Chapter 5 why is our life empty

We follow famous people religiously, politically, or intellectually, we are just gramophones that record repeatedly, and we call this repetition "knowledge."We learn, we repeat, yet our lives are still cheap, vulgar, boring, ugly.why? Q: There is a lack of real drive for kindness in our lives, and we seek to fill that void with organized compassion and enforced justice.Our life is nothing but sex.Can you shed some light on this tiresome subject? K: The explanation for the problem is: our problem is that our life is empty and we don't know love -- we know feelings, we know propaganda, we know sexual needs, but there is no love.And how to transform this emptiness, how to find the flame without the smoke? Of course, that's the problem, isn't it? So, let's find out what's going on together.

Why is our life empty? Although we are very active, although we write books and watch movies, although we have fun, make love, and go to work, our lives are empty, boring, just routine.Why are our relationships cheap, vulgar, empty, and unimportant? We know our own lives so well that our existence has very little meaning; What did the sages, modern sages, or those ancient sages say.We follow famous people religiously, politically, or intellectually, we are just gramophones that record repeatedly, and we call this repetition "knowledge."We learn, we repeat, yet our lives are still cheap, vulgar, boring, ugly.Why? Why is this so? Why do we think the mind is so important? Why is the mind so important in our lives? - The mind is the ability to perceive, think, rationalize, evaluate, balance, and calculate? Why do we think the mind is so important? This Doesn't mean we have to be sentimental, sentimental and promiscuous.We know the emptiness, we know the heaviness of frustration.Why this superficial, negative feeling in our lives? Indeed, we can only understand it when we soberly explore it in our relationships.

What is going on in our relationship? Isn't our relationship a self-isolation? Isn't every mental activity a process of protection, safety-seeking, or isolation? Isn't this kind of thinking what we call a Collective, isolating process? Isn’t every activity of our life a self-enclosed process? You can find it in everyday life.The family has become a process of self-isolation, it has been isolated, it must exist in opposition.So, all our activities lead to self-isolation, and this creates a sense of emptiness; and because of the emptiness, we fill it with radio, noise, chatting, gossip, reading, the acquisition of knowledge, honor, money, social status, and so on.But these are isolated processes, so they only reinforce the isolation.So, for most people, life is a process of isolating, denying, resisting, and conforming to patterns; naturally, there is no life in this process, and therefore there is a sense of loneliness and frustration.It is true that to love someone is to communicate with him, not just to a certain degree but in all, but we do not understand such love.We just know that love is a feeling - my children, my wife, my possessions, my knowledge, my accomplishments, and again this is the isolation process.Isolation in all aspects of our lives is the driving force behind self-enclosed thought and emotion, with which we only occasionally communicate with others.That's why there's this major problem.

Right now, the reality of our lives is what it is—nobility, possession, emptiness—and the question is how do we go beyond it.How do we go beyond loneliness, emptiness and inner poverty? I think most of us don't want to go beyond.Most of us are content with ourselves, it's troublesome to find something new, so we prefer to keep the status quo - and that's where the real difficulty lies.We have too much security; our satisfaction comes from building walls and occasionally whispering outside the walls; sometimes there is an earthquake, there is a revolution and disturbance, but it is quickly extinguished.So, most of us don't really want to go beyond the self-enclosed process; we're just looking for a substitute, the same thing in a different mode.Our dissatisfaction is very superficial, we want new things to satisfy us, new security, new ways of protecting ourselves -- this is isolation again.What we are seeking is not to transcend isolation, but to strengthen it so that it can perpetuate itself undisturbed.Very few people want to go beyond and explore what we call emptiness and loneliness.Those who seek a replacement for the old will be satisfied to find the new safe, but clearly some will want to go beyond that, let us go with them!

Now, in order to transcend loneliness and emptiness, it is necessary to understand the whole process of the mind.What do we call the emptiness of loneliness? How do we know emptiness, how do we know loneliness? By what standard are you judged? When you say loneliness is empty, by what standard? You can only use the old standard.You say "emptiness," you give it a name, and you think you already know it.Doesn't naming things just get in the way of knowing? Most of us know what it means to be lonely from which we are fleeing.Most people also notice this inner poverty and insufficiency.It is not a reaction to failure, it is a fact, and by naming it we cannot rule it out - it is there.Now, how do we know its content, how do we know its essence? Do you understand it after naming it? Do you understand me by calling my name? You can only understand me by observing me and communicating with me, but only Calling me by my name, saying this or that about me would obviously end our communication.In the same way, to know the nature of loneliness, there must be communication with it, and it is impossible for you to name it.To understand something, you first have to stop naming it.If you wanted to know all about your child - I doubt it - what would you do? You watch him, you watch him play, you observe him, you learn from him.In other words, you love the person you want to know.When you love something, there is a communication, but love is not a word, a name and an idea.You cannot love loneliness because you do not know it fully, you approach it with fear -- not fear of it, but something else.You haven't thought about what loneliness is because you don't really know it.Don't laugh, this is not a sophistry.Go through what we are discussing and you will see its importance.

So, what we call "emptiness" is an isolating process, a product of everyday relationships with people, because in relationships we consciously or unconsciously seek isolation.You want to be the sole owner of your property, your wife, your children, and you want to name those things "mine," which clearly shows exclusivity.This process of exclusion inevitably leads to isolation, and since no one can live in isolation, there is conflict; and in conflict we want to escape. All the modes of escape we can think of—whether it be social activity, drinking, following God, the Holy One, performing rituals, dancing, or any other form of entertainment—are the same thing; From the whole process of avoiding conflict, and to go beyond it, we must understand relationship.Only when the heart no longer escapes in any way, but communicates directly with loneliness, there is affection, there is love.In other words, you have to love it to know it.Love is the only way to transform, and love is not a theory, not a belief, it does not follow any book or society's norms.

So, we can't find answers in theory, which only creates further isolation.The answer will be found only when the heart and mind no longer run away from loneliness.Avoidance is the process of isolation, and the truth of the matter is that only when there is love, there is communication and the problem of loneliness is resolved. Bombay, February 12, 1950