Sadness gives depth. Happiness gives height. Sadness gives roots. Happiness gives branches. Happiness is like a tree going into the sky, and sadness is like the roots going down into the womb of the earth. Both are needed, and the higher a tree goes, the deeper it goes, simultaneously. The bigger the tree, the bigger will be its roots. In fact, it is always in proportion. That's its balance.
You are always afraid that somebody may think you a fool. You are afraid that if others think you to be a fool, you will start suspecting it. If so many people think you a fool your self-confidence will be lost. And if everybody goes on repeating that you are a fool, sooner or later you will come to believe it.Only a wise man cannot be deceived, he can appear as a fool.Have you observed yourself? You are always trying to exhibit your wisdom, always in search of a victim to whom you can show your knowledge, just searching, hunting for somebody weaker than you – then you will jump in and you will show your wisdom.A wise man need not be an exhibitionist. Whatsoever is, is. He is not aware of it, he is not in any hurry to show it. If you want to find it, you will have to make efforts. If you have to know whether he is gentle or not, that is going to be your discovery.
When I say maturity, I mean an inner integrity. And this inner integrity comes only when you stop making others responsible, when you stop saying that the other is creating your suffering, when you start realizing that you are the creator of your suffering. This is the first step towards maturity: I am responsible. Whatsoever is happening, it is my doing.You feel sad. Is this your doing? You will feel very much disturbed, but if you can remain with this feeling, sooner or later you will be able to stop doing many things. This is what the theory of karma is all about. You are responsible. Don’t say society is responsible, don’t say that parents are responsible, don’t say the economic conditions are responsible, don’t throw the responsibility onto anybody. YOU are responsible.
A wise man is one who creates a harmony between head, heart, and body. In this harmony one comes to the revelation of the source of one’s life, the very center, the soul. And that is the greatest ecstasy possible – not only to human beings but in this whole universe, nothing more is possible. It is already too much.
Misery is a state of unconciousness. We are miserable because we are not aware of what we are doing, of what we are thinking, of what we are feeling -- so we are continuously contradicting ourselves each moment. Action goes in one direction,thinking goes in another,feeling is somewhere else. We go on falling apart, we become more and more fragmented.There are only two ways out of it. They can become meditators - alert,aware,conscious... that's an arduous thing. It needs guts. Or the cheaper way is to find something that can make you even more unconcious thank you are, so you cannot feel the misery,like drugs and alcohol,sometimes even religion...
You go on trying and trying, and you make many decisions and you take many vows,but nothing happens -- you remain the same. Not that you have not tried,not that you have not tried enough, you have tried and tried and tried. And you fail because it is not a question of effort. More effort won't help. It is a question of being alert, not of effort.
A totally new kind of education is needed in the world. The person who is born to be a poet is proving himself stupid in mathematics and the person who could have been a great mathematician is just cramming history and feeling lost. Everything is topsy-turvy because education is not according to your nature: it does not pay any respect to the individual. It forces everybody into a certain pattern.
Fear is always around some desire. You want to become a famous man, the most famous man in the world- then there is fear. What if you cannot make it? Fear comes. You want to become the richest man in the world. What if you don't succeed? You start trembling; fear comes. You want to possess a woman and you are afraid that tomorrow you may not be able to hold on to her, she may go to somebody else.
But you do just the opposite. You strengthen your thought-waves. You are seized by worthless thoughts and you co-operate with them. You are sitting alone, there is nothing to do and you start thinking of fighting the coming election. The dream begins! Nothing will please you short of reaching the president’s chair. You have become a president in your dream. There are felicitations and you are enjoying them thoroughly! You never stop to think – what kind of stupidity is this! What are you doing? You are just giving energy to worthless fantasies. Your mind is filled with useless illusions of this kind.The constant flow of dreams eats up a large amount of your energy. It is not for free! You purchase it at the cost of your life.If we examine human life in detail, we will find that ninety-nine percent of the life is lost in fruitless dreams like this. Some dream of wealth, others of power, and others of various conquests. What will you gain even if you attain them all?Thought-waves are nothing but dreams. Do not strengthen them. When the dream starts running within, shake yourself and break the dream as quickly as you can.
