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"I do not know if you have ever taken up one thing and gone into it and
probed into it - such as, envy. Our society is based on envy, our
religion is based on envy. Envy is expressed in society as
'becoming,' socially climbing the ladder of success. Envy includes
competition and that word 'competition' is used to cover up envy; our
society is built on that. And the structure of our thinking is built on
envy with its comparisons and competition to be something. Take that
one thing, envy, understand it and go right through it. Put your teeth
into it and strip the mind of envy. And it requires energy, doesn't it?
to go through envy, to watch it in operation outside of us and inside
the skin, to watch the expression of envy, the fulfilment of envy and
the frustration of envy which include ambition, jealousy, hatred, and to
take that and go right through it not only semantically, verbally,
logically, precisely in thinking but also actually strip the mind of all
envy so that it does not think in terms of competition of reaching,
gaining. I am sure you have not done it - not only people who have come
here for the first time but also the people who have heard me for thirty
years. They have not done this, they skirt round it, explain, play.
But to take stock of themselves, day after day, every minute, ruthlessly,
to penetrate into this appalling thing called envy - that requires energy.
That energy is not commitment to non-envy, you understand? When one is
concerned with the understanding of envy, there is no duality as
non-envy to which one is committed..."
10th Public Talk 1961, Bombay |
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"...as we do not know how to live with envy, what to do with it, we think we
should get rid of it, or do something about it if we move away from
it. Which is, not to be envious, the ideal of a human being who is
not envious, who doesn't have any envy, that must be a marvellous
state. So you move away from `what is', from the fact of envy.
Right? When you move away from the fact of envy what takes place,
when you don't move away what takes place?
...Do look at it, do look at it. You remember yesterday we were talking about the scientists are saying, some of them at least I have been told, that when you look at a cell through a microscope, as you are observing it is undergoing a transformation. Now we are saying, as you observe envy without its opposite - you understand - without trying to avoid it, rationalize it, just to look at it, the very process of observation is transforming the envy totally. Listen to it carefully, you will get it in a minute. That is - we'll keep to envy - when we have that feeling of envy we either rationalize it, justify it or condemn it. Right? Which is a division, isn't it. In that there is a conflict: the observer says, I must not be envious, the observer says, why shouldn't I be envious, in a world that is full of envy if I am not envious I will be destroyed. Or he avoids it. And so the observer says, I must do something about it. So there is a division between the observer and the fact of envy. When you look at the microscope without the observer, you understand, then that which is envious undergoes a radical change. And I'll show you why. Don't accept what I am saying, I am not your authority, I am not your guru, for god's sake. It undergoes a change because justification, condemnation or rationalization is a wastage of energy. Right? And when you don't waste that energy through that you have that energy, that energy transforms the fact of envy." 1st Public Dialogue 1976, Ojai |
