Ojai, California | 3rd Public Talk 1945
Most of us are caught up in an endless series of inward conflicts and without resolving them life is utterly wasteful and empty. We are aware of two opposing poles of desire, the wanting and the not-wanting. The conflict between comprehension and ignorance we accept as part of our nature; we do not see that it is impossible to resolve this conflict within the pattern of duality and so we accept it, making a virtue of conflict. We have come to regard it as essential for growth, for the perfecting of man. Do we not say that through conflict we shall learn, we shall understand? We give a religious significance to this conflict of opposites but does it lead to virtue, to clarification, or does it lead to ignorance, to insensitivity, to death? Have you never noticed that in the midst of conflict there is no understanding at all, only a blind struggle? Conflict is not productive of understanding. Conflict leads, as we have said, to apathy, to delusion. We must go outside the pattern of duality for creative, revolutionary understanding.
Tags: conflict
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