The man who loves has no room for anything else.

What brings order in the world is to love and let love do what it will

So, while you are young, must you not seek to find out what life is all about?

What does this so-called education mean, and what is it all about?

Why do we go through the struggle to be educated? Is it merely in order to pass some examinations and get a job? Or is it the function of education to prepare us while we are young to understand the whole process of life? Having a job and earning one's livelihood is necessary

But is that all? Are we being educated only for that? Surely, life is not merely a job, an occupation; life is something extraordinarily wide and profound, it is a great mystery, a vast realm in which we function as human beings. If we merely prepare ourselves to earn a livelihood, we shall miss the whole point of life; and to understand life is much more important than merely to prepare for examinations and become very proficient in mathematics, physics, or what you will.

What an extraordinary thing it would be to create an atmosphere in which there is no fear?

Do you know what intelligence is? It is the capacity, surely, to think freely without fear, without a formula, so that you begin to discover for yourself what is real, what is true; but if you are frightened you will never be intelligent. Any form of ambition, spiritual or mundane, breeds anxiety, fear; therefore ambition does not help to bring about a mind that is clear, simple, direct, and hence intelligent

It is really very important while you are young to live in an environment in which there is no fear

Most of us, as we grow older, become frightened; we are afraid of living, afraid of losing a job, afraid of tradition, afraid of what the neighbours, or what the wife or husband would say, afraid of death. Most of us have fear in one form or another; and where there is fear there is no intelligence

Life is really very beautiful, it is not this ugly thing that we have made of it; and you can appreciate its richness, its depth, its extraordinary loveliness only when you revolt against everything

Against organized religion, against tradition, against the present rotten society

So that you as a human being find out for yourself what is true. Not to imitate but to discover

That is education, is it not?

To live is to find out for yourself what is true, and you can do this only when there is freedom, when there is continuous revolution inwardly, within yourself

The world is torn by conflicting beliefs, by caste and class distinctions, by separative nationalities, by every form of stupidity and cruelty

And this is the world you are being educated to fit into. You are encouraged to fit into the framework of this disastrous society; your parents want you to do that, and you also want to fit in

It is only those who are in constant revolt that discover what is true, not the man who conforms, who follows some tradition. It is only when you are constantly inquiring, constantly observing, constantly learning, that you find truth, God, or love; and you cannot inquire, observe, learn, you cannot be deeply aware, if you are afraid. So the function of education, surely, is to eradicate, inwardly as well as outwardly, this fear that destroys human thought, human relationship and love

The world is in a process of decay. If you see the decay, you have a challenge: you are challenged to find a way of solving this urgent problem

Do you know what it means to learn? When you are really learning you are learning throughout your life and there is no one special teacher to learn from. Then everything teaches you

A dead leaf, a bird in flight, a smell, a tear, the rich and the poor, those who are crying, the smile of a woman, the haughtiness of a man. You learn from everything, therefore there is no guide, no philosopher, no guru. Life itself is your teacher, and you are in a state of constant learning.

Attention comes when you are deeply interested in something, for then you love to find out all about it; then your whole mind, your whole being is there

You have initiative when you initiate or start something without being prompted

It is very important to find out while you are young what it is you really love to do; and this is the only way to create a new society

If we don't love we can never be thoughtful, attentive; we can never be considerate

When you are doing something with your whole being, not because you want to get somewhere, or have more profit, or greater results, but simply because you love to do it

In that there is no ambition, is there? In that there is no competition; you are not struggling with anyone for first place. And should not education help you to find out what you really love to do so that from the beginning to the end of your life you are working at something which you feel is worth while and which for you has deep significance?

Anything truly revolutionary is created by a few who see what is true and are willing to live according to that truth; but to discover what is true demands freedom from tradition, which means freedom from all fears

To observe, to watch, to give your whole attention to something beautiful, your mind must be free of preoccupations

It is only when the mind is very quiet that you can really observe, for then the mind is sensitive to extraordinary beauty

To be free is to be intelligent, but intelligence does not come into being by just wishing to be free; it comes into being only when you begin to understand your whole environment, the social, religious, parental and traditional influences that are continually closing in on you. But to understand the various influences

The influence of your parents, of your government, of society, of the culture to which you belong, of your beliefs, your gods and superstitions, of the tradition to which you conform unthinkingly

To understand all these and become free from them requires deep insight; but you generally give in to them because inwardly you are frightened. You are afraid of not having a good position in life; you are afraid of what your priest will say; you are afraid of not following tradition, of not doing the right thing. But freedom is really a state of mind in which there is no fear or compulsion, no urge to be secure

We all want to be famous people

And the moment we want to be something, we are no longer free

The function of education, then, is to help you from childhood not to imitate anybody, but to be yourself all the time. And this is a most difficult thing to do: whether you are ugly or beautiful, whether you are envious or jealous, always to be what you are, but understand it. To be yourself is very difficult, because you think that what you are is ignoble, and that if you could only change what you are into something noble it would be marvellous; but that never happens. Whereas, if you look at what you actually are and understand it, then in that very understanding there is a transformation. So freedom lies, not in trying to become something different, nor in doing whatever you happen to feel like doing, nor in following the authority of tradition, of your parents, of your guru, but in understanding what you are from moment to moment

When you are in revolt against the whole tradition of trying to become something. That is the only true revolution, leading to extraordinary freedom. To cultivate this freedom is the real function of education

There can be no freedom as long as you are merely trying to become somebody, or imitate a noble example

Shyness implies self-consciousness

An intelligent mind is one which is constantly learning, never concluding

An intelligent mind is an inquiring mind, a mind that is watching, learning, studying

When there is no fear, there is love

What is important is that those of you who are dealing with children should not impose upon them your own fallacies, your own notions about ghosts, your own particular ideas and experiences

Our love is always hedged about with anxiety, jealousy, fear

Which implies that we depend inwardly on another, we want to be loved. We don't just love and leave it there, but we ask something in return; and in that very asking we become dependent

To love is not to ask anything in return, not even to feel that you are giving something

And it is only such love that can know freedom

You can have a simple mind only when you know how to love

Society is the relationship between man and man

Jealousy implies dissatisfaction with what you are and envy of others

To be discontented with what you are is the very beginning of envy

We human beings have been given the capacity to think, and we think wrongly

If you are listening to find out, then your mind is free, not committed to anything; it is very acute, sharp, alive, inquiring, curious, and therefore capable of discovery

Have you ever sat very silently, not with your attention fixed on anything, not making an effort to concentrate, but with the mind very quiet, really still? Then you hear everything, don't you? You hear the far-off noises as well as those that are nearer and those that are very close by, the immediate sounds

Which means, really that you are listening to everything. Your mind is not confined to one narrow little channel. If you can listen in this way, listen with ease, without strain, you will find an extraordinary change taking place within you, a change which comes without your volition, without your asking; and in that change there is great beauty and depth of insight

If you can really listen to everything

To the lapping of the water on the bank of a river, to the song of the birds, to the crying of a child, to your mother scolding you, to a friend bullying you, to your wife or husband nagging you

Then you will find that you go beyond the words, beyond the mere verbal expressions which so tear one's being

Happiness does not come when you are striving for it

And that is the greatest secret

For happiness to be, you have to find out how to free the mind of all fear

True education is to learn how to think, not what to think

It is only through real discontent that one has initiative

Creativeness has its roots in the initiative which comes into being only when there is deep discontent

