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subscribe Tell a friend QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 27TH QUESTION - SAANEN
3RD QUESTION & ANSWER MEETING - 25TH JULY 1980
'DISCONTENT'
One observes what is happening in the world, one sees the over population, the pollution, corruption and violence, in practically every country and one tries to find an answer. One may be discontented, not only with what the speaker is saying but with everything around one - with one's job, with one's wife or husband, with one's girl or boy friend and much else. One is discontented. And that is the common lot for most of us. Either that discontent becomes a consuming flame, or it is dampened down by seeking some kind of satisfaction in various activities of life. Instead of allowing discontent to become a consuming flame, most of us almost destroy it. We are so easily satisfied, so gullible, so ready to accept, that gradually our discontent withers away and we become the normal mediocre human being, without any vitality, without any energy, without any urge to do anything.
The questioner implies that he has been through all that; he has read and thought about life a great deal, he has probably been all over the world and has not found an answer to this discontent. People who are thoughtful, aware of what is happening around them and in themselves, are aware that politics, science and religion have not answered any of our deep human problems. We have technologically evolved and developed but inwardly we are discontented. The questioner, listening to the speaker, is even more disturbed, more discontented and antagonistic and asks what is wrong with what the speaker is saying - or is there something wrong with himself? Instead of accepting and sitting quietly and saying yes, he is antagonistic to the speaker; he does not accept. One must be very clear as to whether this discontent has a cause, because if it has a cause then it is seeking contentment, satisfaction, gratification. The discontent creates the opposite, the wish to be contented, to be satisfied, to be completely bourgeois. If what one wants, when one is discontented, is to find something with which one can be completely contented, so that one is never disturbed, then one will find a way to obtain contentment and discontent will wither and be gone.
Perhaps that is what most of us are doing. You have been to this or to that talk, you come here wanting some kind of satisfaction, some kind of certainty and assurance, some gratifying truth. Most of us find satisfaction very easily; in the kitchen, in some aspect of religion, or in politics. So gradually and inevitably the mind is narrowed down, made small when its capacity is so immense.
If one is not satisfied with anything, discontented with the whole universe - as the questioner puts it - not just dissatisfied at the level of having no house or money, then that discontent has no cause; it is discontent in itself, not because of something. Such people are rare who have this flame of discontent. Perhaps such a person comes here, listens, and that discontent increases, it becomes all-consuming. So what shall he do when he is totally dissatisfied with the whole structure of thought? He is in an immovable state. He is not seeking, he is not wanting, he is not pursuing something or other; he is aflame with this thing. And the speaker is also immovable. What he says is so; not because he is dogmatic, superstitious, romantic or self-assertive. He says that if you comprehend consciousness with its content and the freeing of that consciousness of its content there is a totally different dimension. He has said this for fifty years, not because he has invented it, but because it is so.
There are these two entities, one is completely discontented, nothing satisfies him, words, books, ideas, leaders, politics, nothing and so he is in an immovable state, and the other is equally immovable, he will not budge, he will not yield. What happens? Two human beings, one from the depth of his mind and heart is totally dissatisfied and the other also from the depth of his mind and heart says, "It is so; then these two entities meet. This is not something romantic, invented out of imagination. This is so. But if one feels antagonistic to the other, then he has already moved. He has not remained completely dissatisfied. The moment he says, "I am antagonistic to you and to that of which you speak", he has moved away from what is burning. He has already softened. Still the other has no antagonism; he says, "It is so". When the first person meets the speaker without antagonism, without wanting something from him, he is alight. Then both are the same. Fire is fire. It is not your fire, my fire, it is fire. When the fire is dampened, the are different.