May 4, 1969 - Punta de Vacas, Argentina
"If you have come to hear a man because you think that he will
communicate wisdom, you have mistaken your way, because true wisdom is
not communicated by books or impassioned speeches - true wisdom is found
in the depths of your consciousness, just as true love is found in the
depths of your heart.
If you have come at the urging of slanderers and hypocrites to hear
this man so that what you hear today may later be used in arguments
against him, you have mistaken the way, because this man has not come
here to ask anything of you, or to use you, because he does not need
you.
You are listening to a man who does not know the laws that rule the
Universe, who is not privy to the laws of History, who is ignorant of
the relationships that govern the peoples of the world. This man
addresses himself to your consciousness, far from the cities and their
sick ambitions. Over the cities, where each day is a struggle, a hope
cut short by death, where love is followed by hate, where foregiveness
is followed by revenge, over the cities of the rich and the poor, over
the immense fields of humanity, a mantle of suffering and sorrow has
fallen.
You suffer when pain bites your body. You suffer when hunger invades
your body. But you suffer not only from immediate pain in your body or
from hunger in your body, you suffer also from the consequences of
diseases that befall your body.
We must distinguish between two types of suffering. There is one type
of suffering that occurs as a result of sickness, and that suffering
can be pushed ba ck by the advance of science, just as hunger can be
pushed back by the reign of justice. There is another kind of suffering
that does not depend on the sickness of your body but yet derives from
that sickness: if you are disabled, if you cannot see, if you cannot
hear, you suffer. But though that suffering derives from your body, or
from the sicknesses of your body, such suffering is of your mind.
There is, however, another kind of suffering, which neither the
advance of science nor the advance of justice c an push back. That type
of suffering, which is a suffering strictly of your mind, recedes before
faith, before joy in life, before love. You must realize that such
suffering is always rooted in the violence that exists in your own
consciousness. You suffer because you fear losing what you have, or
because of what you have already lost, or because of what you
desperately long to reach. You suffer because you lack. Or because you
feel fear in general... These, then, are the great enemies of humankind:
fear of sickness, fear of poverty, fear of death, fear of loneliness.
All these are sufferings that are in your mind; all of them reveal an
inner violence, a violence that is inside you, the violence that is in
your mind. Notice how that violence always stems from desire. The more
violent a person is, the more gross, the more base are that person's
desires.
I would like to tell you a story that took place a long time ago.
Once there was a traveller who had to make a long journey. He yoked
his animal to a cart and began his journey to a distant destination,
which he had to reach within a certain span of time. He called the
animal Need and the cart he called Desire; he called one wheel Pleasure and the other one Suffering.
Sometimes our traveller took the right fork in the road and sometimes
the left, yet always he kept onward toward his destination. The faster
the cart traveled, the faster the wheels of Pleasure and Suffering
turned, connected as they were to the same axle and carrying as they did
the cart of Desire. Since the journey was long, our traveller at length
grew bored. So he decided to decorate his cart, and he began to adorn
it with all manner of beautiful things. But the more he loaded down the
cart of Desire with decorations, the heavier it became for Need to pull.
On the curves and steep hills of the road, the poor animal grew
exhausted and was unable to pull the cart called Desire. And where the
road was sandy the wheels of Pleasure and Suffering would bog down.
One day our traveller grew desperate, because the road was long and
he was still very far from his destination. That night, he decided to
meditate on the problem, and as he was doing so he heard the neighing of
his old friend, Need. Understanding the message, very early the next
morning he beg an to lighten the cart of its burden - stripping it of
all its fine adornments - and then he set off toward his destination
with the animal Need pulling the cart at a brisk trot. Still, he had
lost much time, time that was now irrecoverable. The next night our
traveller again sat down to meditate, and he realized - thanks to
another message from his old friend - that now he had to undertake a
task that was doubly difficult, because it meant his letting-go. At
daybreak, he abandoned the cart of Desire. It is true that when he did
so, he no longer possessed the wheel called Pleasure, but then he also
became free of the wheel called Suffering. And so, abandoning the cart,
he rode astride the animal called Need and galloped off across the green
fields until he reached his destiny.
See how desire can corner you, see how desire can trap you. But
notice that there are desires of different weights. There are desires
that are more base, and there are desires that are more elevated.
Elevate desire, overcome desire, purify desire. In doing so, surely you
will have to sacrifice the wheel of Pleasure, but you will also become
free of the wheel of Suffering.
Violence in a person, driven by desire, does not just lie like a
sickness upon the consciousness of that person - it acts in the world of
other people, it is exercised on others. And do not think that when I
talk of violence I am speaking only about the armed act of war, in which
one faction of men destroys another. That is one form of physical
violence. But there is also economic violence. Economic violence is the
violence through which you exploit other people; economic violence
occurs when you steal from another person, when you are no longer a
brother or sister to others, but become a bird of prey upon other
people. There is also racial violence. Do you think that you are not
engaging in violence when you persecute a person who is not of your same
race, do you think that you are not engaging in violence when you
defame that person for being of a race different from your own? And
there is religious violence: do you think that you are not engaging in
violence when you refuse work, or close your doors to a person, or fire
that person because that person does not share your religious beliefs?
Do you think that it is not violence when you use defamation to build a
wall around other people, excluding them from your society because they
do not share your religious beliefs - isolating them within their
families, isolating them with their loved ones because they do not share
your religious beliefs?
There are other forms of violence which are imposed by Philistine
morality. You wish to impose your way of life upon another person; you
wish to impose your vocation upon another. But who has told you that you
are an example that must be followed? Who has told you that you can
impose a way of life because it pleases you? What makes your way of life
a model, what makes it a pattern that you have the right to impose on
others? This, then, is another form of violence.
You can only end the violence in yourself and others and the world
around you through inner faith and inner meditation. Many apparent ways
out are actually false doors, false solutions, that cannot end the
violence. This world is on the verge of exploding and there is no clear
way to end the violence! Do not seek solutions that are false. There is
no politics that can solve this mad urge for violence. There is no
political party or movement on the planet that can end the violence. No
false doors will lead us out of the violence in the world... I have been
told that all over the world young people are following false paths to
escape the violence and inner suffering. They turn to drugs as a
solution. Do not seek false doors to end the violence.
My brother, my sister - keep simple commandments, as simple as these
rocks and this snow and this sun that bless us. Carry peace within you
and carry it to others. My brother, my sister - back in history is a
human being showing the face of suffering. Look at that face of
suffering... but remember that it is necessary to move forward, and it
is necessary to learn to laugh, and it is necessary to learn to love.
To you, my brother and sister, I throw this hope, this hope of joy,
this hope of love, so that you may elevate your heart and elevate your
spirit, and so that you do not forget to elevate your body."