silence shared in words
presents
The Difference Between Dropping Out and Escapism
Can one be a dropout and still be responsible?
Is there a difference between dropping out and escapism?
There is
tremendous difference between the two.
Escaping
is an act of cowardliness,
because you could not face the situation.
You could not find guts enough
to encounter whatever
was the situation.
You escaped.
You showed your back
out of fear.
The escapist
will never be able to forgive himself
how can he forget that he has been cowardly?
The dropout is a totally different phenomenon.
He is not dropping out
of a particular
structure, society, religion,
out of fear.
In fact he had been preventing
himself
from dropping out,
out of fear.
His dropout is his declaration
of freedom,
individuality
His dropout
signifies that he is no longer
part of a crowd,
that now he is going to seek and search on his own;
that he is no longer a follower of Christ or Krishna,
that he does not believe in any god or in any hell or heaven.
Now he is becoming
a seeker,
a searcher.
He is getting ready to risk everything he has, whatever the consequences,
because unless one risks everything,
one cannot find the truth.
Truth is not a compromise.
It is a total let-go,
risking all.
If you are saving even a little bit
in case
it is needed,
you will not find the truth.
You are still behaving in a cowardly way
Saving a little bit
shows your fear.
A dropout has to be total
It is not out of fear;
it is out of awareness,
a certain consciousness
that we are living in a bondage of many kinds -- social,
cultural,
racial,
political,
educational.
All kinds of
chains are around our being.
A dropout simply drops out of all these chains.
And the moment he decides to drop out,
miraculously he finds those chains cannot prevent him.
They are only cowbells.
All that was needed was courage
and a tremendous sense
of freedom,
an excitement
of discovering,
a grounding
in one's own self,
a responsibility -- felt for the first time
that, "I am alive
and I have a responsibility to live
with my totality.
Otherwise how am I going to answer existence,
that, 'Life was given to you
and you never lived it.
You went on postponing till death
destroyed everything.'"
A dropout is a revolutionary.
The escapist
is not a revolutionary,
he is a reactionary.
That difference has to be remembered.
My sannyasins are dropouts,
not escapists.
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