Public Talk 6, Bombay, 25 February 1953

25.2.1953 6:20 to 7:30 p.m.

DISCONTENT

TALK

DISCONTENT

6:20 to 7:30 p.m. 25.2.1953

I think it is important to understand the problem of discontent. Perhaps you may find the right answer to that enormous problem, if we can search out the deeper significance of discontent. Most of us are dissatisfied with ourselves, with our environment, with our ideas, in our relationships; we want to bring about a change and being discontent, from the villager up to the most learned, if he is not caught in his knowledge, if he is not a slave to his learning, there is a spreading discontent, which makes us do all kinds of actions; we want to find a way to contentment. If you are dissatisfied, we want to find a way to happiness; if you are battling within yourselves, ourselves, we want to find a way to peace. Being dissatisfied, discontent, we want to find an answer that will be satisfactory. So the mind is ever groping, probing to find out the truth, true answer to its discontent, and some find an answer in their satisfaction, in an aim, in a purpose of life which they have established for themselves; and finding a means to their desire they think they have found contentment. And is contentment to be found? To be found, for which there is power, and is peace a thing to be found by the process of the intellect, and is happiness a thing gotten by the understanding or creating the opposite of what it is — the misery and this discontent, is it essential in our life? The fact is we are discontent with “what is,” discontent with things which we have, with what we are; and as discontent arises because of comparison, I am discontent because I see you learned, rich, happy, powerful. Is that the cause of discontent? Or does discontent come into being when I am seeking a way, a way from “what is;” because if I can understand the way of discontent, perhaps I shall find a way to happiness, not a way to — perhaps there will be happiness, there will be contentment, but that contentment and that happiness is not the process of stagnation. Because if I am discontent and if I want to be content, then that way leads to contentment, which is stagnation, and that is all that most of us want. And is there a way, can we find out, probe into the question of discontentment without trying to create its opposite, without trying to seek its opposite; because, after all, when we are young we are discontent with the society as it is. We want to reform, we want to bring about a change, so we join society, parties, political groups, or religious associations, and soon our discontentment is canalised, held, and is destroyed. Because we are only concerned then in carrying out a way, a system, which will produce a result, and thereby put aside our discontent — and is not that one of our greatest problems? How easily we are satisfied, and is not discontent essential in our life, to any question, to any enquiry, to probing, to find out what is real, what is truth what is essential in life? If I use this discontent in college, be learned, you may have a good job and this discontent vanishes. He is satisfied, he is struggling to maintain the family, he has to earn a livelihood and so his discontent is calmed, destroyed, and he becomes a mediocre entity satisfied with things of life and he is not discontent. The flame must be maintained from the beginning to the end, so that there is true enquiry, true probing into the problem of what is discontent. Because the mind seeks very easily a drug to make it self-content, with virtues with qualities, with ideas with actions. And there it has established a routine and caught up in it. With that we are quite familiar. But our problem is not how to calm discontent, but how to keep it smouldering, alive, vital. In all our religious books, all the Gurus, all the political systems pacify the mind, quieten the mind, influence the mind to subside, to put aside this discontent and wallow in some form of contentment. And is it not essential to be discontent in order to find what is true, and why is it that we are discontent; and does discontent produce revolution change, transformation? And does transformation, revolution come about only when we understand the nature of discontent, and with what it is discontent? What is it that we