Don't be afraid of discontent, but give it nourishment until the spark becomes a flame and you are everlastingly discontented with everything

With your jobs, with your families, with the traditional pursuit of money, position, power

So that you really begin to think, to discover

You can think very clearly only when you are not seeking a result; you can think very clearly only when you have no prejudice

All of which means, really, that you can think clearly, simply and directly only when your mind is no longer pursuing any form of security and is therefore free of fear

If you are discontented with everything

With your prejudice, with your beliefs, with your fears

And are not seeking a result, then that very discontent brings your thought into focus, not upon any particular object or in any particular direction, but your whole thinking process becomes very simple, direct and clear

Our discontent is based upon our desire for 'the more'. It is only because we want something more that most of us are discontented. But I am not talking about that kind of discontent. It is the desire for 'the more' that prevents clear thinking. Whereas if we are discontented, not because we want something, but without knowing what we want; if we are dissatisfied with our jobs, with making money, with seeking position and power, with tradition, with what we have and with what we might have; if we are dissatisfied, not with anything in particular but with everything, then I think we shall find that our discontent brings clarity. When we don't accept or follow, but question, investigate, penetrate, there is an insight out of which comes creativity, joy

If you can look at yourself without condemning what you see, without comparing yourself with somebody else, without wishing to be more beautiful or more virtuous; if you can just observe what you are and move with it, then you will find that it is possible to go infinitely far. Then there is no end to the journey, and that is the mystery, the beauty of it

Civilization is the collective desire and will of many people

The man who really wants to find out whether or not there is a state beyond the framework of time, must be free of civilization; that is, he must be free of the collective will and stand alone. And this is an essential part of education: to learn to stand alone so that you are not caught either in the will of the many or in the will of one, and are therefore capable of discovering for yourself what is true

Don't depend on anybody

I am not going to accept, I am going to investigate, explore

Life is an extraordinary mystery

Not the mystery in books, not the mystery that people talk about, but a mystery that one has to discover for oneself; and that is why it is so grave a matter that you should understand the little, the narrow, the petty, and go beyond it

If you don't begin to understand life while you are young, you will grow up inwardly hideous; you will be dull, empty inside, though outwardly you may have money, ride in expensive cars, put on airs. That is why it is very important to leave your little room and perceive the whole expanse of the heavens. But you cannot do that unless you have love

Not bodily love or divine love, but just love; which is to love the birds, the trees, the flowers, your teachers, your parents, and beyond your parents, humanity

If you begin now to have love in your heart, if you love the tree you plant, the stray animal you pat, then as you grow up you will not remain in your small room with its narrow window, but will leave it and love the whole of life

Love is factual, it is not emotional, something to be cried over

You want to be famous because everybody around you in this society wants to be famous

If you are inwardly rich, then it does not matter to you whether you are known or unknown

One of the most difficult things in life is not to be bound by an idea; being bound is called being consistent

To be consistent is to have a mind that is unvaryingly following a particular pattern of thinking

Which means that you must not do contradictory things one thing today and the opposite thing tomorrow

Does it matter very much who a Master or a guru is? What matters is life

Not your guru, not a Master, a leader or a teacher who interprets life for you. It is you who have to understand life; it is you who are suffering, who are in misery; it is you who want to know the meaning of death, of birth, of meditation, of sorrow, and nobody can tell you. Others can explain, but their explanations may be entirely false, altogether wrong

It is good to be sceptical, because it gives you a chance to find out for yourself whether you need a guru at all. What is important is to be a light unto yourself, to be your own Master and disciple, to be both the teacher and the pupil

As you grow older you want what you do to be acknowledged by many people. You may say, "I will do this thing for the sake of my guru, for the sake of my country, for the sake of man, for the sake of God", but you are really doing it to gain recognition, out of which grows pride; and when you do anything in that way, it is not worth doing

To understand something like pride, you must be capable of thinking right through; you must see how it begins and the disaster it brings, see the whole of it, which means that you must be so keenly interested that your mind follows it to the end and does not stop half way. When you are really interested in a game you play it to the end, you don't suddenly stop in the middle and go home. But your mind is not used to this kind of thinking, and it is part of education to help you to inquire into the whole process of life and not just study a few subjects

Which is import- ant: to fight over your conflicting opinions as to whether something is beautiful or ugly, or to be sensitive to both beauty and ugliness?

You must see the dancing leaves, the water flowing under the bridge, the beauty of an evening, and also be aware of the beggar in the street; you must see the poor woman struggling with a heavy load and be ready to help her, give her a hand. All this is necessary, and it is only when you have this sensitivity to everything that you can begin to work, to help and not reject or condemn

We always want to know who the Master is, who the learned person is, who the artist is that painted the picture. We never want to discover for ourselves the content of the picture irrespective of the identity of the artist. It is only when you know who the poet is that you say the poem is lovely. This is snobbishness, the mere repetition of an opinion, and it destroys your own inward perception of the reality of the thing. If you perceive that a picture is beautiful and you feel very grateful, does it really matter to you who painted it? If your one concern is to find the content, the truth of the picture, then the picture communicates its significance

If you and I want to bring about a complete revolution in the social order, the first thing we have to understand is this instinct for the acquisition of power

Society is the relationship between you and me; and if our relationship is based on ambition each one of us wanting to be more powerful than the other, then obviously we shall always be in conflict

It is only when all this competitiveness is removed that there will be a peaceful society in which all of us can live happily, creatively

If you really love to be an engineer, or a scientist or if you can plant a tree, or paint a picture, or write a poem, not to gain recognition but just because you love to do it, then you will find that you never compete with another. I think this is the real key: to love what you do

To find out what you love to do demands a great deal of intelligence; because, if you are afraid of not being able to earn a livelihood, or of not fitting into this rotten society, then you will never find. But,if you are not frightened, if you refuse to be pushed into the groove of tradition by your parents, by your teachers, by the superficial demands of society, then there is a possibility of discovering what it is you really love to do. So, to discover, there must be no fear of not surviving

Unless you see the truth of what you do and are guided by that truth, your life becomes a hideous mess

If you want to discover the truth in that vital process which is your own life, you will have to inquire deeply into all these things; you will have to give your mind and heart to it. You will have to think independently, clearly, without prejudice; for truth is not away from life, it is in the very movement of your daily living

The real student is studying, learning, inquiring, exploring, not just until he is twenty or twenty-five, but throughout life

To be a student is to learn all the time; and as long as you are learning, there is no teacher, is there? The moment you are a student there is no one in particular to teach you, because you are learning from everything. The leaf that is blown by the wind, the murmur of the waters on the banks of a river, the flight of a bird high in the air, the poor man as he walks by with a heavy load, the people who think they know everything about life

You are learning from them all, therefore there is no teacher and you are not a follower

You can learn from books, but that does not take you very far. A book can give you only what the author has to tell. But the learning that comes through self-knowledge has no limit, because to learn through your own self-knowledge is to know how to listen, how to observe, and therefore you learn from everything: from music, from what people say and the way they say it, from anger, greed, ambition

This earth is ours, it does not belong to the communists, the socialists, or the capitalists; it is yours and mine, to be lived on happily, richly, without conflict. But that richness of life, that happiness, that feeling, "This earth is ours", cannot be brought about by enforcement, by law. It must come from within because we love the earth and all the things thereof; and that is the state of learning

