Speaker: The first requirement of living intelligently is to close the mind from the external occupations, to ask it to find out its own truth.
‘What are you doing? Why are you so noisy? Why are you always so bored? Why are you confused and frustrated? When you enter in particular class, why are you more eager to hold the back benches? What is the quality of your decisions? What is quality of your relationships? Why are you so often afraid? Why are you so insecure? Why are you always looking for the company? Why you can’t be alone with yourself?’
That’s what an intelligent mind does. It asks itself what is happening.
‘Why are you so keen on gossiping? Why does silence scare you? Why can’t you listen? When you look at the future, why do you either see fear or hope? Can’t you stay in this moment? Have you ever loved? Do you understand living?’ Ask these questions to the mind. These questions are not from the outside, these questions are from your daily life.
If you are not totally sleeping, if you are not an escapist, a coward who wants to run from himself, you confront yourself. You ask yourself, ‘Is this what I am doing from morning till evening; in our classroom in the institute, on the road? Why do I always want entertainment? Why am I so keen to get entertainment?’
As an intelligent mind does, it would come to see that to ask for entertainment, that it keeps feeling bored all the time, that it is never present in the moment, it is missing life. Life is here and now. Your own daily life is what you must observe, not my life, not somebody else’s life. If it is your life that you are observing, not a dictated life, then the questions that would come to you would be really authentic.
‘How do I feel ? What is core thing about all this? Why I am often lost? The moment I see my dependencies being taken away, why do I get scared? Why do I always want to belong to a community?’
These are the questions that I must ask. ‘Why do I study only when the examinations approach? That means I have no love for what I am doing.’ You have taken this as a regular routine of your life. You have understood that life is like this only. Can we look at it honestly, intelligently?
(One of the listeners raises his hand)
If you are raising your hand, if your hand is still up, it means that you are not listening. You are not sharp enough to see that you are not listening. My own life, my one single precious life, observe it. Observe it just like you observe in science, without interfering, unbiased, unmotivated. Just observe what is happening, what is this whole drama about. You deserve to understand. It is your obligation towards yourself to understand.
You have a life to live. You deserve to understand. Only then there is good fun in life. Real joy!
All that you know right now is a little bit of pleasure, which amounts to nothing. That joy of freedom, that vitality, you can know only with that intelligence. You deserve that. It’s your birthright in some sense. Don’t deny yourself of that.