A mystic is one who has dropped all dreams, who has thrown away this mirror of the mind and who looks directly into life, without any medium interfering. Then he sees the eternal progression, then in a single moment he sees all eternity, and in a single atom he can see the whole reflected.
You are not in any way aware that you are already victorious, that life has happened to you. You are already a winner and nothing more is possible, all that could happen has happened to you. You are already an emperor, and there is no other kingdom to be won. But you have not recognized it, you have not known the beauty of the life that has already happened to you. You have not known the silence, the peace, the bliss that is already there.And because you are not aware of the inner kingdom, you always feel that something more is needed, some victory, to prove that you are not a beggar.
Untalented people, unintelligent people go into politics. Those who are talented become artists, painters, poets, philosophers, mystics, dancers. They have a thousand and one other beautiful things to do, not politics. Only the third rate, the most unintelligent part of a country, moves into politics.
Man is a question mark . . . and it is a blessing—celebrate it. It is a blessing because only man is a question mark; no dog is, no tree is. The rose bush is beautiful but not as beautiful as man, and the moon is beautiful but not as beautiful as man—because they are unconscious. Only man is consciously on a quest. And how can you be on a quest if you don’t have a question mark in your being?
THE CONSCIOUSNESS IS THE ATMAN, THE SOUL.The first meaning is: in this world, only consciousness is yours. The word atman means: that which is your own. Regardless of how much the rest may appear to you as your own, it is alien. All of that which you otherwise claim as yours – friends, loved ones, family, wealth, fame, high position, a great empire – it is all a deception. Because one day death will snatch it all away from you. So death is the criterion for determining who is your own and who is the stranger. That which death can separate you from, know that it didn’t belong to you, and that which it can’t, was indeed your own.
Love is dangerous because it makes you an individual. And the state and the church . . . they don’t want individuals, not at all. They don’t want human beings, they want sheep. They want people who only look like human beings but whose souls have been crushed so utterly, damaged so deeply, that it seems almost irreparable.
Love sharpens intelligence, fear dulls it. Who wants you to be intelligent? Not those who are in power. How can they want you to be intelligent?—because if you are intelligent you will start seeing the whole strategy, their games. They want you to be stupid and mediocre. They certainly want you to be efficient as far as work is concerned, but not intelligent; hence humanity lives at the lowest, at the minimum of its potential.
The whole of history is the history of murderers. If you become a murderer, fame will be very easy. You can become a prime minister, you can become a president—but these are all masks. Behind them you will find very violent people, terribly violent people hiding, smiling. Those smiles are political, diplomatic. If the mask slips, you will always see Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Nadir Shah, Napoleon, Alexander, Hitler, hiding behind.
And all are asleep,so all are foolish. Don't feel offended. Thefacts have to be stated as they are.You function in sleep; that's why you go on stumbling,you go on doing things you don't want to do, you go on doing things you have decided not to do. You go on doing things you know are not right to do, and you don't do things that you know are right. How is this possible? Why can't you walk straight? Why do you go on getting trapped into bypaths? Why do you go on going astray? This is what is happening. Watch your life--everything that you go on demanding is so confused and so confusiing. You are not alert. You can't see, you can't heart-- certainly you have ears so you can hear, but there is nobody inside to understand it. Certainly you have eyes so you can see,but there is nobody present inside. So your eyes go on seeing and your ears go on listening, but nothing is understood. And on each step you stumble, on each step you commit something wrong. And still you go on believing that you are aware.
The first step in awareness is to be watchful of your body. Slowly,slowly one becomes alert about each gesture,each movement. And as you become aware, a miracle starts happening: many things that you used to do before simply disappear. Your body becomes more relaxed,your body becomes more attuned, a deep peace starts prevailing even in your body, a subtle music pulsates in your body.