You don't feel respect for your servant or the villager, but only for those from whom you hope to get something. That kind of respect is really fear; it is not respect at all, it has no meaning. But if you really have love in your heart, then to you the governor, the teacher, your servant and the villager are all the same; then you have respect, a feeling for them all, because love does not ask anything in return

Real life is doing something which you love to do with your whole being so that there is no inner contradiction, no war between what you are doing and what you think you should do. Life is then a completely integrated process in which there is tremendous joy. But that can happen only when you are not psychologically depending on anybody, or on any society, when there is complete detachment inwardly, for only then is there a possibility of really loving what you do. If you are in a state of total revolution, it does not matter whether you garden, or become a prime minister, or do something else; you will love what you do, and out of that love there comes an extraordinary feeling of creativeness

If one knows what the disease is, there is a possibility of curing it. But to know the disease, to know the particular limitation, bondage or hindrance of the mind, and to understand it, one must not condemn it, one must not say it is right or wrong. One must observe it without having an opinion, a prejudice about it

Which is extraordinarily difficult, because we are brought up to condemn

If you are none of these things and therefore do not look through the screen of any idea or belief, but actually have the direct contact, then you will notice what an extraordinary relationship there is between you and what you observe. If you have no prejudice, no bias, if you are open, then everything around you becomes extraordinarily interesting, tremendously alive

The moment you criticize, you are not in relationship, you already have a barrier between yourself and them, but if you merely observe, then you will have a direct relationship with people and with things

Life is not something which can be understood from a book, nor can its significance be gathered by following another, or through some form of prayer. You and I must understand it for ourselves

Which we can do only when we are fully alive, very alert, watchful, observant, taking interest in everything around us; and then we shall discover what it is to be really happy

Love will arise in your heart when you have no barrier between yourself and another, when you meet and observe people without judging them, when you just see the sailboat on the river and enjoy the beauty of it

What is important is to be inwardly very simple, very austere, which is to have a mind not clogged with beliefs, with fears, with innumerable wants, for only such a mind is capable of real thinking, of exploration and discovery

When you are conscious that you are happy, happiness goes out of the window. To seek happiness is absurd, because there is happiness only when you don't seek it

Only he has love who abandons himself, forgets himself completely, and thereby brings about the state of creative beauty

It is only when you are afraid of something, when you are resisting something, that there has to be discipline; then you have to control, hold yourself together

Most of us have not this spirit of revolt this urge to break through, to find out; and it is this spirit that is important

To know how one's mind works is a basic purpose of education. If you don't know how your mind reacts, if your mind is not aware of its own activities, you will never find out what society is

Society is always trying to control, to shape, to mould the thinking of the young. From the moment you are born and begin to receive impressions, your father and mother are constantly telling you what to do and what not to do, what to believe and what not to believe

From childhood these things are poured into you, which means that your mind

Which is very young, impressionable, inquisitive, curious to know, wanting to find out

Is gradually being encased, conditioned, shaped so that you will fit into the pattern of a particular society and not be a revolutionary

You must know what you are thinking

Sit under a tree or on the river bank and quietly observe how your mind works. Don't correct it, don't say, 'This is right, that is wrong', but just watch it as you would a film

It is really very interesting, far more interesting than any film, because your mind is the residue of the whole world and it contains all that human beings have experienced. Do you understand? Your mind is humanity, and when you perceive this, you will have immense compassion

If you watch your own mind, it is all there

The moment you say, "I have discovered, I know, I am a great man because I have found out this and that", you are lost. If you have to take a long journey, you must carry very little; if you want to climb to a great height, you must travel light

By the end of the year he may be entirely different

Meet another human being always with a fresh mind, and not with your prejudices, with your fixed ideas, with your opinions

Unless there is within you this movement to find out what is the real, what is truth, what is love your efforts will be without significance. You may be very learned and do the things which society calls good, but they are all within the prison walls of tradition and therefore of no revolutionary value at all

Opinions are not important, because I will have one opinion, you will have another, and a third person will have still another. To be concerned with opinions is a stupid form of thinking

What is important is to see facts as they are without opinion, without judging, without comparing

Through initiative there comes about confidence

When confidence is born of action within the social structure, there always goes with it a strange arrogance

The function of education is not to make you fit into the social pattern; on the contrary, it is to help you to understand completely, deeply, fully and thereby break away from the social pattern, so that you are an individual without that arrogance of the self, but you have confidence because you are really innocent

Unless you are properly educated, unless you have this extraordinary confidence of innocence, you are inevitably going to be absorbed by the collective and lost in mediocrity. You will put some letters after your name, you will be married, have children, and that will be the end of you

Most of us are frightened. Your parents are frightened, your educators are frightened, the governments and religions are frightened of your becoming a total individual, because they all want you to remain safely within the prison of environmental and cultural influences. But it is only the individuals who break through the social pattern by understanding it, and who are therefore not bound by the conditioning of their own minds

It is only such people who can bring about a new civilization, not the people who merely conform, or who resist one particular pattern because they are shaped by another. The search for God or truth does not lie within the prison, but rather in understanding the prison and breaking through its walls

And this very movement towards freedom creates a new culture, a different world

If there is a richness in one's life

Not the richness of money or knowledge, which anyone can acquire, but that richness which is the movement of reality with no beginning and no ending

Then companionship becomes a secondary matter

Most people cannot live alone, therefore they need companions. It requires enormous intelligence to be alone; and you must be alone to find God, truth. It is nice to have a companion, a husband or a wife, and also to have babies; but you see, we get lost in all that, we get lost in the family, in the job, in the dull, monotonous routine of a decaying existence. We get used to it, and then the thought of living alone becomes dreadful, something to be afraid of

If you love something, you never get tired of it

I mean love in which there is no seeking of a result, no wanting something out of it. When you love something, it is not self- fulfilment, therefore there is no disappointment, there is no end

You are expecting something from him, and when that expectation is not fulfilled you are disappointed

Which means, really, that inwardly, psychologically you are depending on that person. So wherever there is psychological dependence, there must be frustration; and frustration inevitably breeds anger, bitterness, jealousy, and various other forms of conflict. That is why it is very important, especially while you are young, to love something with your whole being

A tree, an animal, your teacher, your parent

For then you will find out for yourself what it is to be without conflict, without fear

Living is not this tawdry, mediocre, disciplined thing which we call our existence. Living is something entirely different; it is abundantly rich, timelessly changing, and as long as we don't understand that eternal movement, our lives are bound to have very little meaning

I think we all ought to wash our minds completely clean, as the trees are washed by the rain, because they are so heavily laden with the dust of many centuries, the dust of what we call knowledge, experience. If you and I would cleanse the mind every day, free it of yesterday's reminiscences, each one of us would then have a fresh mind, a mind capable of dealing with the many problems of existence

Confidence comes when you feel completely at home, secure

As you grow up you must be able to discuss, to find out what you think is true and stick to it

You must be able to stand by something which you feel is right, even though it brings pain, suffering, loss of money, and all the rest of it

There is no end to learning and you can learn from everything if your mind is curious, alert

Most of us don't think about these matters; if we are afraid in the presence of a grave or serious older person, we don't inquire into it, we don't ask ourselves

Why am I afraid?