are discontent with? When you can really probe into that question, then probably we may find an answer. What is it that we are discontent with? Surely with “what is.” The “what is” may be the social order, the “what is” may be the relationship, the “what is,” that what we are, the thing we are essentially, which as we are, the ugly, the wandering thoughts, ambitions, the frustrations, the innumerable fears, that is what we are, and in going away from that we think we shall find an answer to our discontent. So we are always seeking a way, a means and that is what our mind is concerned with, the means to change the “what is.” I am discontent and I want to find out a way, the means, to find contentment, so my mind is occupied with the means, the way, and the practising of the way in order to arrive at contentment. So I am no longer concerned with discontent, and the embers, the flame that is burning, which we call discontent. We do not find out what is behind that discontent. We are only concerned with going away from that flame, from that burning anxiety. Surely we are discontent with “what is,’ and to probe into “what is” is enormously difficult — the actual “what is,” not what should be — and to probe into that, what I am moment to moment, not what I am at some intellectual, happy, spiritual moment, not the enquiry, the probing into the higher-self, which are all the fabrications of the mind; but to actually probe into, to enquire into “what is,” is enormously difficult because our mind is never satisfied, never content in the examination of “what is.” It always wants to transform “what is” into something else, which is the process of condemnation, justification or comparison. If you observe your own minds you will see it; it comes to face with “what is,’ then it condemns it, then compares it with what it should be; or justifies it and so on, and thereby pushes away “what is,” setting aside the thing which is causing the disturbance, the pain, anxiety. So is not discontent essential, and not to be smothered away, but to be encouraged, enquired, probed into, so that with the understanding of “what is” there comes content, not the contentment which is produced by a system of thought? Please listen to this (emphasis). But that contentment comes with the understanding of “what is;” that contentment is not the product of the mind. When the mind is disturbed, agitated, incomplete, it is seeking peace, it is looking away, away from “what is,” and so, therefore, the mind, through justification, comparison, judgment, is trying to alter “what is,” and thereby hoping to arrive at a state when it will not be disturbed, when it will be peaceful, when there will be quietness; or when the mind is disturbed by the social condition, the poverty, starvation, the degradation, the appalling misery about everything, seeing that it wants to alter and so it gets entangled in the way of altering, in the system of altering. But if the mind is capable of looking to “what is” without comparison, without judgment, without the desire to alter it into something else, then you will see that there comes a kind of contentment which is not of the mind. Contentment of the mind, the contentment which is the product of the mind, is an escape, it is sterile, it is dead; but that contentment which is not of the mind comes into being when there is the understanding of “what is,” in which there is profound revolution which affects the society, the individual relationship. So discontent is not to be calmed, to be set aside, to be drugged by some system or thought — it is an essential thing. It must be kept alive, burning, in order to find out, because if we are in conflict with each other, our world is being destroyed. There is crisis after crisis, war after war; there is starvation, misery, there are enormously rich, clothed in their respectability, and there are the poor. To solve this problem, what is necessary is not a new system of thought, a new economic revolution, but to understand “what is” — the discontent. The constant probing of “what is” should bring about a revolution which is much more far-reaching than the revolution of ideas; and it is this revolution that it is so necessary to bring about a different culture, a different religion, a different relationship between man and man.

