Conversations with Pupul Jayakar

A Dialogue on Death

What is ending?

The mind cannot enter into a totally new dimension if there is a shadow of memory of anything.

If the movement of thought ends, consciousness as we know it is not.

Thought is the enemy of compassion.

Q: What significance has death?

I meet the Buddha. He has told me very carefully: be a light to yourself. So that truth is with me, it is the seed that is flowering in me. So if he goes away, the seed is flowering. But what is important is that seed of truth which has been planted by my alertness, awareness, intense listening. That seed will flower.

Have we, in this dialogue, seen the meaning of death, the extraordinary beauty of ending something?

Video format: NTSC

Region code: All regions

Duration: 60 mins

Language: English

How Does One Enquire Into the Source of All Life?

Q: What is the source of all existence, all life, all action?

How does a mind enquire into something extraordinary that has a quality of the universal, cosmic, of supreme order?

The world outside is the world inside.

How do I enquire into myself except through my reactions, the way I think, the way I act, the way I respond to the environment, my relationship to another?

Man has done this a great deal, this process of introspective observation.

Must I go through all this?

The mind is caught in this diligent enquiry.

You have done all that is possible  start with the impossible.

What is the state of mind that has put away something man has carried for a million years?

Such a mind is necessary to uncover the origin.

Video format: NTSC

Region code: All regions

Duration: 91 mins

Language: English

Can We Live Without the Burden of a Thousand Yesterdays?

Q: Is it possible to keep the mind very young, and yet ancient?

Can the brain, which has been conditioned for millions of years, wipe away its conditioning and have a quality of pristine freshness?

Can the brain end the built-in quality of its own deterioration?

Can the brain be young, fresh, alive, original?

What is consciousness?

Can the content, which makes up consciousness, end itself so that there is a totally different dimension?

Can I wipe away, end the thousand yesterdays, with all the superficialities, pettiness, narrowness, brutalities, cruelty, and ambition?

Is it possible to see the whole complex of ‘what is’?

Video format: NTSC

Region code: All regions

Duration: 68 mins

Language: English

What Will Bring About Change in the Brain?

Q: Is there an outside agency that will bring change in the brain cells?

There is only thought not Eastern or Western thought.

How does culture come into being?

What do we mean by the word culture?

Is it the training and refinement of the brain?

Is culture that which is contained in the brain cells?

Man has lived on this earth for a million years and we are as primitive now as we were before.

Is culture preventing change?

What will make human beings bring about a radical mutation in themselves?

Video format: NTSC

Region code: All regions

Duration: 77 mins

Language: English

Why Are We Frightened To Be Nothing?

Q: Is there a movement which is not of time, which is eternal?

The brain is conditioned by time and thought.

How do you come into contact with this fact?

As long as that conditioning remains, insight is not possible.

You may have occasional insight into something, but pure insight is the perception of completeness. That insight is not of time and thought.

The psyche is a bundle of dead memories. I am a movement of memories. If I have an insight into that, there is nothing, I don’t exist.

Nothing then contains the whole universe. Compassion is nothing, and that nothingness is supreme intelligence.

So why are ordinary, intelligent people, frightened of being nothing?

Video format: NTSC

Region code: All regions

Duration: 68 mins

Language: English