To be integrated implies a sense of freedom, and when this integration is taking place there is surely no need for discipline. Integration means being one thing totally on all levels at the same time

A man who loves does not do whatever he likes. It is love alone that leads to right action. What brings order in the world is to love and let love do what it will

Our present education is rotten because it teaches us to love success and not what we are doing. The result has become more important than the action

It is good to hide your brilliance under a bushel, to be anonymous, to love what you are doing and not to show off. It is good to be kind without a name. That does not make you famous, it does not cause your photograph to appear in the newspapers. Politicians do not come to your door. You are just a creative human being living anonymously, and in that there is richness and great beauty

The mind creates the problems, and then becomes the soil in which they take root; and once a problem is well established in the mind it is very difficult to uproot it. What is essential is for the mind itself to see the problem and not give it the soil to grow

Real co-operation comes, not through merely agreeing to carry out some project together, but with the joy, the feeling of togetherness

Escape does not solve the problem, because when you come back it is still there; so why not face it from the very beginning?

Observe your own mind and you will see how restless it is, always occupied with something: with what somebody said yesterday, with something you have just learned, with what you are going to do tomorrow, and so on. It is never unoccupied

Which does not mean a stagnant mind, or a kind of mental vacuum. As long as it is occupied, whether with the highest or the lowest, the mind is small, petty; and a petty mind can never resolve any problem, it can only be occupied with it. However big a problem may be, in being occupied with it the mind makes it petty. Only a mind that is unoccupied and therefore fresh can tackle and resolve the problem

Relationship is a mirror in which you can see yourself, not as you would wish to be, but as you are

It is very important not to follow anybody, not to have one particular teacher, but to learn from the river, the flowers, the trees, from the woman who carries a burden, from the members of your family and from your own thoughts. This is an education which nobody can give you but yourself, and that is the beauty of it. It demands ceaseless watchfulness, a constantly inquiring mind. You have to learn by observing, by struggling, by being happy and tearful

The moment you are very clear about what you want to do, things happen. Life comes to your aid

A friend, a relation, a teacher, a grandmother, somebody helps you. But if you are afraid to try because your father may turn you out, then you are lost. Life never comes to the aid of those who merely yield to some demand out of fear

The mind is the result of habit, is it not? It is the result of tradition, the result of time

Time being repetition, a continuity of the past. And can the mind, your mind, stop thinking in terms of what has been

And of what will be, which is really a projection of what has been? Can your mind be free from habit and from creating habits? If you go into this problem very deeply you will find that it can; and when the mind renews itself without forming new patterns, habits, without again falling into the groove of imitation, then it remains fresh, young, innocent, and is therefore capable of infinite understanding

The mind must die to everything it has gathered

To all the habits, the imitated virtues, to all the things it has relied upon for its sense of security. Then it is no longer caught in the net of its own thinking. In dying to the past from moment to moment the mind is made fresh, therefore it can never deteriorate or set in motion the wave of darkness

You hear something which you think is right and you want to carry it out in your everyday life; so there is a gap between what you think and what you do, is there not? You think one thing, and you are doing something else. But you want to put into practice what you think, so there is this gap between action and thought; and then you ask how to bridge the gap, how to link your thinking to your action. Now, when you want to do something very much, you do it, don't you? When you want to go and play cricket, or do some other thing in which you are really interested, you find ways and means of doing it; you never ask how to put it into practice. You do it because you are eager, because your whole being, your mind and heart are in it

To ask, 'How am I to do it?' is a thoughtless question, because when you are really interested in something which you don't know how to do, you go at it and soon begin to find out

The action of being is entirely different from the action of becoming. The action of being is so revolutionary that society rejects it and concerns itself exclusively with the action of becoming, which is respectable because it fits into the pattern. But any desire that expresses itself in the action of becoming, which is a form of ambition, has no fulfilment. Sooner or later it is thwarted, impeded, frustrated, and we revolt against that frustration in mischievous ways

Your desires are never really fulfilled

It may be all right to have fallen into a habit of doing something when you are seventy or eighty, with one foot in the grave; but you are just beginning your life, and already to be used to something is a terrible thing, is it not?

You see, when you have become used to something, your mind is already on its way to the graveyard. If you think as a Hindu, a communist, a Catholic, a Protestant, then your mind is already going down, deteriorating. But if your mind is alert, inquiring to find out why you are caught in a certain habit, why you think in a particular way, then the secondary question of whether you should smoke or drink tea can be dealt with

Life has an astonishing way of taking care of you, because then there is no taking care on your part. Life carries you where it will because you are part of itself; then there is no problem of security, of what people say or don't say, and that is the beauty of life

They are not concerned about death. If death comes, it is all right, they are finished. There is no concern about what is going to happen; they are living from moment to moment, are they not? It is we human beings who are always concerned about death

Because we are not living. That is the trouble: we are dying, we are not living

Now, if you can live from moment to moment and not be concerned about the future, if you can live without the thought of tomorrow

Which does not mean the superficiality of merely being occupied with today; if, being aware of the whole process of the known, you can, relinquish the known, let it go completely, then you will find that an astonishing thing takes place. Try it for a day

Put aside everything you know, forget it, and just see what happens. Don't carry over your worries from day to day, from hour to hour, from moment to moment; let them all go, and you will see that out of this freedom there comes an extraordinary life that includes both living and dying

The fact is that truth is life, and life has no permanency. Life has to be discovered from moment to moment, from day to day; it has to be discovered, it cannot be taken for granted. If you take it for granted that you know life, you are not living. Three meals a day, clothing, shelter, sex, your job, your amusement and your thinking process

That dull, repetitive process is not life. Life is something to be discovered; and you cannot discover it if you have not lost, if you have not put aside the things that you have found. Do experiment with what I am saying. Put aside your philosophies, your religions, your customs, your racial taboos and all the rest of it, for they are not life. If you are caught in those things you will never discover life; and the function of education, surely, is to help you to discover life all the time

A man who says he knows is already dead. But the man who thinks, 'I don't know', who is discovering, finding out, who is not seeking an end, not thinking in terms of arriving or becoming

Such a man is living, and that living is truth

What is the true work of man? Surely, the true work of man is to discover truth, God; it is to love and not to be caught in his own self-enclosing activities. In the very discovery of what is true there is love, and that love in man's relationship with man will create a different civilization, a new world

Your mind can pay complete attention without distraction and without resistance

Be totally aware so that your mind is all the time attentive without being caught in the process of exclusion

If your mind has space, then in that space there is silence

And from that silence everything else comes, for then you can listen, you can pay attention without resistance. That is why it is very important to have space in the mind

When the mind is unaware of its reactions, of its own subtle movements, such a mind is lazy, ignorant

One must be very watchful to find out if one is really lazy, Don't just accept it if people tell you that you are lazy. Find out for yourself what laziness is. The man who merely accepts, rejects or imitates, the man who, being afraid, digs a little rut for himself

Such a man is lazy and therefore his mind deteriorates, goes to pieces. But a man who is watchful is not lazy, even though he may often sit very quietly and observe the trees, the birds, the people, the stars and the silent river

Why are you afraid to be what you are? Why don't you start with what you are and not with what you should be? Without understanding what you are, merely to try to change it into what you think you should be has no meaning. Therefore scrap all ideals. I know the older people won't like this, but it doesn't matter. Scrap all ideals, drown them in the river, throw them into the wastepaper basket, and start with what you are

Which is what?

