The only tragedy there is in the world is ignorance,
And all evil comes from there.
The only tragedy there is in the world is un-wakefulness and un-awareness,
And from there comes fear,
And from fear comes everything else.
But death is not a tragedy at all.
Dying is wonderful,
But it's only horrible to people who have never understood life.
It's only when you're afraid of life that you fear death.
It's only dead people who fear death.
The people who are alive have no fear of death.
And one of your American authors has put it so well.
The test of your awakening,
I don't remember what word he uses exactly,
Is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy.
What is the end of the world for a caterpillar,
Is a butterfly for the master.
Death is resurrection.
But we're not talking about something that will happen,
But is happening right now.
If you would die to the past,
If you would die to every minute,
The person who is fully alive is the person who is full of death.
We're always dying to things.
We're always shedding everything in order to be fully alive and to be resurrected at every moment.
Now,
The mystics,
The saints,
And others,
Their great effort is to wake people up.
If we don't wake them up,
We're always going to have these other minor ills of hunger and war and violence,
Etc.
Because of the great ill,
The great evil of sleeping people,
Ignorant people.
In Mexico,
There was a Jesuit who became the treasurer of the province.
He says he wrote a note to Arupé once to ask him about the relative value of communism,
Socialism,
And capitalism,
And Father Arupé gave him a lovely reply.
He said,
A system is about as good or as bad as the people who use it.
You know,
People with golden hearts would make capitalism work beautifully.
Don't ask the world to change.
You change first.
Then you will get a good enough look at the world so that you will be able to change whatever you think ought to be changed.
First,
Take the plank out of your own eye.
But if you don't take it out of your eye,
You have lost the right to change anyone or anything.
Till you are aware of yourself,
You have no right attempting to interfere with anyone else or with the world.
The danger of attempting to change others and to change things,
If you yourself are not aware,
Is that you may be changing things for your own convenience,
Your own pride,
Your own dogmatic convictions and belief,
Or just to relieve your negative feelings.
I happen to have negative feelings,
So you'd better change so that I'll feel good.
First,
Cope with your negative feelings so that when you move out to change others,
You're coming from love.
You're not coming from hate.
You're not coming from negativity.
You're coming from love.
Strange as it may seem,
People can be very hard on others and very loving.
The surgeon can be so hard on the patient and so loving.
Love can be very hard indeed.
