BENGALURU: What is a relationship? Can there be a relationship when each human being has a problem - however trivial, however complex, can there be a relationship when each one is pursuing his own particular aggrandisement? Can there be a relationship when each one pursues his own particular little tendency? Can there be a relationship when there is ambition, greed, envy, when each one has a belief - please follow all this - to which he clings? Can there be any relationship between a man and a woman when one is a Catholic and the other is a Protestant, or a Hindu or a Buddhist - practising, not just casual? So what is relationship? Because it seems to me that it is one of the most important things in life, because living is relationship.
If there is no right relationship there is no living at all, it is then merely a series of conflicts, either ending up in divorce, or just separation, or isolation with all its anxieties, attachments, fears and all the things that are involved in this sense of being completely isolated. I am sure you know all this. The more one grows older, not merely in age but in observation, one realises - I must be careful here, observation is not a matter of time, I must withdraw that. One observes in life how extraordinarily vital relationship is. And apparently, very few human beings have broken down the barrier that exists between themselves and another. And to break down this barrier, with all the implications in it - not just the physical barrier, one has to go deeply into this question of action. Right? Are we following each other? Good.
What is action? Action is not the future action, or the past action, but action - the acting. Is it the result of a conclusion and acting according to that conclusion? Or is it based on some belief and acting according to that belief? Is it based on some experience and acting according to that experience or knowledge? And if it is, then action is always in the past. No? And so our relationship is always in the past, not the present. Are we meeting each other?
Look: if I have a relationship with another, in that relationship - and relationship is action, obviously - in that relationship I have built up through many days, years, or a week, an image about her, or him. And according to that image I have, I act. And she acts according to that image which she has. And this image is the relationship between her and me, or him and you. Right? Are you following all this? Please do observe your own minds, your own activity in relationship and you will soon find out the truth and the validity of this statement. Our relationship is based on image. Right? And how can there be a relationship with another if it is merely a relationship of images?