Use your mind to find out what you want to do in life

What you want to do, not what society or some ideal tells you to do. If you give your whole being to this inquiry, then you are a revolutionary; then you have the confidence to create, to be what you are, and in that there is an everrenewing vitality. But the other way you are dissipating your energy in trying to be like somebody else

Don't you see, it is really an extraordinary thing that you are so afraid to be what you are; because beauty lies in being what you are

When the mind revolts within the pattern of society, such a revolt is like a mutiny in a prison, and it is merely another form of ambition. But when the mind understands this whole destructive process of the present society and steps out of it, then its action is not ambitious. Such action may create a new culture, a better social order, a different world, but the mind is not concerned with that creation. Its only concern is to discover what is true; and it is the movement of truth that creates a new world, not the mind which is in revolt against society

One must have information about a problem, but the mind must be free of that information to find the answer

Most of us learn facts, gather information or knowledge, but the mind never learns how to be quiet, how to be free from all the turmoils of life, from the soil in which problems take root. We join societies, adhere to some philosophy, give ourselves over to a belief, but all this is utterly useless because it does not solve our human problems. On the contrary, it brings greater misery, greater sorrow. What is needed is not philosophy or belief, but for the mind to be free to investigate, to discover and to be creative

If my desire is merely to change the boy, which is wanting him to fit into a particular pattern, then I cannot understand him

The moment you try to become intelligent, you cease to be intelligent

It is the function of right education to help you to think for yourself, so that out of your own thinking you feel immense confidence. Then you are a creative human being and not a slavish machine

When the mind is merely concerned with itself and its own activities, it is not beautiful; whatever it does, it remains ugly, limited, therefore it is incapable of knowing what beauty is. Whereas, a mind that is not concerned with itself, that is free of ambition, a mind that not caught up in its own desires or driven by its own pursuit of success

Such a mind is not shallow, and it flowers in goodness

It is this inward goodness that gives beauty even to a so-called ugly face. When there is inward goodness the ugly face is transformed, for inward goodness is really a deeply religious feeling

To be religious is to be sensitive to reality. Your total being

Body, mind and heart

Is sensitive to beauty and to ugliness, to the donkey tied to a post, to the poverty and filth in this town, to laughter and tears, to everything about you. From this sensitivity for the whole of existence springs goodness, love; and without this sensitivity there is no beauty, though you may have talent, be very well dressed, ride in an expensive car and be scrupulously clean

You cannot love if you are thinking about yourself

Which does not mean that you must think about somebody else. Love is, it has no object. The mind that loves is really a religious mind because it is in the movement of reality, of truth, of God, and it is only such a mind that can know what beauty is. The mind that is not caught in any philosophy, that is not enclosed in any system or belief, that is not driven by its own ambition and is therefore sensitive, alert, watchful

Such a mind has beauty

It is very important while you are young to learn to be tidy and clean, to sit well without restless movement, to have good table manners and to be considerate, punctual; but all these things, however necessary, are superficial, and if you merely cultivate the superficial without understanding the deeper thing, you will never know the real significance of beauty

A mind that does not belong to any nation, group or society, that has no authority, that is not motivated by ambition or held by fear

Such a mind is always flowering in love and goodness. Because it is in the movement of reality, it knows what beauty is; being sensitive to both the ugly and the beautiful, it is a creative mind, it has limitless understanding

Ambition, desire and fulfilment lead inevitably to frustration, sorrow

When you feel very strongly about something, do you consider it difficult to put it into action?

It is only when you don't totally feel the truth of something that you say it is difficult to put it into action. You don't love it. That which you love you do with ardour, there is joy in it, and then what society or what your parents may say does not matter. But if you are not deeply convinced, if you do not feel free and happy in doing what you think is right, surely your interest in it is false, unreal; therefore it becomes mountainous and you say it is difficult to put it into action

In doing what you love to do there will of course be difficulties, but that won't matter to you, it is part of life. You see, we have made a philosophy of difficulty, we consider it a virtue to make effort, to struggle, to oppose

If you deeply feel what is right and can therefore stand alone, then your action born of love will have extraordinary significance, it will have vitality, beauty

It is only in a very quiet mind that great things are born; and a quiet mind does not come about through effort, through control, through discipline

A mind that practises love cannot love. But if you love and do not interfere with it, then love will operate

The man who is nobody, who does not want to be a somebody, who is just himself and understands himself

Such a man is free of arrogance, of pride

The desire to have lasting happiness, the fear of dying or of losing property, the pleasure of being flattered, the resentment of being insulted, the quarrelling over your god and my god, your way and my way

The mind is ceaselessly occupied with all this and nothing else. It may pretend to seek peace, to feel brotherly, to be good, to love, but behind this screen of words it continues to be caught up in the conflict of the 'me' and the 'mine', and that is why it creates the problems which you bring up every morning in different words

The rich man in his expensive car, the girl who makes herself more beautiful, the boy who tries to be very smart

They all want to show that they have something. It is a strange world, is it not? You see, a lily or a rose never pretends, and its beauty is that it is what it is

You see, it is only when the mind is free from the burden of knowledge that it can find out what is true; and in the process of finding out, there is no accumulation, is there? The moment you begin to accumulate what you have experienced or learnt, it becomes an anchorage which holds your mind and prevents it from going further. In the process of inquiry the mind sheds from day to day what it has learnt so that it is always fresh, uncontaminated by yesterday's experience. Truth is living, it is not static, and the mind that would discover truth must also be living, not burdened with knowledge or experience. Then only is there that state in which truth can come into being

When learning is only a means to get somewhere, the moment you have got where you want to go, you forget the means

And surely that is not learning at all. So there may be the state of learning only when there is no motive no incentive when you do the thing for the love of itself

Do not pursue what should be, but understand what is. The understanding of what you actually are is far more important than the pursuit of what you should be

We are all afraid, we all want security, we all want to be loved, we all want to eat and to be happy. But you see, the superficial differences destroy our awareness of the fundamental similarity between us as human beings. To understand and to be free of that similarity brings about great love, great thoughtfulness. Unfortunately, most of us are caught up in, and therefore divided by, the superficial differences of race, of culture, of belief. Beliefs are a curse, they divide people and create antagonism. It is only by going beyond all beliefs, beyond all differences and similarities, that the mind can be free to find out what is true

The moment the mind gets used to something it begins to function in the groove of habit, therefore it becomes dull, it is no longer vulnerable; it loses that sensibility which is necessary to find out what is God, what is beauty, what is love

We justify sorrow; instead of revolting against this whole rotten system and breaking through it, we merely adjust ourselves to it. To be free of sorrow one must be free of the desire to do harm

And also of the desire to do 'good', the so-called good that is equally the result of our conditioning

You show respect out of fear

Do you know what it means to be sensitive? It means, surely, to have a tender feeling for things: to see an animal suffering and do something about it, to remove a stone from the path because so many bare feet walk there, to pick up a nail on the road because somebody's car might get a puncture. To be sensitive is to feel for people, for birds, for flowers, for trees

Not because they are yours, but just because you are awake to the extraordinary beauty of things

