eliwill/krishnamurti_discussions · Datasets at Hugging Face

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We learn it in doing it. We are not suggesting that we retire to our rooms and find out. Good God, no!
You learn while you are doing. The doing is the learning. To find out whether we are cooperating or if we are cooperating, then it really doesn't lead to contradictions.
Either you have to cooperate because you are compelled, or violent circumstances compel you. Or you want to cooperate, you love to cooperate, you want to do things together. That is order; I can't live by myself in my room.
And there is no contradiction there at all? Obviously not. But if you compel me, or circumstances compel me, or I feel that if I don't I will be looked down upon, that is violence.
But not if I see we must work together, that life is working together, that I can't live by myself. After all, I find out whether I am violent in doing things with you - how I play, how I talk, how I listen to you. In relationship I find out.
Otherwise I can't find out, I can't sit in my room and try to find out whether I am violent. I can imagine I'm not violent, but the real test, the real action comes in relationship, to see if I am like that. That's real work.
And if you do that you have tremendous energy because your life is in order. Most people work either to avoid punishment or to gain something in the way of possessions, money, fame and so on. So most people work under great pressure.
Here at Brockwood there is not that extreme pressure, or any kind of pressure put upon you. Therefore there is a tendency, if I may point out, to slacken, to let go, to become rather empty and lose that vitality that youth generally has - that feeling of urgency, the flame of doing something. All that gradually disappears and you are left here to be responsible to yourself, which is rather difficult.
Most of us want somebody to lean on, somebody to encourage us, somebody to say, "You are doing very well, carry on!" And to push us a little when we are slack, drive us when we are indifferent, when we are sleepy, shake us to keep awake so that somebody gradually becomes the authority. Haven't you noticed this?
There is no authority here, therefore you are left to yourself and it is very difficult to keep oneself at the highest point of energy, drive, intelligence and affection and not just go off into a kind of daydream, uselessly wasting time. Brockwood is supposed to give you - and I hope it does - the terrain, the environment, the atmosphere in which this self-generating energy can go on. How is all this to be created?
Who is going to do it? Everyone here. What does that mean?
Self-responsibility. When you use a word be very careful that you know what it means. Do you know what that word "responsibility" means?
- not what you think it should mean, but what it means according to the dictionary. We must first understand the meaning of that word. Here is your English teacher, ask her.
Doesn't it mean the ability to respond? That's right, isn't it? - the capacity to respond.
We often use the word "answerable; we say, "I am answerable for such and such." If I am inefficient I can't answer, respond properly. So responsibility means to respond adequately to the job or to the environment or to the incidents around me.
I must respond to my highest that is what the word "responsible" means. See what a lot is involved in that one word. So who is going to be responsible to bring about the right soil here, the right environment, the right atmosphere, so that you are totally awake, generating the energy for yourself?
Each one of us. Can you do this, Gregory? Is each one of us capable of this?
All of us together. No. Who is "All of us together"?
Will you be responsible to bring about this soil where you will respond to an incident, to everything that is happening around you completely, adequately? If each one of us does that there is no problem, is there? Then the place will be marvellous and each one of us will have a thousand-watt candle inside him.
Is each one of us capable of this? That is, when you say, "I'll go to bed at ten o'clock" - or whatever you agree on - you will do it and nobody need tell you. You follow what it implies?
When you study you give your complete attention to it, that means an adequate response to the subject, to everything which is your responsibility. Can we all do this together? We are capable of it, but we don't usually do it.
Why not? Are you slack or indifferent to what you are doing because you want to be doing something else? First, how can one be responsible if one doesn't know the field in which one is working well enough.
I mean, before I can take responsibility for something, I have to know for certain that I can do it. Yes, that you are capable of doing it. But mostly what happens is that people are saying, "You are responsible," and it's taken for granted that one knows what to do.
No, look, Tungki, we have just now defined that word. I am asking you, are you capable, adequate, sufficiently intelligent to deal with something that has to take place here? If we are not, let's be humble about it, let's be sensible and we are not.
Then how do we bring this about in us? Discuss it, I am not going to answer for you. It has something to do with relationship.
When you are responsible, you are responsible in relationship, aren't you? I don't know - find out. I see so many misunderstandings in the school, very often among the students, among the staff.
But I realize now that in order to be responsible we have to see first that we have misunderstandings which must be cleared up. Now how do you clear up a misunderstanding? What is the requisite quality necessary to help us to wipe away a misunderstanding?
You say something and I misunderstand it and I get hurt. How do you and I wipe away that hurt, that sense of, "You've misunderstood me?" Or I have done something out of misunderstanding which you think I ought not to have done.
