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.
Understanding is now or never; it is a destructive flash, not a tame affair; it is this shattering that one is afraid of and so one avoids it, knowingly or unknowingly. Understanding may alter the course of one’s life, the way of thought and action; it may be pleasant or not but understanding is a danger to all relationship. But without understanding, sorrow will continue.
Is it not possible to live in this world without ambition, just being what you are?
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 behaviour; but if you merely condemn, resist or blame him, there is no comprehension of the child.
Love must exist with freedom. Not the freedom to do what I like – that is nonsense; freedom of choice, and so on, has no value in what we are talking about – but there must be total freedom to love.
But to run away from fear is only to increase it. One of the major causes of fear is that we do not want to face ourselves as we are.
The movement from certainty to uncertainty is what I call fear.
That is what we do. We carry our burdens all the time; we never die to them, we never leave them behind.
Living in such a corrupt, stupid society as we do, with the competitive education we receive which engenders fear, we are all burdened with fears of some king, and fear is a dreadful thing which warps, twists, and dulls our days.
Sir, love is not directed to something. The sunshine is not directed to you and me; it is there.
Because the brain functions perfectly only in order, not in disorder. It functions most efficiently when there is complete order, whether that order is neurotic or rational; because in neurosis, in imbalance, there is order, and the brain accepts that order.
Wisdom is greater than saintliness, for wisdom comes with the ending of sorrow. And the understanding of sorrow is to understand oneself. Then in the understanding of oneself so completely, there is quietness, there is beauty.
You are educated to fit into society; but that is not education, it is merely a process which conditions you to conform to a pattern.
The man who is trying to become something is ugly, insensitive; he is a crude person.