163. Love.

You ask for the way to make the invisible visible?

Pay attention to the visible.

Do not just see, pay attention.

It means, when you see a flower,

let your whole being become the eye.

When you listen to the birds, let your entire body-soul become the ear.

When you look at a flower, do not think.

When you listen to birds, do not ponder.

Let the total consciousness

either see or hear or smell or taste or touch.

Because it is due to a shallowness of sensitivity that the invisible is unable

to become visible,

and the unknown remains unknown.

Deepen the sensitivity. Do not just swim in sensitivity, drown in it.

This I call meditation.

And, in meditation, the seen disappears

and finally the seer too. There remains only the seeing.

It is in this seeing that the invisible becomes visible

and the unknown becomes known.

Not only this – even the unknowable becomes knowable.

And remember that whatever I am writing –

do not start thinking about this as well: act.

Nothing has ever been nor can be attained

by creating theories.

There is no other door except ‘seeing for oneself’.

164. Love.

You ask: how far is the destination?

Ah! The destination is very far, and very near too.

And the distance or the nearness of the destination

is not dependent on the destination but upon you yourself.

The deeper the will, the nearer the destination.

If the will is total, then you yourself are the destination.

165. Love.

The word is not the thing –

the word God is not God.

But the mind goes on accumulating words and

words and words,

and then the words become the barrier.

See this as a fact with you:

can you see anything without the word?

Can you feel anything without the word?

Can you live even for a single moment without the word?

Do not think but see

and then you will be in meditation.

To exist wordlessly is to be in meditation.

166. Love.

Always see what is –

the facts.

That which is.

Do not project anything,

do not interpret,

do not impose any meaning:

that is, do not allow your mind to interfere,

and you will begin to encounter reality.

Otherwise everyone lives in his own world of dreaming.

And meditation is the coming out of these worlds,

these dreaming patterns.

A philosopher stopped Mulla Nasruddin on the street.

In order to test whether the Mulla

was sensitive to philosophical knowledge

he made a sign, pointing at the sky.

The philosopher meant: There is only one truth,

which covers all.

Nasruddin’s companion, an ordinary man, thought:

The philosopher is mad.

I wonder what precautions Nasruddin will take.

Nasruddin looked in his knapsack and took out a coil of rope.

This he handed to his companion.

Excellent, thought the companion.

We will bind him up if he becomes violent.

The philosopher saw that Nasruddin meant:

Ordinary humanity tries to find truth by methods

as unsuitable as attempting to climb

into the sky with a rope.

Now can you remain content with the fact

of Mulla Nasruddin giving the rope to his companion

without any interpretation whatsoever?

Remain with the fact, and you will be in meditation.

167. Love.

The ego is necessary

for both the sensation of pain and the feeling of pleasure

and vice versa also –

the sensation of pain and the feeling of pleasure,

are necessary for the existence of the ego.

In fact these are two sides of the same coin.

The name of the coin is ignorance.

Understand this

and do not fight with the ego

or with pain and pleasure,

because unless ignorance is gone

they will not go, they cannot go.

And you cannot fight with ignorance

because ignorance is just absence of something –

absence of yourself.

So be present to your ignorance,

be aware of it,

and then you will be and there will be no ignorance

because you and ignorance cannot exist simultaneously,

as with light and darkness.

168. Love.

A small boy with a penny

clutched tightly in his hot little hand

entered the toy shop

and drove the proprietor to distraction

asking him to show this and that

and everything

without ever making up his mind.

Look here, my boy, said the storekeeper finally.

What do you want to buy for a penny –

the whole world with a fence around it?

The boy thought for a moment

and then replied: Let me see it.

And I say to you that ordinarily

no one in this world is different from that small boy.

But unless one is different, one is not mature.

And maturity does not come with age alone,

maturity comes through understanding the distinction

between that which is possible

and that which is not possible.

169. Love.

Things go on changing without.

You must mirror them,

you must reflect them,

but remember always that the mirror remains the same.

Mirroring does not change the mirror.

Do not be identified with mirroring.

Remember yourself as the mirror –

that is what is meant by witnessing.

And witnessing is meditation.

Lieh-Tzu exhibited his skill in archery to Po-Hun Wu-Jen.

When the bow was drawn to its full length

a cup of water was placed on his elbow

and he began to shoot.

As soon as the first arrow was let fly

a second one was already on the string

and a third followed.

In the meantime he stood unmoved like a statue.

Po-Hun Wu-Jen said: The technique of your shooting is fine,

but it is still a technique.

You look just like a statue from without.

Now let us go up to a high mountain

and stand on a rock projecting over a precipice

and then you try to shoot.

They climbed up a mountain.

Standing on a rock projecting over a precipice

ten thousand feet high

Po-Hun Wu-Jen stepped backward

until one third of his feet was hanging over the rock.

He then motioned to Lieh-Tzu to come forward.

Lieh-Tzu fell to the ground

with perspiration running down to his heels.

Po-Hun Wu-Jen said:

The perfect man soars up above the blue sky

or dives down to the yellow springs,

or wanders about all over the eight limits of the world,

yet shows no signs of change in his spirit.

But you betray a sign of trepidation

and your eyes are dazed.

How can you expect to hit the target?

170. Love.

Do you want to ask questions?

Or do you want to get answers?

Because if you want to ask questions

then you will not get answers,

and if you want to get answers

then you cannot be allowed to ask questions –

because the answer is in that consciousness

where the questions have not yet been raised,

or have been uprooted and thrown out.

171. Love.

I hope you will be moving in deep meditation.

Breathe in it

sleep in it

live in it –

let meditation be your very existence.

Only then is the happening.

Don’t do it, but be it.

And my blessings are always with you.

If you need any help from me just ask when

you are thoughtless,

and it will be given to you.

172. Love.

A madman entered the bazaar and declaimed:

The moon is more useful than the sun.

But why? asked someone.

We need the light more

during the night than during the day, he said.

And I say to you that

all our metaphysical theories and explanations

are not of more worth than the explanation of that madman.

173. Love.

Ask for nothing and you will never be frustrated.

Anticipate darkness with light and sorrow with happiness

because such is the nature of things.

Then you will never be frustrated.

Say to life: What can you do to me? I want nothing!

And say to death: What can you do to me? I have already died!

Then you will be truly free,

because unless one is free of life one can never be free of death.

And when one is free of both

one knows that life which is eternity itself.

174. Love.

Man is always lacking,

because he desires without knowing himself,

because he desires to become something

without knowing his being,

and this is absurd.

First one must know his being

otherwise there will be anguish.

Becoming is anguish

because it is a constant tension

between that which is and that which should be –

and it is an impossible longing also

because only that can be which is.

So know yourself as you are

without any ideals,

without any judgment

and without any condemnation.

Go deep within yourself without any desires to become

because only then can you know yourself.

Discover yourself,

not according to anybody else,

but as you are.

Discover the fact,

discover the real

in its total nakedness.

In this total authenticity

just be a witness,

and then there is an altogether different quality to life,

the quality of let go.

Then one is relaxed totally.

And all flowering is in relaxation,

and all benediction.

175. Love.

Fear cripples consciousness,

and fear is the source of unconsciousness,

that is why without transcending fear

no one can attain to full consciousness.

But what is fear?

Fear is awareness of death without knowing what death is.

Fear exists in the gap between you and your death,

and if there is no gap, no space,

then there is no fear.

Do not think of death as something outside you

because it is not.

And do not think of death as something in the future

because it is not.

Death is within you,

because death is the other side of life.

Life cannot exist without death;

they both belong to the same energy

as positive and negative poles.

So do not identify yourself with life –

because you are both.

The identification with life creates the gap.

And death has nothing to do with the future,

it is always here and now.

Every moment, it is.

And when one ceases to regard it

as something outside oneself

and, so to speak, draws it into his consciousness

and assimilates the idea of it,

one is completely changed.

He is in all truth born again.

And then there is no fear

because then there is no gap.

176. Love.

Thinking is necessary but not enough,

one must know living also,

otherwise one becomes like the philosopher

mentioned by Soren Kierkegaard

who builds a fine palace

but is doomed not to live in it.

He has a shed for himself next door to what

he has constructed for others,

including himself, to look at!

Meditation is not thinking, but living.

Live it daily, moment to moment;

that is, live in it or let it live in you.

It is not something other-worldly either,

because all such distinctions are from the mind:

they are speculative and not existential,

and meditation is existential.

It is no more than one’s everyday life lived totally.

When Mencius says: The truth is near

and people seek it far away,

he means this.

When Tokusan is asked about it he replies:

When you are hungry you eat,

when you are thirsty you drink,

and when you meet a friend you greet him.

He means this.

Ho Koji sings: How wondrous this, how mysterious!

I carry fuel, I draw water.

He also means this.

And when you are near me

whatsoever I may say I always mean this.

Or I may not say anything –

but then too I always mean this.

177. Love.

Religion is so much an experience

that it cannot be handed over by one to another.

But there are traditions of religious experience –

which are bound to be false

because of the very nature of the religious experience.

One has to travel the path alone

with no footprints of other travelers even to guide one.

Hassan of Basra was asked: What is Islam and who

are the Muslims?

He is reported to have said:

Islam is in the books

and Muslims? Muslims are in the tombs.

178. Love.

The world itself is a punishment enough,

so really there is no need for hell at all.

Once a man who had three wives

was brought before the king of the country for punishment.

The king called in his counselors and asked them to devise

the worst possible punishment for the offender,

even death itself.

But they did not order his execution,

ruling instead that it would be still worse for him

to live with all three wives at the same time.

Two weeks later the man committed suicide.

179. Love.

I have no special doctrine or philosophy,

no set of concepts or intellectual formulas,

but only certain irrational devices

through which I can push you into the unknown.

I do not believe in any theories

or any systems of thought,

but I have faith in certain existential situations

through which I can throw you into the unknown.

Intellectual understanding is not understanding at all

but only a deception.

Understanding is always of the total,

of the whole being.

Intellect is only a part, and that too a minor one,

but it acts as the whole

and thereby creates all sorts of stupidities.

Do not be identified with your intellect.

Dissolve it into the whole of your being,

and then you will know what understanding is –

and the bliss and the ecstasy that follow it inevitably.

180. Love.

Meditation is a mirror –

and the most faithful one.

Whoever goes into meditation

risks a confrontation with himself.

The mirror of meditation never lies,

and it does not flatter.

It is impartial and innocent

and it never projects anything.

It only faithfully shows your real, original face,

the face we never show to the world,

the face that we ourselves have forgotten.

So it is possible

that you yourself

may not be able to recognize it the first time!

But do not escape from it.

Face it and you will come to know it and recognize it.

This confrontation is the first test of courage

on the inner way.

So when it comes about –

rejoice and feel blessed.

181. Love.

Yes, there is tension.

To be consciously conscious is to be tense,

but it is not because of consciousness

but because of partial consciousness.

The unconscious is always

behind the so-called consciousness.

This situation creates tension

because this creates a dichotomy, a duality;

hence the tension.

The being, which cannot be divided,

is divided,

hence the tension.

The unnaturalness of the situation

is the root cause of this tension,

and for that matter of all tensions,

because then one is not individual,

that is, indivisible;

therefore there is tension,

and one cannot really relax unless one is one.

Either be totally unconscious as in deep and

dreamless sleep –

and then there is no tension,

or be totally conscious –

and then you are in the state of no-tension

because the total can never be tense.

That is why the whole is the holy.

But falling into a deep sleep-like trance

is just escaping the problem,

and that too only for the time being,

because you will be back soon –

and worse off,

because by such escapes

the gap between

the conscious and the unconscious

is not bridged

but, on the contrary, widened even more.

One becomes split and schizophrenic.

So always be aware of the mind

because it tries to find solace in unconscious states

in so many ways –

through chemical drugs,

through auto-hypnotic means, and otherwise.

Begin to be aware of anything

which ordinarily happens unconsciously,

for example – anger, jealousy, pride –

and your consciousness will be deepened.

Act consciously,

even in day-to-day acts be conscious,

for example walking, eating, talking,

and your consciousness will be expanded.

Be alert when thinking.

No thought should be allowed to pass unwitnessed.

And then, in the end, there is an explosion

in which you become totally conscious,

with no unconsciousness behind.

When this happens one is one,

and to be one is to be silent.

This silence is beyond time and space,

because it is beyond duality.

182. Love.

God is when you are not.

When you are it is not

because you are nothing but a blindness.

The ego cannot see,

the ego cannot be aware,

the ego exists only as a by-product of unconscious living.