How do you clear that up? You go back to the beginning and see what went wrong. Is it necessary to do all that?
It needs time. No, it needs a little more than that - what else is necessary? A regard, a proper relationship.
Which means what? Go on, push. () It needs patience and care, a feeling of eagerness.
() I would say affection. Peter says it needs affection - you understand? If I have affection I say, "Let's look at the misunderstanding and see if we can't get over it."
But if I merely examine it intellectually and take time over it, then I'll be hurt by somebody else. So affection is the basis on which one can wipe away misunderstandings. Right?
I think if you didn't have an image about yourself you wouldn't be hurt. Yes, but I have an image and he has an image. I get hurt by what you have said; how do I wipe it away?
Can I say, "Look, I have misunderstood, I am sorry, do let us talk about it again"? That requires a certain affection, doesn't it? Have you got that affection?
Affection is different from sentiment - be very clear on that point. What does sentiment mean? Feeling.
But it's not right feeling. Now find out the difference between affection, love and sentiment. We said sentiment is feeling, emotionalism.
"I feel I should do this, I feel I am a great man, I feel anger" - that is a sentiment. "I love In that there is a great deal of sentiment because I don't want to do things which may hurt them. Sentiment implies a feeling.
Now what is affection and what is sentiment? Somehow there is a self-deceptive element in sentiment. Yes, that's right.
Sentiment can become sentiment can become efficient but cruel. You often find a sentimental person is capable of being brutal in another mood. Like the Nazis, who were sentimental about music and the arts, but very brutal.
That's right. But we have all got that feeling in us also, so don't let us put it on certain types of people. That is, we can be sentimental, go into a kind of ecstatic nothingness over music, over painting, we can say, "I love Nature", and the next minute hit someone on the head because he thwarts us.
So sentiment is one thing and affection is another. If I have affection for you I am going to talk things over with you. I say, "Don't be rough, be quiet, sit down, talk to me, I have misunderstood you.
I want to talk it over with you because I have affection for you." I have no sentiment for you but I have affection for you. I don't know whether you see the difference - do you?
I think younger people often feel that sentiment is something sloppy. I agree. Because if you have a sentiment it becomes mechanical, you automatically have a reaction.
You see, idealism is sentimentality and therefore it breeds hypocrisy - I do not know whether you see that. Because it has moods. That's right, all that is involved in sentiment.
That being clear, have we this affection so that when there is a misunderstanding we can talk about it and get it over, not store it up? Perhaps the word "sentimentality" needs a definition. I mean, it seems to go even further than sentiment.
It's a secondhand emotion. It's an ugly thing. It's mostly put on.
Yes, that's right, like a mask you put on. It seems that it is difficult to distinguish in daily life. Let's take an I see a beautiful tree.
What is that feeling? Is that sentiment? I look at that tree and say, "What a marvellous tree that is, how beautiful," - is that sentiment?
Sir, are you talking to yourself when you say that? Yes. I say, "How beautiful that is" to myself.
You may be there and then I would say, "Look, how lovely that tree is." Is that sentiment? It's a fact.
But when you see a tree and think you ought to feel it is beautiful that is a sentiment. Yes, that's it - you've understood? Have you absorbed it?
Yes. Which is, when you think you ought to... That's right. So when I feel sentimental about something I put on a false I "ought" to feel that is a beautiful tree.
It's an act of behaviour. Yes, an act of behaviour. I am glad we are getting into this.
Yes, but now, continuing your story, you take care of that tree and become attached. Then does sentimentality come in? Yes.
When you become attached, sentimentality creeps in. So absorb it, it's a food you are chewing - you have to digest it. You when there is affection, is there attachment?
No, but sometimes one jumps to the other without realizing it. Of course. There seems to be no boundary.
So you have to go very slowly. We are trying to differentiate between affection and sentimentality. We see what sentimentality is.
Most of us don't feel sentimental when we are young but as we grow older we put on many unnecessary masks and say, "We must feel the beauty of that tree." Or, "I must love that poem because Keats or Shelley wrote it." Affection is something entirely different.
Sentimentality is affectation, hypocrisy. Now, what is affection? It literally means to move towards somebody.
Yes, doesn't it? To be affected by something. First listen to what Mr. Simmons said.
We have to listen to each other. He "To move towards somebody." That means what?
You feel for them. Be careful - don't say "feel". I move towards you, you may be rigid but I move towards you, I make a gesture towards you.
I stretch out my hand to you, you may not want it but I stretch it out. Affection means, "to move towards" - the tree, the bird, the lake, or a human being - to stretch out your arm, your hand, to make a gesture, smile; all that is affection, isn't it? If I stretch my hand out to you though I've misunderstood you, you immediately say, "Yes, I'll try and wipe it out."
Unless there is a movement towards you the misunderstanding cannot be got rid of. But some people might just stretch out their hand mechanically. That is sentimentality, that is hypocrisy.
And if you are affected by somebody, that can be a form of getting worked up in the same way. That's right. We soon have to leave Brockwood, and then we meet people who are our mother, or some person like that.
