(7th Public Talk, 22nd July, 1979).
Look beyond the mountain; in that look are the nearby houses, the meadows, the shapely hills and the mountains themselves; when you drive a car, you look well ahead, three hundred yards or more; that look takes in the side roads, that car that is parked, the boy that is crossing and the lorry that's coming towards you, but if you merely watched the car ahead of you, you would have an accident. The distant look includes the near but looking at what is near does not include the distant.
Self-pity is one of the elements of sorrow. Another element is being attached to someone and encouraging or fostering his attachment to you. Sorrow is not only there when attachment fails you but its seed is in the very beginning of that attachment. In all this the trouble is the utter lack of knowing oneself. Knowing oneself is the ending of sorrow. We are afraid to know ourselves because we have divided ourselves into the good and the bad, the evil and the noble, the pure and the impure. The good is always judging the bad, and these fragments are at war with each other.
That is what we have been talking about this morning, the emptying of the mind of the 'me' and 'you' and the 'we' and 'they.' Then you can live from moment to moment, endlessly, without struggle, without conflict. But that is real action, not conflict, brutality and violence.