Happy Is the One Who Is Nothing

Be supple mentally. Strength does not lie in being firm and strong but in being pliable. The pliable tree stands in a gale. Gather the strength of a swift mind.

Ref. 5001-A

It is the quality of freshness, of newness, that is essential, or otherwise life becomes a routine, a habit; and love is not a habit, a boring thing. Most people have lost all sense of wonderment. They take everything for granted, and this sense of security destroys freedom and the wonderment of uncertainty.

Ref. 3645-B

It needs great intelligence to live together, not surrender to each other or be dominated by one or the other. Relationship is the most difficult thing in life.

Ref. 7FBB-C

worldliness. Humility is simplicity, but cultivated humility is another form of worldliness.

Ref. 035C-D

Our petty minds have petty problems and petty answers, and so we spend our days. We don’t love, and when we do, it is always with fear and frustration, sorrow and longing.

Ref. 7F51-E

One is everlastingly comparing oneself with another, with what one is, with what one should be, with someone more fortunate. This comparison kills. Comparison is degrading; it perverts one’s outlook. And on comparison one is brought up. Our education is based on it, and so is our culture. So there is an everlasting struggle to be something other than what one is. The understanding of what one is uncovers creativeness, but comparison breeds competitiveness, ruthlessness and ambition, which we think bring about progress. Progress has only led so far to more ruthless wars and misery than the world has ever known. To bring up children without comparison is true education. It

Ref. DE1D-F

We are so very seldom alone; always with people, with thoughts that crowd in, hopes that have not been fulfilled or are going to be, and recollections. To be alone is essential for one to be uninfluenced, for something

Ref. 019D-G

There seems to be no time for this aloneness; there are too many things to do, too many responsibilities. To learn to be quiet, shutting oneself in one’s room to give the mind a rest, becomes a necessity. Love is part of this aloneness. To be simple, clear and inwardly quiet is to have that flame.

Ref. 04D1-H

Things may not be easy, but the more one asks of life, the more fearful and painful it becomes. To live simply, uninfluenced, though everything and everyone is trying to influence, without varying moods and demands is not easy, but without a deep quiet life, all things are futile.

Ref. 21A1-I

We feed this pride, or we run to humility. The opposite of pride is not humility—it is still pride but is called humility. Consciousness of being humble is a form of pride. The mind has to be something. It struggles to be this or that, never in a state of nothingness. If nothingness is a new experience, it must have that experience. The very attempt to be still is another acquisition. The mind must go beyond all effort, only then…

Ref. 2E82-J

Our days are so empty, filled with activities of every kind—business, speculation, meditation, sorrow and joy. In spite of all this, our lives are empty. Strip someone of position, power or money, and what are they? One had all that show outwardly but is empty and shallow inwardly. One cannot have both inner and outer riches. The inner fullness far outweighs the outer. One can be robbed of the outer; outer events shattering what has been carefully built up. But inner riches are incorruptible, nothing can touch them, for they have not been put together by the mind.

Ref. 5EF7-K

Desire is effort to be, to become, and with an ending to becoming the struggle to fulfil vanishes.

Ref. 4861-L

To think of the future is to have roots in the soil of uncertainty.

Ref. C592-M

To be really alone, without yesterday’s memories and problems, to be alone and happy, without outward or inward compulsion, is to let the mind be uninterfered with. To be alone. To have a quality of love about a tree, protective and yet alone. We are losing the feeling for trees, and so we are losing love for humanity. When we cannot love nature, we cannot love humanity. Our gods have become small and petty, as is our love. In mediocrity we have our being, but there are the trees, the open heavens and the inexhaustible riches of the earth.

Ref. 4856-N

They eat meat; they become army officers to kill and be killed. Overnight their values change. The centuries of a pattern of culture is overthrown and a new one taken on. The desire to be secure, in one form or another, is so dominant that the mind will adjust itself to any pattern that can give it security and safety. But there is no security. When one really understands this, there is something totally different, which creates its own way of life. That life cannot be understood or copied; all that one can do is to understand and be aware of the ways of security. This brings its own freedom.