One goes on living as if in sleep.

In this sleep the part begins to dream that it is the whole,

and this dreaming becomes a barrier to knowing the whole.

Begin to be aware,

aware of your actions, thoughts and emotions,

just aware.

Because if you condemn or appreciate

you will not be aware –

in any choice the awareness is contaminated

and the darkness of unawareness comes in.

So just be aware without any choice;

then awareness is pure and innocent,

and then awareness is a mirror.

In this mirror-like awareness one never finds oneself

but one finds that-which-is.

And that is God.

But it is only when you are not

because you are the dust which makes the mirror blind.

Because you are the blindness.

183. Love.

There are three forms of knowledge.

The first is intellectual knowledge,

which is in fact not knowledge but only information

and the collection of facts and the use of these

to arrive at further intellectual concepts.

The second is emotional knowledge,

which is also not really knowledge

but the mental state in which man feels

he has known something,

but there is no transformation or mutation of his being.

The first is objective, and out of it science is born,

and the second is subjective, and is the source of all art.

The third is neither,

it is beyond both,

and this third is the real.

It is achieved through meditation

because meditation does not use thinking and feeling

as doors of perception.

Really, these are not doors of perception

but forces of projection.

Through them pure knowing is impossible;

whatsoever comes through them is changed and colored by them.

So unless one is free of all projections

one cannot know that-which-is.

When there are no ripples of thought and emotion

in the consciousness, then and only then

does the third form of knowledge dawn,

and this third is the only real knowledge.

Out of it religion is born,

and out of it is total transformation.

184. Love.

The journey is long

and the path is pathless.

And one has to be alone –

there is no map and no guide.

But there is no alternative.

One cannot escape it,

one cannot evade it.

One has to go on the journey.

The goal seems impossible

but the urge to go on it is intrinsic.

The need is deep in the soul.

Really, you are the urge, you are the need –

and consciousness cannot be otherwise

because of this challenge

and because of this adventure.

So do not waste time – begin.

Do not calculate – begin.

Do not hesitate – begin.

Do not look back – begin.

And always remember old Lao Tzu’s words:

A tree that takes both arms to be encircled

grows from a tiny root.

A many-storied pagoda

is built by placing one brick upon another brick.

A journey of three thousand miles is begun by a single step.

185. Love.

When I say mutation I do not mean simply change.

Change is from the known to the known.

A sinner becomes a saint –

then it is change and not mutation.

You can practice change

but you cannot practice mutation

because only the known can be practiced –

and then any change is going to be only a modified past

because the past will be continuous in it,

and the past also will be the master of it

because it is cultivated by the past.

In other words, change is from this to that,

it is a movement in the known.

But mutation is an explosion:

from this to nothingness,

from here to nowhere.

You cannot practice it –

on the contrary, you are the only hindrance.

So what is to be done?

Really nothing can be done.

Be aware of this helplessness,

and remain in this helplessness.

Do not do anything

because any doing will be escaping

from this fact of helplessness.

Do not move at all –

and then there is an explosion,

and then there is mutation.

186. Love.

Religion is not a promise for the future

but an experience here and now.

But through the priesthood it has become

promises and promises and promises.

At an examination of a class in First Aid

a member, who was also a priest, was asked:

What would you do if you found a man in a

fainting condition?

I would give him some brandy, was the answer.

And if there was no brandy? he was then asked.

I would promise him some, replied the priest.

187. Love.

Wherever there are words there is no real meaning.

But here also are words.

Then what to do?

Read between the words.

Or read that which is said but not written,

or that which is shown and not even said,

or that which is meant and not even shown.

That is – look in,

because the words are without

but the meaning is within.

188. Love.

Reason is not enough;

it is necessary but not enough.

The beyond must be remembered – and always,

because reason in itself is destructive;

alone, it is nothing but an implement to dissect.

It makes a man anti-all and pro-nothing.

It creates absolutely negative minds

which can criticize but cannot create,

because reason has no healing force within itself.

It is only a tiny part and not the whole of life,

and the healing force is always with the whole.

189. Love.

With thought the mind has boundaries

but without thought the mind is just infinite space.

That is why in thoughtless awareness

one stops being a drop

and becomes oceanic.

And then there is great energy.

This energy wipes out everything which is dead.

It wipes out the whole karmic past –

and with no effort at all.

The greater absorbs the lesser and remains untouched.

190. Love.

The will to wholeness is inherent in everything,

but only in man has it become conscious.

Therefore man lives in tension,

and only when this longing is fulfilled

is his negative state of tension erased.

The tension is symbolic of the infinite potential

and also of the infinite possibilities.

Man is not what he can be,

and unless he is that which he can be

he cannot be at ease.

This dis-ease is man,

and health is in wholeness.

The fact that language has one root

for the words whole, holy and to heal

conceals a deep truth:

He who is whole is also healed,

and to be healed is to be whole.

This wholeness can only be achieved

by becoming totally conscious of oneself:

The darkness of the unconscious is to be penetrated

and transformed into light.

And meditation is the method.

191. Love.

The new world revealed in meditation

is not something added from the outside.

It has always been there – within,

is in being itself.

It is being itself.

One may know it or not, but it is there –

as a seed, of course, as a potentiality.

One has to make it actual, that is all.

That is why when it is revealed,

when it flowers,

one laughs uproariously

because it has always been there and one never knew it.

To work towards meditation is just like sculpturing

because as the sculptor chisels out a figure

deeply buried in a mass of inert matter,

so the meditator transforms his own inert potentialities

into living, dynamic and conscious creations.

Of course, here

the creator and the creation and the means of creation

are not different but one

because the meditator himself is all.

And that is why I call meditation the greatest art.

192. Love.

Do not think of others and waste your time;

really, that is a subtle and cunning way of the mind

to escape from itself.

Once a monk asked Ummon:

Sir, you always say that Buddhism helps us in

every possible way,

but how can it help the blind, the deaf or the dumb?

The blind cannot see the teacher’s staff

that is raised before them,

the deaf cannot hear the teacher’s words, no matter how wise,

the dumb cannot ask their questions or speak

their understanding:

so since we cannot help these people

how can we say that Buddhism helps in every possible way?

What good is it?

Ummon just remained silent for a while

and then abruptly poked at the questioner with his stick.

The monk of course jumped back.

Ah! said Ummon. I see you are not blind!

Then he told the monk to come forward, which he did.

Ah-ha! said Ummon. I see you are not deaf!

Then he asked the monk

if he understood what all this to-do was about.

The monk said he did not.

Ah-ha! said Ummon. I see you are not dumb!

193. Love.

Meditation does not require any application of the mind

or use of effort.

It descends upon you as effortlessly as sleep.

You cannot try to sleep,

nor can you try to meditate.

On the contrary,

every effort hinders its smooth and silent coming.

There is no place in it for action or aggression –

and action is always aggressive.

Meditation is passive receptivity.

Mind is aggressive,

meditation is passive.

Be passive

and receptive

and open

and vulnerable

and wait.

The real miracle happens through waiting.

The moment that waiting is total

there is a happening,

and – the explosion.

194. Love.

The problem of life is not philosophical,

it is existential.

You cannot solve it from the outside;

you cannot just be a spectator of it –

you are in it, you are it.

And moreover, what is philosophy?

At the worst a linguistic misunderstanding,

or at best a linguistic analysis.

And even at its best it leads nowhere

because the problem is existential

and it cannot be solved through

language analysis and grammar.

One dark night a dervish was passing a dry well

when he heard a cry for help from below.

What is the matter? he called down.

I am a grammarian,

and I have unfortunately fallen,

due to my ignorance of the path, into this deep well,

in which I am now all but immobilized,

responded the other.

Hold on, friend, and I’ll fetch a ladder and a rope, said the dervish.

One moment please! said the grammarian.

Your grammar and diction are faulty.

Be good enough to amend them. If that is so much more important

than the essentials, shouted the dervish, you had best stay where you are

until I have learned to speak properly.

And he went his way.

195. Love.

Don’t think about surrender at all

because that which thinks about it is the only barrier.

And therefore no one can surrender;

it is not a doing at all, it happens.

You cannot go to it,

it comes to you.

And any effort on your part will hinder its coming.

Be open and effortless, relaxed and passive,

and it will come – it always comes.

I am a witness of it.

196. Love.

Mulla Nasruddin was searching for something on the ground.

What have you lost, Mulla? someone who saw him searching, asked.

My key, said the Mulla. So they both went down on their knees

and looked for it.

After a time the other man asked: Where exactly did you drop it?

In my house, said the Mulla.

Then why are you looking here?

There is more light here than inside my house.

I ask you also – where are you looking for the key?

Inside the house?

Or out there, where there is more light?

197. Love.

There is no end to man’s self-deception, because whatsoever he is

going to do he can rationalize it.

One day one man boasted in the bar

that he was a man of iron will,

and now he would prove it

by not touching wine again in his life.

But not even that day could pass by.

In the evening he came to the bar

and said loudly for all to hear –

I am stronger than my willpower.

I fought the whole day and finally conquered

my damn willpower!

A double scotch, please!

198. Love.

The way of meditation is above the self;

its base is surrendering.

Surrender the self to your own no-self;

be as if you are not.

Oh, the benediction

when one just leaves everything to the no-self!

Buddha called this phenomenon anatma or anatta

(no-selfhood).

One must turn oneself into a puppet

in the hands of the no-self,

and then everything begins to flow naturally

and spontaneously

just like a river flowing to the sea

or like a cloud wandering in the sky.

Lao Tzu says this is doing by non-doing.

One ceases to be one’s own master

and becomes an instrument of the unknown –

and what nonsense it is to be one’s own master

because there is no one to be so!

Do not search and you will continue to believe in it.

Search and it is nowhere to be found.

The self exists only in ignorance.

It is ignorance.

In knowing there is no self

because there is no knower.

Then knowing is enough unto itself.

199. Love.

There is conflict in the mind – always,

because the mind cannot exist without the conflict.

It gets strengthened through conflict;

even warring against conflict is conflict

and struggling to go beyond the mind is mind.

See this deeply and immediately

without motive,

just as if you have come across a snake in the street

– and the jump.

Then it is not that you jump

but – the jump.

The jump happens spontaneously,

without effort and without conflict.

When this happens there is no-mind

and no-mind is the door to the divine.

200. Love.

In meditation, enjoy doing nothing.

Be in a state of perfectly quiet passivity –

then you are in harmony with the world.

The thought-forms dissolve automatically

because they cannot exist with total passivity:

they are forms of an activity-addicted mind,

and with them dissolves the ego –

because it cannot exist without thought-forms.

The ego is nothing but a whirlpool center

of constantly revolving thought-forms.

Remain in passivity,

that is, in the state of absolute doing-nothingness,

and meditation deepens to the depths where there is no meditator.

And remember that only when there is no meditator

has meditation really come into being.

If you are then there is no meditation,

and when there is meditation you are not.

201. Love.

It is tragic but true that few people ever

possess their souls.

They possess everything except themselves,

and then naturally they just become a thing

among their other things.

The possessor becomes the possessed.

Nothing is more rare in any man, says Emerson,

than an act of his own.

But this is just what can be expected

because no one is their own,

no one is themselves.

Most people are other people.

They are not living

but only acting roles given to them by others.

Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions

and their faces are just masks.

They are faceless.

They have no authentic being at all.

Their lives, a mimicry –

and their passions, a quotation.

Break this vicious circle otherwise you will never be.

Break this through meditation –

and it cannot be broken by anything else

because through mind it cannot be broken,

and except for meditation, all else is mind.

Mind is the prison,

meditation, the door.

And the only door.

202. Love.

Only God is –

that is why it is so difficult to find him.

And God is everywhere –

that is why he seems to be nowhere.

And the seeker is the sought –

that is why all seeking is so futile.

Stop and see.

But the mind is running constantly.

Do not be, and see.

But the mind is trying to be continuously.

Says Auden:

For the garden is the only place there is, but you will not find it,

until you have looked for it everywhere

and found nowhere that is not a desert.

The miracle is the only thing that happens,

but to you it will not be apparent,

until all events have been studied

and nothing happens that you cannot explain.

And life is the destiny you are bound to refuse

until you have consented to die.

Stop and see.

Do not be, and see.

203. Love.

Live in the body intimately and deeply.

Feel the body more and let the body feel more.

It is astonishing how many people

are almost completely unaware of themselves physically.

The body is suppressed and denied life too much,

that is why it is just a dead weight and not a living joy.

That is why I insist: go back into the body

and regain the wonderful joy in its movements,

sheer movements.

