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Listening to one's thought or to the blackbird on a branch or to what is being said, without the response of thought, brings about a wholly different significance from that which the movement of thought brings. This is the art of listening, listening with total attention: there is no centre which listens.
The silence of the mountains has a depth which the valleys have not. Each has its own silence; the silence among clouds and among trees is vastly different; the silence between two thoughts is timeless; the silence of pleasure and of fear are tangible. The artificial silence which thought can manufacture is death; the silence between noises is the absence of noise but it is not silence, as the absence of war is not peace. The dark silence of a cathedral, of the temple, is of age and beauty, especially constructed by man; there is the silence of the past and of the future, the silence of the museum and the cemetery. But all this is not silence.

The man had been sitting there on the bank of the beautiful river, motionless; he was there for over an hour. He would come

 

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there every morning, freshly bathed, he would chant in Sanskrit for some time and presently he would be lost in his thoughts; he didn't seem to mind the sun, at least the morning sun. One day he came and began to talk about meditation. He did not belong to any school of meditation; he considered them useless, without any real significance. He was alone, unmarried and had put away the ways of the world long ago. He had controlled his desires, shaped his thoughts and lived a solitary life. He was not bitter, vain or indifferent; he had forgotten all these some years ago. Meditation and reality were his life. As he talked and groped for the right word, the sun was setting and deep silence descended upon us. He stopped talking. After a while, when the stars were very close to the earth, he said: "That is the silence I have been looking for everywhere, in the books, among the teachers and in myself. I have found many things but not this. It came unsought, uninvited. Have I wasted my life in things that did not matter? You have no idea what I have been through, the fastings, the self-denials and the practices. I saw their futility long ago but never came upon this silence. What shall I do to remain in it, to maintain it, to hold it in my heart? I suppose you would say do nothing, as one cannot invite it. But shall I go on wandering over this country, with this repetition, this control? Sitting here I am conscious of this sacred silence; through it I look at the stars, those trees, the river. Though I see and feel all this, I am not really there. As you said the other day, the observer is the observed. I see what it means now. The benediction I sought is not to be found in the seeking. It is time for me to go."

 

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1973

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The river became dark and the stars were reflected on its waters near the banks. Gradually the noises of the day were coming to an end and the soft noises of the night began. You watched the stars and the dark earth and the world was far away. Beauty, which is love, seemed to descend on the earth and the things of it.


23RD SEPTEMBER 1973

He was standing by himself on the low bank of the river; it was not very wide and he could see some people on the other bank. If the talk was loud he could almost hear them. In the rainy season the river met the open waters of the sea. It had been raining for days and the river had broken through the sands to the waiting sea. With the heavy rains it was clean again and one could swim in it safely. The river was wide enough to hold a long narrow island green with bushes, a few short trees and a small palm. When the water was not too deep cattle would wade across to graze on it. It was a pleasant and friendly river and it was particularly so on that morning.
He was standing there with no one around, alone, unattached and far away. He was about fourteen or less. They had found his brother and himself quite recently and all the fuss and sudden importance given to him was around him.[6] He was the centre of respect and devotion and in the years to come he would be the head of organizations and great properties. All that and the dissolution of them still lay ahead. Standing there alone, lost and strangely

 

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aloof, was his first and lasting remembrance of those days and events. He doesn't remember his childhood, the schools and the caning. He was told years later by the very teacher who hurt him that he used to cane him practically every day; he would cry and be put out on the verandah until the school closed and the teacher would come out and ask him to go home, otherwise he would still be on the verandah, lost. He was caned, this man said because he couldn't study or remember anything he had read or been told. Later the teacher couldn't believe that boy was the man who had given the talk he had heard. He was greatly surprised and unnecessarily respectful. All those years passed without leaving scars, memories, on his mind; his friendships, his affections, even those years with those who had ill-treated him somehow none of these events, friendly or brutal, have left marks on him. In recent years a writer asked if he could recall all those rather strange events, how he and his brother were discovered and the other happenings, and when he replied that he could not remember them and could only repeat what others had told him, the man openly, with a sneer, stated that he was putting it on and pretending. He never consciously blocked any happening, pleasant or unpleasant, entering into his mind. They came, leaving no mark and passed away.

Consciousness is its content: the content makes up consciousness. The two are indivisible. There is no you and another, only the content which makes up consciousness as the "me" and the not "me". The contents vary according to the culture, the racial accumulations, the techniques and capacities acquired. These are broken up as the artist, the scientist and so on. Idiosyncrasies are the response of the conditioning and

 

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1973

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the conditioning is the common factor of man. This conditioning is the content, consciousness. This again is broken up as the conscious and the hidden. The hidden becomes important because we have never looked at it as a whole. This fragmentation takes place when the observer is not the observed, when the experiencer is seen as different from the experience. The hidden is as the open; the observation the hearing of the open is the seeing of the hidden. Seeing is not analysing. In analysing there is the analyser and the analysed, a fragmentation which leads to inaction, a paralysis. In seeing, the observer is not, and so action is immediate; there is no interval between the idea and action. The idea, the conclusion, is the observer the seer separate from the thing seen. Identification is an act of thought and thought is fragmentation.

The island, the river and the sea are still there, the palms and the buildings. The sun was coming out of masses of clouds, serried and soaring to the heavens. In only a loin cloth the fishermen were throwing their nets to catch some measly little fishes. Unwilling poverty is a degradation. Late in the evening it was pleasant among the mangoes and scented flowers. How beautiful is the earth.


