truth is not.
Truth is not something to be remembered, stored up, recorded, and then
brought out. What is accumulated is not truth. The desire to experience
creates the experiencer, who then accumulates and remembers. Desire makes for
the separation of the thinker from his thought; the desire to become, to
experience, to be more or to be less, makes for division between the
experiencer and the experience. Awareness of the ways of desire is
self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is the beginning of meditation.
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August 21
Immediate action
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If
you are in contact with anything, with your wife, with your children, with
the sky, with the clouds, with any fact, the moment thought interferes with
it you lose contact. Thought springs from memory. Memory is the image, and
from there you look and therefore there is a separation between the observer
and the observed.
You have to understand this very deeply. It is this separation of the
observer from the observed that makes the observer want more experience, more
sensations, and so he is everlastingly pursuing, seeking. It has to be
completely and totally understood that as long as there is an observer, the
one that is seeking experience, the censor, the entity that evaluates,
judges, condemns, there is no immediate contact with what is. When you have
pain, physical pain, there is direct perception; there is not the observer
who is feeling the pain; there is only pain. Because there is no observer
there is immediate action. There is not the idea and then action, but there
is only action when there is pain, because there is a direct physical
contact. The pain is you; there is pain. As long as this is not completely
understood, realized, explored and felt deeply, as long as it is not wholly
grasped, not intellectually, not verbally, that the observer is the observed,
all life becomes conflict, a contradiction between opposing desires, the
“what should be” and the “what is.” You can do this only if you are aware
whether you are looking at it as an observer, when you look at a flower or a
cloud or anything.
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August 22
Reality is in what is
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Instead
of asking who has realized or what God is why not give your whole attention
and awareness to what is? Then you will find the unknown, or rather it will
come to you. If you understand what is the known, you will experience that
extraordinary silence which is not induced, not enforced, that creative
emptiness in which alone reality can enter. It cannot come to that which is
becoming, which is striving; it can only come to that which is being, which
understands what is. Then you will see that reality is not in the distance;
the unknown is not far off; it is in what is. As the answer to a problem is
in the problem, so reality is in what is; if we can understand it, then we
shall know truth.
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August 23
Face the fact
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I’m
in sorrow. Psychologically I’m terribly disturbed; and I have an idea about
it: what I should do, what I should not do, how it should be changed. That
idea, that formula, that concept prevents me from looking at the fact of what
is. Ideation and the formula are escapes from what is. There is immediate
action when there is great danger. Then you have no idea. You don’t formulate
an idea and then act according to that idea.
The mind has become lazy, indolent through a formula which has given it a
means of escape from action with regard to what is. Seeing for ourselves the
whole structure of what has been said, not because it has been pointed out to
us, is it possible to face the fact: the fact that we are violent, as an
example? We are violent human beings, and we have chosen violence as the way
of life—war and all the rest of it. Though we talk everlastingly, especially
in the East, of nonviolence, we are not nonviolent people; we are violent
people. The idea of nonviolence is an idea, which can be used politically.
That’s a different meaning, but it is an idea, and not a fact. Because the
human being is incapable of meeting the fact of violence, he has invented the
ideal of nonviolence, which prevents him from dealing with the fact.
After all, the fact is that I’m violent; I’m angry. What is the need of an
idea? It is not the idea of being angry; it’s the actual fact of being angry
that is important, like the actual fact of being hungry. There’s no idea
about being hungry. The idea then comes as to what you should eat, and then
according to the dictates of pleasure, you eat. There is only action with
regard to what is when there is no idea of what should be done about that which
confronts you, which is what is.
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August 24
Freedom from what is
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Being
virtuous comes through the understanding of what is, whereas becoming
virtuous is postponement, the covering up of what is with what you would like
to be. Therefore in becoming virtuous you are avoiding action directly upon
what is. This process of avoiding what is through the cultivation of the
ideal is considered virtuous; but if you look at it closely and directly you
will see that it is nothing of the kind. It is merely a postponement of
coming face to face with what is. Virtue is not the becoming of what is not;
virtue is the understanding of what is and therefore the freedom from what
is. Virtue is essential in a society that is rapidly disintegrating.
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August 25
Observing thought
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I
must love the very thing I am studying. If you want to understand a child, you
must love and not condemn him. You must play with him, watch his movements,
his idiosyncrasies, his ways of behavior; but if you merely condemn, resist
or blame him, there is no comprehension of the child. Similarly, to
understand what is, one must observe what one thinks, feels and does from
moment to moment. That is the actual.
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August 26
Escape breeds conflict
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Why
are we ambitious? Why do we want to succeed, to be somebody? Why do we
struggle to be superior? Why all this effort to assert oneself, whether
directly, or through an ideology or the State? Is not this self-assertion the
main cause of our conflict and confusion? Without ambition, would we perish?
Can we not physically survive without being ambitious?