Make it a meditation and you will be enriched

beyond comprehension.

204. Love.

John Burroughs remembers:

One day my boy killed what an old hunter told him

was a mock duck.

It looked like a duck,

it acted like a duck,

but when it was placed on the table –

it mocked us!

Remember to make a clear-cut distinction

between your self and your mock-selves – the masks,

otherwise in the end they will all mock you!

205. Love.

Man is strange, very strange,

because he begins by deceiving others

and ends with deceiving himself.

A fakir was walking down the village street

deep in thought

when some urchins began to throw stones at him.

He was taken by surprise,

and besides he was not a big man.

Don’t do that, he said, and I will tell you

something of interest to you.

All right, what is it? But no philosophy.

The king is giving a free banquet to all comers –

he simply lied to them.

The children ran off towards the king’s palace

as the fakir warmed to his theme –

the delicacies and delights of the entertainment…

He looked up and saw them

disappearing into the distance,

and then suddenly he tucked up his robes

and started to sprint after them.

I had better go and see, he panted to himself,

because it might be true after all.

206. Love.

To be religious is to be a yea-sayer:

yes to everything –

yes to life and yes to death,

yes to light and yes to darkness.

Total acceptance is religion.

Says Nicolas De Cusa: Yes God! Yes God!

Yes, yes and always yes.

Say yes – and feel it,

and you have entered the temple of the divine.

Say no and you yourself have closed the doors –

or closed yourself to the divine.

No is suicidal, no is poisonous –

know this and be a yea-sayer.

Let your heart say yes with every beat.

Breathe yes in and out

and you will feel the divine all around you

within and without.

He is always present but he cannot enter through a no sign.

He cannot trespass on you.

With a no you are an ego

but with a yes you are just egolessness.

Ego is a Leibnizian monad without any doors or windows,

and egolessness is the gate.

Be a gate – the divine is waiting to enter you from eternity.

207. Love.

Begin to live positively – that is,

with positive emotions.

To be negative is to be self-destructive

and ultimately suicidal.

But ordinarily the mind works that way

because it is only an instrument for safety and security;

it detects only death and not life.

So to be completely positive is to transcend mind.

Some fakir was asked to talk to a group

about the negative nature of the mind.

He tacked up on the wall a large sheet of

perfectly white paper.

He made a black spot in the paper with a pencil.

Then he asked each man to say what he saw.

Each man replied: A black spot.

The fakir then said: Yes, there is a little black spot.

But not one of you saw the big expanse of white paper –

and that is the point of my speech.

208. Love.

The forms of existence are finite – all forms.

Really, to have a form means to be finite.

But existence is infinite

because only the formless can be infinite,

and existence is formlessness,

that is why it can take all forms.

But to take form in any way is to allow death in

because form is a death sentence,

whilst existence itself is eternal life.

Do not be identified with the form:

this identification creates the fear of death

– in fact, all fear.

Remember the formless

and you will know immortality

because you will be that – then.

209. Love.

One’s attitude is everything.

Negative attitudes negate life –

they are good for dying but not good for living.

Life needs positive attitudes;

life feeds on them

because they make you

not only happy but creative also.

Once there lived an old woman,

but the older she became the younger she felt –

because youthfulness has nothing to do with age,

it is an attitude,

and with age and its richness

one can really be younger than the young.

The old woman was so cheerful and creative

that everyone wondered at her.

But you must have some clouds in your life,

said a visitor.

Clouds? she replied. Why, of course:

if there were no clouds

where would the blessed showers come from?

In the presence of trouble –

and there are troubles in life –

the positive mind grows wings

but others buy crutches.

Grow wings, and do not buy crutches.

210. Love.

There is no security in life

because life cannot exist except as insecurity –

that is why the more secure one is

the less alive one becomes.

Death is complete security.

So never be in search of security

because you are searching for death.

To live totally and in ecstasy never demands security.

Accept insecurity blissfully

and when you accept it

then you will know that it has a beauty of its own.

Mulla Nasruddin’s tomb

was fronted by an immense wooden door,

barred and padlocked.

Nobody could get into it – at least through the door.

As his last joke

the Mulla decreed that the tomb

should have no walls around it…

What the Mulla did with his tomb

everybody is doing with his life –

and unknowingly!

If you also want to do it –

at least do it knowingly,

because I know that you cannot do it knowingly!

Not only you cannot, but no one can do it,

because no one can knowingly be stupid.

211. Love.

The universe cares for little but play.

But man in his life does hardly anything but work,

and because of this everything has become upside down.

Hence the agony.

The law, the tao of the universe, is play – leela –

and the law of human reason is work

because reason cannot think beyond utility.

But existence exists beyond utility.

Meditate on this gap and you will find the bridge –

and the bridge is necessary

because you cannot exist without work,

and to exist only for work is unbearable and unlivable.

The meditative man works

so that he can play more intensely –

the reason for his work is play.

And the unmeditative man plays so that he can work more efficiently –

the reason for his play is work.

212. Love.

Life does not need comfort when it can be offered meaning

nor pleasure when it can be shown purpose,

because in the total intensity of intentional living

is the fruition of the seed of consciousness.

And consciousness without the self is the goal.

Consciousness without the center –

and you have reached.

Consciousness without ego is nirvana:

or you may call it God or whatsoever you like.

Know that everyone is seeking this state of being,

but unless the seeker is lost, this state of being cannot be found –

and the seeker can only be lost

in the fire of total intensity of living.

So live totally.

And live in the moment

and moment to moment,

because there is no other way to live totally,

and no other way to dissolve the center, the self, the ego.

213. Love.

The secret of meditation is the art of unlearning.

Mind is learning;

meditation is unlearning.

That is – die constantly to your experience.

Don’t let it imprison you.

Experience becomes a dead weight

in the living and flowing, riverlike consciousness.

Live in the moment unburdened of the past,

flow in the moment unblocked by the mind,

and you will be in meditation.

Know well that it is innocence that is full

and experience that is empty –

although the surface appearance is quite the contrary.

It is innocence that knows

and experience that knows not –

though innocence never claims

and experience is nothing but claims and claims and claims!

And that is why I say:

innocence is meditation because it opens the doors of the unknown.

So learn how to unlearn.

So learn how to be beyond the mind.

Do not cling to the known

and the master key will be in your hands.

Be open and vulnerable,

always living and flowing into the unknown,

and you will be in meditation –

you will be meditation.

214. Love.

Three men made their way to the circle of a Sufi

seeking admission to his teachings.

Almost at once one of them

detached himself from the group,

angered by the erratic behavior of the master.

On the master’s instructions

the second was told by a disciple

that the sage was a fraud.

He withdrew soon afterwards.

The third was allowed to talk

but was offered no teaching for so

long that he lost patience and left the circle.

When they had all gone away

the teacher instructed his circle thus:

The first man was an illustration of the principle:

Do not judge fundamental things through seeing.

The second was an illustration of the injunction,

Do not judge things of deep importance through hearing.

The third was an example of the dictum:

Never judge by speech or the lack of it.

When asked by a disciple

why the applicants could not have been

instructed in this matter

the master retorted: I am here to give real knowledge,

not to teach what people pretend

that they have already learned at their mother’s knees.

215. Love.

Always remember the golden rule: One step at a time.

A good natured woman was often asked for food by tramps.

She finally decided to refuse them;

it was becoming too burdensome.

But shortly after she made her resolution

one young man stopped

and asked her for a little piece of thread.

She noticed that his pants were badly ripped,

that he had a needle,

and she realized he could not get work

with his pants in their present condition,

so she gave him the thread.

The fellow took the thread,

went down the road and sat under a tree

for a few minutes,

then came back to the house.

He told the woman he could not repair the pants

unless he had a piece of cloth for a patch.

She gave him a small piece of material.

About an hour later the young fellow

came again to the house

and said: Madam, these pants are beyond repair.

It would be very good of you

if you could give me a pair of your husband’s old pants.

So she gave him a pair of old pants

and smiled at his cleverness.

The young man went behind the barn

and changed into the pants given to him.

Then he returned to the house and told the woman

that the pants were sort of big around the waist,

but if she could give him some food

he was sure they would fit perfectly.

This time the woman burst out laughing

and gave him a big dinner.

And all because he took one step at a time.

216. Love.

Knowledge is accumulation,

that is why knowledge is always dead,

while learning is moment to moment

because learning is not accumulation but movement.

So do not be dead with knowledge

but move with learning,

only then will you be alive.

Do not be tethered to experience –

experience is slavery.

Always transcend that which has been

so that you are ready to receive the new.

Ecstasy is always with the new,

with the fresh, with the young,

with the discontinuous –

and to be always in the discontinuous

is to be in the divine.

217. Love.

If one is aware of the present moment

then one also becomes aware of the fact that

there is no me inside.

The me is my past,

the me is the dead past.

The me is not my life because it is not living.

The ego can exist only in the past

or in the future –

which is nothing but a projection of the past.

That is why awareness, moment to moment awareness,

leads to egolessness –

because the ego cannot exist in the present

and because awareness cannot exist except

in the present.

So they cannot exist simultaneously.

Ego is unawareness

and awareness is egolessness.

218. Love.

I live without planning,

and I also feel that this is the only way to be alive at all.

In fact I live a wild life,

absolutely unplanned,

not knowing anything about the future –

not even about the next moment.

Today is enough for me –

really more than enough!

The moment that is present is the only living moment –

the past is dead in the sense that it is no more

and the future is also dead

in the sense that it is not yet born.

And so to be concerned with the past is to be dead

and to be concerned with the future is also to be dead.

The only way to be alive is to be here and now –

in the moment and totally in it.

Living moment to moment I have found that ecstasy and bliss

which is not of this world at all.

The single moment lived totally transcends time itself.

It becomes the gap between two moments of time,

and if one can be in this gap

then one is beyond death

because time is death

and timelessness is life.

Life is not something fixed and finished,

life is living what is,

a process, just riverlike,

flowing always into the unknown,

from the shores of the known to the shores

of the unknown.

219. Love.

Anger, violence, greed or envy

cannot be overcome by the cultivation of their opposites,

because anger itself will cultivate its opposite

and violence will be present in its cultivated non-violence.

So always be aware

of the hypnotic spell of the opposite:

it never solves any problem

because it is beating around the bush.

Do not fall into the trap of the opposite

but understand anger, violence or greed

or anything else

directly.

To seek the opposite is a way of escape.

To seek the opposite is cowardice.

Live with your mind as it is.

Do not try to change it.

Be brave and face it and understand it.

When the light of awareness falls on anger or

greed or envy

there is change.

Awareness acts as a catalytic agent –

and then anger does not change into its opposite,

it is not that violence becomes non-violence,

but there is no-anger,

there is no-violence.

And when there is no-violence there is no-mind,

and an altogether different dimension opens its door:

the dimension of the spontaneous,

the dimension of the divine.

220. Love.

Moment to moment life passes into death,

because it is death.

Covered, it appears as life,

uncovered it is death.

Always remember this fact.

This is silent meditation.

And when this remembering even penetrates

your dreams

you will have a new door opened unto you.

In fact through it you will be altogether new,

and ultimately reborn.

Remembering death gives a new dimension

to consciousness

because to remember death is not natural.

On the contrary nature has arranged

that one should not be aware of it

because the moment one transcends death

one transcends nature also.

And one cannot transcend death

unless one is totally aware of the fact.

So be totally aware of death.

And it is happening each moment within and without.

It is present everywhere.

And because it is so obvious one becomes absent to it.

Remember – and deepen the consciousness,

because as the awareness of death goes deeper

one becomes capable of feeling that which is deathless.

Really, death is the door –

the opening to the deathless.

But be conscious of it.

Be conscious and transcend.

Be conscious and know that which is before birth and after death.

And – you are that.

221. Love.

Be a stranger to yourself.

See life as a river flowing through time.

Stand on the bank, neither curious nor concerned.

Glance or gaze at the driftwood of your past

floating in your memory –

just like the incidents one reads about in the paper.

Detached and indifferent remember that nothing matters.

Only exist –

and the explosion.

222. Love.

Always be positive, in each and every situation –

that helps meditative awareness very much.

Negative attitudes negate the whole effort.

Diogenes was looking for an honest man in New Delhi.

Any luck? asked a wayfarer.

Oh, pretty fair, sir, replied Diogenes.

I still have my lantern.

223. Love.

Philosophy cannot cure you of questions –

on the contrary, it can give you more.

I heard this at a chemist’s shop:

Did the patent medicine you purchased cure your aunt?

Good heavens, no.