You have to respond to her sentiments. I know. You see, then love is not sentiment or sentimentality.
Love is something very hard, if I can use that word. You understand what it means? Not hard in the sense of brutal, it has no hypocrisy, no sentimentality, it has no clothing around it.
Down to earth, you mean? If you like to put it that way. We know now what we mean by affection, love and sentimentality.
How do we create the environment here, the terrain, the soil in which there is that sense of freedom from pressure and hence non-dependence, so that you yourself generate this tremendous feeling of living, of vitality, of flame - whatever you like to call it. How do we set about it? It's your responsibility.
Do you now understand the meaning of that word? What will you do to bring about this atmosphere? - because each one of us is responsible.
It's not Mr. or Mrs. Simmons or X, Y, Z - you are responsible. Surely affection cannot be cultivated? Then what will you do?
We said affection is necessary, but we are asking how do you create this atmosphere in which affection can function? If we can see it when we occasionally have this affection, then we can see the situation which encourages us to have it. You are not answering the question.
Here at Brockwood we are responsible for creating this soil in which there is freedom, which is non-dependency. In that freedom, in this energy we can flower in goodness. How are we to create that?
Perhaps we could meet Tungki's point there, because I think some of us have felt the same thing. What he said was, we have felt moments of affection in the past and if we can analyse that, perhaps we can see what brought it about. If that's a false trail, Perhaps we can finish with it.
We know we have felt affection, it has happened. Why does it disappear? Can it?
Or was it sentimentality and therefore it has gone? You say, "I've felt sometimes, or often, this sense of great affection, but somehow it goes and comes back occasionally." Now, can affection go away or is it sentimentality that can wither?
We feel affection and in trying to hold on to it and perpetuate it we become sentimental, because we try to recognise its symptoms and what it does, and we act according to memory. Or it may be sentimentality, which we call affection. Yes, if it's real affection I don't see how it can dissolve.
That's right. It gets buried maybe, but it doesn't dissolve. It can be buried by misunderstandings and it can re-emerge.
Can it? If I have real affection can you bury it? No.
Most of us haven't got this great sense of affection. Now how do we bring it about? Don't say "cultivate it", that takes time.
Isn't it part of seeing the necessity? During the first talks you had with us you tried to show us the necessity of this place. Look, affection can't be cultivated, can it?
To say, "I love you" that feeling must come naturally, not be forced or stimulated. One can't say, "It is necessary therefore I must love you." How do you have this affection?
Can you take time over it? Find out. It may be that you must come to it obliquely - you understand what I mean?
Perhaps you have to find out what stops you from having affection. But you must have it before you can find out what stops it. Anger, jealousy, misunderstanding - will all those things stop affection?
Yes. Will they? You say something brutal - will that destroy my affection?
I am hurt, but the real thing, the beauty of affection, will that be destroyed? So it may be that we can come upon it from a different direction. Shall we investigate that possibility?
I am full of sentimentality, emotionalism, idealism, of "This should be done," "That must be done," "I will try". Those are all sentimentalities. We said affection is a very hard reality, it's a fact, you can't distort it, you can't destroy it.
If I haven't got it I want to find out how I am to come upon it. I can't cultivate it, I can't nourish it by good deeds, saying, "I must go and help you when you are sick; that is not affection. There must be a way of doing something that will bring it about.
We'll find out. What do you think? If I've never experienced it, how can I know that it is there?
I am going to find out, I don't know, I haven't got any affection. I may have it occasionally when I am half asleep, but actually I haven't got it when I am living, struggling. Now how is that seed to flower in me?
You have to lose your images of people. That's one thing. I want to come much nearer.
Also, there are many things that are preventing it, maybe we can look at those things. Yes, go on. But will that do it?
I can't do it before I've looked at what is preventing me. Maybe I am angry, I get easily irritated and misunderstood. So I let me wipe it out.
Will affection come? I know many people, so-called monks, good social workers and so on, who have trained themselves not to be angry. But the real flame has gone, they never had it, they are kind, generous people, they will help you, will give you their money, their coat, their shelter, but the real thing is nowhere there.
I want to find out how to let this thing flower in us; once it flowers you can't destroy it. You have see the things that prevent it. That means you are deliberately cultivating affection.
When you say, "I will see what the things are which are blocking me", that is a deliberate act in order to get it. I don't know whether you see this. Yes.
Therefore you are trying to cultivate it, aren't you? - only in an obscure way. () You said that we must try to find the soil for affection, for this sense of responsibility.
() If we try to create a certain relationship, an atmosphere, whatever you call it, in which this can flower, isn't that perhaps what she meant? I am trying to point out that you cannot cultivate it. But can you not bring about the right "something"?
That's what I'm trying to find out. So let's forget affection as you cannot cultivate it. I wonder if you understand this?