QUESTION: Who are you? Whom am I listening to? You say not to rely on any Guru; you say listen to me. Listening to you is to listen to the greatest of Gurus of all. I am puzzled. What am I to do?

ANSWER: Does it really matter very much who the speaker is? Surely it does not matter much by whom the microphone is made; but it matters very much what the microphone conveys to your ears. The voice is of no importance, whose it is, whether it is educated, whether it is the voice of the cultured, it does not at all matter; but what is important is what it says, conveys, and what it says and the understanding of it, depends upon you, not on the Guru, not on the voice — how you understand it, how you translate it, how you put it into action; so again, the voice is not important. And what is this listening, and how do you listen? Do you listen with your projections, through your projections, through your ambitions, desires, fears, anxieties, through hearing only when you want to see? That will be satisfactory, that will gratify, that will give comfort, that will for the moment alleviate your suffering — if you listen through the screen of those desires; they are obvious. Listen to your own voice; you are listening to your own desires, and is there any form of listening — because is it not important to find out how to listen? Not only to what is being said, but everything about what is said, to the noise of the streets, in the patter of birds, the noise of the tramcar, to the restless sea, to the voice of your husband, your wife, friends, to the crime of a lad. Is it not important to listen? And it is important only when one is not projecting ones own desires through which one listens; and is there any form of listening? Can one put aside all those screens through which we listen, and really listen — and what does this listening mean? Because that is all what we are concerned, is it not? Not who is the speaker, whether he is good or bad, whether he is the Guru, small or big; it is utterly irrelevant, but in listening to the speaker you are going to find out how you are listening; you are watching yourself, not listening to me, you are watching the process of your own mind; how you project, how you ward off, how you feel shy of certain statements; how you will resist and how you will put aside a now idea, a way of looking; all that reveals the process of your own mind. Does it not? And when you discard, put aside, jointly, all those projections of the mind, is there any other way of listening? Can one put those aside and really listen? Then is there a Guru at all, then is a Guru necessary at any time? We all think Guru is necessary from the beginning to the threshold. If the Guru is not necessary after the threshold, then he is not necessary from the beginning, because the end lies in the beginning, and the man who is seeking the threshold of reality must seek at the beginning, not at the end. And because we are sluggish, impatient, doubtful, discontent, we want to find somebody to lead us away from it, but that is the very thing that is essential — not the entity who leads away not the system, not a thought that will take us away from what we are. So is it not important to know how you are listening, and when you listen without these projections, what happens? Please follow this a little bit. What happens when you are not projecting your desires through which you hear, which are translated to suit your particular temperament, to your particular idiosyncrasies, to your particular desires — when you are not doing that, how do you listen? Is your mind capable of listening? Will it allow you to listen, and then when you are so capable of listening, and then when you are listening, what happens? What happens to the mind that is so listening; not whether there is a Guru or not, whether you are hearing the voice of the Guru who is promulgating a truth, to which you are listening, which makes the Guru essential for you there; but if you are not listening through the screen, through the layers of your own projections, then what are you listening to? You understand? We are always listening to something, are not we, to a voice, to the voice of something, to the restless sea, but if you are not listening through your projections, then are you listening to anything? Please watch your own mind, not what I am saying. If you are listening to what I am saying, then you are dependent on me, and if you depend on me, then you have fear, then you are fettered to me; and that is a bondage, that is a travail which you have to go beyond. So from the very beginning, don’t be dependent on any one. Don’t follow any one, because it matters what you are from the beginning, not what you are at the end. So when the mind is no longer following, no longer listening to the projections, to the voice of its own projections, its desires, ambitions, satisfactions, then what is the mind listening to? Is there a listening to anything? — but only a complete openness, a complete state in which there is no reaction, no listening to anything, in which there is no concentration, as a Guru. No absorption with an idea, in an idea. Then is it not a state of complete pacific, active but very quiet, not listening to anything, but listening, not projecting, but thoroughly still; then in that state is there a Guru? And in that state is a Guru necessary? Is that state not possible from the very beginning? That is if I want to understand something fundamental, must not I be in that state always, to understand something, not projecting my own desires, and that most of us don’t listen. You are always listening to something, you are not listening, and you are always listening to our own voices, and that voice always assumes the voice of despair, hope, or pleasure or security. But if I am not listening to something, but I am listening, then is there not an utter stillness of the mind, which is not the result of any discipline to be achieved at some far end, but to be understood right at the very beginning, from now on for the rest of our lives, and if we can completely and totally discard this whole idea of Guru, be awakened to the giver of company, the man who will lead us to truth if we can completely wipe it away, and you can wipe it away when you understand, when you know how to listen. When we know when we see that listening to something is listening to our own projections, to our own desires, translating them to suit ourselves, when we understand that, when we really hear it, then there is no listening to anything. Then there is only listening; that listening is eternal because it is not of time, because it is not of mind.

QUESTION: What is happiness? Is it not the search for happiness that makes the mind crave for new experience? Is there a state of happiness that is beyond the mind?