On reading the wrapper around the bottle

she got two more diseases.

224. Love.

Mulla Nasruddin was carrying home some liver

which he had just bought.

In the other hand he held a recipe for liver pie

which a friend had given him.

Suddenly a buzzard swooped down and carried off the liver.

You fool! shouted Nasruddin.

Having the meat is all very well,

but what will you do without the recipe?

225. Love.

Man can only know what God is not.

To know what God is, is impossible

because that’s where the realm of being begins.

You cannot know God but you can be,

and in that dimension is the only knowing.

But that knowing

is altogether different from all our other knowing

because in that knowing there is no knower

and no known,

but only knowing.

That is why in that dimension knowing and being

are the same.

There is even no knowledge.

because knowledge is dead and therefore a thing.

Moreover, knowledge is always of the past,

and God is never in the past

or in the future.

God is now, always now;

and here, and always here.

Close your eyes and see.

Then open your eyes and see.

Then neither close your eyes nor open your eyes and see.

226. Love.

There was once a man

who was obsessed with the idea

that there was a secret knower in those

who achieved success.

To discover this secret

he devoted years to study and research:

ancient masonry, philosophy, astrology, psychology,

salesmanship, religious beliefs,

the various cults that have had their rise and fall.

All these he studied long and diligently,

but no conclusion was visible.

He struggled and struggled

but still there was no conclusion.

And then instead of success in his search

for the secret of success

came death – and as death approached him

he realized the goal of his whole life’s efforts,

and finally he gave his conclusion to those

who were near him.

It came in two short words: I will.

227. Love.

Do not believe in thinking

because that is the greatest of all superstitions –

but well hidden

because it pretends to be anti-superstitious!

Thinking is nothing but dust in a blind mind

because you cannot think that which is not known –

and you need not think that which is already known.

The encounter is always with the unknown.

The unknown is everywhere,

within and without,

and thinking is always in the known and of the known.

You can never be in contact with the unknown through the known

so throw the known and be in contact with the unknown.

And this is what I call meditation.

228. Love.

Man goes on dreaming and desiring

but basically remains where he is,

and in the end

nothing but the ashes of his dreams and desires

are in his hands –

and of course there are tears in his eyes.

Panchatantra has a beautiful story:

In a certain town lived a Brahmin named Seedy

who got some barley meal by begging,

ate a portion,

and filled a jar with the remainder.

This jar he hung on a peg one night,

placed his cot beneath it

and fixing his gaze on the jar

fell into a hypnotic reverie.

Well, here is a jar of barley meal, he thought.

Now if a famine comes

I will get a hundred rupees for it.

With that sum I will get two she-goats:

every six months they will bear two more she-goats.

After goats, cows.

When the cows calve I will sell the calves.

After cows, buffaloes.

After buffaloes, mares.

From the mares I shall get plenty of horses.

The sale of these will mean plenty of gold.

The gold will buy a great house with an inner court.

Then someone will come to my house

and offer his lovely daughter with a dowry.

She will bear a son whom I shall call Moonlord.

When he is old enough to ride on my knee I will take a book,

sit on the stable roof and think.

Just then Moonlord will see me,

will jump from his mother’s lap

in his eagerness to ride on my knee

and will go too near the horses.

Then I shall get angry and tell my wife to take the boy

but she will be too busy with her chores

and will not pay attention to what I say.

Then I will get up and kick her!

Being sunk in his hypnotic dream

he let fly such a kick that he smashed the jar

and the barley meal it contained made him white all over.

229. Love.

Go on discarding: not this, not this (neti, neti),

and ultimately when nothing remains to be discarded –

then the explosion happens.

Do not cling to anything, to any thought.

Go on and on until the nothingness.

I have heard about a little boy, Toyo, and his meditations.

He was only twelve years old

but he wanted to be given something to ponder on,

to meditate on,

so one evening he went to Mokurai, the Zen master,

struck the gong softly to announce his presence,

and sat before the master in respectful silence.

Finally the master said: Toyo, show me the sound of two hands.

Toyo clapped his hands.

Good, said the master.

Now show me the sound of one hand clapping.

Toyo was silent.

Finally he bowed and left to meditate on the problem.

The next night he returned and struck the gong

with one palm.

That is not right, said the master.

The next night Toyo returned and played geisha music with one hand.

That is not right, said the master.

Again and again Toyo returned with some answer

but the master said again and again, That is not right.

For nights Toyo tried new sounds

but each and every answer was rejected.

The question itself was absurd so no answer could be right.

When Toyo came on the eleventh night,

before he said anything the master said:

That is still not right!

– then he stopped coming to the master.

For a year he thought of every possible sound

and discarded them all,

and when there was nothing left to be discarded any more

he exploded into enlightenment.

When he was no more, he returned to the master

and without striking the gong he sat down and bowed.

He was not saying anything

and there was silence.

Then the master said: So you have heard the sound without sound!

230. Love.

Thought is divisive,

it divides ad infinitum,

so thought can never come to the total, to the whole.

And the whole is while the parts are not –

or they are only for the mind –

and if there is no mind then there are no parts.

With the mind and because of the mind

the one becomes many – or appears so;

and with the mind and through the mind,

to conceive the one is impossible.

Of course it can think about the one,

but that one is nothing but a putting together of all the parts,

and that one is quite different from the one which is.

The one which is conceptualized by the mind

is just a mathematical construct:

it is not a living whole,

it is not organic,

and unless one experiences the cosmos as

an organic whole

one has not known anything at all.

This is not possible with thought,

but this is possible with no-thought.

231. Love.

Emptiness is all –

and to get hold of emptiness is to attain all and be all.

But it is very arduous to get hold of emptiness –

because it is emptiness! And it hurts much –

though it is emptiness, it still hurts much!

Because to make way for it the ego has to die.

But I am happy that you are dying

because this is the only way to be beyond death –

I say: the only way.

Remember this always.

Sekkyo once said to one of his monks:

Can you get hold of emptiness?

I will try, said the monk; and he cupped his hands in the air.

That is absurd, said Sekkyo.

You have not got anything in there.

Well, master, said the monk, please show me the right way.

Thereupon Sekkyo seized the monk’s nose and gave it a great yank.

Ouch! yelled the monk. You hurt me!

I cannot help it,

because that is the only way to get hold of emptiness!

said Sekkyo.

232. Love.

Man asks questions and then answers them himself.

Nothing is answered in this way.

But man is capable of deceiving himself –

and the whole of philosophy

is nothing but such a deception.

Man asks: What is mind?

And then answers himself: Not matter?

And then asks: What is matter?

And then answers: Not mind?

And this stupid game goes on.

I have heard about a distinguished philosopher

who always began his speeches with: Why are we here?

He had occasion to address the inmates

of a mental hospital

and ended with: Ladies and Gentlemen, why are we here?

One of the inmates called out:

We are all here because we are not all there!

233. Love.

The mind always thinks in terms of the self.

It is egocentric.

During the French revolution

a man from Paris stopped at a village

and was asked by a friend what was happening.

They are cutting off heads by the thousands,

said the visitor.

How terrible! cried the villager.

That could ruin my hat business!

But this is the way of the mind,

and because of this it is never in tune with the cosmos,

so how can it know life?

It cannot know it because it cannot be one with it.

Really with the mind there is no knowing

but only superficial acquaintance.

Intimate and deep knowing comes only with no-mind –

and meditation is the dissolving of mind into no-mind.

234. Love.

A monk asked Hyakujo Yekai:

What is the most miraculous event in the world?

Hyakujo said: I sit here all by myself!

235. Love.

Freedom from becoming means freedom for being.

Becoming is desiring,

being is that which is.

Becoming is longing for the future,

being is to be in the present.

Becoming is mental,

being is existential.

That is why becoming must cease for the being

to reveal itself.

Becoming is just like the smoke around the flame,

or just like the outer covering around the seed,

so please let the smoke go

for the flame to explode in its complete glory

and splendor,

and let the seed die to its outer shell

so that it may be what it is in its innermost depth.

236. Love.

No more principles are needed.

The world is already much too burdened with principles

and people who are men of principle.

I have heard that once a priest was consoling a widow.

He said with much feeling that her dead husband

was a man of principle.

That he was, sighed the widow.

Every Saturday night for these past twenty years

the poor man would come home

and faithfully hand me his pay envelope –

he never missed doing that.

Of course the envelope was always empty,

but mind you,

he was loyal to the principle of the thing.

237. Love.

Religion is – living without conflict,

that is, without ideas

and without ideals,

because whenever one lives with ideals

there is conflict,

there is conflict between

that which is and that which should be,

and then life is misery.

See this and go beyond.

In fact the very seeing of the fact is going beyond.

And please do not ask the seemingly inevitable, “How?”

Because there is no how to it.

Either you see it or you do not see it –

and moreover the how again creates conflict.

238. Love.

Bhakti needs only time to absorb the shock she

has come across

in her deep meditations;

remember – only time and nothing else.

The shock is nothing new.

It happens whenever the deeper layers of the unconscious

are encountered.

Before any mutation this is absolutely necessary.

Be grateful to the divine because this is a good omen.

Bhakti needed it badly,

and when she is out of it she will be a totally new person.

Soon she will be twice-born.

At present she is passing through a great spiritual crisis,

so you be with her – but just as if you are not.

Be present, but with absolute absence.

This is the only way you can be helpful to her.

Let her be alone as much as possible.

Do not talk with her

except where it is needed absolutely,

and then too be telegraphic.

But if she herself wants to talk

let her talk as much as she likes,

and you yourself just be a passive listener.

Let her do whatsoever she wants to do or not do

and soon everything will be okay.

Do not worry at all.

I will always be there beside you –

and if you can see, you will be able to see me also.

Of course Bhakti will feel my presenceand become aware

of me so many times in these days. Convey my blessings to her.

239. Love.

One day a man came to the Sufi teacher, Bahauddin.

He asked for help in his problems

and guidance on the path.

Bahauddin told him to abandon spiritual studies

and to leave his court at once.

A kind-hearted visitor began to remonstrate

with Bahauddin.

You shall have a demonstration, said the master.

At that moment a bird flew into the room

darting hither and thither,

not knowing where to go in order to escape.

The master waited until the bird settled

near the only open window

of the chamber and then suddenly clapped his hands.

Alarmed, the bird flew straight

through the opening of the window

to freedom.

To him that sound must have been something of a shock,

even an affront, do you not agree? said Bahauddin.

240. Love.

Fu Ta Shih says:

Each night one embraces a Buddha while sleeping,

each morning one gets up again with him.

Rising or sitting –

both watch and follow one another

Speaking or not speaking –

they are in the same place.

They never part even for a moment

but are like the body and its shadow.

If you wish to know the Buddha’s whereabouts,

in the sound of your own voice

there he is.

Do you understand this?

If not now – when will you understand?

And this is not being asked for the first time,

but many many times in many many lives

the same question has been raised –

and you have not yet answered!

Now, is it not time enough?

241. Love.

Mind is localization of consciousness,

and it can be localized in any part of the body.

Ordinarily we have localized it in the head,

but other cultures and other civilizations in the past

have tried other parts of the body also,

and on other planets

there are beings with other parts of their bodies

working as their minds.

But whatsoever the part chosen

localization of consciousness means its freezing,

and whenever it ceases to flow freely as is needed

it is no longer consciousness in its suchness.

Meditation means: consciousness in its suchness.

So let consciousness fill the whole body,

let it flow throughout the totality of your being

and you will have a feeling of aliveness

which is never known and felt

by localized consciousness.

Whenever there is localization of consciousness

the part in which the localization happens

becomes tense and diseased

and the remainder of the body becomes a dead weight.

But with meditative consciousness

or flowing consciousness

everything changes completely:

the whole body becomes alive, sensitive and aware

and consequently weightless.

Then there is no center at which

tensions can exist and accumulate:

they cannot exist without frozen blocks of consciousness.

The flowing, moving consciousness

washes them out constantly with every movement.

And when the whole body is alive

only then do you begin to feel

the cosmic consciousness all around you.

How can a frozen consciousness,

and that too surrounded by a dead body,

feel the cosmic?

242. Love.

Now man knows more about man than ever

and yet no problem is solved.

It seems that something is basically wrong

with our so-called knowledge itself.

This whole knowledge is derived from analysis,

and analysis is incapable of penetrating

the depths of consciousness.

The analytical method is all right for matter

or for things

because there is no inside to them,

but consciousness is insideness,

and to use the analytical method with consciousness

is to treat it as an object,

while it is not an object at all.