You may have read or heard about the so-called positive thinkers of the West. They sayjust the opposite -- they don't know what they are saying. They say, "When you breatheout, throw out all your misery and negativity; and when you breathe in, breathe in joy,positivity, happiness, cheerfulness."Atisha's method is just the opposite: when you breathe in, breathe in all the misery andsuffering of all the beings of the world -- past, present and future. And when you breatheout, breathe out all the joy that you have, all the blissfulness that you have, all thebenediction that you have. Breathe out, pour yourself into existence. This is the methodof compassion: drink in all the suffering and pour out all the blessings.And you will be surprised if you do it. The moment you take all the sufferings of theworld inside you, they are no longer sufferings. The heart immediately transforms theenergy. The heart is a transforming force: drink in misery, and it is transformed intoblissfulness... then pour it out.Once you have learned that your heart can do this magic, this miracle, you would like todo it again and again. Try it. It is one of the most practical methods -- simple, and itbrings immediate results. Do it today, and see.That is one of the approaches of Buddha and all his disciples. Atisha is one of hisdisciples, in the same tradition, in the same line. Buddha says again and again to hisdisciples, "IHI PASSIKO: come and see!" They are very scientific people. Buddhism isthe most scientific religion on the earth; hence, Buddhism is gaining more and moreground in the world every day. As the world becomes more intelligent, Buddha willbecome more and more important. It is bound to be so. As more and more people come toknow about science, Buddha will have great appeal, because he will convince thescientific mind -- because he says, "Whatsoever I am saying can be practiced." And Idon't say to you, "Believe it," I say, "Experiment with it, experience it, and only then ifyou feel it yourself, trust it. Otherwise there is no need to believe.
I cannot conceive that the man who dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a machine. He also had a heart, just like you. He also had his wife and children, his old mother and father. He was as much a human being as you are—with a difference. He was trained to follow orders without questioning, and when the order was given, he simply followed it.
Mind is basically the beginning of madness. And if you are too much in it, it will drive you mad.Mind has no certainity about anything. If you are betweeen two polarities of the mind,in a limbo--always to do or not to do,you will go crazy. You are crazy! Before it happens,jump out and have a look from outside at the mind.Mind is basically indecisive and awareness is basically decisive.So any act of awareness is total,full without repentance.
Zen is a single step—the journey of one single step. You can call it the last step or the first step, it doesn’t matter. It is the first and it is the last, the alpha and the omega. The whole teaching of Zen consists of only one thing: how to take a jump into nothingness, how to come to the very end of your mind, which is the end of the world.
You cannot be truthful if you are not courageous. You cannot be loving if you are not courageous. You cannot be trusting if you are not courageous. You cannot inquire into reality if you are not courageous. Hence courage comes first and everything else follows.
There is a very delicate line between pornography and beauty. A naked woman is not necessarily pornographic; a naked man is not necessarily pornographic. A beautiful man, a beautiful woman, naked, can be examples of beauty, of health, of proportion. They are the most glorious products of nature. If a deer can be naked and beautiful—and nobody thinks the deer is pornographic—then why should it be that a naked man or woman cannot be just seen as beautiful?
As long as there is thirst in you, water can quench it; but you can live a kind of life in which you never feel thirsty; do not go in the sun, do no manual work, stay at home and relax and you will not feel the thirst. But then you will find no joy in drinking water. He who toils all day, enjoys the bliss of a good night’s rest. This is ironical: if you want to enjoy the pleasure of a good night’s sleep you have to work like a labourer all day. The trouble is that you want to spend your days like an emperor and your nights like a labourer.
Sometimes it happens that you become one, in some rare moment. Watch the ocean, the tremendous wildness of it--and suddenly you forget your split, your schizophrenia; you relax. Or, moving in the Himalayas, seeing the virgin snow on the Himalayan peaks, suddenly a coolness surrounds you and you need not be false because there is no other human being to be false to. You fall together.
Man wants to make certain about the future,about tommorow--which cannot be done. Let it sink as deeply in your heart as possible, it cannot be done. Don't waste your present moment trying to make the future certain. The future is uncertainity that is the very quality of the future.One can do only one thing: Be alert and wait.
