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CHAPTER 2
22 August 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
[The Tathata group was present.
A group member says: People tell me that their first impression of me is that I’m angry or aggressive or detached, and usually I’m feeling the opposite.
It seems that usually I’m saying one thing and my body and face are saying something else.]
How do you yourself feel? Don’t be bothered much by what others say. How do you feel? If you don’t feel that there is any problem, then there is no problem. So watch yourself for at least two weeks.
When you are feeling sympathetic, just pay attention to your face, your facial tensions, your eyes, your hands, your posture, your tone, the way you are talking, how you are standing, how you are looking at the person. Just watch; an inner observation for two weeks. If you feel after this observation that yes, there is something contradictoryYou feel loving but in your body you are
withdrawn; you wanted to show your happiness, but you simply showed your sadness. You were feeling very very sympathetic, but your total style was very detached, far away, as if you don’t care. You have to watch. You cannot depend on others. They may be right, they may not be. So I’m not deciding anything right now.
Be absolutely objective about it, because there is no question of defending. If it is there, one has to know it is there and then something can be done. It can be dropped. If it is not there, there is no need to be worried about it. Simply go on your way, and what others say is irrelevant. But don’t reject them outright.
So note if you feel any dichotomy; if when you feel something, the body is saying something and you are saying something else. If you feel this split, then just note it down – in many types of moods.
You are feeling happy but you give the impression to the other person that you are very unhappy or bored. You are listening very attentively to the person, but you give the feeling that you want him to stop, you are simply bored.
The body sometimes goes on giving indications which can be against your inner feelings. Your body can behave separately. It can become an automaton. autonomous. Then the link is broken, but that link can be created again. So for two weeks just watch... and it is not difficult. When you are showing love or saying that you love a person, your eyes should become radiant. Your eyes should show the light that comes when you feel love for somebody. If your eyes go on looking dead, stone-dead and you say ‘I love you’, then something inside is not in contact. Then you are speaking two languages together.
And remember always that the bodily language is more important than what you say. The other person will not listen to what you say. The other person will listen to what you are. So you will always be in difficulty because you will think that you were loving, so loving, and nobody returns your love. You were listening intently, but others feel that you were feeling bored. If there is such a situation, it has to be mended. But first watch, and then tell me, mm? Good.
[Another group member said that someone had told him he was difficult to contact and communicate with: I’m always trying to be kind and open to people. I thought I was open to personal relationships. So it shocked me and has been a good lesson. I just don’t know what to do.]
Just wait. Keep in mind what she said. In the next group also, ask people their impressions of you, and afterwards, remind me again.
Sometimes it happens that a person who always tries to be kind, loving, loses contact, because the very effort to be always loving is unnatural. Sometimes you have to be angry also. That may be the cause. People who are always good become a little closed because they are always trying to do something which may be there, which may not be there. Sometimes it is there – then it is okay – but sometimes it is not there and you still force it; then you lose contact.
So one just has to be real – then there is communication. Being real means sometimes you will be cruel too, not Kind; sometimes you will hurt and sometimes you will heal too. Then you are both summer and winter, both good and bad; you are open. But if you try to be just good always, always a catholic Christian, then it is difficult.
But watch in the next group also and then tell me. It can be very significant and can change your whole mode of life.
[A sannyasin says: I’ve been a diplomat, and then lately I’ve been teaching – but I’ve resigned from that.
I’ve been thinking I might study something like massage because I like working with my hands, and I know it’s a job where you can be open and receptive.]
It’s very good. To do something with the hands is always good. Rather than to be a head, it is always good to be hands. It will make you more alive and more in contact with life. It will make you more grounded.
Massage is perfectly good. It is better than to be a diplomat. It is very very good to forget all about that nonsense. Get more into your body. Make your senses more alive. See more lovingly, taste more lovingly, touch more lovingly, smell more lovingly. Let your senses function more and more. Then suddenly you will see the energy that was. moving too much in the head is now well-divided in the body.
The head is very dictatorial. It goes on taking energy from everywhere and is a monopolist. It has killed the senses. The head is taking almost eighty percent of the energy, and only twenty percent is left for the whole body. Of course the whole body suffers, and when the whole body suffers, you suffer, because you can only be happy when you are functioning as a whole, as an organic unity, and every part of your body and being is getting its proportion; not more than that, not less than that. Then you function in a rhythm. You have a harmony.
Harmony, happiness, health – they are all part of one phenomenon, and that is wholeness. If you are whole, you are happy, healthy, harmonious.
The head is creating a disturbance. People have lost many things. People cannot smell. They have lost the capacity to smell.
They have lost the capacity to taste. They can only hear a few things. They have lost their ears. People don’t know what touch really is. Their skin has become dead. It has lost the softness and receptivity. So the head thrives like an Adolf Hitler, crushing the whole body. The head becomes bigger and bigger. It is very ridiculous. Man is almost like a caricature – a very big head and just very small limbs, hanging.
So bring back your senses. Do anything with the hands, with the earth, with the trees, with the rocks, with bodies, with people. Do anything that needs not much thinking, not much intellectualisation. And enjoy. Then your head will by and by be unburdened. It will be good for the head too, because when the head is burdened too much, it thinks – but it cannot think. How can a worrying mind think? For thinking you need clarity. For thinking you need a non-tense mind.
It will look like a paradox, but for thinking you need a thoughtless mind. Then you can think very easily, very directly, intensely. Just put any problem before yourself and your non-thinking mind starts solving it. Then you have intuition. It is not worry – just insight.
When the mind is burdened too much with thoughts, you think too much but to no purpose. It comes to nothing; there is nothing in the head. You go round about, round about; you make much noise, but the end result is zero.
So it is not against the head to disperse the energy into all the senses. It is in favour of it, because when the head is balanced, in its right place, it functions better; otherwise it is jammed. It is such great traffic. It is almost a rush hour; for twenty-four hours a rush hour.
So start doing something – whatsoever you feel. Massage is very good. The body is beautiful. Anything to do with the body is beautiful.
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