And it cannot be made an object;

its very nature is subjectivity,

its being is subjectivity,

so it must not be approached from outside

because then whatsoever is known about it is not about it.

Consciousness must be approached from inside –

and then the method is meditation and not analysis.

Meditation is synthetic:

it is concerned with the whole and not with the parts,

it is subjective and not objective,

it is irrational or super-rational and not rational,

it is religious or mystic and not scientific.

Authentic knowledge of consciousness

comes only through meditation and all else is

just superficial acquaintance

and basically erroneous

because the very source of it is fallacious and poisonous.

243. Love.

Life is a dream so enjoy it;

but do not ask for more because

then you only disturb the dream

and get nothing except a disturbed night.

Be a witness to the dreaming mind

and then there is transcendence:

then you go beyond dreaming and beyond mind itself.

And know well that there is an awakening

below the dreaming mind

which is nothing but just a disturbed dream.

One can get to this below-dreaming state of awakening

through asking for more, desiring more –

as ordinarily we all do.

In a dream Mulla Nasruddin saw himself

being counted out coins

and when there were nine silver pieces in his hand

the invisible donor stopped giving them.

Nasruddin shouted: I must have ten! so loudly

that he woke himself up.

Finding that all the money had disappeared

he closed his eyes again and murmured,

All right, then, give them back –

I will take the nine.

There is also an awakening above the dreaming mind –

the real awakening

in comparison to which man ordinarily is asleep.

One can reach this awakening

through witnessing the dreaming mind –

and unless one reaches it one is not really alive.

244. Love.

The divine is that from which one cannot depart,

and that from which one can depart is not the divine.

So find that from which you have never departed

and cannot ever depart from –

and then laugh at the absurdity of the human mind

and its efforts!

Buddha is still laughing because of that.

Listen!

245. Love.

Why does man suffer?

Man suffers because of his craving,

craving to possess that which cannot be possessed,

and craving to keep things forever with himself

which are essentially impermanent.

And chief among these things is his own ego,

his own persona.

But all things are impermanent.

Except for change itself

everything changes.

Really nothing is

because everything is only a process,

so as soon as one tries to possess anything it slips away.

The possessor himself is slipping away constantly!

Then there is frustration

and then there is suffering.

Know this well,

realize this well and there will be no suffering

because then you have unearthed the root.

246. Love.

The self can never be free –

because the self itself is the bondage.

This is the meaning of the penetrating saying of Jesus:

He that saveth his life shall lose it

and he that loseth his life shall know life abundant.

Or that of Lao Tzu in Tao-te-Ching:

He who humbles himself shall be saved,

he who bends shall be made straight,

and he who empties himself shall be filled.

One is not to make the self free;

rather on the contrary, one has to be free from the self.

The self is nothing but the husk of the seed.

Do not cling to it.

Sings Wu Ming Fu:

The seed that has to grow must lose itself as a seed,

and they that creep may be transformed

through the chrysalis to wings.

Wilt thou then, O mortal, cling to husks

which wrongly seem to you to be the self?

247. Love.

The gates of the temple are wide open

and it is only after thousands of years

that such opportunity comes to this earth.

Know well that they will not remain open forever.

The opportunity can be lost very easily,

and you are still wavering,

and you are still hesitating –

to enter or not to enter,

to be or not to be.

I know that the challenge is great, but I know also

that your being is completely ready to take the jump.

Hence my insistent call for you to come and enter.

And this is not for the first time that I have called you,

nor the first life;

I know you, Bhakti, through so many births!

And soon you will also remember many things.

But not before the jump.

Only your superficial persona is resisting, not you –

and it is expected to resist always

because the moment one takes the plunge

into the unknown

it has to die naturally.

So please do not identify yourself with it;

be a witness to it, and you will be in the jump.

It is time now to die to the old ego

and be reborn to the supreme self!

248. Love.

Logic is not all;

nor is consistency;

because even madness has its own methods,

rationalizations and inner consistencies.

A madman was throwing handfuls

of crumbs around his house.

What are you doing? someone asked him.

Keeping the elephants away, he answered.

But there are no elephants in these parts,

said the inquirer.

That’s right – my method is effective, isn’t it?

declared the madman.

249. Love.

Total acceptance of existence is impossible for the mind

because the mind exists as denial.

It exists with the no,

and with a total yes it dies.

So it continues to find reasons to say no

even if there are no reasons.

Walking with a disciple one day

Mulla Nasruddin saw for the first time in his life

a beautiful lakeland scene.

What a delight! he exclaimed. But if only,

if only…

If only what, master? asked the disciple.

If only they had not put water in it! said the Mulla.

250. Love.

Meditation is like the sea:

receiving the dirty river and yet remaining pure.

You need not be purified before it,

but you will come out of it purified.

Meditation is unconditional,

purity is not a prerequisite but a consequence.

251. Love.

Be as if dead,

and then dualisms will not contaminate you

and you will reach the state

of the non-arising of thought.

The brightness of self-nature will appear in full –

and when this happens you are no more.

This disappearance is the appearance of the divine,

so please – disappear!

252. Love.

Existence exists in order to exist –

and likewise life.

There is no meaning to it beyond itself

so never posit any meaning,

otherwise you will feel its meaninglessness.

It is not meaningless and it cannot be so

because there is no meaning in it all!

The very search for meaning is mean and ugly

because it comes from the utilitarian mind of man.

Existence simply is

and likewise life:

there is no purpose in it

and there is no end to it.

Feel it here and now!

Please do not practice it

because that is the way of the utilitarian mind.

Be playful

and only then will you know the playfulness

of the universe.

And to know that is to be religious.

253. Love.

Do not continue moving in the old rut –

and the way out is just by your hand.

The mind is the past, the dead past;

one has to break it somewhere and jump out of it

The mind is the prison, the slavery.

Be free of it.

And the moment is ripe.

Of course I know that you are still not clearly aware of it

but you are not unaware either.

Gather courage and jump into the unknown.

Just one step is enough

because the next follows it automatically.

But do not go on thinking and thinking and thinking.

Thinking promises to lead you somewhere

but the promise remains always a promise,

because thinking is just impotent

as far as life is concerned.

So please, be existential.

Do not hesitate.

And you have nothing to lose – because you

have nothing!

Realize this and be nothing – no-one.

254. Love.

Life is movement,

process,

fluidity;

but ideas become fixed,

so they become also anti-life.

They become dead blocks.

Do not remain with them.

Move.

And do not fear inconsistency

because life is not a syllogism,

life is not a theory

but a mystery.

Someone asked Mulla Nasruddin: How old are you, Mulla?

Forty.

But you said the same last time I asked you, five years ago!

Yes, I am always consistent and always stand by

what I have said.

255. Love.

Mind means consciousness somewhere –

centered,

focused and tense.

Meditation means consciousness nowhere,

and when it is nowhere it is everywhere –

decentralized.

Unfocused and non-tense.

Mind is agony by its very nature,

meditation – ecstasy.

Do not treat consciousness like a cat tied to a string.

This very treatment –

or mistreatment –

creates the mind.

The consciousness must be left

to itself, utterly free

to move and be

according to its nature.

Do not localize it.

Do not be partial.

This is the essence of my discipline of no-discipline.

Preserve the absolute fluidity of your consciousness

and then you will not be,

and when you are not and only consciousness is

then for the first time the doors of the divine

are open to you.

256. Love.

Yes, man learns by experience!

Two old drunkards

were in the habit of coming together twice a week

to the wine-seller to get drunk.

After years of this one of them died.

His old friend came in on the Saturday

and they told him his pal had died –

that the whisky had been taken into blood circulation

and so saturated his blood and his breath

that one night before going to bed

the old man went to blow out the candle

and his breath caught fire and he was burned to death.

The other man promptly called for a Bible

and took an oath that from that time forward

he would never blow out another candle in his life!

Yes, man learns by experience!

257. Love.

Do not imitate anyone,

do not follow anyone,

otherwise you will be just a pseudo existence –

and that is worse than suicide.

Be yourself –

and only then

can you be responsible

and authentic and real.

But ordinarily everyone is just secondhand and borrowed,

and that makes everything ugly.

Mulla Nasruddin went to a mosque and sat down.

His shirt was rather short

and the man behind him pulled it lower,

thinking it looked unseemly.

Nasruddin immediately pulled the shirt of the man

in front of him.

What are you doing? asked the man in front.

Don’t ask me, ask the man behind – he started it,

said Nasruddin.

258. Love.

The real religious experience

cannot be organized, taught or transmitted.

To systematize it is to kill it.

It is so living and moving and dynamic

that to impose a pattern on it is impossible;

and the experience is always so unique and individual

that it cannot be put into any category –

although it happens when the individual is not.

It cannot be followed,

for everyone has to find it for himself,

and that is the beauty of it,

and also its freedom and virginity.

It is not new in the sense of any opposition to the old,

it is new in the sense of timelessness –

that is, eternally fresh and innocent –

as every flower is new

and every sunrise is new

and every love is new.

It is not borrowed from the past,

it is not based on any tradition,

it is not derived from without,

it happens within,

without any causality.

It happens unconditionally.

It is not continuous with the mind,

it is a discontinuous explosion.

There are clouds in the sky

and the sky cannot be seen,

but there is no causal chain.

The clouds have gone

and the sky is clear

but there is no cause-and-effect relationship.

The sky has not even known the clouds!

It has not been affected by them in any way whatsoever.

259. Love.

Life becomes more authentic

in the direct encountering of death.

But we always try to escape the fact of death,

and so life becomes pseudo and phony.

Even death, when authentic, has a beauty of its own

while pseudo-life is just ugly.

Meditate on death

because there is no way to know life

unless you stand face to face with death.

And it is everywhere;

wherever life is death is also.

They are really two aspects of one and the

same phenomenon,

and when one comes to know this, one transcends both.

Only in that transcendence is the total flowering of consciousness

and the ecstasy of being.

260. Love.

Man adds everything to his ego –

while everything goes on without him.

He is nothing,

but he thinks himself everything.

Mulla Nasruddin was walking past a well

when he had the impulse to look into it.

It was night, and as he peered

into the deep water

he saw the moon’s reflection there.

I must save the moon! the Mulla thought,

otherwise she will never wane

and the fasting month of Ramadan

will never come to an end.

He found a rope, threw it in and called down:

Hold tight! Keep bright, help is at hand!

The rope caught in a rock inside the well

and Nasruddin heaved as hard as he could.

Straining back he suddenly felt the rope give way

as it became loose and he was thrown on his back.

As he lay there panting

he saw the moon riding in the sky above.

Glad to be of service, said Nasruddin.

Just as well I came along, wasn’t it?

261. Love.

Are you really aware of what anger is?

Are you really aware of it when it is present?

I ask these questions

because man is never present in the present.

Man lives in the past

and only becomes aware of anything

when it has become a part of his memory.

One becomes aware of anger and sadness

only when they are all over,

and then awareness is just pseudo-awareness;

it is not awareness but remembering,

and remembering leads nowhere

because it is running in a circle.

Then one can fight with anger

but can never understand it,

and fighting with anger is anger –

of course more subtle

and therefore more strong and more poisonous.

So do not think about anger or sadness or happiness

and do not understand remembrance to be awareness

but be aware when anger is present.

Be totally conscious of it,

live it consciously and do not escape from it

and then you will know what it is.

To understand it is to transcend it.

Then you will find a silence descending on you

which passes all understanding.

262. Love.

Never to have seen the truth

is better than to have seen it

and not to have acted on it.

263. Love.

One should never be afraid of rising thoughts or desires

but only of the delay in being aware of them.

264. Love.

The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace;

and the brook would lose its song if we removed the rocks.

265. Love.

Be empty and you will know.

Be empty and you will be the mirror.

Only total nothingness is capable of knowing all!

I have heard that the nun Chiyono studied for years

and meditated for years on the ultimate questions

of existence

but was unable to find the light.

The thinking was filling her so much

that she could not be a passage for the divine.

She was so filled with herself

that she could not be a host to the divine guest,

and the more she longed for enlightenment

the further off it was.

But one moonlit night she was carrying an old pail filled with water

– and the thing happened!

She was watching the full moon reflected

in her pail of water

when the bamboo strip that held the pail staves broke.

The pail fell all apart,

the water ran out,

the moon’s reflection disappeared –

and with it Chiyono herself disappeared.

She was not – but the enlightenment was there!

She wrote this verse:

This way and that way

I tried to keep the pail together,

hoping the weak bamboo

would never break.

But suddenly the bottom fell out:

no more water

no more moon in the water –

and emptiness in my hand!

