|
Main Index
|
| |
| |
|
| |
no instinct; he has to learn it. Even love has to be learned. A human child who is brought up without love cannot learn it. He will not be able to love. If a mother is not there, and if a mother doesn't become a source of happiness, of ecstasy, then no woman can become a source of happiness and ecstasy for that child. When he becomes mature, grown-up, he will not be attracted to women, because now instinct is not functioning.
This will not happen to animals: in the right moment they will start functioning. They will become sexual; they will move towards the opposite sex -- that is instinctive, mechanical. With man nothing is mechanical. If you don't teach a human child language, he will not learn it. If you don't teach it, he is not going to have it. It is not natural; there is no instinct for it. Whatsoever you are is because of your learning. Man is less nature and more culture. Animals are simply nature.
Man is less natural and more cultural, but one dimension, the basic and the most foundational, remains uncultured -- that is the dimension of being alive. You take it as if you already have it; it is taken for granted -- that is wrong. You don't know how to live, because just to breathe is not synonymous with living. Just to eat and sleep and just carry on the bodily affairs is not synonymous with living. You are existing, that's right, but you re not alive.
A Buddha is alive, not simply existing. That aliveness can come only if you learn it, if you become aware of it, and if you search for it and if you create situations in which it can evolve. Remember this: for man, mechanical evolution is not. Conscious evolution has taken place, and now you cannot do anything about it -- you have to move into conscious evolution. You cannot fall back. You can stick where you are -- then you will get bored.
That's what is happening. You are not moving. You go on accumulating physical things, so things are moving, not you. Your riches go on accumulating, they are growing -- your bank balance is growing, not you. You are not increasing at all. On the contrary, you may be shrinking, decreasing, but you are not increasing. Unless you do something
|
|
|
|
| |