But these trees don’t grow impatiently. They move with a grace, with patience, with trust. There is no hurry anywhere else except in your mind. If you really want to be in a state of peace and joy, you will have to unlearn your old habit for achieving things quickly
At the cost of efficiency always choose awareness, and you will create the situation in which meditation will become possible. You are not here just to become more and more efficient—you are here to become more and more alive; you are here to become more and more intelligent; you are here to become more and more happy, ecstatically happy. But that is totally different from the ways of the mind.
Meditation is simply awareness without any effort, an effortless alertness; it does not need any technique. But your mind is so full of thoughts, so full of dreams, so much of the past, so much of the future—it is not here and now, and awareness has to be here and now. The techniques are needed to help you to cut your roots from the past, to cut your dreams from the future, and to keep you in this moment as if only this moment exists. Then there is no need of any technique. After Shiva’s Vigyan Bhairava Tantra, in these five or ten thousand years, nobody has developed a single method. The cathartic methods are simply to throw all your impatience, your speediness, your hurry, your repressions.
Meditation, godliness, enlightenment, nirvana, they all came into being through love, because through love a glimpse was achieved. And when the glimpse was there, daring souls went on an adventure to find the source from where this glimpse comes.
Breathing in, let golden light come into you through your head, because it is there that the Golden Flower is waiting. That golden light will help. It will cleanse your whole body and will make it absolutely full of creativity. This is male energy. Then when you exhale, let darkness, the darkest you can conceive, like a dark night, river-like, come from your toes upwards—this is feminine energy: it will soothe you, it will make you receptive, it will calm you, it will give you rest—and let it go out of the head. Then inhale again, and golden light enters in.
When you have gone beyond thinking, and if you can still remain alert, aware, as if one is fast asleep but still alert—deep down at the very core of one’s being a lamp goes on burning, a small candle of light—then you will see your original face. And to see your original face is to be back in the Garden of Eden.
The unconscious mind goes on doing things and creating problems. There is no wall at all that you have to push through. The real thing is that you want to push, you are in a hurry. And because you want to push, you have to imagine a wall. It is your imagination. Just try to laugh at your imagination, at your hurry, because this is not the way meditation happens. Laugh, relax, and just be in the moment – watching whatever is going on, outside or inside, in the world or in the mind. You are neither the world nor the mind. You are behind all, just a pure watching consciousness.
In the old days prime ministers were not chosen by the vote of the people, because how can you choose by the vote of the people? How can people choose their leaders? They would like to, but they are not capable. Democracy is just a dream, it has not happened anywhere – it cannot happen. And wherever it happens it creates trouble; the medicine proves more dangerous than the disease itself.
Your body is made of two things: your will to do, your ego, and the physical form you have received from the prakriti, the nature. If the will to do is present within you, then the nature will go on providing you with an appropriate body. This is how you have been born again and again. Sometimes you were an animal, sometimes a bird, a tree some other time, and sometimes a man. Whatsoever you wished to achieve, it has happened. Your desire to achieve becomes the actuality; thoughts become real things. So beware when you desire, because all desires are fulfilled – sooner or later.If you are of the habit of watching the birds fly in the sky and wonder, ”How free the birds are, I wish I were a bird.” it will not be long before you become a bird. You see dogs mating, and if that moment a thought arises in you, ”What freedom! What happiness!” – soon you will become a dog. Whatever desire you keep within you, it becomes a seed.
Has it ever occurred to you that the last thought before your falling asleep at night becomes the first thought on waking up in the morning? All night long, while you remain asleep, the thought stays within you in a seed form. And so, that which is the last thing at night becomes first in the morning. At the moment of your death all your desires will come together and become a seed. That very seed will consequently be the new life in the womb. You start fresh from where you left off.Whatsoever you are is of your own making. Don’t blame others. As a matter of fact, there is no one whom you can blame. Basically it is the cumulative effect of your own actions. Whatsoever you are – beautiful or ugly, happy or unhappy, man or a woman – it is all a result of your actions. You are the architect of your life. Don’t blame on your stars – you’ll be simply fooling yourself. This way you are dumping the responsibility on to someone else.No need to say God has sent you – don’t dump the responsibility on God. That’s just a strategy to avoid your own responsibility. You alone are the cause for being imprisoned in this body. One who understands perfectly that he himself is responsible for being in this world, a transformation takes place in his life.
