Meeting Life (eBook)

What Does Relationship Mean?

SAANEN, SWITZERLAND, AUGUST 1981

The love of trees is, or should be, a part of our nature, like breathing. They are part of the earth like us, full of beauty with that strange aloofness. They are so still, full of leaves, rich and full of light, casting long shadows and wild with joy when there is a storm. Every leaf, even at the very top, is dancing in the slight breeze, and the shadows are welcoming in the strong sun. As you sit with your back against the trunk, if you are very quiet, you establish a lasting relationship with nature. Most people have lost that relationship; they look at all those mountains, valleys, the streams and the thousand trees as they pass by in their cars or walk up the hills chattering, but they are too absorbed in their own problems to look and be quiet. The smoke is going up in a single column across the valley, and below a lorry goes by, heavy with logs of recently cut trees, their bark still on them. A group of boys and girls passes by chattering and shattering the stillness of the wood.

The death of a tree is beautiful in its ending, unlike man’s. A dead tree in a desert, stripped of its bark, polished by the sun and the wind, all its naked branches open to the heavens, is a wondrous sight. A great redwood, many, many hundreds of years old, is cut down in a few minutes to make fences, seats, and build houses or enrich the soil in a garden. That marvellous giant is gone. Man is pushing deeper and deeper into the forests, destroying them for pasture and houses. The wilds are disappearing. There is a valley, whose surrounding hills are perhaps the oldest on earth, where cheetahs, bears and the deer one once saw have entirely disappeared, for man is everywhere. The beauty of the earth is slowly being destroyed and polluted. Cars and tall buildings are appearing in the most unexpected places. When you lose your relationship with nature and the vast heavens, you lose your relationship with man.

He came with his wife and did most of the talking. She was rather shy, intelligent-looking. He was rather overbearing and appeared to be aggressive. He said they had been to some of the talks after reading one or two books and had heard some of the dialogues.

’We have really come to talk over with you personally our major problem, which I hope you won’t mind. We have two children, a boy and a girl; they are at school, fortunately for them. We don’t want to inflict on them the tensions between us, though they will feel them sooner or later. We two are very fond of each other; I won’t use the word “love”, as I have understood what you mean by that word. We were married fairly young; we have a nice house with a smallish garden. Money is not our problem. She has money of her own and I work, though my father left me some. We haven’t come to you as a marriage counsellor, but we want to discuss with you, if you don’t mind, our relationship. My wife is rather reserved, but I am sure she will join in the discussion presently. We had agreed that I should lead off. We are greatly troubled about our relationship. We have talked about it quite often, but nothing has come out of it. After this introduction, the question I would like to put is: what is wrong with our relationship, or what is right relationship?’

What is your relationship with those clouds, full of evening light, or with those silent trees? It is not an irrelevant question. Do you see those children playing in that field, the old car? When you see all those, what is your reaction, if one may ask?

’I am not sure what it is. I like to see children playing. So does my wife. I have no special feelings about those clouds or that tree. I have not thought about them; probably I have never even looked at them.’

His wife said, ’I have. They mean something to me, but I can’t put it into words. The children out there could be my children. After all I am a mother.’

Do look, sir, at those clouds and the tree as though you were looking for the first time. Look at them without thought interfering or wandering off. Look at them without naming them as a cloud or a tree. Just look with your heart and eyes. They are of the earth as we are, as those children are, even that old car. The very naming is part of thought.

’To look at those without verbalizing them seems almost impossible. The very form is the word.’

So words play a very important part in our lives. Our life, it appears, is a network of complicated, interrelated words. Words have a great impact upon us, like ’god’, ’democracy’, ’freedom’, ’totalitarianism’. These words conjure up familiar images. The words ’wife’ and ’husband’ are part of our everyday currency. But the word ’wife’ is not actually the living person, with all her complexities and troubles. So the word is never the actual. When the word becomes all-important, the living, the actual is neglected.

’But I can’t escape from the word and the image that the word brings up.’

One cannot separate the word and the image. The word is the image. To observe without word/image is the problem.

’That’s impossible, sir.’

If one may point out, you haven’t attempted seriously to do this. The word ’impossible’ blocks your doing it. Don’t, please, say it is possible or impossible, but simply do it. Let us go back to your question: what is right relationship? You will, one is sure, find out for yourself what is right when we understand relationship. What does relationship mean to you?

’Let me think. It means so many things depending on circumstances. One day it is a particular response, and on another it has a wholly different significance. It’s responsibility, boredom, irritation, sensual responses and the urge to escape from it all.’

This is what you call relationship. It is different degrees of sensory responses, of sentiment – romantic, if one is inclined that way – tenderness, attachment, loneliness, fear and so on (apprehension more than actual fear). This is called relationship with one particular person or another. You are also related to your ideals, hopes, to your experiences, conclusions. All this is you and your relationship with another; and the other person is similar to you, though she may be biologically, culturally, outwardly different. So does it not indicate that you are ever active within egocentricity and she is active in a similar manner? Two parallel lines never meeting?

’I am beginning to see what you mean, but do please continue.’

It becomes clear that there is no actual relationship. One is basically concerned about oneself, one’s own pleasure, yielding to another in satisfaction and so on and on. Let’s put it differently. Why are human beings so self-centred, consciously, or in the deepest recesses of their being selfish? Why? The non-domesticated animals appear not to be egocentric as humans are. If we are to discover for ourselves what is right relationship, we must go into this question very deeply. Perception without motive is to experiment. Most of us find it difficult to observe without some kind of motive or other. Can we examine together, very objectively, what actually takes place in a relationship of two people, whether it is intimate or not? Almost all reactions are recorded in the brain, especially those that are painful or pleasurable, consciously or at a deeper level. This recording goes on from childhood until death. This recording slowly builds up an image or picture which each person has of himself. If one is married or lives with another, for a month or for years, each one has formed an image about the other – the hurts, the irritations, the harsh words, the flatteries and so on, the sensual responses, the intellectual observations, the companionship and tenderness, the imagination of fulfilment and cultural associations. These form the varying images that are awakened in different circumstances. Apart from actual physical relations, these images distort or deny a profound relationship of love, compassion with its intelligence.

’Then how or in what manner can these images not be formed?’

Are you not putting a wrong question, sir? Who is it that prevents? Is it not another image or idea that is putting the question? Are you not still working with images, from one to the other? Such inquiries lead nowhere. When one is hurt or wounded psychologically, which one is, from childhood, the consequences of that hurt are obvious: fear of further hurts, withdrawal by building a wall around oneself, further isolation and so on – a process of neuroticism. If and when one is aware of, observes these wounds, the conflicts, then one instinctively demands how one can prevent being hurt. The ultimate image is the ’I’, the self with the capital ’S’ and the small ’s’. When one grasps the full significance of why the brain, thought, forms these images, the truth of why these images exist, that very perception dispels all the formation of images. This is the ultimate freedom.

’What is the reason why the brain, or thought, as you say, forms images?’

Is it for security? To be safe from all danger? To be certain, to avoid confusion? Whatever small part of the brain is functioning, to function well, efficiently, it must feel certain, safe. Whether that certainty, security, is an illusion or some invention of thought, such as faith or belief, is actually of no importance as long as...