A man who knows what it is to have humility is a vain man.
I am sure you have been brought up in the school of “must” and “must not” and hence, you have destroyed thought and feeling. You have been bound and crippled by systems, methods, by your teachers. So leave all those “musts” and “must nots.
Such awareness is like living with a snake in the room; you watch its every movement, you are very, very sensitive to the slightest sound it makes. Such a state of attention is total energy; in such awareness the totality of yourself is revealed in an instant.
Truth is not something that can be followed; it has to be discovered. You cannot find truth through any book or through any accumulation of experience.
It is only when I am in communion with sorrow that I understand it.
You must have passion to create – not babies – to bring about a different world, different human beings in the world, to change the society in which you live. Without that tremendous passion, one becomes mediocre, soft, unclear, lacking integrity.
Meditation is like going to a well, the waters of which are inexhaustible, with a pitcher that is always empty. The pitcher can never be filled. What is important is the drinking of the waters and not how full the pitcher is. The pitcher must be broken to drink the water. The pitcher is the centre which is always seeking – and so it can never find.
One of the odd things about love is that whatever you do will be correct if you love. When there is love, action is always right, in all circumstances. And when there is that quality of love, there is compassion. Compassion means passion for all. Compassion cannot exist, nor love, if you belong to any sect, any group, or to any organized religion.
We don’t just love and leave it there, but we ask something in return; and in that very asking we become dependent.
When you use me as a guru and I use you as disciples, there is mutual exploitation. Similarly, when you use your wife and children for your furtherance, there is exploitation. Surely, that is not love. When there is use, there must be possession; possession invariably breeds fear, and with fear come jealousy, envy, suspicion. When there is usage, there cannot be love, for love is not something of the mind. To think about a person is not to love that person.
Fear is the cause of the search for protection or security, security which is either physical, spiritual, religious, or emotional. So long as there is that search there must be fear, which then creates a barrier between your mind and your environment, and thereby creates conflict; and that conflict you cannot dissolve as long as you are only concerned with adjustment, modification, and never with the discovery of the fundamental cause of fear.
So love is not a thing of the mind. It is only when the mind is really quiet, when it is no longer expecting, asking, demanding, seeking, possessing, being jealous, fearful, anxious – when the mind is really silent, only then is there a possibility of love.
The mind pursues that which it has experienced, but that which it has experienced is already over, dead, gone. To discover that which is, the mind must die to that which it has experienced.
Love is something that is new, fresh, alive. It has no yesterday and no tomorrow. It is beyond the turmoil of thought.
Then what is love? Obviously, it can only happen when there are no longer all the things that are not love, like ambition, competition, wanting to become somebody. That is our life: We want to be somebody famous, to fulfil, know, become a writer, an artist, something bigger. All that is what we want. Can such a man or woman know what love is?
To understand and withstand the pressure of tradition you must have, not strength, but confidence – the tremendous confidence which comes when you know how to think things out for yourself. But you see, your education does not teach you how to think; it tells you what to think.
Don’t accept anything, it does not matter who says it, but investigate the matter for yourself. If you merely accept, you become mechanical, dull, you are already dead; but if you investigate, if you think things out for yourself, then you are alive, vital, a creative human being.
Pleasure is sustained by thought; therefore thought is not love.
Sorrow is the shadow of desire.
Is it not possible to live in this world without ambition, just being what you are?