To love is the most important thing in life

When you love someone because that person loves you in return, surely that is not love. To love is to have this extraordinary feeling of affection without asking anything in return

You may have a clear skin, a nice face, you may wear a lovely sari or be a great athlete, but without love in your heart you are an ugly human being, ugly beyond measure; and when you love, whether your face is homely or beautiful, it has a radiance

You say this, and somebody else says that. Each one has an opinion, but opinion is not truth; therefore do not listen to mere opinion, it does not matter whose it is, but find out for yourself what is true. Opinion can be changed overnight, but truth cannot be changed

The mind creates the image and then derives power from its own creation. That is what the mind is everlastingly doing: producing images and drawing strength, happiness, benefit from those images, thereby remaining empty, inwardly poverty-stricken. So what is important is not the image, or what the millions say about it, but to understand the operation of your own mind

The mind cannot create truth. What it creates is not truth, it is merely an opinion, a judgment. So it is important to find out for yourself what is true

To find out what is true, the mind must be without any movement, completely still. That stillness is the act of worship, not your going to the temple to offer flowers and pushing aside the beggar on the way. You propitiate the gods because you are afraid of them, but that is not worship. When you understand the mind and the mind is completely still, not made still, then that stillness is the act of worship; and in that stillness there comes into being that which is true, that which is beautiful, that which is God

When you look at a flower, when you just see it, at the moment is there an entity who sees? Or is there only seeing? Seeing the flower makes you say, 'How nice it is, I want it; so the 'I' comes into being through desire, fear, greed, ambition, which follow in the wake of seeing. It is these that create the 'I', and the 'I' is non-existent without them

Because it is only the innocent mind, the mind that has experienced vastly and yet is free of knowledge and experience

It is only such a mind that can discover that which is more than brain and mind. Otherwise what you discover will be coloured by what you have already experienced, and your experience is the result of your conditioning

You know that when you have enough clothes, jewels, or whatever it is, you don't have to philosophize about it. But the moment need moves into the field of greed, it is then that you begin to philosophize to rationalize, to explain away your greed

The mind knows how essentially stupid it is to smoke, and yet one goes on smoking. Why? Because it likes the sensations of smoking, and that is all. If the mind were as keenly aware of the stupidity of smoking as it is of the pain of a pinprick, it would stop smoking immediately. But it doesn't want to see it that clearly because smoking has become a pleasurable habit

If you eat something which gives you a violent tummyache, you don't go on eating it, do you? You put it aside immediately

As long as the mind clings to a belief, it is held in a prison

IS IT NOT a very strange thing in this world, where there is so much distraction, entertainment, that almost everybody is a spectator and very few are players? Whenever we have a little free time, most of us seek some form of amusement. We pick up a serious book, a novel, or a magazine. If we are in America we turn on the radio or the television, or we indulge in incessant talk. There is a constant demand to be amused, to be entertained, to be taken away from ourselves. We are afraid to be alone, afraid to be without a companion, without a distraction of some sort. Very few of us ever walk in the fields and the woods, not talking or singing songs, but just walking quietly and observing things about us and within ourselves. We almost never do that because, you see, most of us are very bored; we are caught in a dull routine of learning or teaching, of household duties or a job, and so in our free time we want to be amused, either lightly or seriously. We read, or go to the cinema

Or we turn to a religion, which is the same thing. Religion too has become a form of distraction, a kind of serious escape from boredom, from routine

I don't know if you have noticed all this. Most people are constantly occupied with something

With puja, with the repetition of certain words, with worrying over this or that

Because they are frightened to be alone with themselves. You try being alone, without any form of distraction, and you will see how quickly you want to get away from yourself and forget what you are. That is why this enormous structure of professional amusement, of automated distraction, is so prominent a part of what we call civilization. If you observe you will see that people the world over are becoming more and more distracted, increasingly sophisticated and worldly. The multiplication of pleasures, the innumerable books that are being published, the newspaper pages filled with sporting events

Surely, all these indicate that we constantly want to be amused. Because we are inwardly empty, dull, mediocre, we use our relationships and our social reforms as a means of escaping from ourselves. I wonder if you have noticed how lonely most people are? And to escape from loneliness we run to temples, churches, or mosques, we dress up and attend social functions, we watch television, listen to the radio, read, and so on

Very few go beyond this extraordinary fear of loneliness; but one must go beyond it, because beyond it lies the real treasure

Some of the younger students may still be unaware of loneliness, but the older people know it: the feeling of being utterly cut off, of suddenly being afraid without apparent cause

That is loneliness. But aloneness is something entirely different; it is a state of freedom which comes into being when you have gone through loneliness and understand it. In that state of aloneness you don't rely on anyone psychologically because you are no longer seeking pleasure, comfort, gratification. It is only then that the mind is completely alone, and only such a mind is creative

If at school you merely learn subjects in order to pass examinations, then learning itself becomes a means of escape from loneliness

When you ask a question, what is important is to find out for yourself the truth of the matter and not merely accept what someone else says

We take in the noises, the songs, the beautiful and ugly sights, but we are not aware of our reactions to them

The deeper the mind penetrates its own thought processes, the more clearly it understands that all forms of thinking are conditioned; therefore the mind is spontaneously very still

Which does not mean that it is asleep. On the contrary, the mind is then extraordinarily alert, no longer being drugged by mantrams, by the repetition of words, or shaped by discipline. This state of silent alertness is also part of awareness; and if you go into it still more deeply you will find that there is no division between the person who is aware and the object of which he is aware

As long as your mind is condemning, judging, forming opinions, concluding, it is neither aware nor sensitive

When you are rude to people, when you pick flowers and throw them away, when you ill-treat animals, when you scratch your name on the furniture or break the leg of a chair, when you are unpunctual to meals and have bad manners in general, it all indicates insensitivity, does it not? It indicates a mind that is not capable of alert adjustment. And surely it is part of education to help the student to be sensitive, so that he will not merely conform or resist, but will be awake to the whole movement of life. The people who are sensitive in life may suffer much more than those who are insensitive; but if they understand and go beyond their suffering they will discover extraordinary things

'Sadism', which means deriving pleasure from the suffering of others

To be dedicated is to give oneself to something completely, without asking anything in return; to be like a monk, like a hermit, like the great teachers and scientists

Ambition breeds competition and therefore destroys people. A society based on greed and acquisition has always within it the spectre of war, conflict, suffering

Love is the most practical thing in the world. To love, to be kind, not to be greedy, not to be ambitious, not to be influenced by people but to think for yourself

These are all very practical things, and they will bring about a practical, happy society

You see, this is part of awareness: to be cognizant of the fact that they are giggling over there in the corner, and at the same time to continue with one's own seriousness

The difficulty with most grown-up people is that they have not solved the problem of their own living, and yet they say to you, "I will tell you what is practical and what is not"

In the prosperous countries modern education is making people more and more materialistic, and therefore luxury in every form is perverting and destroying the mind; and in the poor countries, like India, education is not encouraging you to create a radically new kind of culture, it is not helping you to be a revolutionary

A true revolutionary is a man who is free of all inducement, free of ideologies and the entanglements of society which is an expression of the collective will of the many

