excerpt

Every human being is caught in time. I am not talking about time by the watch, chronological time which does influence thought, but of time at a different level, time as a movement of the infinite past, moving through the present to some future.

As long as I am caught in that, there is no end to sorrow. I say to myself, "I'll be happy tomorrow; I'll escape from my present misery, my deep inner psychological disturbance which brings about sorrow. I'll gradually get over it, forget it, rationalize it, escape from it or invent some future hope".

But to end suffering I must understand time. Time must come to an end, because thought has created sorrow, thought is time, thought has said "I'm lonely; I'm incapable of functioning; I'm not loved; my ambition, my capacity is not fulfilling itself. I must have time to do this, and time to achieve, to become, to change".

So thought, which is the result of time, and which is time, looks to something which will help it to dissolve this sorrow. If I look at myself I will see that this is what I have done whenever any sorrow has arisen. Thought immediately comes into operation.

After all, sorrow is a challenge, a challenge to which there is inadequate response and therefore, out of that sorrow, there is a feeling of disturbance, of anxiety, of fear. I lose my job. I see someone famous, rich, prosperous. I have nothing, and someone else has everything -beauty, culture, intelligence. Thought by comparing, adjusting accepting or denying breeds this thing

To be attentive implies to be aware of the division of time into the past, the present and the future, the "I have been", "I must not", "I will do". If we are completely aware of this whole process of time, we will see that time has come to an end altogether.

When someone whom we love or like does something or dies, we respond to it after the shock is over according to the reactions of our loneliness, of self-pity, of wanting more time to do this or that, with regrets as to what might have been and what might not have been. All this is a dissipation of attention.

When the shock is over, if we attend completely and do not move away in any direction, then we will find that there is an ending to sorrow, not in some distant future, but immediately. It is only a mind that is not clouded by sorrow that knows what it is to love. Only such a mind can meditate.

Meditation is not something to be achieved, something that you practise, learn, but it is this attention, attending to everything from the most little thing to the deepest thing. When you do that, you will find out for yourselves that there is a silence which is not of time, which is not of thought.

When you can come upon something not put together by thought, you will find that it is something which is not time at all.