Ref. 2F63-O

We are never alone with anything, with ourselves or with the earth. It is easy to be alone with a desire, not to resist it by an act of will, not to let it run away into action, not to allow its fulfilment, not to create its opposite by justification or condemnation, but to be alone with it. This brings about a very strange state without any action of will. It is will that creates resistance and conflict. Being alone with a desire brings about a transformation in the desire itself. Play with this and discover what happens; don’t force anything but consider it easily.

Ref. FF36-P

True dignity is a very rare thing. An office or a position of respect gives dignity. It is like putting on a coat. The coat, the costume, the post gives dignity. A title or position gives dignity. But strip man of these things and very few have the quality of dignity that comes with the inward freedom of being as nothing. Being something is what man craves for, and that something gives a position in society which is respected, a category of some kind—clever, rich, a saint, a physicist.

Ref. 6261-Q

To be nothing is to be free of that very idea. Being, not of or in a particular state, is true dignity. It cannot be taken away; it always is.

Ref. 34EC-R

The human mind is like a sieve which holds some things and lets others go. What it holds is the size of its own desires, and desires, however profound, vast, noble, are small, are petty, for desire is a thing of the mind. Not to retain, but to have the freedom of life to flow without restraint, without choice, is complete awareness.

Ref. 0D42-S

Life is a strange business. Happy is the one who is nothing.

Ref. 5030-T

Money does spoil people. There is a peculiar arrogance of the rich. With very few exceptions, in every country, the rich have that peculiar atmosphere of being able to twist anything, even the gods. They can buy their gods. Riches are not only of wealth but the capacity of being able to do things. Capacity gives man an odd sense of freedom. He feels he is above others, that he is different. All this gives a sense of superiority; he sits back and watches others squirm, oblivious to his own ignorance, the darkness of his mind. Money and capacity offer an escape from this darkness, but escape is a form of resistance, which breeds its own problems.

Ref. 4844-U

Life is a strange business. Happy is the one who is nothing.

Ref. 5030-V

Play with this. Don’t force it; let it watch itself. Most people who attempt to be simple begin with the outer, discarding, renouncing and so on, but inwardly the complexity of their being remains. With inward simplicity, the outer corresponds. To be simple inwardly is to be free from the urge for more, which does not mean to be satisfied with what is. To be free from the urge for more is not to think in terms of time, progress, getting somewhere. To be simple is for the mind to free itself from all results, to empty itself of all conflict. This is real simplicity.

Ref. 65A7-W

Every experience, every thought must end each day, each minute, as it arises, so that the mind does not put out roots into the future. This is really important, for this is true freedom. Thus there is no dependence, for dependence brings pain, affecting the physical and breeding psychological resistance. And resistance creates problems—to achieve, to become perfect, and so on.

Ref. 8D90-X

Life and death are one movement, not isolated states. Living is dying, dying to everything, to be reborn every day.

Ref. AA4F-Y

It is will, this constant desire to be, that completely destroys the simple being.

Ref. CECB-Z

It is strange how we want freedom and do everything to enslave ourselves.

Ref. 30C4-A

Our minds make little castles of security. We want to be sure of everything, sure of our relationships, of our fulfilments, our hopes and our futures. We build these inward prisons, and woe to anyone that disturbs us. It is strange how the mind is ever seeking a zone where there will be no conflict or disturbance. Our living is the constant breaking up and rebuilding, in different forms, of these zones of safety. Our mind then becomes a dull and weary thing. Freedom consists in having no security of any kind.

Ref. 75F4-B

Life is a series of events, wanted and unwanted, and as long as we pick and choose which we shall keep and which we shall discard, there must inevitably be a conflict of duality, which is the shock.

Ref. 7E6B-C

Those whose morality is based on security, security in every form, are not moral, for the desire for security is the outcome of fear. Fear and the constraint of fear, which we call morality, is not moral at all. Intelligence is the total freedom from fear. Intelligence is not respectability, nor is it the various virtues cultivated through fear. In understanding fear, there is something wholly different from the formulations of the mind.

Ref. 5D73-D