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.This isnot a discussion.Let me unroll it - but not for you to rememberwhat I say so that you can go home and speculate about it, which isnonsense.We are learning together.Do you know a total action at any time in your life? And whatdo we mean by a total action? Surely, there is a total action onlywhen your whole being, your mind, your heart, your body, is in itcompletely, without division or separation.And when does thathappen? Please, sirs, go with me slowly.When does such a thingtake place? Total action takes place only when there is completeattention, does it not? And what do we mean by completeattention?Please, I am thinking this out as I go along, I am not repeating itfrom memory.I am watching, learning.Similarly, you must watchyour own mind, and not just listen to my verbal explanations.Whatdo we mean by attention? When the mind concentrates on anobject, is that attention? When the mind says, "I must look at thisone thing and eliminate all other thoughts", is that attention? Or isit a process of exclusion, and therefore not attention? In attention,surely, there is no effort, there is no object to be concentrated upon.The moment you have an object upon which you concentrate, thatobject becomes more important than attention.The object is thenmerely a means of absorbing your mind; your mind is absorbed byan idea, as a child is absorbed by a toy, and in that process there isno attention because there is exclusion.Nor is there attention when there is a motive, obviously.It isonly when there is no motive, when there is no object, when thereis no compulsion in any form, that there is attention.And do youknow such attention? Not that you must experience it, or learnabout it from me; but do you know for yourself the quality of thisattention, the feeling of a mind which is not compelled toconcentrate, which has no object to gain and is therefore capable ofattention without motive? Do you understand, sirs? What isimportant is not how to get it, but actually to feel the quality ofcomplete attention as you are listening to me.Now, when does complete attention take place? Surely, onlywhen there is love.When there is love there is complete attention.There is no need of a motive, there is no need of an object, there isno need of compulsion: you just love.It is only when there is lovethat there is complete attention, and therefore total action inresponse to political, religious and social problems.But we have nolove; nor are the political leaders, the social and religiousreformers, concerned with love.If they were, they would not talkof mere reform, nor create new patterns of thought.Love is notsentimentality, it is not emotionalism, it is not devotion.It is a stateof being, clear, sane, rational, uncorrupted, out of which comes thetotal action which alone can give the true reply to all our problems.It is because you have no love that you pretend to change; on thecircumference you reform, but the core is empty.You will knowhow to act totally only when you know what it means to love.Sirs, we have developed our minds, we are so-calledintellectuals, which means that we are full of words, explanations,techniques.We are disputatious, clever at arguing, at opposing oneopinion with another.We have filled our hearts with the things ofthe mind, and that is why we are in a state of contradiction.Butlove is not easily come by.You have to work hard for it.Love isdifficult to understand - difficult in the sense that to understand ityou have to know where reason is necessary and go with reason asfar as possible, and also know its limitations.This means that, tounderstand what it is to love, there must be self-knowledge - notthe knowledge of Shankara, Buddha, or Christ, which you gatherfrom books.Such books are just books, they are not divinerevelations.The divine revelation comes into being only throughself-knowledge; and you can know yourself, not according to thepattern of some psychologist, but only by observing how yourthought is functioning, that is, by watching yourself from momentto moment as you get into the bus, as you talk to your children, toyour wife, to your servant.So if you know yourself, you will know what it means to love,and out of that there is total action, which is the only good action.No other action is good, however clever, however profitable,however reformatory.But to love, you need immense humility -which is just to be humble, not to cultivate humility.To be humbleis to be sensitive to everything about you, not only to the beautiful,but also to the ugly; it is to be sensitive to the stars, to the stillnessof an evening, to the trees, to the children, to the dirty village, tothe servant, to the politician, to the tramcar driver.Then you willsee that your sensitivity, which is love, has an answer to the manyproblems of life, because love is the answer to all the problemswhich the mind creates
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