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subscribe Tell a friend QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 46TH QUESTION - BROCKWOOD PARK
2ND QUESTION & ANSWER MEETING - 4TH SEPTEMBER 1980
'CORRUPTION'
Does this need explanation? When you are attached to an idea, to a concept, to an ideal as the Communists are, or the Catholics, is there not the beginning of corruption? When I am tied to a belief, to a god, to an image or to a person, is there not the beginning of corruption? Please Sirs, it is not what I say - just look at it for yourselves. Is attachment love? If I were attached to you as an audience (God forbid!) I would be exploiting you, deriving great comfort from you, fulfilling myself. Is that not corruption? When I am attached to my wife, to my friend, to a piece of furniture or whatever it is, corruption begins: I have to guard it, I have to protect it, and so comes fear. Fear begins with attachment. I may derive pleasure in that attachment, comfort, encouragement, but there is always the shadow of fear in it, anxiety, jealousy and possessiveness; people like to be possessed and to possess. Is that not corruption because in that there is a sense of fear, anxiety, that I might lose it?
So can one live in this world without any sense of attachment to anything? - to one's beliefs, dogmas, gods, to all the various symbols, ideologies and images and to the furniture, house, experiences? Which does not mean that one becomes detached. When there is an attempt to be detached then detachment is part of attachment, because the opposite has its roots in its own opposite. Is that clear? So when one understands the nature of attachment, the consequences of it, sees the whole movement of it, not just one particular attachment to a person, to an idea, or to a piece of furniture, but comprehend and have insight into this whole movement of attachment - then attachment drops away immediately without any conflict. Then perhaps one has love - because love, fear and jealousy cannot go together.