266. Love.

One day Lin-chi was asked: What is the essence of meditation?

Lin-chi came right down from his seat

and taking hold of the questioner by the front of his robe,

slapped his face, then let him go.

The questioner, of course, stood there stupefied.

Then Lin-chi laughed and said to him:

Why don’t you bow?

This woke him from his reverie,

and when he was about to make a bow to the master

he had his first taste of meditation!

Please read this again and again and again,

and if you do not have the same taste

then slap your face yourself

then laugh and bow down to yourself –

and then you will certainly have the same taste.

267. Love.

The sun is rising high in the sky.

Its light enters the house through an opening.

The dust is seen moving in the ray of light

but the empty space of the room is unmoving.

Now close your eyes and be silent.

Then ask yourself: Who am I –

the moving dust or the unmoving space of the room?

Do not answer intellectually,

because intellectual answers are not answers,

but wait and realize.

Hsu Yun says: The mind is nothing but foreign dust.

Who are you – the mind? – the foreign dust? or —?

268. Love.

The mind exists to raise questions,

but only questions.

It never answers,

and it can never answer.

That is beyond it,

it is not meant for that,

that is not its function.

But it tries to answer,

and the result is the mess called philosophy!

Meditation never questions,

but it answers.

It is the answer,

because it is life,

because it is existence.

Question – and there is no answer.

Do not question – and you are the answer.

Why is it so?

It is so because

the questioning consciousness, mind, is disturbed,

and the non-questioning consciousness, no-mind,

is silent, quiet and at rest in its suchness.

Philosophy comes out of questioning,

religion, out of the non-questioning consciousness.

Logic is the method of philosophy

and meditation the method of religion.

269. Love.

If the present is just continuous with the past

then it is not present at all.

To be present,

the present must be discontinuous with the past,

only then is it young, fresh and new –

and then it is not a part of time

but is eternity itself.

The now is eternal

but we live in the past or in the future –

which is nothing but a faint echo of the past itself.

Our whole activity springs from the past

or the future –

which is the same thing.

Then the present is false and dead:

and if the present is false then we cannot be real,

and if the present is dead then we cannot be alive.

That is why I insist on living in the present

and dying each moment to the past.

Live atomically – moment to moment –

and then your life will have a totally different quality:

the quality of the divine.

270. Love.

To me meditation means –

be playful and transcend all seriousness.

See: life is not serious.

Look around: existence is not serious.

Only disease is serious, and of course death,

and the exploiters of death – the priests!

Life is playful and festive and therefore purposeless.

It is not going anywhere, because there is nowhere to go.

It is always here and here.

It is always now and now.

It is just abundant energy overflowing from here to here

and from now to now,

and once you know it and be it

you are in that ecstasy which is the purpose

of purposelessness!

Don’t be a mind and you will know it and be it.

Meditation is no-mindedness.

Mind is thinking, and thinking is going astray

from the being.

Mind is forgetfulness of “that which is”.

Meditation is coming back home.

So, come back home.

And I create situations so that

you may remember the forgotten,

and I will go on creating situations

until you have returned.

271. Love.

There are things which cannot be proved,

and there is no evidence for them

because they are self-evident.

To try to prove them is ridiculous,

and the effort shows that one

is not acquainted with them.

Such are all the proofs of God.

Sitting one day in the teahouse

Mulla Nasruddin heard the rhetoric of

a traveling scholar –

he was arguing to prove the existence of God.

Questioned by one of the company on some point

the scholar drew a book from his pocket

and slammed it on the table:

This is my evidence. And I wrote it myself!

A man who could not only read but write was a rarity,

and a man who had written a book…!

The villagers treated the pundit with profound respect –

and of course Mulla Nasruddin was impressed.

Some days later Mulla appeared at the teahouse

and asked whether anyone wanted to buy a house.

Tell us something about it,

Mulla, the people asked him,

for we did not even know that you had a

house of your own.

Actions speak louder than words! shouted Mulla,

and from his pocket he took a brick

and hurled it on the table in front of them.

This is my evidence! Examine the quality –

and I built the house myself!

272. Love.

When you are with me be completely at ease and relaxed;

that is, be totally yourself.

If you feel like crying, then cry;

if you feel like weeping, then weep –

but just be continually aware.

Do not think about what you are doing,

just be the doing.

And when your senses are shaken like leaves in the wind,

enter this shaking,

because only in such situations is the being revealed.

If a feeling against someone or for someone arises

do not project it on the person in question

but remain centered in yourself,

and you will know a transcendence

which is not of this world at all.

273. Love.

The past is not

nor is the future,

but the mind exists between these two non-existences,

and therefore – the misery.

To live in the mind is to live in misery,

in agony and in hell.

The mind is the hell.

Be aware suddenly of this

and then there is a new opening:

the opening of the present,

the opening of that-which-is.

The present is the only existence

or, it is the existence.

Be in it and you are liberated.

Live in it and there is bliss.

274. Love.

No ideology can help to create a new world

or a new mind

or a new human being,

because ideological orientation itself

is the root cause of all the conflicts and all the miseries.

Thought creates boundaries,

thought creates divisions

and thought creates prejudices.

Thought itself cannot bridge them;

that is why all ideologies fail.

Now man must learn to live without ideologies:

religious, political or otherwise.

When the mind is not tethered to any ideology

it is free to move to new understandings.

And in that freedom flowers all that is good

and all that is beautiful.

275. Love.

A disciple of Rinzai met a party

of three men on a bridge.

One of the three asked him: How deep is the river of meditation?

Find out for yourself, he said,

and offered to throw the questioner from the bridge.

But unfortunately the man ran away from him in time

and escaped.

If you meet such a man, who can throw you in the river,

be fortunate enough to be thrown!

And you have met such a man!

Now be thrown.

276. Love.

You possess only that which will not be lost in death.

All else is illusion –

even the possessor,

because that too will not be able to stand the final shipwreck.

Then find out what is left.

Turn in and meditate.

Discard all that is vulnerable to death.

Say: Not this, not that,

and go deep to the point where nothing more remains to be discarded

– and the illumination.

277. Love.

Nothing great is ever accomplished without going mad,

that is, without breaking through

the ordinary level of consciousness

and letting loose the hidden powers lying further below,

and also penetrating to the realm that is further above.

And it may not be true for any other great thing,

but it is absolutely true as far as meditation is concerned.

Meditation means madness –

of course, with a method!

278. Love.

Detach yourself from all fixed ideas:

they are the killers of all aliveness and innocence –

which are musts for illumination.

Beware of the trap of preconceptions;

they make a stagnant pool of your consciousness,

and to meet the ocean you need a dynamic one.

Be alive and fluid and flowing –

then the goal is not far off.

279. Love.

Meditation is the disciplined opening of the self to God.

Because of fear we are closed, and only love

can become a door.

So love more –

or rather be loving, then there is less fear and less tension,

and you are more open.

This helps meditation as nothing else.

Meditation plus love is the path.

280. Love.

Truth is never secondhand,

it cannot be transferred.

One has to know it and be it oneself.

That is why all tradition falsifies it,

and all scriptures,

and all words,

and in the end it is nothing

but the soup of Mulla Nasruddin…

But first I must tell you the story.

A relative from the country

came to see Nasruddin and brought a duck.

Nasruddin was grateful,

had the bird cooked, and shared it with the guest.

Presently another visitor arrived.

I am a friend, he said, of the man who gave you the duck.

Nasruddin fed him as well.

This happened several times.

Nasruddin's house had become like a restaurant

for out-of-town visitors.

Everyone was a friend of the friend

of the original donor of the duck.

Finally Nasruddin was exasperated.

One day there was a knock at the door and

a stranger appeared.

I am the friend of the friend of the friend of the man

who brought you the duck from the country, he said.

Come in, said Nasruddin.

They seated themselves at the table

and Nasruddin asked his wife to bring the soup.

When the guest tasted it

it seemed to be nothing more than warm water.

What sort of soup is this? he asked the Mulla.

That, said Nasruddin,

is the soup of the soup of the soup of the soup

of the duck.

281. Love.

Man is not a rational animal,

but only a rationalizing one;

and that is more dangerous than just being irrational.

Give me a shot of bourbon and a shot of water –

said the obviously heavy drinker to the bartender.

When the order was placed before him on the bar

the lush pulled a worm from his pocket

and dropped it into the glass of water.

After watching it swim around for a few seconds

the man drew the worm from the water

and dropped it into the whisky.

It wriggled briefly, then curled up and died.

You see that? said the lush to the bartender.

It proves that if you keep on drinking whisky

you will never have worms.

282. Love.

Life is a sermon;

existence preaches in its own way,

but always indirectly –

and that is the beauty of it.

The harmony in nature teaches,

without any intention,

the lesson of balance in life.

Look at a bird on the wing –

and effortlessly you will go into meditation.

Or listen to its song –

and for no reason your heart will move with it.

And when there is no effort on your part

the meditation goes deep and suddenly transforms you;

and when there is no motivation and you move –

the movement is in the divine.

283. Love.

I know your inner condition

more than you know it yourself

because now your inner is not my outer.

Things that are happening to you unconsciously

and even against your conscious will are good.

Welcome them and be grateful,

because nothing divine can happen to you with your will,

rather, your will is the only barrier.

Say wholeheartedly: Thy will be done!

And feel it

and live it.

Come home soon,

I am waiting for you,

and much is waiting to happen to you also.

I know you are skeptical.

That is not bad

but a good beginning to start with.

Wherever there is mind there is skepticism.

Mind is skepticism

and therefore conflict.

That is the way of the mind

and its nature.

Please do not fight with it

nor be identified with it.

These are the obvious alternatives,

but both are false,

and aspects of the same coin.

You will have to walk in between.

Come and be with me, and you will understand.

284. Dear Mukta.

Love.

Yes, you were related to Yoga Vivek in one of your past lives.

Now many things will be remembered by you soon

because the key is in your hands.

But do not think about them at all,

otherwise your imagination will get mixed up with the memories

and then it will be difficult to know

what is real and what is not.

So always be aware from now on

that you do not think about past lives:

let the memories come up by themselves.

No conscious effort on your part is needed;

on the contrary it will be a great hindrance.

Let the unconscious do the work,

you be just a witness,

and as the meditation goes deeper

many locked doors will be opened to you.

But always remember to wait for the mysteries to reveal themselves.

The seed is broken – and much is to follow.

You need only wait and be a witness.

285. Love.

Just drop yourself into the divine and be purified!

Surrender and be reborn.

Do not resist.

Let go!

286. Love.

See: this is a white paper –

it contains words.

You can look at it as white paper or as words.

Or, listen to the silence which contains a sonata;

you can be aware of the silence or of the sonata.

Or, think of the space which contains a building;

you can be aware of the space or of the building.

Or, imagine an empty house;

you can conceive of it as the walls or as an emptiness.

If you see the words, the building, the sonata and the walls

you are in the mind,

but if you see the white paper or the silence or the space

or the emptiness

then you are in meditation.

287. Love.

From sound to soundlessness is the path.

Intone a sound like A-U-M,

slowly, and as sound enters

soundlessness so do you.

Or: remain in the gap between any two sounds

and you yourself will become soundlessness.

Or: bathe in the continuous sound of a waterfall,

or any other.

Or: by putting your fingers in your ears

hear the source of all sounds –

and there will be a sudden explosion

of the silent music of the cosmos.

Using any way fall into the abyss of soundlessness

and you will achieve the divine.

288. Love.

I am thrilled with great expectations about you.

Much is to happen within you and without also.

You are on the verge of the explosion,

so be alone.

Not lonely but alone,

and live with that aloneness.

Rather, be that aloneness;

that is the only meditation for you now.

Loneliness is negative:

to be lonely is to be aware of the absence of others.

But to be alone is the most positive state of mind:

it is to be aware of the presence of oneself.

Be aware of the presence that is you.

Just be aware and wait,

wait for the happening.

Near, very near is the moment.

And remember that I am always with you.

I have always been with you

even when you did not know me.

And always feel my blessings.

289. Love.

Takuan says: You cannot bathe in solid ice,

nor can you live in a frozen consciousness –

and what is the mind except that?

Go in and find out.

Do not ask anybody,

do not go to the scriptures,

go in and find out.

Do not think about it

because that is absurd –

how can you think against the mind?

Any conclusion out of thinking

can only strengthen the mind.

Do not think because thinking

is stopping, halting and freezing.

Thinking is the disease.

Go in and find out – immediately.

A moment’s thinking

and you are again in the old rut.

A moment’s thinking

and you are as far from the real as is possible.