ANSWER: Why do we enquire: what is happiness? Is that the right approach, is that the right probing, for we are not happy? If we are happy, our world would be entirely different, our civilization, our culture would be wholly, radically different; but we are not. We are unhappy human beings, petty, miserable, struggling, vain, surrounding ourselves with useless futile things, satisfied with petty ambitions and with money and position. We are unhappy beings, though you may have knowledge, you may have money, rich houses, plenty of children, cars, experience; you are unhappy, suffering human beings. And because we are suffering we want happiness, and so we are led away by those who promise this happiness, social, economic or spiritual. So we want to escape from “what is.” What is suffering, pain, loneliness, despair. That is what we want to run away from, and the running away from it, the very run gives us experience, and those experiences we call happiness, and is there any other kind of happiness? What is good, of my asking of that happiness, when I am suffering, and can I understand suffering? That is my problem; now, how to be happy? I am happy, but I am not suffering; the moment I am conscious, it is not happiness. Is it not so?

Because the moment I know I am virtuous, I cease to be virtuous. The moment I know I am humble, courageous, generous, the moment I am aware that, I am not. So happiness is not a thing to be sought after, is not a thing to be invited like virtue; virtue when cultivated becomes immoral because it strengthens the “Me,” the “I,” leading to respectability, which is self; whereas, can I understand what is suffering, and can I understand what is suffering when a part of my mind is running away, seeking happiness, seeking a way out of this misery? So must not I, if I am to understand suffering, be completely one with it, not reject it, not justify it, not condemn it, compare it, but completely be with it and understand it? That is, can I listen to the voice of suffering without projections? — and I cannot listen when I am seeking happiness. So my probing, enquiry, is no longer what is happiness, if there is happiness beyond my mind, I shall find it, and so on. Whether it is permanent or impermanent, whether it is an experience and therefore to be stored and therefore something of the past; it is already gone. Therefore it is no longer happiness. Therefore the truth of “what is,” happiness, it will come if I know how to listen. But I must know how to listen to suffering; if I can listen to suffering, I can listen to happiness because that is what I am, what you are, suffering; fearful of death, the desire to be secure, after death, the desire to be permanent and to have position, wealth, comfort now, and with the ache of loneliness. So can I listen to all that? So my problem is no longer a way to happiness. But to find out how to listen to the voice of suffering, just to listen, without trying to. That is a very arduous process because the mind continuously objects to living with suffering, to look at it, not to interpret it, not to justify, translate it, condemn it, to look at it, to know its content, to be acquainted, to love it. Then only is the mind capable of listening to that voice which is beyond suffering; but it is incapable of listening if it is merely running away from it into some futile imagination or illusion, or some desire for satisfaction. So what is important is not if there is happiness, but from the very beginning of suffering to enquire what is suffering and to stay with that till the right answer comes and the right answer cannot come if you are seeking. The moment you search for the right answer the mind is projected, because it wants the answer; therefore it is not concerned with listening to suffering, it is not concerned with listening. It is concerned with the answer which will reject this suffering, and the moment you wish to reject something, then you will find an answer which will be satisfactory, so if that satisfaction is seeking and not to understand suffering, because after all that is what we all want. We want satisfaction, either in positions, in relationships or in ideas, to be satisfied; and the more you are satisfied the more suffering, because the mind that is satisfied is never let alone. It is always being challenged by every side of life, and so a mind realising that in seeking satisfaction, and the very desire to find an answer for suffering is to be satisfied — it puts aside all this totally. Therefore it is only listening, listening first to the voice of something, seeing the whole teachings, how the mind runs away; it can never stay with suffering, like facing fear; fear comes only when you are running away from it, fear exists in the process of life, not when you are confronted with a thing. It is only when you are running away from the thing; in the very running away fear is created, not when you are watching the thing, “what is.” So, similarly, if I can look to suffering without running away — which creates sorrow, which creates fear, which prevents me from looking at it — then there is a possibility of listening to suffering without interpretation, without judgment, without translating or asking for a result. Then only is there a possibility of listening to something and trying to find something beyond the mind; but we cannot find what is beyond the mind if I do not know, if I am incapable of facing “what is;” and that requires enormous attention, great passive awareness to observe without justification, or without judgment; just to observe, just to listen and in that there is a transformation, in that there is happiness, which is not measured by time, by the mind.

