BENGALURU : Here is the question put at the beginning: craving strengthens conditioning. And any form of resistance, contradiction, opposing desires is a waste of energy, because in that there is involved a great deal of effort, struggle, frustration, anxiety and fear. All that is a waste of energy. Could we learn about it, not to be told what to do or how to think or how not to waste energy, but learn together about this question, as craving strengthens one’s conditioning and any form of resistance is a waste of energy.
Can we learn about it? And what do we mean by learning? Can we approach it that way? Would that be worthwhile? Instead of my telling you what it is and you telling me what it is, can’t we learn about it.
So to learn - what does learning mean? Not only at the school level, at the college level, at the university level, the technological level, but also learning through experience, in which is involved testing, going through any particular form of experience, and learning from it, and utilising what one has learnt an a means of testing.
So I think it might be worthwhile to find out what we mean by learning. It is really quite a complex problem, it needs a great deal of thinking about or enquiring into or feeling your way into it - perhaps not thinking about it but feeling ones way into it. What does it mean to learn? Now here is a question: resistance is a waste of energy. Now, I hear that statement, I want to find out the truth of it or the falseness of it - I want to learn about it.
I don’t accept it, I don’t reject it - I want to find out. First of all, in that there is a great deal of curiosity not about somebody else but about that statement, whether there is in it any fragment of truth or anything that is worthwhile which can be tested, learnt about, experienced and lived. I want to learn about it. Therefore when I hear such a statement, I am really quite curious, like a schoolboy is curious, he wants to know, he asks many questions.
So where shall I yield and not yield? Now, how can you tell me or I tell you where to yield and not to yield? Or have I to learn about it? You follow? If you tell me that I must yield there and I must not yield there, you have already set a resistance going in me. But to find out for myself where I must yield without resistance and where I must not yield - if you tell me I must wave the flag, I couldn’t do it. But you threaten me, you want to put me in prison, whatever it is. So I am going to learn. Then that means I shall find out how to act at the moment you ask me to wave the flag. If I come to that moment with a conclusion I am already resisting. Because I have no principle, which is a conclusion, I have no ideology - there is freedom.