Why is Sex a Problem?

extract from What Are You Doing With Your Life? ·
Why is it that whatever we touch we turn into a problem? Why has sex become a problem? Why do we submit to living with problems; why do we not put an end to them? Why do we not die to our problems instead of carrying them day after day, year after year? Surely, sex is a relevant question, which I shall answer presently, but there is the primary question: why do we make life into a problem? Working, sex, earning money, thinking, feeling, experiencing, you know, the whole business of living-why is it a problem? Is it not essentially because we always think from a particular point of view, from a fixed point of view?

Understanding the Mind

extract from What Are You Doing With Your Life? ·
It seems to me that without understanding the way our minds work, one cannot understand and resolve the very complex problems of living. This understanding cannot come through book knowledge. The mind is, in itself, quite a complex problem. In the very process of understanding one’s own mind, the crisis which each one of us faces in life can perhaps be understood and gone beyond.

Can We Love and Yet Not Possess?

· extract from What Are You Doing With Your Life? ·
Life cannot be without relationship, but we have made it so agonizing and hideous by basing it on personal and possessive love. Can one love and yet not possess? You will find the true answer not in escape, ideals, beliefs but through the understanding of the causes of dependence and possessiveness. If one can deeply understand this problem of relationship between oneself and another, then perhaps we shall understand and solve the problems of our relationship tips with society, for society is but the extension of ourselves.

Do What You Love

· Extract from What Are You Doing With Your Life? ·
So, is it not very important when you are young, when you are in a place like this, to help you to awaken your own intelligence so that you will naturally find your vocation? Then, if you find it and if it is a true thing, then you will love it right through life. In that, there will be no ambition, no competition, no struggle, no fighting each other for position, for prestige; and perhaps then you will be able to create a new world. Then, in that world, all the ugly things of the old generation will not exist-their wars, their mischief, their separative gods, their rituals which mean absolutely nothing, their government, their violence. In a place of this kind, the responsibility of the teacher and of you is very great because you can create a new world, a new culture, a new way of life.

Why Change?

· Extract from What Are You Doing With Your Life? ·
Man has lived for two million years or more, but he has not solved the problem of sorrow. He is always sorrow-ridden: he has sorrow as his shadow or as his companion. Sorrow of losing somebody; sorrow in not being able to fulfill his ambitions, his greed, his energy; sorrow of physical pain; sorrow of psychological anxiety; sorrow of guilt; sorrow of hope and despair-that has been the lot of man; that has been the lot of every human being. And he has always tried to solve this problem-to end sorrow within the field of consciousness-by trying to avoid it, by running away from sorrow, by suppressing it, by identifying himself with something greater than himself, by taking to drink, to women, by doing everything in order to avoid this anxiety, this pain, this despair, this immense loneliness and boredom of life-which is always within this field of consciousness, which is the result of time.