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subscribe Tell a friend QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 40TH QUESTION - BROCKWOOD PARK
1ST QUESTION & ANSWER MEETING - 2ND SEPTEMBER 1980
'SCHOOLS AND FOUNDATIONS'
A group of us saw the necessity of having a school. `School' comes from the Greek word for leisure - leisure in which to learn, a place where students and teachers can flower, a place where a future generation can be prepared, because schools are meant for that, not just merely to turn out human beings as mechanical, technological instruments - though jobs and careers are necessary - but also flower as human beings, without fear, without confusion, with great integrity. And how to bring about such a `good' human being? - I am using the word `good' in its proper sense, not in the respectable sense, but in the sense of a whole human being, not fragmented, not broken up. Although it is very difficult to find teachers who are `whole', we are trying in India (where there are five or six schools), in California, in Canada and here, to see that these schools are real centres of understanding, of comprehension of life. Such places are necessary; that is why we have these schools. We may not always succeed but perhaps after ten years one or two people may come out of them as total human beings.
The Foundations in America, Canada, India and here exist merely to publish books, to organize these gatherings, to help the schools - not as centres of `enlightenment' and all that business. And nobody is making a profit out of them.
Now why do I speak? This has often been asked. "Why do you go on wasting your energy after fifty years when nobody seems to change? Why do you bother about it? Is it a form of self-fulfilment? Do you get energy talking about these things, and so depend on the audience?" We have been through all that several times.
First of all, I do not depend on you as a group who come to listen to the speaker. The speaker is not attached to a particular group nor is it necessary for him to have a gathering. Then what is the motive? I think when one sees something true and beautiful, one wants to tell people about it, out of affection, out of compassion, out of love. And if there are those who are not interested, that is all right, but those who are interested can perhaps gather together. Can you ask the flower why it grows, why it has perfume? It is for the same reason the speaker talks.