As long as you want to be admired, to be prominent, your education is going to destroy you, because it will help you to become somebody in this society, and this society is pretty rotten. We have built this destructive society through our greed, through our envy, through our fear, and it is not going to be transformed by ignoring it or calling it an illusion. Only the right kind of education will wipe away greed, fear, acquisitiveness, so that we can build a radically new culture, a different world altogether; and there can be the right kind of education only when the mind really wants to understand itself and be free of sorrow

The keen athlete is disciplining himself all the time, is he not? His joy in playing games and the very necessity to keep fit makes him go to bed early, refrain from smoking, eat the right food and generally observe the rules of good health. His discipline is not an imposition or a conflict, but a natural outcome of his enjoyment of athletics

If discipline brings about a greater output of human energy, then it is worth while, then it has meaning; but if it merely suppresses human energy, it is very harmful, destructive

Surely, if the human mind, which is capable of such astonishing energy, is not seeking reality or God, then every expression of its energy becomes a means of destruction and misery

That the moment you really want to do something, you have the energy to do it

In the search for reality, energy creates its own discipline. The man who is seeking reality spontaneously becomes the right kind of citizen, which is not according to the pattern of any particular society or government

In your very seeking of truth there will be discipline, and then you will be a real human being, a complete individual, and not merely a Hindu or a Parsi limited by his particular society and culture. If, instead of curtailing his energy as it is doing now, the school can help the student to awaken his energy in the pursuit of truth, then you will find that discipline has quite a different meaning

Man exists for only one purpose, which is to find reality or God

Without understanding its fundamental purpose which is to find extraordinary thing called the mind, which has the capacity to create atomic submarines and jet planes, which can write the most amazing poetry and prose, which can make the world so beautiful and also destroy the world

Without understanding its fundamental purpose, which is to find truth or God, this energy becomes destructive; and then society says, "We must shape and control the energy of the individual."

Unless each one of you is so educated that, when you leave school and go out into the world, you are full of vitality and intelligence, full of abounding energy to find out what is true, you will merely be absorbed by society; you will be smothered, destroyed, miserably unhappy for the rest of your life

Those who are seeking truth or God are much more explosive, they release extraordinary energy, not only in themselves but in others; and it is they who are the real revolutionaries, not the communists, the socialists, or those who merely reform. Conquerors and rulers come and go, but the human problem is ever the same. We all want to dominate, to submit or resist; but the man who is seeking truth is free of all societies and of all cultures

Meditation is the process of understanding your own mind. If you don't understand your own thinking, which is self-knowledge, whatever you think has very little meaning. Without the foundation of self-knowledge, thinking leads to mischief. Every thought has a significance; and if the mind is incapable of seeing the significance, not just of one or two thoughts, but of each thought as it arises then merely to concentrate on a particular idea, image, or set of words

Which is generally called meditation - is a form of self-hypnosis. So, whether you are sitting quietly, talking, or playing, are you aware of the significance of every thought, of every reaction that you happen to have? Try it and you will see how difficult it is to be aware of every movement of your own thought, because thoughts pile up so quickly one on top of another. But if you want to examine every thought, if you really want to see the content of it, then you will find that your thoughts slow down and you can watch them. This slowing down of thinking and the examining of every thought is the process of meditation; and if you go into it you will find that, by being aware of every thought, your mind

Which is now a vast storehouse of restless thoughts all battling against each other

becomes very quiet, completely still. There is then no urge, no compulsion, no fear in any form; and, in this stillness, that which is true comes into being. There is no 'you' who experiences truth, but the mind being still, truth comes into it. The moment there is a 'you' there is the experiencer, and the experiencer is merely the result of thought, he has no basis without thinking

You are not aware, you are not thinking, your mind has gone to sleep, and so you do things which are obviously stupid. As long as you are not fully conscious, not completely there, it is no good merely telling you not to do certain things. But, if the educator can help you to be thoughtful, to be really aware, to observe with delight the trees, the birds, the river, the extraordinary richness of the earth, then one hint will be enough, because then you will be sensitive, alive to everything about you and within yourself

Your sensitivity is destroyed because, from the time you are born till you die, you are everlastingly being told to do this and not to do that

Parents, teachers, society, religion, the priest, and also your own ambitions, your own greeds and envies

they all say 'do' and 'don't'. To be free of all these do's and don'ts and yet to be sensitive so that you are spontaneously kind and do not hurt people, do not throw paper about or pass by a rock on the road without removing it

This requires great thoughtfulness. And the purpose of education, surely, is not just to give you a few letters of the alphabet after your name, but to awaken in you this spirit of thoughtfulness so that you are sensitive, alert, watchful, kind

Happiness does not come into being when you seek it; it is a by-product, it comes into being when there is goodness, when there is love, when there is no ambition, when the mind is quietly seeking out what is true

We all want success. There are many who have the outward pretensions of humility, but only those are happy who are really humble inwardly, and it is they who do not fight

What do we mean by misuse? A mind that is ambitious, greedy, envious, a mind that is burdened with belief and tradition a mind that is ruthless, that exploits people

Such a mind in its action obviously creates mischief and brings about a society which is full of conflict. As long as the mind does not understand itself, its action is bound to be destructive; as long as the mind has no self-knowledge, it must breed enmity. That is why it is essential that you should come to know yourself and not merely learn from books. No book can teach you self-knowledge. A book may give you information about self-knowledge, but that is not the same thing as knowing yourself in action. When the mind sees itself in the mirror of relationship, from that perception there is self-knowledge; and without self-knowledge we cannot clear up this mess, this terrible misery which we have created in the world

It is the same mind, whether it is seeking success or truth; but, as long as the mind is seeking success, it cannot find out what is true. To understand the truth is to see the truth in the false, and to see what is true as true

HAVE YOU EVER wondered why it is that as people grow older they seem to lose all joy in life? At present most of you who are young are fairly happy; you have your little problems, there are examinations to worry about, but in spite of these troubles there is in your life a certain joy, is there not? There is a spontaneous, easy acceptance of life, a looking at things lightly and happily. And why is it that as we grow older we seem to lose that joyous intimation of something beyond, something of greater significance? Why do so many of us, as we grow into so-called maturity, become dull, insensitive to joy, to beauty, to the open skies and the marvellous earth?

We are so concerned with ourselves

That is one explanation. We struggle to become somebody, to achieve and maintain a certain position; we have children and other responsibilities, and we have to earn money. All these external things soon weigh us down, and thereby we lose the joy of living

If each one of us could understand the problem of struggle and conflict, then I think we would be able to live effortlessly, happily, with a smile on our face. I think it is effort that destroys us, this struggling in which we spend almost every moment of our lives. If you watch the older people around you, you will see that for most of them life is a series of battles with themselves, with their wives or husbands, with their neighbours, with society; and this ceaseless strife dissipates energy. The man who is joyous, really happy, is not caught up in effort. To be without effort does not mean that you stagnate, that you are dull, stupid; on the contrary, it is only the wise, the extraordinarily intelligent who are really free of effort, of struggle

When we hear of effortlessness we want to be like that, we want to achieve a state in which we will have no strife, no conflict; so we make that our goal, our ideal, and strive after it; and the moment we do this, we have lost the joy of living. We are again caught up in effort, struggle. The object of struggle varies, but all struggle is essentially the same. One may struggle to bring about social reforms, or to find God, or to create a better relationship between oneself and one's wife or husband, or with one's neighbour; one may sit on the banks of Ganga, worship at the feet of some guru, and so on. All this is effort, struggle. So what is important is not the object of struggle, but to understand struggle itself

