December 23, 2025
How can a simple thing be made complex? Do you ever think of that? You are here and we are here to, and perhaps the purpose of our getting together - if there is a purpose at all - might be served if we just look at each other, smile and go away. Yet there is first a suggestion (I want to say 'illusion') that there is a purpose, and that I have to decide how best this purpose can be achieved, because I think quite a number of possibilities exist. An extremely simple thing is getting more and more complicated. There is a purpose and, to serve that purpose, quite a number of possibilities exist and someone has to make a decision.
What we have never bothered to ask is, ‘Is there purpose at all?' (It sounds a bit primitive to inquire into this fundamental thing.') Have we gathered together for a purpose? If so, who determines this? If there are fifty people, there are at least seventy-five purposes — because some of us have two or three! Each one has a different purpose, a different attitude, a completely different outlook.
Once we have assumed that there is a purpose …, — because the complicated mind refuses to see, or ask itself, ‘Is there a purpose to it?'—, we assume that there is a purpose for which we have been delivered into this world. If you will forgive my being lighthearted, the only purpose is that I was a burden to my mother. She wanted to get rid of this thing! It could have been as simple as that - and once the delivery has taken place her problem is solved. My problem need not arise. I am here.
The art of 'awareness' is very much like the awareness of a thorn that has entered your foot and cannot be removed. You are extremely vigilant not to aggravate the trouble while you do your work, you are ever careful not to let the thorn go deeper into the foot, virtue. For how long? For a whole lifetime! This art of continuous self-watchfulness can be learned and mastered. If however there is self-condemnation or self-pity, the mind will refuse to watch it; if there is self-justification the whole purpose is defeated.