When we call ourselves European, Asian, African, or Muslims, Jews, Christians or anything else, we are being violent.
Can we see why it is violent?
It is violent because we are separating ourselves from the rest of mankind. When one separates oneself by nationality, by belief, by tradition, it breeds violence. A person who seeks to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; they are concerned with the total understanding of mankind. Identification with the rag called the national flag is an emotional and sentimental factor and for that factor we are willing to kill one another–and that is called, “the love of one’s country”, “the love of one’s neighbour”? One can see that where sentiment and emotion come in, love no longer has any place.
We know, if we understand one question rightly, all questions are answered. But we don't know how to ask the right question. To ask the right question demands a great deal of intelligence and sensitivity. Here is a question, a fundamental question: is life a torture? It is, as it is; and man has lived in this torture centuries upon centuries, from ancient history to the present day, in agony, in despair, in sorrow; and they cannot find a way out of it. Therefore, they invent gods, temples, churches, mosques, synagogues, all the rituals, and all that distraction to escape in different ways.
Art is one avenue available for us to practice our humanity and it allows us to ask the fundamental question of what are we striving for? For us, we are striving to radically bring about a transformation of our perceived reality, to not accept things as they are, nor revolt against them. Revolt doesn't answer a thing. We must understand it, go into it, examine it, give our hearts and our minds, with everything that we have, to find out a way of living differently. That depends on each and every one of us, and not on someone else, because in this there is no teacher, no pupil; there is no leader; there is there is no Master, no Savior. You yourself are the teacher and the pupil; you are the Master; you are the leader; you are everything. And to understand is to transform what is.
Through performance we hope that one will listen, see, sense, but not with the memory of what we already know; and this is very difficult to do. One listens to something, and our mind immediately reacts with its knowledge, its conclusions, its opinions, its past memories. It listens, inquiring for a future understanding.In order to practice a non-violent concept of humanity we affirm to just observe oneself, observe how one is listening, and we will see that this is what is taking place. Either we are listening with a conclusion, with knowledge, with certain memories, experiences, or we want an answer, and we are impatient. We want to know what it is all about, what life is all about, the extraordinary complexity of life. We are not actually listening at all. We can only listen when the mind is quiet, when the mind doesn't react immediately, when there is an interval between our reactions and what is being said. Then, in that interval there is a quietness, there is a silence in which alone there is a comprehension which is not intellectual understanding. If there is a gap between what is said and our own reaction to what is said, in that interval, whether we prolong it indefinitely, for a long period or for a few seconds–in that interval, if we observe, there comes clarity. It is the interval that is the transformation.
We are the world. The world is you and me, the world is not separate from you and me. We have created this world–the world of violence, the world of wars, the world of religious divisions, sex, anxieties, the utter lack of communication with each other, with no sense of compassion, consideration for another. Wherever one goes in any country throughout the world, human beings, that is, you and another, suffer; we are anxious, we are uncertain, we don’t know what is going to happen. Everything has become uncertain. Right through the world as human beings we are in sorrow, fear, anxiety, violence, uncertain of everything, insecure. There is a common relationship between us all. We are the world essentially, basically, fundamentally. The world is you, and you are the world. Realising that fundamentally, deeply, not romantically, not intellectually but actually, then we see that our problem is a global problem. It is not my problem or your particular problem, it is a human problem. Tackling this human problem through art is to elevate the values of poetry in order for pragmatics and the desire for knowledge to fall away in order for us to meet in the gap between what we think we know and the unknown–in order for us to find our feet together once again. This practice and the ethical considerations they entail are what we strive for.