We learn it in doing it. We are not suggesting that we retire to our rooms and find out. Good God, no!

You learn while you are doing. The doing is the learning. To find out whether we are cooperating or if we are cooperating, then it really doesn't lead to contradictions.

Either you have to cooperate because you are compelled, or violent circumstances compel you. Or you want to cooperate, you love to cooperate, you want to do things together. That is order; I can't live by myself in my room.

And there is no contradiction there at all? Obviously not. But if you compel me, or circumstances compel me, or I feel that if I don't I will be looked down upon, that is violence.

But not if I see we must work together, that life is working together, that I can't live by myself. After all, I find out whether I am violent in doing things with you - how I play, how I talk, how I listen to you. In relationship I find out.

Otherwise I can't find out, I can't sit in my room and try to find out whether I am violent. I can imagine I'm not violent, but the real test, the real action comes in relationship, to see if I am like that. That's real work.

And if you do that you have tremendous energy because your life is in order. Most people work either to avoid punishment or to gain something in the way of possessions, money, fame and so on. So most people work under great pressure.

Here at Brockwood there is not that extreme pressure, or any kind of pressure put upon you. Therefore there is a tendency, if I may point out, to slacken, to let go, to become rather empty and lose that vitality that youth generally has - that feeling of urgency, the flame of doing something. All that gradually disappears and you are left here to be responsible to yourself, which is rather difficult.

Most of us want somebody to lean on, somebody to encourage us, somebody to say, "You are doing very well, carry on!" And to push us a little when we are slack, drive us when we are indifferent, when we are sleepy, shake us to keep awake so that somebody gradually becomes the authority. Haven't you noticed this?

There is no authority here, therefore you are left to yourself and it is very difficult to keep oneself at the highest point of energy, drive, intelligence and affection and not just go off into a kind of daydream, uselessly wasting time. Brockwood is supposed to give you - and I hope it does - the terrain, the environment, the atmosphere in which this self-generating energy can go on. How is all this to be created?

Who is going to do it? Everyone here. What does that mean?

