Die Every Day ( 10 Nov 2006 Fri)

Die Every Day

What is age? Is it the number of years you have lived? That is part of age; you were
born in such and such a year, and now you are fifteen, forty or sixty years old.
Your body grows old - and so does your mind when it is burdened with all the
experiences, miseries and weariness of life; and such a mind can never discover what
is truth. The mind can discover only when it is young, fresh, innocent; but
innocence is not a matter of age. It is not only the child that is innocent - he may
not be - but the mind that is capable of experiencing without accumulating the
residue of experience. The mind must experience, that is inevitable. It must respond
to everything - to the river, to the diseased animal, to the dead body being carried
away to be burnt, to the poor villagers carrying their burdens along the road, to
the tortures and miseries of life - otherwise it is already dead; but it must be
capable of responding without being held by the experience. It is tradition, the
accumulation of experience, the ashes of memory, that make the mind old. The mind
that dies every day to the memories of yesterday, to all the joys and sorrows of the
past - such a mind is fresh, innocent, it has no age; and without that innocence,
whether you are ten or sixty, you will not find God.

The Book of Life - November 10