You can either be a person who is a coward, afraid, ready to submit, surrender, a person who has himself no dignity, no respect for his own being—or you can be fearless. But then you are going to be a rebel, you cannot avoid that. Either you can be a man of faith or you are going to be a rebellious spirit.
Meaning comes from the unknown, from the stranger, from the unpredictable that suddenly knocks at your door — a flower that suddenly blooms and you never expected it; a friend that suddenly happens to be on the street you were not waiting for; a love that blooms suddenly and you were not even aware that this was going to happen, you had not even imagined, not even dreamed. Then life has meaning. Then life has a dance. Then every step is happy because it is not a step filled with duty, it is a step moving into the unknown. The river is going towards the sea.
Always remember that when a new moment, a new insight, hovers around you, choose the new because the old has not done anything for you, so what is the point of going back? Even if the new proves wrong, then too, choose the new. At least it will be a new adventure; you will come to know something.
Just look around! This immense universe is functioning so perfectly well that nothing can be added to it. It needs no improvement. Seeing this, one relaxes. If stars can go on dancing and flowers can go on blooming and birds can go on singing, why not you? You also belong to this universe. You are part of it. In fact, you are the most valuable part of it, the greatest flowering is going to happen in you—the flowering of consciousness, the golden flower of being.
PERFECT VIRTUE PRODUCES NOTHING, because it needs nothing. Production comes out of desire, production comes because you are imperfect. You create something as a substitute because you feel unfulfilled. When you are absolutely fulfilled, why should you create, how can you create? Then you yourself have become the glory of creation, then the inner being itself is so perfect, nothing is needed.PERFECT VIRTUE PRODUCES NOTHING. If the world is virtuous, all utilitarian goals will be lost. If the world is really virtuous there will be play and no production. Then the whole thing will just become a game. You enjoy it, but you don’t need it. A perfect sage is absolutely useless.
Love is prayerfulness groping toward godliness. Love is poetry born out of the sheer joy of being. Love is song, dance, celebration: a song of gratitude, a dance of thankfulness, celebration for no reason at all, for this tremendous gift that goes on showering on us, for this whole universe, from the dust to the divine.
Fame is foolish, it is pointless, meaningless. Even if the whole world knows you, how does it make you richer? How does it make your life more blissful? How does it help you to be more understanding, to be more aware? To be more alert, to be more alive?
As soon as you are filled with awareness, the first thing that will happen is you will begin to see misery, the hell around you. Because you are the one who has created it. However, if you remain courageous and pass through the misery consciously, you will have cut the crop. You won’t have to go through the same miseries again. Once you have gone through this chain of miseries – the chain of karmas, the chain tied around your soul.... If you could pass through it without losing your consciousness, courageously, unworried; if you could determine, ”whatever misery I have created, I’ll go through it, I’ll go to the end of it. I want to arrive at that initial moment when I was innocent and the journey of suffering had not started yet, when my soul was absolutely pure and I had not gathered any misery – I am determined to penetrate up to that point regardless of any consequences, pain, or sorrow.
Start with very small experiments. When anger arises, stop! What is the hurry? When you feel hatred, wait! There should be some interval. Reply only when you are fully conscious – not until that. You will find that all that is sinful in life has fallen away from you; all that is wrong is banished forever. You will suddenly discover, there is no need to respond to anger. Perhaps you might feel like thanking the man who insults you. Because he has obliged you. He gave you an opportunity to awaken.Kabir has said stay near the one who is critical of you. Look after him and serve him who is abusing you because it is he who gives you the opportunity to awaken.All the occasions that drown you in unconsciousness can be turned into stepping stones to awareness if you wish so. Life is like a huge boulder lying in the middle of the road. Those who are foolish, see the stone as a barrier and turn back. For them the road is closed. Those who are clever, climb the stone and use it as a step. And the moment they make it a stepping stone greater heights are available to them.A seeker should keep in mind only one factor, and that is: to utilize each moment to awaken awareness. Then be it hunger or anger or lust or greed, every state can be utilized towards awareness.
