capacity to observe, your own activities, your own thoughts, your own way of life. When you ask ‘how’ you really become a secondhand human being; you lose integrity and also the innate honesty to look at yourself, to be what you are and to go beyond and above what you are. Never, never ask the question ‘how.’ We are talking psychologically, of

As I asked, to be a mediocre person? Mediocrity means to go half way up the hill, half way in anything, never going to the very top of the mountain or demanding all your energy, your capacity, never demanding excellence.

Suffering is merely that high, intense clarity of thought and emotion which forces you to recognize things as they are. But

“If I may suggest, never under any circumstances ask ‘how.’ When you use the word how you really want someone to tell you what to do, some guide, some system, somebody to lead you by the hand so that you lose your freedom, your

Freedom is a state of mind—not freedom from something but a sense of freedom, a freedom to doubt and question everything and, therefore, so intense, active, and vigorous that it throws away every form of dependence, slavery, conformity, and acceptance. Such freedom implies being completely alone. But can the mind brought up in a culture so

So what is it you are going to be? The usual mediocre person? Get a job, settle down with all the problems around you and in you—is that your future? Of

Or are you going to be a totally different human being, who is aware and knows he has to meet adversity and opposition and that, therefore, there is no easy way of satisfaction? Because most of us want a life of ease, of comfort, without trouble, which is almost impossible. And if you do meet opposition, will you run away from it? If you don’t like

have done may not have been totally correct, to live with the fact and not interpret the fact according to your pleasure or form of reaction, that is not frightening. Life isn’t very simple. One can live simply but life itself is vast, complex. It extends from horizon to horizon. You can live with few clothes or with one meal a day, but that is not