Observing the many fragments of life, the various activities opposing, contradicting each other and bringing about a great deal of confusion, one asks if there is an action which can cover totally all the divergent, contradictory, fragmentary activities. In our own lives we can observe how we are broken up with contradictory desires, with opposing political, religious, artistic, scientific, and business activities. Is there an action that can respond totally to every demand of life without being contradictory itself? I do not know if you have ever asked such a question.
Most of us live in our own particular little activity and try to make the best of it. If you are a politician--and I hope you aren't--then your world is very dependent on votes and all the nonsense that goes on in the name of politics. If you are a religious person, you will have a number of beliefs, a way of meditation contradicting everything in your daily life. If you are an artist, you live totally apart from all this, absorbed in your own particular fancy, in your own perception of beauty, and so on. And if you are a scientist, you live in your laboratory and are just a normal human being elsewhere, rather shoddy and competitive. So seeing all this, with which most of us must be quite familiar, what is an action that can respond totally to every demand and yet remain noncontradictory, whole?
Now, if you put that question to yourself, as we are doing now, what would be your answer? As we said the other day when we met, we are sharing together the problems of our life, not intellectually, but actually. We said that that is the meaning of communication--to consider together a common issue. Now the common issue is this question of whether there is an action, a way of living every day, whether you are an artist, a scientist, a businessman, so that your life can be whole, so that there is no fragmentation and therefore no contradictory action.
If the question is clear, then how shall we find such an action? By what method, by what system? If we are trying to find a method, a way of living by a system, according to a certain pattern, then that very pattern, that very system is contradictory. Please, do let's understand this very clearly. If I follow a particular system in order to bring about an action which will be whole, complete, full, rich and beautiful, the method, system becomes mechanical. My actions will be mechanical and therefore totally incomplete. Therefore I must set aside all ideas of following a mechanical, repetitive activity.
I must also find out whether thought can help to bring about such an action. You live a fragmentary life: you are different in the office and at home; you have private thoughts and public thoughts. You can see this wide gulf, this contradiction, this fragmentation. And one asks if thought can bridge all these various fragments, can bring about an integration among all these factors. Can it? We have to find out the nature and structure of thought before we say that thought can or cannot...K