290. Love.

We kneel down to ourselves

because we kneel down to the gods we make

out of our experience, or out of our desires and dreams,

or out of our so-called logic and foolish arguments.

This is neither humility nor prayer,

rather, on the contrary, this is

the most egoistic attitude possible.

The truly religious mind is one which just kneels down –

not to anyone, not to any image in particular.

This kneeling down is nothing but

a flowering of one’s total nothingness.

Then this kneeling down becomes an inner way of life,

and unless prayer is such, prayer is not.

One cannot pray, one can only be prayerful.

291. Love.

You cannot run away from the self

because you are the self –

how can you run away from it?

It is like running from one’s own shadow:

all your efforts are bound to be futile.

Rather, stop and see it,

witness it, be aware of it.

Face the shadow and then – where is it?

It has never been, really.

You created it by not facing it

and you strengthened it by running from it.

Is it not time now to stop the game?

292. Love.

Search – and the ego is always somewhere behind.

Search – and in every act the ego is the motivation.

But if one can find that this is so

and can realize it,

one goes beyond it, because the very realization

is the going beyond.

Brother, said Mulla Nasruddin to a neighbor,

I am collecting to pay the debt of a poor man

who cannot meet his obligations.

Very commendable said the other, and gave him a coin.

Who is this person?

Me, said Nasruddin as he hurried away.

A few weeks later he was at the door again.

I suppose you are calling about a debt,

said the trusting neighbor.

I am.

I suppose someone can’t pay a debt

and you want a contribution?

That is so.

I suppose it is you who owes the money?

Not this time.

Well, I am glad to hear it.

Take this contribution.

Nasruddin pocketed the money.

Just one thing, Mulla –

what prompts your humanitarian sentiments

in this particular case?

Well, you see…I am the creditor!

293. Love.

Knowledge is through experiencing.

Mere information is not knowledge,

on the contrary it cannot give the clarity

which knowledge gives to the mind

and may confuse one more

because a confused mind is still more burdened with it.

Two men had played chess

regularly together for several years.

They were quite evenly matched

and there was keen rivalry between them.

Then one man began to beat his rival nearly every time they played

and the other man was completely at a loss

to understand this phenomenon.

On the contrary, he was expecting his game to improve

because he was reading a four-volume set

on How to Play Chess.

After much thought he came up with an idea.

He sent the books to his friend as a gift –

and it was not long before they were evenly

matched again!

294. Love.

There is no proof of the divine in the world

for it is hidden deep, deep, deep inside.

But in you there is the absolute proof,

for it is deep, deep, deep, inside.

Go in and discover it.

Thinking about it will not help:

action is needed,

action turned on oneself –

so act.

That is, turn in.

Man is like a sealed book

written before he was born,

and ordinarily he carries it unopened inside himself

until he dies.

One who opens it knows that he is not

and only the divine is.

295. Love.

Truth is aristocratic.

It cannot be decided by votes or numbers

because truth is enough in itself,

it needs no help or support;

it even needs no proof because truth is self-evident.

A certain man was believed to have died

and was being prepared for burial

when he revived.

He sat up but he was so shocked at the scene around him that he fainted.

He was put in a coffin

and the funeral party set off for the cemetery.

Just as they arrived at the grave

he regained consciousness,

lifted the coffin lid

and cried out for help.

It is not possible that he has revived, said the mourners,

because he has been certified as dead

by competent experts.

But I am alive! shouted the man.

He appealed to a well-known and impartial scientist

and jurisprudent who was present.

Just a moment, said the expert.

He then turned to the mourners, counting them:

Now we have heard what

the alleged deceased has had to say;

you fifty witnesses tell me what you regard as the truth.

He is dead, said the witnesses.

Bury him, said the expert.

And so he was buried.

296. Love.

Choice is the root cause of all anguish.

Choose and you always choose hell –

even when you choose heaven.

And who chooses hell directly?

Yet everyone lives in hell.

What a trick!

The gates of heaven open into hell!

Then what is to be done?

Nothing at all,

because in doing nothing

you can rest content with all things as they are,

and you have knocked at the right door

without even knocking!

297. Love.

Silence is benediction

but not the silence you can create,

because you are the noise

so you cannot create silence.

But you can create the illusion of it,

and this illusion is created by all sorts of

auto-hypnotic techniques.

So never use auto-suggestions to be silent;

rather, be aware of the constantly chattering mind,

and be aware, not to make it still but to understand it.

This very understanding flowers into a silence

which is not just absence of noise

but a positive bliss.

298. Love.

To explore truth one must be free of one’s prejudices –

that is, from oneself.

Otherwise one goes round and round in circles,

because the known can never

be the door for the unknown;

and the known is the mind,

so mind becomes the barrier.

Look attentively at this fact.

Be alert to the vicious circle of the mind –

and then there is transcendence.

The known must cease for the unknown to be.

The known must go for the unknown to come in –

and this cessation of the known is meditation.

299. Love.

The more deeply you go within yourself

the less you will find yourself –

and yet that is the very heart of your being.

And vice versa also:

because the more you go without

the more you will find yourself –

and yet that is the very heart of your non-being.

These are the two ways in which you can go.

The first is the way of meditation,

and the second is the way of the mind.

300. Love.

Be ordinary, so ordinary that you come to be

virtually nobody –

and there is the opening,

and there is the explosion.

Only when you are not are you the extraordinary!

But do not think about it

and do not crave it,

and if the craving comes – be aware and laugh.

It will be stopped by awareness

and the created energy will be used by the laughter,

and after the laugh you will feel a deep relaxation.

Then begin to dance or sing

and the negative state of the mind

will be transformed into the positive.

The craving to be someone, somebody,

is absolutely negative

because the ego is the negation of being.

The ego is the principle of negation,

and if the negative is negated then you are positive.

The ego is the source of all inferiority,

but the trick is subtle

because the ego promises superiority

and in the end only results in inferiority.

Decode this secret and understand it very clearly.

One who thinks in terms of superiority

will always remain inferior

because these are two aspects of the same coin.

Sow the seeds of superiority

and you will reap the crop of inferiority.

Begin with the longing for superiority

and you will end up with nothing but inferiority

and all the hell that is involved in it.

Begin with humbleness, with humility,

and you are nearer to the divine.

In fact you are divine

but the ego will not allow you any gap

to look into your own divinity.

On the contrary

it will go on creating new, imaginary heavens

only to make way for new hells.

Enter heaven and you are entering hell!

Beware of this, and beware of your so-called self –

the creator of all the agonies that exist on earth.

Be a no-self and you will be that which you are already

and have been always –

that which is bliss eternal,

and freedom,

and the cosmic being, the brahman.

Tat tvam asi – that art thou, my love.

301. Love.

Man is unaware of himself.

He does not know what is happening to him,

nor does he know the state of his being.

A man cut down a tree one day.

A Sufi who saw this taking place said:

Look at this fresh branch which is full of sap, and happy

because it does not know yet that it has been cut off.

But his companion said:

Yes, it may be ignorant of the damage it has suffered,

but it will know in due time.

Hearing this the Sufi laughed and said:

Meanwhile you cannot reason with it.

This reverence is the state of man.

This ignorance is the state of man –

and meanwhile you cannot reason with him!

Or can you?

But this is irrelevant.

If you can reason with yourself that is more than enough!

302. Love.

In life everything is whole, and organically whole.

You cannot divide it

or take it in parts.

Love is like that

and meditation is also like that.

Even death is like that.

That is why I say:

Death is not dead but organically one with life.

You cannot die partially!

– either you die or you do not die.

Nor can you die gradually.

Please remember this always

when you are in meditation or in prayer or in worship.

A very valuable dachshund

owned by a wealthy woman was run over.

The policeman sent a man

to tell the woman of her misfortune.

But break the news gently, he said.

She thinks a lot of this dog.

The man rapped on the mansion door

and when the woman appeared, he said: Sorry, lady,

but part of your dog has been run over.

303. Love.

Artificial and outward discipline have no use –

the inner and natural discipline is enough.

But what is the inner discipline?

In one word: acceptance –

total acceptance.

And acceptance can be only total

because partial acceptance

is just a contradiction in terms.

If you live – live!

If you die – die!

If you suffer – suffer!

And then there is no problem

and no anxiety

and no anguish –

and what freedom!

A Zen master was once asked:

It is terribly hot, how shall we escape it?

Why not go, answered the master,

to the place where it is neither –

neither hot nor cold?

Where is that place?

And then the master laughed and said:

In summer we sweat and in winter we shiver.

304. Love.

How can a man learn to know himself? inquires Goethe,

and then answers:

Never by reflection but only by action.

John Burroughs doubts this.

He says:

Is not this a half-truth? –

because one can only learn his powers of action by action

and his powers of thought by thinking.

But I say that

man is always more than all his actions and

all his thoughts,

and unless that more is known no one knows himself.

That more can be known neither

by action nor by reflection

because they both belong to the periphery

and that more is eternally the center.

It can only be known through witnessing action

and thought both:

not by them but by witnessing them.

And witnessing is meditation.

305. Love.

There is no answer to man’s ultimate questions

because the questions are absurd,

and moreover there is no one to answer them.

Existence is silent and has always been so,

so do not ask

but be silent and live it and know it,

because there is no knowing except living.

The search for answers is meaningless.

A patient in a mental hospital

placed his ear to the wall of his room, listening intently.

Quiet! he whispered to an orderly and pointed

to the wall.

The attendant pressed his ear against the wall, listened, and then

said: I don’t hear anything.

No, replied the patient.

It’s awful, it’s always been this way!

306. Love.

The mind lives in a logical somnambulism,

and it feeds on arguments and words.

You cannot come out of it gradually

or logically or rationally.

Rather, take the jump,

illogical and irrational —

and the jump can be nothing else than that.

It cannot be calculated

or conceptualized or predetermined

because it is going into the unknown

and the unchartered

and the unpredictable,

and ultimately not only into the unknown

but into the unknowable also.

307. Love.

Meditation cannot be taught directly

because it is not a mechanical technique,

but a living art.

Dogo had a disciple called Soshin.

Soshin waited long with his master

to be taught the art of meditation.

He expected lessons the way a schoolboy

is taught at school,

but there no special lessons were forthcoming,

and this bewildered and disappointed the disciple.

One day he said to the master:

It is a long time since I came here

but not a word has been given to me

regarding the essence of meditation.

Dogo laughed at this heartily and said:

What are you saying, my boy?

Since your arrival I have continually

been giving you lessons on the matter!

At this the poor disciple was even more bewildered

and for some time he could not think what to say.

Then one day he gathered courage and asked again:

What kind of lesson could it have been, sir?

Dogo said:

When you bring me a cup of tea in the morning, I take it;

when you serve me a meal, I accept it

and when you bow to me I return it with a nod.

How else do you expect to be taught in meditation?

Soshin hung his head

and began to think about the

puzzling words of the master,

but at this the master said again:

If you want to see, see, right at once,

because when you begin to think

you miss the point altogether.

308. Love.

Meditate, pray and wait.

Do not will anything,

for in you there is strength

greater than any strength of your own.

But it works only when your will is at rest.

309. Love.

Be free at the center;

let the center relax and die:

be only a circumference –

and this is the only renunciation I know.

No man is free until he is free at the center.

When he lets go then he is really free –

and then life is not anguish

and then life is not agony

because no hell can exist without the self, the center.

310. Love.

Do you hear me?

Do you see me?

I stand at the door and knock,

and I knock because of a promise made

in another life and another age.

311. Love.

Be in the crowd as if you are alone

and vice versa.

Receive a guest with the same attitude

you have when alone,

and when alone

maintain the same attitude you have in receiving guests.

In this way the drop drops into the ocean.

On retiring, sleep as if you have entered your last sleep,

and upon awakening be reborn again.

In this way the ocean drops into the drop.

312. Love.

Emptiness is not really emptiness:

rather, it is the all.

It is not negative:

rather, it is positivity itself.

It is out of it that everything is born

and to it everything returns.

It is the source and ground of all existence.

So whenever I say emptiness

I never mean just emptiness!

To me emptiness is not the absence of anything

but the presence of emptiness itself.

And now you can understand it

because you yourself are in it,

and it is in you.

Once a student asked Joshu: Sir, you teach that

we must empty our minds,

but I have nothing in my mind;

now what shall I do?

The old master laughed and said:

Throw it out!

But I have nothing. How can I throw it out?

If you can’t throw it out, carry it out!

Drive it out!

Empty it out!

But don’t stand there in front of me with nothing

in your mind!

313. Love.

Come here whenever it is possible.

