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W
hen you sit quietly and listen to all the sounds around you and watch, and see all the walls, the pictures, the people sitting, the trees in the garden, the people who fidget, the people who cough, the whole hall - what are you learning?
You are learning how to listen and you are learning how to watch. That’s all. Listening, looking, learning. There’s nothing to remember.
And if you know how to look and listen in this way - without remembering what you have seen, heard, learned - then when things change, you are ready to learn again. Then you are not frightened when things change because you know how to meet change, to know how to meet life - which is change.
To have a single authority in any part of your life which really matters to you, that is to be a corrupt human being. No-one can un-corrupt you. No-one can tell you what to do with your life, how to live it - if you let them, you are both corrupted. This is so simple.
I am going to die. How am I going to die - corrupt or pure? That is the only problem of death. Shall I die now from being totally innocent, totally vulnerable, totally intelligent or shall I die at ninety from old age? Old age - in the sense, aware of how many years have been wasted? You see it, sir?
“How do you gain freedom? How do you become free?”
You don’t. If you are at all interested in freedom, you observe very carefully those things which are free. People aren’t free, so you can’t learn about freedom from people. From people you can only learn about relationship together, about fears, worries, pre-occupations, anxieties, et cetera. So what do you observe if you want to learn about freedom? Not yourself, obviously. You are not free. What will you do if this question really matters to you? If it doesn’t really matter to you, I know what you again will do - you will respond to me through the prison bars, begging.
Paul Dimmock
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