Self-responsibility. When you use a word be very careful that you know what it means. Do you know what that word "responsibility" means?

- not what you think it should mean, but what it means according to the dictionary. We must first understand the meaning of that word. Here is your English teacher, ask her.

Doesn't it mean the ability to respond? That's right, isn't it? - the capacity to respond.

We often use the word "answerable; we say, "I am answerable for such and such." If I am inefficient I can't answer, respond properly. So responsibility means to respond adequately to the job or to the environment or to the incidents around me.

I must respond to my highest that is what the word "responsible" means. See what a lot is involved in that one word. So who is going to be responsible to bring about the right soil here, the right environment, the right atmosphere, so that you are totally awake, generating the energy for yourself?

Each one of us. Can you do this, Gregory? Is each one of us capable of this?

All of us together. No. Who is "All of us together"?

Will you be responsible to bring about this soil where you will respond to an incident, to everything that is happening around you completely, adequately? If each one of us does that there is no problem, is there? Then the place will be marvellous and each one of us will have a thousand-watt candle inside him.

Is each one of us capable of this? That is, when you say, "I'll go to bed at ten o'clock" - or whatever you agree on - you will do it and nobody need tell you. You follow what it implies?

When you study you give your complete attention to it, that means an adequate response to the subject, to everything which is your responsibility. Can we all do this together? We are capable of it, but we don't usually do it.

Why not? Are you slack or indifferent to what you are doing because you want to be doing something else? First, how can one be responsible if one doesn't know the field in which one is working well enough.

I mean, before I can take responsibility for something, I have to know for certain that I can do it. Yes, that you are capable of doing it. But mostly what happens is that people are saying, "You are responsible," and it's taken for granted that one knows what to do.

No, look, Tungki, we have just now defined that word. I am asking you, are you capable, adequate, sufficiently intelligent to deal with something that has to take place here? If we are not, let's be humble about it, let's be sensible and we are not.

Then how do we bring this about in us? Discuss it, I am not going to answer for you. It has something to do with relationship.

When you are responsible, you are responsible in relationship, aren't you? I don't know - find out. I see so many misunderstandings in the school, very often among the students, among the staff.

But I realize now that in order to be responsible we have to see first that we have misunderstandings which must be cleared up. Now how do you clear up a misunderstanding? What is the requisite quality necessary to help us to wipe away a misunderstanding?

You say something and I misunderstand it and I get hurt. How do you and I wipe away that hurt, that sense of, "You've misunderstood me?" Or I have done something out of misunderstanding which you think I ought not to have done.

How do you clear that up? You go back to the beginning and see what went wrong. Is it necessary to do all that?

It needs time. No, it needs a little more than that - what else is necessary? A regard, a proper relationship.

Which means what? Go on, push. () It needs patience and care, a feeling of eagerness.

() I would say affection. Peter says it needs affection - you understand? If I have affection I say, "Let's look at the misunderstanding and see if we can't get over it."

But if I merely examine it intellectually and take time over it, then I'll be hurt by somebody else. So affection is the basis on which one can wipe away misunderstandings. Right?

I think if you didn't have an image about yourself you wouldn't be hurt. Yes, but I have an image and he has an image. I get hurt by what you have said; how do I wipe it away?

Can I say, "Look, I have misunderstood, I am sorry, do let us talk about it again"? That requires a certain affection, doesn't it? Have you got that affection?

Affection is different from sentiment - be very clear on that point. What does sentiment mean? Feeling.

But it's not right feeling. Now find out the difference between affection, love and sentiment. We said sentiment is feeling, emotionalism.

"I feel I should do this, I feel I am a great man, I feel anger" - that is a sentiment. "I love In that there is a great deal of sentiment because I don't want to do things which may hurt them. Sentiment implies a feeling.

Now what is affection and what is sentiment? Somehow there is a self-deceptive element in sentiment. Yes, that's right.

Sentiment can become sentiment can become efficient but cruel. You often find a sentimental person is capable of being brutal in another mood. Like the Nazis, who were sentimental about music and the arts, but very brutal.