You listen to anybody who suppresses you. And your personality fractures into thousands of pieces. Until you begin to listen to the inner voice, you cannot be an integrated whole.I call him a sannyasin who has begun to heed the inner voice and is ready to stake everything on it. But you cannot hear the inner voice as long as you are unconscious. Until then whatever you might take to be the inner voice will not be the inner voice; it will be a voice from outsideThe voice that satisfies you is the voice of your desires, but you call it your inner voice.Only the awakened person has an inner voice. Once this voice comes within range of your hearing, all that is sinful, all that is impure and dirty, all the chaos and confusion within you, will cease at once. You will then realize what a collection of personalities you have been.
So start with the waking state. When you are hungry eat, but always remember that it is the body that is hungry, not you. If you hurt your leg, wash and clean the wound, apply medication, but always remember that it is the body that is hurt, not you. This much remembrance – and you will find that ninety-nine percent of the pain has vanished. This slight knowledge, this little awareness removes so much of your suffering. One percent is bound to remain because the knowledge is not total. When knowledge becomes total all of the suffering disappears.Buddha said that an awakened person is beyond suffering. You can cut off the limbs of such a person, you can throw him in the fire, you can kill him, but you cannot make him suffer, because he stands apart from all that is happening around him.
Whenever you’ll open your eyes, you will find nothing but ugliness and misery all around you. Everything looks fine when you are in an unconscious state. This is the reason why you find it difficult to conceive: CONSCIOUSNESS IS THE BEING. You say, ”Impossible!” That’s why one needs to go through pain. That is called tapascharya, spiritual practice. Whenever one begins to become aware, first he will have to go through suffering. For lives you have created misery around you, who else would pass through it if not you? That is what we have called the karma.
Unconcious makes you interested in other--things, people, but it is always the others. Unconciousness keeps you you completely in the darknesss; your eyes go on being focused on others. It creates a kind of exteriority, it makes you extroverts. Conciousness creates interiority. It makes you introverts; it takes you inward, deeper and deeper.
We always live in the tommorow,which never comes and which cannot come; it is impossible. That which comes always is today, and we go on sacrificing today for tommorow,which is nowhere. The mind goes on thinking of the past,which you have destroyed,which you have sacrificed for something that has not come. And then it goes on postponing for further tommorows.
I never use the word renunciation at all. I say: "Rejoice in life,in love,in meditation,in the beauties of the world, in the ecstasy of existence--rejoice in everything!" Transform the mundane into the sacred. Transform this shore ino the other shore, transform the earth into paradise.And then indirectly a certain renunciation starts happening. But that happens,you don't do it. It is not a doing, it is a happening.
Life is very simple. Just sometimes put your head away, sometimes behead yourself, sometimes look with no clouds in the eyes - just look. Sometimes sit by the side of a tree - just feel. By the side of a waterfall - listen. Lie down on the beach and listen to the roar of the ocean, feel the sand, the coolness of it, or look at the stars, and let that silence penetrate you. Or look at the dark night and let that velvety darkness surround you, envelop you, dissolve you. This is the way of the simple heart.
He accepts life in all its facets, in all its climates and colors. He alone does not choose he accepts life unconditionally. He does not shun love; being a man he does not run away from women. As one who has known and experienced God, he alone does not turn his face from war. He is full of love and compassion, and yet he has the courage to accept and fight a war. His heart is utterly non violent, yet he plunges into the fire and fury of violence when it becomes unavoidable. He accepts the nectar, and yet he is not afraid of poison.
If you live, ego disappears. Life knows no ego, it knows only living and living and living. Life knows no self, no center; life knows no separation. You breathe - life enters into you; you exhale you enter into life. There is no separation. You eat, and trees enter into you through the fruit. Then one day you die, you are buried in the earth, and the trees suck you up and you become fruits. Your children will eat you again. You have been eating your ancestors - the trees have converted them into fruits. You think you are a vegetarian? Don't be deceived by appearances. We are all cannibals.
