We just met a unique craftsman who came aboard the boat to repair faulty equipment. He lives in Martinique and built his own boat. He is jovial and cultivates the art of derision. His eyes sparkle and he speaks of love with detachment, without possessiveness, which is a rare thing. He works with passion and enjoys challenges, finding solutions, using ingenuity and being creative. He likes to do what he does and is generous of his time. His nomadic life is simple and connected to everything. His attitude in life makes him an "enlightened", sensitive and intelligent individual in the truest sense of the word. He has transformed himself over time and radiates his environment. He is what he thinks.
We tend to dissociate ourselves from what we are, we think in terms of the future. In the office, we try to become the manager, to climb in the hierarchy, to gain status, authority over others etc. We hope to become richer, more perfect, less violent and at peace with ourselves. This personal drive to become arises from the conditioning of culture, habits, traditions and education.
The point is that we are violent. It can easily be explained, it is relatively simple. The culture that we create and in which we live is largely responsible for it. How do we observe this fact ? We are angry, jealous, envious, brutal.. Is there an observer observing the violence ? Do we observe it by dissociating ourselves from the fact ? It then implies that we are distinct from the thing observed, which is the psychoanalysts' method and their identification businesses, implying progression over time. Or we can see anger, jealousy, violence as an integral part of the observer, as one, without division ? If one sees unity then the conflict immediately ceases.
The conflict exists as long as there is a division : christian, jewish, muslim or nationalist. As long as the division exists there is conflict. This division also exists internally : the ego that wants to become something. The divided, fragmented mind is subject to conflict and it is never free, without distortion.
MEDITATION CONSISTS OF DISCOVERING A WAY OF LIVING IN WHICH CONFLICT NO LONGER EXISTS.
It is not a question of fleeing or seeking mystical experiences, but rather a daily way of living free from conflicts. This is only possible when we understand the internal division and the contradictions. As long as the division exists, as long as we seek to become more this or less that, to become better, to be a noble person, then there is a conflict which prevent us from seeing the fact. Can the mind, conditioned by the past and by the culture change when it sees the falsehood of ideologies, submission and obedience ? We obey in order to be successful. Obeying involves submission to an authority, doesn't it ?..
A mind colored with authority can never be free and live effortlessly. This applies of course to parental authority, which is violent by nature. But how do we live the way we are without effort nor conflict ? We do not ask the question because our life has always been a struggle. We have been taught to fight since we were kids : in sport, in studies, at work, etc. But as soon as there is an effort there is distortion, as for a machine which heats up and loses of its performance..
But all that we know is effort, submission, repression and resistance. Does a mind trapped in this system can ever cease to be in permanent effort. The struggle arises from contradiction and duality : to be this and to want to be that you know, contradictory desires and ideas.. Most people are abominable beings capable of the worst brutality. So thought invents the idea of ​​non-violence. So there is a contradiction between the fact and the idea, isn't there ? The fact is that we are violent, and the ideal is non-violence. Not knowing how to understand violence, we invent the non-fact of non-violence..
BUT THOSE WHO WANT TO CHANGE MUST OBSERVE WHAT IS AND NOT WHAT SHOULD BE..
Having ideologies and certainties is one of the reasons why we have no life energy, no inner flame, because we live in the fuzzy abstraction of concepts and thought. When we put aside the future we can deal with what is, and not imagine what should be. What should be becomes the authority, and the mind freed from that authority is free to observe the only valid truth.
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