That's right. But we have all got that feeling in us also, so don't let us put it on certain types of people. That is, we can be sentimental, go into a kind of ecstatic nothingness over music, over painting, we can say, "I love Nature", and the next minute hit someone on the head because he thwarts us.

So sentiment is one thing and affection is another. If I have affection for you I am going to talk things over with you. I say, "Don't be rough, be quiet, sit down, talk to me, I have misunderstood you.

I want to talk it over with you because I have affection for you." I have no sentiment for you but I have affection for you. I don't know whether you see the difference - do you?

I think younger people often feel that sentiment is something sloppy. I agree. Because if you have a sentiment it becomes mechanical, you automatically have a reaction.

You see, idealism is sentimentality and therefore it breeds hypocrisy - I do not know whether you see that. Because it has moods. That's right, all that is involved in sentiment.

That being clear, have we this affection so that when there is a misunderstanding we can talk about it and get it over, not store it up? Perhaps the word "sentimentality" needs a definition. I mean, it seems to go even further than sentiment.

It's a secondhand emotion. It's an ugly thing. It's mostly put on.

Yes, that's right, like a mask you put on. It seems that it is difficult to distinguish in daily life. Let's take an I see a beautiful tree.

What is that feeling? Is that sentiment? I look at that tree and say, "What a marvellous tree that is, how beautiful," - is that sentiment?

Sir, are you talking to yourself when you say that? Yes. I say, "How beautiful that is" to myself.

You may be there and then I would say, "Look, how lovely that tree is." Is that sentiment? It's a fact.

But when you see a tree and think you ought to feel it is beautiful that is a sentiment. Yes, that's it - you've understood? Have you absorbed it?

Yes. Which is, when you think you ought to... That's right. So when I feel sentimental about something I put on a false I "ought" to feel that is a beautiful tree.

It's an act of behaviour. Yes, an act of behaviour. I am glad we are getting into this.

Yes, but now, continuing your story, you take care of that tree and become attached. Then does sentimentality come in? Yes.

When you become attached, sentimentality creeps in. So absorb it, it's a food you are chewing - you have to digest it. You when there is affection, is there attachment?

No, but sometimes one jumps to the other without realizing it. Of course. There seems to be no boundary.

So you have to go very slowly. We are trying to differentiate between affection and sentimentality. We see what sentimentality is.

Most of us don't feel sentimental when we are young but as we grow older we put on many unnecessary masks and say, "We must feel the beauty of that tree." Or, "I must love that poem because Keats or Shelley wrote it." Affection is something entirely different.

Sentimentality is affectation, hypocrisy. Now, what is affection? It literally means to move towards somebody.

Yes, doesn't it? To be affected by something. First listen to what Mr. Simmons said.

We have to listen to each other. He "To move towards somebody." That means what?

You feel for them. Be careful - don't say "feel". I move towards you, you may be rigid but I move towards you, I make a gesture towards you.

I stretch out my hand to you, you may not want it but I stretch it out. Affection means, "to move towards" - the tree, the bird, the lake, or a human being - to stretch out your arm, your hand, to make a gesture, smile; all that is affection, isn't it? If I stretch my hand out to you though I've misunderstood you, you immediately say, "Yes, I'll try and wipe it out."

Unless there is a movement towards you the misunderstanding cannot be got rid of. But some people might just stretch out their hand mechanically. That is sentimentality, that is hypocrisy.

And if you are affected by somebody, that can be a form of getting worked up in the same way. That's right. We soon have to leave Brockwood, and then we meet people who are our mother, or some person like that.

You have to respond to her sentiments. I know. You see, then love is not sentiment or sentimentality.

Love is something very hard, if I can use that word. You understand what it means? Not hard in the sense of brutal, it has no hypocrisy, no sentimentality, it has no clothing around it.

Down to earth, you mean? If you like to put it that way. We know now what we mean by affection, love and sentimentality.

How do we create the environment here, the terrain, the soil in which there is that sense of freedom from pressure and hence non-dependence, so that you yourself generate this tremendous feeling of living, of vitality, of flame - whatever you like to call it. How do we set about it? It's your responsibility.

Do you now understand the meaning of that word? What will you do to bring about this atmosphere? - because each one of us is responsible.

