Freedom and love
Considering there is so much violence, disorder and confusion in the world, not only in this country, but almost everywhere, it becomes more and more important to become very serious. Not serious according to one’s own fancy or inclination, or according to any particular plan or system; because systems, organized belief, organized conduct, has completely failed, it has no meaning any more.
Unfortunately what apparently has meaning in this world at the present time is lawlessness, and in this country there is inefficiency, corruption, and each man, especially in the political world, is seeking his own fulfilment through ambition.We all know this and we have become totally indifferent to it. We have lost our moorings, we are confused, and it seems to me that it is very important that each one of us should become extraordinarily serious.
One of the things that we are serious about is when our pleasure is threatened or taken away, then we become not only violent, but somewhat serious. But we are talking about seriousness that demands complete attention, attention to what we are doing, what we are thinking, to our way of life. Because as one observes, all leadership has failed, there is no authority to tell us what to do, and if there is, we don’t pay attention, we go on in our own pleasant way.
Organized belief as religion has no longer any meaning whatsoever. And systems, whether the Communist system, or any other system or religion, or a system that one has developed for oneself according to which one functions and thinks again these have failed. I think this is fairly obvious. It is obvious to anybody who is at all aware of what is going on in the world; not only in the world outside, but also in the world in which we live, in the family circle, the world of our own secret longings, secret desires and pleasures.
As there is so much confusion and violence, so much disorder and lawlessness, we - at least those of us who are somewhat earnest must commit ourselves, not to any particular belief, not to any particular system, but commit ourselves to a serious enquiry which will help us to live totally differently. Because what is needed, surely, is a way of life that will be completely orderly, which we as individuals and as human beings can find by enquiring, by seeking, questioning, by doubting, by totally discarding. Orderly, not according to a formula, but according to a serious attention which begins to enquire into every activity of our life. Such commitment is essential.
I do not know if we realize not only outwardly, but also inwardly, how shoddy our lives are, how empty, meaningless, though we may well repeat some authority, or a religious book over and over again, or follow some religious leader. If we examine the way we live we shall find that it is very empty, lonely, miserable, confused and utterly meaningless. No temple, no book, no leader, no belief of any kind, nor any authority is going to solve this problem for us. Realizing this, seeing what is actually taking place both outwardly and inwardly, one has to become extraordinarily serious and the commitment is to be serious.
I don’t think we realize sufficiently clearly or see objectively, what is actually going on outwardly and inwardly both psychologically and objectively. We are incapable of looking because we are so frightened. We think others will do something to take us out of this mire - some political leader or some guru, or by going back to the past, reviving the past, or by forming parties and hating other people.
This is what is actually going on. And as one observes there is a general decline, not only morally, ethically, but also intellectually. Intellectually, we repeat what others have said, endlessly. We compare various clever intellectual authorities, specialists, with others. We read endlessly and we think we are very intellectual, when we can compare dialectically one theory with another, one opinion with another.