You are the way and you are the goal, and there is no distance between you and the goal. You are the seeker and you are the sought; there is no distance between the seeker and the sought. You are the worshipper and you are the worshipped. You are the disciple and you are the master. You are the means and you are the end: this is the great way.
Tapascharya, spiritual practice means: accepting the truth that you are alone; that there is no way one can have a friend, a companion. No matter how much you long for it, regardless of how much you close your eyes and dream of them – you will still remain alone. For lives you built a home, you built a family, and then you lost it – and all through that you have always remained alone. Not even slightly has your aloneness been ever affected. So one who has known, one who has accepted that he is alone, for him there is an indication in this sutra: CONSCIOUSNESS IS THE BEING. Only being is yours, nothing else.
Shiva is saying: the body is a product of nature and your will to do. The nature is merely the source, the womb. Your ego functions like a seed in it. Your will to do this or that, to achieve this or that, to become this or that – acts like a seed. And the moment the art of your doing meets the womb of nature, a body is formed.Therefore, buddhas say: ”Give up all desires, only then will you be liberated.: If you desired for heaven, you will become an angel, but that won’t be liberation either. Because as long as desires persist, there can never be any liberation. All desires lead to the formation of bodies.
Half your life is spent in thinking of the past and the other half in thinking about the future. The journey never begins. Either you roam around the byways of your memory, which is a dead dream, or you wander in your imagination which is a dream of the future, which is still to come. You are divided in these two. The present is in the middle, and that is where life is – but you miss it!
When the ego is not, you are for the first time encountering your being. That being is void. Then you can surrender; then you have surrendered. There are thousands and thousands of stories… just by a touch, just by a look, someone became enlightened. And these minor surrenders prepare you for the total surrender. Once you have known that through surrender you receive something unknown, unbelievable, unexpected, never even dreamed of, then you are ready for a major surrender. And that is the work of the master – to help you in minor surrenders so that you can gather courage for a major surrender, for a total surrender.
Knowing it, you know the very heartbeat of existence. Knowing it, you have known all that is worth knowing, and you have achieved all that is worth achieving. It opens doors to all the mysteries of existence, to all the treasures of existence which belong to you. Outside you are simply a beggar. Even your greatest intellectuals are just playing with words.
A buddha lives in the orgasmic state for twenty-four hours, day in and day out. Between the day Gautama Buddha became enlightened and the day he died there is a distance of forty-two years. For these forty-two years he was utterly in an orgasmic state. Just think! Those few moments you have are nothing compared to a Buddha’s.
Do not focus your gaze on things that are wrong, for what you see, slowly begins to penetrate you. You are addicted to fixing your eyes on the wrong; you pay attention only to what is wrong inside you. The angry man concentrates on his anger, and how to get rid of it. Though he wants to get rid of the anger, he is actually concentrating on that white line of anger within him; the more he concentrates the more he is hypnotized by it.Don’t worry! Everybody is! Don’t focus your eyes on the anger, but concentrate on compassion. Concentrate on what is right. As the right gets more and more energy, the strength of the wrong gets weaker and weaker. Ultimately it will disappear. This happens because energy is one; you cannot use it in two ways. If you have utilized your energy in becoming peaceful, you would have no energy for restlessness. All your energy has moved towards peace, and if you have had a taste of peace and serenity, why bother to become restless? You can maintain your restlessness only if you have never known the flavour of serenity. You can dive into the pleasures of the world only if you have not tasted the divine.
We will be entering the beautiful world of a Zen master's no-mind. Sosan is the third Zen Patriarch. Nothing much is known about him- this is as it should be, because history records only violence. History does not record silence- it cannot record it. All records are of disturbance. Whenever someone becomes really silent, he disappears from all records, he is no more a part of our madness. So it is as it should be.Ch. 1: The Great Way Is Not Difficult
Desire is alcoholic, desire is the greatest drug possible. Marijuana is nothing, lsd is nothing. Desire is the greatest lsd possible – the ultimate in drugs.What is the nature of desire? When you desire, what happens? When you desire, you are creating an illusion in the mind; when you desire, you have already moved from here. Now you are not here, you are absent from here, because the mind is creating a dream. This absentness is your drunkenness. Be present!
