The organized morality which is the respectability and the morality of acquisitiveness, of greed, competition, violence, brutality, we accept as moral. We may say it is very bad to be that way, but that is our life and that is our morality. Our minds, so organized, must inevitably be very shallow; however much you may accumulate knowledge the mind is still shallow, petty, concerned with itself, with its success, with the family, with its little activities how can such a mind know either sorrow or passion? It is only in the understanding of sorrow that passion comes. So, seeing all this, not merely intellectually or verbally, seeing that this is the actual reality of one’s life, what is one to do? What is your answer? This is your life, the ugliness, the growing old with all the ugliness of old age, the bitterness, the frustrations, the utter hopelessness of petty thought, the greed, the envy – you know, this whole thing in which we live – how do we get out of it? That is really the question; not whether you believe in God, or not.
Beauty comes with order, not when there is disorder in our lives. Beauty is not in the museum, in the painting, in statues, or listening to a concert; beauty is not in a poem or in the lovely sky of an evening, or in the light on the water, or in the face of a beautiful person, nor in the building. There is beauty only when the mind and the heart are completely in harmony; and that beauty cannot be gotten by a shallow mind that is caught in the disorder of this world.
When you are confronted with this enormous and very complex issue – what are you, as a human being, to do? When the house is actually burning you have no time to say, well, let us think about it’, ‘Let us find out who set the house on fire, and with what, and whether he was black or white, or whatever it is’ – when the house is burning you are concerned. So what are you going to do? Change is obviously essential, not only outwardly in society, but also in ourselves. The change in society can only be brought about by change within – mere outward reformation, however revolutionary, is always overcome by the inward attitudes, thoughts and feelings; you have seen that in the Russian and other revolutions. So what is one to do?
I wonder, when you are faced with this challenge, what your response as a human being is; is it to retire into some isolated monastery, there to meditate, learn a new technique, become a Zen Buddhist, or take vows of poverty, celibacy, chastity; or is it to join other groups of religious belief or sects, or play with psychoanalysis, or become a social reformer, mending the society which is breaking down? What will you do? Do, please, be terribly serious about it. If you cannot retire or escape – there is no way out that way, if there is no teacher, no guru who is going to help you, no organized religion, no God, for certainly God will not come to your aid, God is your invention – what will you do?
What does the mind do? What does one do when one is confused, as one is with this confusion brought about by so many specialists, by so much knowledge, with the confusion of one’s own uncertainty and the seeking of certainty? What does one do when one does not trust anybody anymore? I hope you do not, – no analyst, no priest and all the rest of it. Inwardly, one has given faith to so many people – one’s love, one’s affection, one’s adoration, one’s trust – and they have all failed, and they must. So, when one is confronted with this immense problem and one has to solve it by oneself, without any help from outside, either one becomes bitter – which is the fruit of modern civilisation – or, what does one do? Are you all waiting for me to tell you? (Laughter) Do not, please, laugh it away. Are you waiting for the speaker to point out what to do? If you are waiting for the speaker to tell you, he becomes your authority, therefore you put your trust in the speaker, and if you put your trust in him then you will be substituting this particular authority for another authority and so you will be lost again; you will be destroying yourself.
So you can neither trust the speaker – please listen seriously – nor anyone else, any authority whatsoever; therein lies great beauty – not despair, not bitterness, not a sense of loneliness; you are faced with this problem and you have to solve it completely, yourself; in that there is great freedom and beauty. Then you are rid of authority, rid of the teacher, rid of the teaching, rid of following anybody, you are a human being free to look and to understand; in that there is great joy, there is beauty – you have thrown away all burdens.
The word ‘responsibility’ is an ugly word. We use that word only when there is no love; ‘responsibility’ is the word used by the clever politician, or by a dominating or asserting woman or man. But we are responsible – that is an actual fact – for everything that is happening in the world, the starvation in the East, the war – it is not an American war against the Vietnamese, it is the war for which each one of us, whether we live in the East or in the West, is responsible. I know you do not feel this. You may feel it for your son who is killed – and I hope he is not – then you feel sorrow-laden, somewhat responsible and carry on. It is when you love you feel responsible; not you love because you feel responsible. There is responsibility because you love; and freedom implies responsibility, not responsibility for other people’s actions – how can I be responsible for your action, for your thinking? – but responsibility for the action which comes with freedom. To be free without responsibility has no meaning.
You are confronted with this problem, and you are alone with it. Have you ever been alone? – alone in the woods, alone by yourself in your room – or are you always crowded by a horde of others, by your companions, wife or husband, by crowding thoughts, by professional problems? – all that indicates that you are never alone; and then when you are alone you are frightened. But now you are alone with this immense problem. There is nobody that is going to give you the answer. You are confronted with this immense problem, and therefore alone; out of this aloneness comes understanding and whatever you do will be right because that aloneness is love. That state of mind, that is confronting this immense problem without any escape, facing all the daily facts of life, the daily ugliness, the daily brutality, the daily words of annoyance, of irritation, is alone; you begin to see the actual fact, to see actually ‘what is’. Then, only, is it possible to go beyond it; then you are a light to yourself. That mind is the religious mind – not the mind that goes to church, believes in gods, that is superstitious, frightened; such a mind is not a religious mind. The religious mind is that state in which there is freedom and great abiding love. And then you can go beyond, then the mind can go to a different dimension and there is truth.