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"You see somebody whom you consider happy or as having realized, and he does certain things;
you, wanting that happiness, imitate him. This imitation is called discipline, isn't it?
We imitate in order to receive what another has; we copy in order to be happy, which you
think he is.
Is happiness found through discipline? By practicing a certain rule, by practicing a certain discipline, a mode of conduct, are you ever free?...Are you free by shaping your mind in a particular way which you call discipline? Obviously you are not. You are merely a repetitive machine, resisting according to a certain conclusion, according to a certain mode of conduct. Freedom cannot come through discipline. Freedom can only come into being with intelligence; and that intelligence is awakened, or you have that intelligence, the moment you see that any form of compulsion denies freedom, inwardly or outwardly." The First and Last Freedom, p.160-161 |
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"Our difficulty is that most of us have read so much, most of us have superficially followed
so many disciplines - getting up every morning at a certain hour, sitting in a certain
posture, trying to hold our minds in a certain way - you know, practise, practise, discipline,
because you have been told that if you do these things for a number of years you will
have God at the end of it. I may put it crudely, but that is the basis of our thinking.
Surely God doesn't come so easily as all that? God is not a mere marketable thing: I do this
and you give me that.
Most of us are so conditioned by external influences, by religious doctrines, beliefs, and by our own inward demand to arrive at something, to gain something, that it is very difficult for us to think of this problem anew without thinking in terms of discipline. First we must see very clearly the implications of discipline, how it narrows the mind, limits the mind, compels the mind to a particular action, through our desire, through influence and all the rest of it; a conditioned mind, however 'virtuous' that conditioning, cannot possibly be free and therefore cannot understand reality. God, reality or what you will - the name doesn't matter - can come into being only when there is freedom, and there is no freedom where there is compulsion, positive or negative, through fear. There is no freedom if you are seeking an end, for you are tied to that end." The First and Last Freedom, p.161-162 |
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"...through practice, through habit, through cultivation of a pattern, the mind only
achieves what it has in view. Therefore it is not free...
To be aware of that whole process - why you are constantly disciplining yourself to
public opinion; to certain saints; the whole business of conforming to opinion, whether
of a saint or of a neighbour, it is all the same - to be aware of this whole conformity
through practice, through subtle ways of submitting yourself, of denying, asserting,
suppressing, sublimating, all implying conformity to a pattern: this is already the
beginning of freedom..."
The First and Last Freedom, p.162 |
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"You may compel a child to do something, put him in a corner, and he may be quiet; but
inwardly he is probably seething, looking out of the window, doing something to get away.
That is what we are still doing."
The First and Last Freedom, p.163 |
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"...the more you discipline the mind, train the mind, the greater its limitations."
Total Freedom |
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"Discipline is the cultivation of resistance, and where there is resistance there is no understanding."
Commentaries on Living, First Series, p.68 |
