BENGALURU: It is important to talk over together the question of suffering and the word ‘love’, which has been so misused. What is the real significance or meaning of that word? And to go into these questions rather deeply, one has to begin with human relationship. Otherwise love becomes an abstraction, without much meaning and remains something printed in a book, or talked about in a church or in a temple, and completely forgotten.
Relationship is the whole structure of society – to put it very simply. It is a very complex problem, the question of relationship. But to enquire into that question one must begin very near. That is, very near, our human relationship with each other. And then discover from there what is right relationship – if there is such a thing – and move from there to the question of what the nature of love is. And whether love can exist as long as human beings suffer and if there is an end to suffering, specially psychologically. So we are going to go into this very complex problem.
We must begin very near to find out actually what our relationship is with each other, because on that our whole social, moral, ethical structure is based – that is society – the society which we have built, a society which is utterly, at present, immoral, degrading, destructive. If we would change the social structure it must begin from within, not merely change from outside.
So we must find out what our human relationship is with society, human relationship with each other, human relationship with the whole of humanity, a global relationship. So what is actually, in our daily life, our relationship to each other, and what is it based on? As we said, the word is not the thing, the description is not the described.
What we are doing now is a verbal description but if we are caught in the description and don’t go to the described, the fact, then we will merely skim the surface and will lose all its meaning. So one must be aware, conscious, or whatever word one may use, not to be caught in words, not to be caught in descriptions, conclusions, but rather look, observe what actually our relationship is in daily life, and whether that relationship can be transformed into something other than ‘what is’? That is our question: to transform ‘what is’ one must be concerned and observe completely ‘what is’, and not imagine ‘what should be’. Right?