(Pause.)

QUESTION: You talk so much of intelligence. What is to be intelligent?

ANSWER: Again, can a stupid mind see what is intelligence? Can a petty mind, a shallow mind find out what is greatness? Please, Sir, listen to this. A petty mind enquires after God. The rich man who builds temples after exploiting people, after putting away money, he enquires what is God. Shall such a man find what is God? Because his mind is corrupt, his mind is cruel, ungenerous, unkind, petty, small and clothed by his own beliefs; shall such a man find what is truth, what is real, what is God? He may surround himself with the images, symbols, prayers, words, books; but shall such a man find what is God — because his mind is petty, and his God is also petty. So a stupid mind enquiring what is intelligence can never understand what is intelligence; but if it is aware that it is stupid, then it is already intelligent. (Great laughter in audience.) (Pause.) Do please listen, this is not a matter of emotional nervous laughter. But as most of us are petty, small, narrow, we create the word in our image; not in Gods image, but in our image. And so what is important is not what is intelligence, but to be aware of our own narrowness, of our stupidity, of our pettiness. When you are aware, not to alter it, I must make it intelligent, I must make it clever, the petty mind which is aware that it is petty, then its activity will still be petty. If I realise that I am stupid, if I am aware that I am stupid, then if I set about to alter that stupidity the very action is born of stupidity, is it not? But if I am aware that I am stupid and listen to it, follow it, understand it, not challenge it, because the stupid mind is still a stupid mind, it cannot alter its course, which is choice — all that it can do is to see that whatever it chooses is still petty. Please observe your own mind, don’t listen to me only, but watch your own minds and see the truth of what I am saying. Because choice is a factor of deterioration, choice is petty under all circumstances; there is no great choice and little choice; and that all our cultural, religious process is from discrimination to discrimination, climbing higher and higher through choice; but the choice is made by the petty mind, because the petty mind — where there is choice there is pettiness of the mind. Because how can a mind which is the result of hate, which is the result of prejudice, which is the result of conditioning — whatever it chooses is still conditioned. Whatever its experiences are, still conditioned. Therefore a mind that is petty in choosing does not liberate from its pettiness. Therefore, when a mind chooses something great, the great is still the petty. When the petty mind chooses the Guru, a particular Guru to follow, it is the petty mind that chooses — therefore the Guru is petty, as all Gurus are petty because you have chosen them.

So intelligence is surely something that is not cultivable through the process of choice, through the process of experience, through knowledge; because a petty mind remains a petty mind though it has innumerable experiences. Because at the centre it is still petty. You may read all the Vedas, all the Upanishads, Gita, all the sacred books of the East and the West; the mind is still petty, so your knowledge is still petty. And is not the mind always petty? Can it be any other thing but petty and small? So is it not important to find out not what is intelligence, but “what is,” in what way the mind is choosing, acting, discriminating? Is it not important to find out for yourselves — not to listen to me, read a book — what is intelligence? To find out for yourselves, to observe the state of your own mind — then only, surely, in the uncovering of “what is,” intelligence comes into being. In the understanding of “what is,” there is that intelligence which is creative.

QUESTION: Every religion advocates prayer. Will you please explain the power of prayer and how prayer differs from meditation?