What is it that makes you cry? It is only your attachments. What is it that you miss when it is lost? It is the object of your attachment. Ponder over this. Find out what it is that grips your very life, without which you feel miserable and destitute; that is the center of your attachment. Here is what you should do: make an effort to find out what things it would hurt you to lose. Then, before they are lost, open your hands little by little, relax your grip on them. This is the method for conquering attachment. There is bound to be pain, but you must bear it; this is your penance. It is not necessary to renounce anything. It is not that you should leave your wife and run away to the Himalayas. Remain there, where you are, but gradually stop depending on her. There is no need to cause any pain; your wife need not even know it. There is no need to tell her.Seek out the attachments. Try gradually to live without the things that you now think you cannot live without. Create such a state within yourself that if and when these things are lost, there is not the slightest tremor within you. Then you will have attained victory over these attachments. This can be possible. It has been possible. And if it has happened to even one, it can happen to all.
Man cannot be reduced to slavery if he is not distorted first. The politician and the priest have been in a deep conspiracy down the ages. They have been reducing humanity to a crowd of slaves. They are destroying every possibility of rebellion in man—and love is rebellion, because love listens only to the heart and does not care a bit about anything else.
So as long as you have not attained to desirelessness, as long as you have not renounced desires completely, you will go on taking births and wandering in different bodies. And howsoever different the forms of the body may be, their basic condition is always the same. The ills of the body are the same, regardless whether it’s a bird’s body or man’s. There is no difference in their miseries, because the fundamental misery is only one: the soul becoming confined in the body, the entering of the soul into the prison of body. A prison after all is a prison; it makes no difference whether its walls are circular or angular no matter what you think.
As you become aware of life, you will begin to see the root cause to all your actions and reactions. Then you will realize that you are not angry with the child because he made a mistake, but because you get pleasure out of being angry. The mistake was only a excuse.
Understand this first and foremost that you are the center of your existence; nobody else is responsible. No matter how burdensome it feels, but you alone are responsible. If you accept this truth all sorrow will soon disappear. Because once it is clear that I am making this game, how long will it take you to destroy it?
Drinking tea is as sacred as doing yoga. Sleeping silently, relaxed, is as sacred as prayer. Looking at a tree, talking to a friend, walking early in the morning, working in the factory or in the office, is as holy as anything else. This is the understanding that is needed for Tao to happen.
This should be one of the basic attitudes—not to think about what the other is doing. That is his life. If he decides to live it that way, that is his business. Who are you even to have an opinion about it? Even to have an opinion means that you are ready to interfere, you have already interfered.
you feel what else is there to do in life apart from living? And even that is out of your control; it depends on an infinite number of factors. Everything is in your unconscious mind. Why sex desire arose in you, why you raised a family, how greed and anger entered you, why you were dishonest, why you accumulated wealth, why you made enemies – you have no idea! You are just like a puppet, whose strings are being pulled by someone else. You imagine you are dancing, but in fact it is someone else who is making you dance.Look closely at your life and you will find that you are nothing more than a puppet. How can anything real happen in the life of a man who is not his own master, but merely a puppet?
Always remember that you are the observer and not the doer. Do not take life to be anything more than acting. Don’t identify yourself too much with the action.Whether you are a wife or husband, a businessman or client, don’t get too involved. Don’t lose yourself in it, for you are simply playing a role in the play. Keep outside of it, and within yourself. These are all necessary parts of life. You must go to work, it is necessary. The play is delightful if you see it as play, but it is fatal if you take it to be life. There is no reason so disrupt your life. You have to play the part that life has given you.
So if you are confused, please remember – don’t help anybody, because your help is going to be poisonous. If you are confused don’t be occupied with others, because you are simply creating trouble, your disease will become infectious. Don’t give advice to anyone, and if you have a little clarity of thought, don’t take advice from someone who is confused. Remain alert, because confused people always like to give advice. And they give it free of charge, they give it very generously!