TH SEPTEMBER 1973

A new consciousness and a totally new morality are necessary to bring about a radical change in the present culture and social structure. This is obvious, yet the left and the right and the revolutionary seem to disregard it. Any dogma, any formula, any ideology, is part of the old consciousness; they are the fabrications of thought whose activity

 

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is fragmentation the left, the right, the centre. This activity will inevitably lead to bloodshed of the right or of the left or to totalitarianism. This is what is going on around us. One sees the necessity of social, economic and moral change but the response is from the old consciousness thought being the principle actor. The mess, the confusion and the misery that human beings have got into within the area of the old consciousness, and without changing that profoundly, every human activity, political, economic and religious, will only bring us to the destruction of each other and the earth. This is so obvious to the sane.

One has to be a light to oneself; this light is the law. There is no other law. All the other laws are made by thought and so fragmentary and contradictory. To be a light to oneself is not to follow the light of another, however reasonable, logic, historical, and however convincing. You cannot be a light to yourself if you are in the dark shadows of authority, of dogma, of conclusion. Morality is not put together by thought; it is not the outcome of environmental pressure, it is not of yesterday, of tradition. Morality is the child of love and love is not desire and pleasure. Sexual or sensory enjoyment is not love.
High in the mountains there were hardly any birds, there were some crows, there were deer and an occasional bear. The huge redwoods, the silent ones, were everywhere, dwarfing all the other trees. It was a magnificent country and utterly peaceful, for no hunting was allowed. Every animal, every tree and flower was protected. Sitting under one of those massive redwoods, one was aware of the history of man and the beauty of earth. A fat red squirrel passed by most elegantly, stopping a few feet away,

 

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watching and wondering what you were doing there. The earth was dry, though there was a stream nearby. Not a leaf stirred and the beauty of silence was among the trees. Going slowly along the narrow path, round the bend was a bear with four cubs as large as big cats. They rushed off to climb up trees and the mother faced one without a movement, without a sound. About fifty feet separated us; she was enormous, brown, and prepared. One immediately turned one's back on her and left. Each understood that there was no fear and no intention to hurt, but all the same one was glad to be among the protecting trees, squirrels and the scolding jays.

Freedom is to be a light to oneself; then it is not an abstraction, a thing conjured by thought. Actual freedom is freedom from dependency, attachment, from the craving for experience. Freedom from the very structure of thought is to be a light to oneself. In this light all action takes place and thus it is never contradictory. Contradiction exists only when that law, light, is separate from action, when the actor is separate from action. The ideal, the principle, is the barren movement of thought and cannot co-exist with this light; one denies the other. This light, this law, is separate from you; where the observer is, this light, this love, is not. The structure of the observer is put together by thought, which is never new, never free. There is no "how", no system, no practice. There is only the seeing which is the doing. You have to see, not through the eyes of another. This light, this law, is neither yours nor that of another. There is only light. This is love.

 

 

1973

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TH SEPTEMBER 1973

He was looking out of the window on to the green rolling hills and dark woods with the morning sun on them. It was a pleasant and lovely morning, there were magnificent clouds beyond the woods, white with billowing shapes. No wonder the ancients said the gods had their abode among them and the mountains. All around there were these enormous clouds against a blue and dazzling sky. He had not a single thought and was only looking at the beauty of the world. He must have been at that window for some time and something took place, unexpected, uninvited. You cannot invite or desire such things, unknowingly or consciously. Everything seemed to withdraw and be giving space only to that, the unnameable. You won't find it in any temple, mosque or church or on any printed page. You will find it nowhere and whatever you find, it is not that.

With so many others in that vast structure near the Golden Horn (Istanbul) he was sitting next to a beggar with torn rags, head lowered, uttering some prayer. A man began to sing in Arabic. He had a marvellous voice, the entire dome and great edifice was filled with it, it seemed to shake the building. It had a strange effect on all those who were there; they listened to the words and to the voice with great respect and were at the same time enchanted. He was a stranger amongst them; they looked at him and then forgot him. The vast hall was filled and presently there was a silence; they went through their ritual and one by one and then they left. Only the beggar and he remained; then the beggar too left. The great dome was silent and the edifice became empty, the noise of life was far away.
If you ever walk by yourself high in the mountains among the pines and rocks, leaving everything in the valley far below you, when there is not a whisper among the trees and every thought has withered away, then it may come to you, the otherness.

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If you hold it, it will never come again; what you hold is the memory of it dead and gone. What you hold is not the real; your heart and mind are too small, they can hold only the things of thought and that is barren. Go further away from the valley, far away, leaving everything down there. You can come back and pick them up if you want to but they will have lost their weight. You will never be the same again.

After a long climb of several hours, beyond the tree line, he was there among rocks and the silence mountains have; there were a few misshaped pines. There was no wind and everything was utterly still. Walking back, moving from rock to rock, he suddenly heard a rattler and jumped. A few feet away was the snake, fat and almost black. With the rattle in the middle of the coils, it was ready to strike. The triangled head with its forked tongue flickering in and out, its dark sharp eyes watching, it was ready to strike if he moved nearer. During all that half hour or more it never blinked, it stared at you, it had no eyelids. Uncoiling slowly, keeping its head and tail towards him, it began to move away in a U-shape and when he made a move to get nearer it coiled up instantly ready to strike. We played this game for a little while; it was getting tired and he left it to go its own way. It was a really frightening thing, fat and deadly.

You must be alone with the trees, meadows and streams. You are never alone if you carry the things of thought, its images and problems. The mind must not be

 

 

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