Our envy, greed, ambition, our competitiveness leading to ruthless efficiency

These are obviously the factors which cause us to struggle, whether in this world or in the world to come

When we struggle, the conflict is between what we are and what we should be or want to be

If you observe from moment to moment how the mind gets caught in everlasting struggle

If you just observe the fact without trying to alter it, without trying to force upon the mind a certain state which you call peace

Then you will find that the mind spontaneously ceases to struggle; and in that state it can learn enormously. Learning is then not merely the process of gathering information, but a discovery of the extraordinary riches that lie beyond the hope of the mind; and for the mind that makes this discovery there is joy

If you observe your mind very quietly without giving explanations, if you just let the mind be aware of its own struggle, you will soon find that there comes a state in which there is no struggle at all, but an astonishing watchfulness. In that state of watchfulness there is no sense of the superior and the inferior, there is no big man or little man, there is no guru. All those absurdities are gone because the mind is fully awake; and the mind that is fully awake is joyous

The moment you arrive there is always a point further ahead at which you have yet to arrive

As long as you pursue success in any direction you are bound to be in strife, in conflict

The pursuit of success is the desire for the 'more', and a mind that is constantly demanding the 'more' is not an intelligent mind; on the contrary, it is a mediocre, stupid mind, because its demand for the 'more' implies a constant struggle in terms of the pattern which society has set for it

Discontent is the striving after the 'more', and contentment is the cessation of that struggle; but you cannot come to contentment without understanding the whole process of the 'more', and why the mind demands it

If you are afraid of making mistakes you will never learn. The older people are making mistakes all the time, but they don't want you to make mistakes, and thereby they smother your initiative. Why? Because they are afraid that by observing and questioning everything, by experimenting and making mistakes you may find out something for yourself and break away from the authority of your parents, of society, of tradition. That is why the ideal of success is held up for you to follow; and success, you will notice, is always in terms of respectability

If you love to do something with all your being you are then not concerned with success and failure

The whole concern of an intelligent person is to see the facts and understand the problem

Which is not to think in terms of succeeding or failing. It is only when we don't really love what we are doing that we think in those terms

The first thing is to be free of this unconscious habit of associating certain feelings with certain words

They don't inquire any further and so they never find out what are the facts irrespective of the neurological or emotional response which that word evokes

When the mind is free of influence, when it neither condemns nor approves but merely looks, observes, then it is not self-absorbed and there is no longer the problem of selfishness trying to be unselfish

You will find that behind the show of confidence most people are empty, dull, mediocre, they have no real confidence at all

You want to be loved because you do not love; but the moment you love, it is finished, you are no longer inquiring whether or not somebody loves you. As long as you demand to be loved, there is no love in you; and if you feel no love, you are ugly, brutish

Without love you are a dead thing; and when the dead thing asks for love, it is still dead. Whereas, if your heart is full of love, then you never ask to be loved, you never put out your begging bowl for someone to fill it. It is only the empty who ask to be filled, and an empty heart can never be filled by running after gurus or seeking love in a hundred other ways

Real education is understanding the significance of life, not just cramming to pass examinations

Being empty, we try to fill ourselves not only by stealing things, but by imitating others. Imitation is a form of stealing: you are nothing but he is somebody, so you are going to get some of his glory by copying him. This corruption runs right through human life, and very few are free of it. So what is important is to find out whether the inward emptiness can ever be filled. As long as the mind is seeking to fill itself it will always be empty. When the mind is no longer concerned with filling its own emptiness, then only does that emptiness cease to be

You know it is so nice just to be very quiet, to sit up straight with dignity, with poise

There is beauty and meaning in life only when the heart is cleansed of the things of the mind

If as human beings we don't know how to care for the earth and the things of the earth, if we don't know how to love our children and are merely concerned with ourselves, with our personal or national advancement and success, we shall make our world hideous

Which is what we are already doing. One country may become very rich, but its riches are a poison as long as there is another country which is starving. We are one humanity, the earth is ours to share, and with loving care it will produce food, clothing and shelter for us all

The function of education is not merely to prepare you to pass a few examinations, but to help you understand this whole problem of living

In which is included sex, earning a livelihood, laughter, having initiative, being earnest and knowing how to think deeply. It is also our problem to find out what God is, because that is the very foundation of our life. A house cannot stand for long without a proper foundation, and all the cunning inventions of man will be meaningless if we are not seeking out what is God or truth

You are happy not because you possess something, not because you have position, wealth, or learning, but because your life has meaning in itself. But that meaning is discovered only when you are seeking out reality from moment to moment

And reality is in everything, it is not to be found in the church, in the temple, in the mosque, or in some ritual

Religion is to love without motive, to be generous, to be good, for only then are we real human beings; but goodness, generosity, or love does not come into being save through the search for reality

The mind, with its cunning arguments, is not everything. There is something vast and immeasurable beyond the mind, a loveliness which the mind cannot understand. In that immensity there is an ecstasy, a glory; and the living in that, the experiencing of that is the way of education. Unless you have that kind of education, when you go out into the world you will perpetuate this hideous mess which past generations have created

Don't complain, but put your shoulder to the wheel and help to create an institution where religion, in the right sense, is investigated, loved, worked out and lived. Then you will find that life becomes astonishingly rich

Far richer than all the bank accounts in the world

You may know a great deal, gather vast stores of information; but a mind that is clouded by knowledge, burdened with information, is incapable of discovery. It may use a discovery through knowledge and technique, but the discovery itself is something original which suddenly bursts upon the mind irrespective of knowledge; and it is this explosion of discovery that is essential. Most people, especially in this country, are so smothered by knowledge, by tradition by opinion, by fear of what their parents or neighbours will say, that they have no confidence. They are like dead people

And that is what the burden of knowledge does to the mind. Knowledge is useful, but without something else it is also most destructive, and this is being shown by world events at the present time

Don't just agree or disagree, but find out for yourself if there is truth in what is being said. Don't be indifferent : be either hot or cold. If you see the truth of all this and are really hot about it, that heat, that energy will grow and bring about a new society. It will not dissipate itself by merely revolting within the present society, which is like decorating the walls of a prison

To understand something you cannot compare it with something else. Understanding does not come through comparison, it comes only when you examine the thing itself

To think for oneself, to find out what is true and stand by it, without being influenced, whatever life may bring of misery or happiness

That is what builds character

To have character means, surely, to be able to withstand the false and hold on to the true

Now, if you feel this very strongly and stick to it in spite of everything, regardless of whether you go to prison or are shot for it, as you may be in certain countries, then you will have character

The mind can discover only when it is young, fresh, innocent; but innocence is not a matter of age. It is not only the child that is innocent

He may not be

But the mind that is capable of experiencing without accumulating the residue of experience. The mind must experience, that is inevitable. It must respond to everything

To the river, to the diseased animal, to the dead body being carried away to be burnt, to the poor villagers carrying their burdens along the road, to the tortures and miseries of life

Otherwise it is already dead; but it must be capable of responding without being held by the experience. It is tradition, the accumulation of experience, the ashes of memory, that make the mind old. The mind that dies every day to the memories of yesterday, to all the joys and sorrows of the past

Such a mind is fresh, innocent, it has no age; and without that innocence, whether you are ten or sixty, you will not find God