Why are we clever and ambitious? Is not ambition an urge to avoid what is? Is
not this cleverness really stupid, which is what we are? Why are we so
frightened of what is? What is the good of running away if whatever we are is
always there? We may succeed in escaping, but what we are is still there,
breeding conflict and misery. Why are we so frightened of our loneliness, or
our emptiness? Any activity away from what is is bound to bring sorrow and
antagonism. Conflict is the denial of what is or the running away from what
is; there is no conflict other than that. Our conflict becomes more and more
complex and insoluble because we do not face what is. There is no complexity
in what is, but only in the many escapes that we seek.
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August 27
Discontent has no answer
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What
is it that we are discontented with? Surely with what is. The what is may be
the social order, the what is may be the relationship, the what is may be
what we are, the thing we are essentially—which is, the ugly, the wandering
thoughts, the ambitions, the frustrations, the innumerable fears; that is
what we are. In going away from that, we think we shall find an answer to our
discontent. So we are always seeking a way, a means to change the what
is—that is what our mind is concerned with. If I am discontent and if I want
to find a way, the means to contentment, my mind is occupied with the means,
the way and the practicing of the way in order to arrive at contentment. So I
am no longer concerned with discontent, with the embers, the flame that is
burning, which we call discontent. We do not find out what is behind that
discontent. We are only concerned with going away from that flame, from that burning
anxiety.
...This is enormously difficult because our mind is never satisfied, never
content in the examination of what is. It always wants to transform what is
into something else—which is the process of condemnation, justification or
comparison. If you observe your own mind you will see that when it comes face
to face with what is, then it condemns, then it compares it with “what it
should be,” or it justifies it and so on, and thereby pushes away what is,
setting aside the thing which is causing the disturbance, the pain, the
anxiety.
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August 28
Effort is distraction from what is
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We
must understand the problem of striving. If we can understand the
significance of effort, then we can translate it into action in our daily
life. Does not effort mean a struggle to change what is into what it is not,
or what it should be, or what it should become? We are constantly escaping
from what is, to transform or modify it. He who is truly content is he who
understands what is, who gives the right significance to what is . True
contentment lies not in few or many possessions, but in understanding the
whole significance of what is. Only in passive awareness is the meaning of
what is understood. I am not, at the moment, talking of the physical struggle
with the earth, with construction or a technical problem, but of
psychological striving. The psychological struggles and problems always
overshadow the physiological. You may build a careful social structure, but
as long as the psychological darkness and strife are not understood, they
invariably overturn the carefully built structure.
Effort is distraction from what is. In the acceptance of what is, striving
ceases. There is no acceptance when there is the desire to transform or
modify what is. Striving, an indication of destruction, must exist so long as
there is a desire to change what is.
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August 29
A contentment not of the mind
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Is
not discontent essential, not to be smothered away, but to be encouraged,
inquired into, probed, so that with the understanding of what is there comes
contentment? That contentment is not the contentment which is produced by a
system of thought; but it is that contentment which comes with the
understanding of what is. That contentment is not the product of the mind—the
mind which is disturbed, agitated, incomplete, when it is seeking peace, when
it is seeking a way away from what is . And so the mind, through
justification, comparison, judgment, tries to alter what is, and thereby
hopes to arrive at a state when it will not be disturbed, when it will be
peaceful, when there will be quietness. And when the mind is disturbed by
social conditions, by poverty, starvation, degradation, by the appalling
misery, seeing all that, it wants to alter it; it gets entangled in the way
of altering, in the system of altering. But if the mind is capable of looking
at what is without comparison, without judgment, without the desire to alter
it into something else, then you will see that there comes a kind of
contentment which is not of the mind.
The contentment which is the product of the mind is an escape. It is sterile.
It is dead. But there is contentment which is not of the mind, which comes
into being when there is the understanding of what is, in which there is
profound revolution which affects society and individual relationship.
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August 30
Keep discontent alive
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Is
not discontent essential in our life, to any question, to any inquiry, to
probing, to finding out what is the real, what is Truth, what is essential in
life? I may have this flaming discontent in college; and then I get a good
job and this discontent vanishes. I am satisfied, I struggle to maintain my
family, I have to earn a livelihood and so my discontent is calmed,
destroyed, and I become a mediocre entity satisfied with things of life, and
I am not discontent. But the flame has to be maintained from the beginning to
the end, so that there is true inquiry, true probing into the problem of what
discontent is. Because the mind seeks very easily a drug to make it content
with virtues, with qualities, with ideas, with actions, it establishes a
routine and gets caught up in it. We are quite familiar with that, but our
problem is not how to calm discontent, but how to keep it smoldering, alive,
vital. All our religious books, all our gurus, all political systems pacify
the mind, quieten the mind, influence the mind to subside, to put aside
discontent and wallow in some form of contentment...Is it not essential to be
discontented in order to find what is true?
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August 31
To understand what is
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We
are in conflict with each other and our world is being destroyed. There is
crisis after crisis, war after war; there is starvation, misery; there are
the enormously rich clothed in their respectability, and there are the poor.
To solve these problems, what is necessary is not a new system of thought,
not a new economic revolution, but to understand what is—the discontent, the
constant probing of what is—which will bring about a revolution which is more
far-reaching than the revolution of ideas. And it is this revolution that is
so necessary to bring about a different culture, a different religion, a
different relationship between man and man.
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The Book of Life
Jiddu Krishnamurti
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