ANSWER: You pray. Do you not? And when do you pray? Is it when you are happy, or is it you pray in the moment of strain and suffering? You pray every morning doing Puja. That is a routine that is traditional and dull, without much significance; and when you are suffering you pray, do you not? Supplicate, petition, something to find an answer for your suffering; or there is a prayer in which there is no routine, or which is not the outcome of supplication, which is complete listening; that is, there is the routine prayer of repetition of words. That obviously produces a certain result; the more you repeat the more quiet you are. But that quietness of repetition is stagnation because the mind is put to sleep by repeating a phrase, and you think you have done marvellously if you can quieten the mind by repetition — but that quietness is not creative, is it? It is dull. It is like the petty human beings concerned with household things; pray, repeat the words — because in its repetition, it is peaceful in its smallness. Then there is the prayer, the supplication, the petition when there is suffering. Please follow all this. Listen to all this. When I suffer I want an answer. When my son dies, I want to find out comfort; I want somebody to tell me that he is alright. When I am dying, I want an assurance in my old age from some Guru, or from the book, or some friend that everything is alright, I am secure. So I beg, I petition, I enquire, I ask. When I petition, I ask, I beg, I receive what I want; because what I want is security, comfort. I am confronted with the abyss of darkness, with loneliness, with utter extinction, not knowing what it is. So I am asking for somebody to give me the answer; the answer which I want, which is to guarantee that on the other side there is light, there is companionship, there is the Father. So when I suffer I pray, and my prayer is answered according to my desire. This is not a cynical reply but is the actual fact, because I am suffering and if somebody comes and tells me that I am suffering, all these miseries that you have given to thousands of people, the way you have behaved, and I do not want to face it, I want to pacify and I want the comfort in the person who satisfies me, and in that suffering, when I pray I am also passive, because the moment I think about something, about light, about the bird, sea, about a picture, my suffering goes and we temporarily put aside. Have you not noticed that if you can turn your mind from your physical suffering there is a less suffering? Similarly, in praying, if you can turn your mind away from the present conflict, from the present misery, there is a peace — but that is an escape. In that there is deterioration; it gives you certain tranquillity, peace, the mind at rest, gives it certain peace which acts as a drug, then you might take whisky as prayer because all that you are concerned with is not to suffer, not to enquire, not to find out, go beyond. All that you are concerned is trying some comfort. So prayer answers what you want, and the more you want the more you want, the more strongly you desire the greater your satisfaction. But if one can use that word “prayer,” which has been so misused, to something quite differently, which is, if I can understand what is meditation, then I shall perhaps understand what is prayer — what is the right prayer not this stupid prayer of the petty mind. So what is meditation? To find out what is meditation you must know what the meditator is; not some higher entity, but the meditator, the one who meditates, the one who sits down, closes his eyes and begins to meditate. Without knowing that entity, the process is all waste, you cannot know meditation. Because you cannot separate meditation from the meditator. There is no meditation without the meditator, and without the meditator, understanding myself, there is no Peace. So to find out what is meditation one must understand what is the meditation; meditator, in the understanding which is self-knowledge, there is wisdom — don’t listen to just words, but understand yourself. Self-knowledge is the beginning of wisdom; and a small mind meditating at the end of 10 years will be a small mind. That is the tragedy of people who are meditating. They have enclosed themselves so deeply in their conditioning that nothing can penetrate, and they remain petty, anxious, everlastingly seeking But if the meditator sets about to understand itself, the understanding of oneself is from moment to moment, from day to day, what he is, what he is not; when you getting in the tramcar, in the business, when you are talking to your wife, when you are scolding your servant, when you are snobbish, looking up to the baths, these are the moments when you study yourself. Then in that self-knowledge you will find out the operations of meditation, how the meditator comes into being; then you will find that there is no meditator apart from meditation. There is only the meditation, not the meditator meditating; then, when there is only meditation, then there is peace — because the mind is no longer meditating upon something. Then the mind is no longer seeking through meditation to find something. There is only meditation, as there is only listening; there is not the meditator meditating upon something. Then observer is the observed. Then the fear is not thought, then only is there peace and that peace cannot be sought by the mind because the mind is everlastingly petty, small. The mind can never be great. What is great, is; cannot be invited by the mind. Mind can only invite its own pettiness, it cannot invite the great; it cannot invite the truth, the real, and so the mind can only be quiet, receptive, alone, listening.