It's not Mr. or Mrs. Simmons or X, Y, Z - you are responsible. Surely affection cannot be cultivated? Then what will you do?

We said affection is necessary, but we are asking how do you create this atmosphere in which affection can function? If we can see it when we occasionally have this affection, then we can see the situation which encourages us to have it. You are not answering the question.

Here at Brockwood we are responsible for creating this soil in which there is freedom, which is non-dependency. In that freedom, in this energy we can flower in goodness. How are we to create that?

Perhaps we could meet Tungki's point there, because I think some of us have felt the same thing. What he said was, we have felt moments of affection in the past and if we can analyse that, perhaps we can see what brought it about. If that's a false trail, Perhaps we can finish with it.

We know we have felt affection, it has happened. Why does it disappear? Can it?

Or was it sentimentality and therefore it has gone? You say, "I've felt sometimes, or often, this sense of great affection, but somehow it goes and comes back occasionally." Now, can affection go away or is it sentimentality that can wither?

We feel affection and in trying to hold on to it and perpetuate it we become sentimental, because we try to recognise its symptoms and what it does, and we act according to memory. Or it may be sentimentality, which we call affection. Yes, if it's real affection I don't see how it can dissolve.

That's right. It gets buried maybe, but it doesn't dissolve. It can be buried by misunderstandings and it can re-emerge.

Can it? If I have real affection can you bury it? No.

Most of us haven't got this great sense of affection. Now how do we bring it about? Don't say "cultivate it", that takes time.

Isn't it part of seeing the necessity? During the first talks you had with us you tried to show us the necessity of this place. Look, affection can't be cultivated, can it?

To say, "I love you" that feeling must come naturally, not be forced or stimulated. One can't say, "It is necessary therefore I must love you." How do you have this affection?

Can you take time over it? Find out. It may be that you must come to it obliquely - you understand what I mean?

Perhaps you have to find out what stops you from having affection. But you must have it before you can find out what stops it. Anger, jealousy, misunderstanding - will all those things stop affection?

Yes. Will they? You say something brutal - will that destroy my affection?

I am hurt, but the real thing, the beauty of affection, will that be destroyed? So it may be that we can come upon it from a different direction. Shall we investigate that possibility?

I am full of sentimentality, emotionalism, idealism, of "This should be done," "That must be done," "I will try". Those are all sentimentalities. We said affection is a very hard reality, it's a fact, you can't distort it, you can't destroy it.

If I haven't got it I want to find out how I am to come upon it. I can't cultivate it, I can't nourish it by good deeds, saying, "I must go and help you when you are sick; that is not affection. There must be a way of doing something that will bring it about.

We'll find out. What do you think? If I've never experienced it, how can I know that it is there?

I am going to find out, I don't know, I haven't got any affection. I may have it occasionally when I am half asleep, but actually I haven't got it when I am living, struggling. Now how is that seed to flower in me?

You have to lose your images of people. That's one thing. I want to come much nearer.

Also, there are many things that are preventing it, maybe we can look at those things. Yes, go on. But will that do it?

I can't do it before I've looked at what is preventing me. Maybe I am angry, I get easily irritated and misunderstood. So I let me wipe it out.

Will affection come? I know many people, so-called monks, good social workers and so on, who have trained themselves not to be angry. But the real flame has gone, they never had it, they are kind, generous people, they will help you, will give you their money, their coat, their shelter, but the real thing is nowhere there.

I want to find out how to let this thing flower in us; once it flowers you can't destroy it. You have see the things that prevent it. That means you are deliberately cultivating affection.

When you say, "I will see what the things are which are blocking me", that is a deliberate act in order to get it. I don't know whether you see this. Yes.

Therefore you are trying to cultivate it, aren't you? - only in an obscure way. () You said that we must try to find the soil for affection, for this sense of responsibility.

() If we try to create a certain relationship, an atmosphere, whatever you call it, in which this can flower, isn't that perhaps what she meant? I am trying to point out that you cannot cultivate it. But can you not bring about the right "something"?

That's what I'm trying to find out. So let's forget affection as you cannot cultivate it. I wonder if you understand this?