You will always be welcomed.

And stay with me a little longer,

and let me help.

It will be difficult for you

because you will have to let go of yourself completely.

But it is not impossible –

and for you especially

because I have seen in you the great potential

that is awaiting its opportunity.

With you much that is impossible is possible.

There is a seed which is longing to explode.

Its very longing is the source of your search,

its longing is the tension that you are today

and its longing will be the freedom

that you will be tomorrow.

The essence is there and

the existence will follow if you so wish.

Please follow its call to the conclusion.

Go on doing meditation.

Do not seek results,

they will come by themselves when the time is ripe.

And the time is ripe

but you still are not.

Let meditation ripen you.

314. Love.

Life is non-fragmentary,

but mind makes it appear fragmentary;

and this fragmentation creates all the problems.

Beware of fragments

and always look beyond them

and below them

and through them –

then you will be able to see the ocean

in spite of all the waves.

The waves are in the ocean

but the waves are not the ocean.

The ocean can be without the waves

but the waves cannot be without the ocean.

315. Love.

Mind means duality

and meditation, oneness.

In Zen they call it – The One Sword.

Kusunoki Masashige came to a Zen monastery

when he was about to meet the oncoming army

of Ashikaga Takanji, and asked the master:

When a man is at the parting of the ways

between life and death, how should he behave?

The master answered: Cut off your dualism

and let the one sword stand serenely by itself

against the sky!

316. Love.

The real thing is

not to fight with your thoughts or desires or instincts

because that is negative

and the negative cannot help.

The real thing is

to grow in awareness, in meditation,

because then one wins without any fight whatsoever.

And to win through conflict is not a real victory

because that which has been suppressed

will have to be suppressed again and again.

Through conflict there is no end to conflict

and through fight only more fight is born.

But there is a victory

without any conflict, fight or suppression.

That victory comes through positive growth in awareness.

Do not fight with yourself

but grow in awareness and understanding and silence,

and all that is negative and diseased

will have withered away by itself.

Suzuki tells a story:

Chi Hsing Tzu was raising a fighting cock for his lord.

Ten days passed and the lord asked:

Is he ready? Chi answered:

No sir, he is not ready.

He is still vain and flushed with rage.

Another ten days passed and the prince asked

about the cock.

Chi said: Not yet, sir.

He is on the alert whenever he sees the shadow

of another cock

or hears its crowing.

Still another ten days passed

and when the inquiry came from the prince, Chi replied:

Not quite yet, sir.

His sense of fighting is still smoldering within him

ready to be awakened.

When another ten days elapsed

Chi replied in response to the inquiry:

He is almost ready.

Even when he hears another crowing he shows

no excitement.

He has now become positive.

He has grown in subtle inner awareness.

Now he resembles one made of wood,

he is so quiet and silent.

His qualities are integrated.

No cock is his match

and to win he will not have to fight

because other cocks will run away from him immediately.

They cannot face him now.

And really it proved so.

He won fights without fighting at all.

And I say that you can do likewise with yourself:

learn the secret from Chi Hsing Tzu’s cock!

317. Love.

Everything has happened as it should happen.

And l was surprised not because you ran away from here

but because I never thought you could be

so predictable!

It is not from here that you have escaped,

it is only a vain effort to escape from yourself –

which is impossible.

How can one escape from oneself?

But in meditation a moment comes,

necessarily comes, when the mind tries the impossible –

for the mind this is the last defensive act.

Meditation is ultimately suicidal to the mind.

And of course the mind must be given a chance –

and you have given it!

Meditation is encountering yourself

directly and in your total nakedness.

This creates fear and the futile effort to escape.

The effort is futile because

whatsoever is known once is known forever

and you cannot be the old ignorant person again.

There is no way to go back

and there is no bridge.

This escape will make you more mature too

and you will come back strengthened

through it and because of it.

Now relax there under the sky and beside the sea

and I will be there.

Whenever you are relaxed you will feel my presence.

And when you feel like coming, come back –

and soon you will feel this.

I will be waiting here for you as ever.

Come and continue the arduous journey

towards your self.

318. Love.

I know that the apprenticeship

is very hard but worth it.

So keep on. It is arduous,

but one has to pay for everything,

and in no other way can you get to the great treasure.

You have longed for it for lives and lives

and now when the time is ripe

and the key is being given to you

do not lose courage.

Access to the treasure is difficult

because it is hidden

in our own unconscious layers of the mind.

It will be easy if you approach that threshold

when the diurnal tide is favorable,

that is when you are passing from sleep to waking

or from waking to sleep.

So evening and morning

are probably the best times for meditation.

You might have noticed that when the mind

is recovering from sleep it takes at least fifteen minutes

to close one aperture and fully open the other.

That is why dreams

cannot last longer than that

in your memory after waking.

When the mind is approaching sleep

it again passes the same threshold.

Be aware of this threshold

because it is very significant

for those who are in search of the inner treasure.

This threshold is the gate to the unknown.

This threshold,

this gap between waking and sleep,

must be used for meditation.

Be aware of the gap,

be a witness of the interval,

and you will be transformed.

319. Love.

I know what is happening to you –

nothingness is descending, emptiness is increasing.

Welcome it, and rejoice in its coming.

Dance in ecstasy because

there is no other way to welcome it.

And the more you dance, the more you will die.

And when you are completely dead you will be reborn.

And the moment is near, very near – just by the corner.

You have passed through the entrance-explosion and now

be ready for the ultimate.

Look at yourself once more

as the river looks at itself before falling into the ocean,

because after falling into the ocean

there will be no one to look, and no one to be looked at!

320. Love.

What is meditation?

Hsu Yun says: Meditation lies in laying down.

But laying down what?

Laying down yourself – because nothing less will do.

Have you ever been at the bedside of a dead man?

If you try to scold him he will not be excited,

and even if you hit him with a staff he will not hit back.

He also indulged once in the same things everyone indulges in.

He also longed for reputation and wealth.

But now he is without any longing whatsoever.

Now he does not make any distinctions

and lays down everything.

If you can be in this laying down state – alive,

you are in meditation.

321. Love.

Leave the grasping of things and thoughts.

Open your fist completely

because grasping is suffering.

Stop! cries Buddha.

But the mad mind does not stop.

If it stops, it is Enlightenment!

322. Love.

Love to be alone.

Solitude is the temple of the divine,

and remember that there is no other temple.

323. Love.

Do not be closed to the universe.

Open all your doors and windows

and let everything pass freely in and out, out and in,

because only then will you be able to receive the truth.

324. Love.

Ego plays a subtle role everywhere –

not only in men but in mice also!

An arrogant elephant

looked down contemptuously at a mouse

and said: You are just about

the skinniest little creature I have ever seen.

I am not always like this, squeaked the mouse.

I’ve been sick!

325. Love.

The whole of Yoga has gone dead because of imitation.

One cannot imitate anything that is real.

The real is always spontaneous:

one can jump into it but one cannot practice it.

Any practice is of the mind and by the mind –

and the mind is the past, the dead.

The mind is the thing one has to jump out of.

Out of the mind is the explosion,

so be aware of the mind and its tricks!

Mamiya went to a great teacher to learn meditation.

The teacher told him to concentrate on the famous koan:

What is the sound of one hand?

Mamiya went away

and came back a week later shaking his head.

He could not get it.

Get out! said the master. You are not trying hard enough.

You still think of money and food and pleasure.

It would be better if you died,

then you might learn the answer.

The next week Mamiya came back again.

When the master asked him:

Well, what is the sound of one hand? –

he clutched at his heart, groaned

and fell down as if dead.

Well, you have taken my advice and died,

said the master,

but what about the sound?

Mamiya opened one eye:

I have not solved that yet, he said.

Dead men don’t speak, said the master.

Get up and get out!

326. Love.

We settle down where no settling is possible.

We make homes

whilst homelessness is the very nature

of our consciousness.

We go on doing things which are impossible

and then suffer!

But no one else is responsible.

We fight with the void and are then defeated –

not because the void is stronger than us

but because it is not.

Now stand up

and fight with the empty space of the room

so that you can know and taste

the whole stupidity of the human mind.

And then sit down and laugh at yourself,

and as the laughter dies down

be silent and search within,

and then you will come to know a deep mystery:

the mystery that the void is not only without

but within also!

327. Love.

Death is everywhere

but everyone deceives himself that it is not for him.

This is the greatest

and the deepest deception the human mind is capable of,

and unless one is constantly aware of this fact

one is bound to be a victim of this deception –

because the mind goes on giving

very beautiful and logical rationalizations

up to the very end.

I have heard about a ninety-year-old man

who got into a bitter argument with his shoemaker

as to how a pair of shoes should be made.

See here, said the shoemaker,

What’s the idea of doing so much yapping?

You are past ninety

and there is little chance of your living long enough

to wear these shoes out.

The old fellow looked sternly at the shoemaker

and said: Apparently you are not aware

that statistics prove that very few people

die after ninety years of age!

328. Love.

Information is not knowledge

because information is not transformation

and can never be –

and knowledge comes only through transformation.

Information is adding something to the same old mind.

It is quantitative;

there is no qualitative change

because the mind behind it remains the same.

That is why all that is called education

just proves to be superficial.

Mind must go through a qualitative change,

otherwise there is no wisdom;

and to go on adding information to ignorance is fatal.

I call meditation

the method for mind’s total mutation.

First let there be a transformation

of the very quality of the mind

and only then education can be educative.

In ancient times

the king of a certain country was concerned

because his son was something of a fool.

The king’s counselors urged that the son be sent away

to a great university in another land

in the hope that the boy

would acquire learning and wisdom.

The king agreed.

The son studied hard for several years

then wrote to his father that he had learned

just about everything possible

and pleaded to be allowed to return home.

The king assented.

When the son arrived at the palace

the king was overjoyed.

A great feast was prepared

and all the great men of the kingdom were invited.

At the end of the festivities

one of the sages present asked the son

what he had learned.

The young man ticked off the university’s curriculum

that he had gone through. While the lad was talking

the sage slipped a ring off his finger,

closed his hand over it,

held up his hand and asked: What do I hold in my hand?

The son thought for a moment and said:

It is a round object with a hole in the center.

The sage was astonished at such wisdom.

Maybe the lad had become a great mind.

Will you now name the object? asked the sage.

The king’s son pondered for a few moments, then said:

The sciences that I studied do not help me

in answering your question,

but my own commonsense tells me that it is a cartwheel.

The sage concluded to himself

that you can educate a fool

but you cannot make him think.

329. Love.

Yes, there is a way,

but in many the will is lacking to find it.

And it is not far away,

it is just by the corner, so to speak.

Knowingly or unknowingly all men long for it.

Really, the whole of life is a longing for it

because without it

there is no reaching, no flowering, no fulfillment.

But few men seek it

and still fewer seek it rightly

and still fewer find it –

and all of those who find it do not enter.

Only a few enter

and still fewer progressively follow it.

But those who follow it with their total being

realize that the way is the goal itself!

330. Love.

Mind and meditation are two names

of the same substance,

or the same energy.

Mind is energy flowing in dualisms,

in conflict and dis-ease;

and meditation is non-dual energy,

one with itself and at ease.

Thinking is impossible without dualisms,

that is why meditation asks you to go beyond thinking.

The moment there is no thinking –

or a single ripple of thought –

the energy becomes integrated

and there is a qualitative change.

The no-thinking energy

opens the door of the dimensionless dimension.

So refrain from seeking even

Enlightenment or Buddhahood

because with any seeking whatsoever

the mechanism of thought

begins to operate and create dualisms.

331. Love.

Do not forget the search for the divine

for even a single moment

because the time is always short and the task is great,

and besides, the mind is wavering.

In fact the mind is the wavering.

Remember this, and remain aware of this fact

as much as you can

because the moment one is aware, the wavering stops,

and in the intervals are the glimpses:

glimpses of oneself, glimpses of no-mind.

One has to absolutely transcend the wavering of the mind before one comes to the doors of the beloved.

No-mindedness is the door.

And the door is not far off.

But the seeker is asleep.

Mind is the sleep.

That is why you will have to be attentive and alert

to everything that passes before your consciousness –

even be attentive to the inattentive moments.

Through constant awareness

the spiritual sleep will be broken

and you will he transformed.

This is your potentiality,

this is everyone’s potentiality,

and for you the time is ripe.

But the seed can remain a seed and die.

The opportunity can be lost.

You are free to be that which you are meant to be

or to be that which you are not meant to be.

Man is free to be or not to be –

this is the glory and this is the burden.

Freedom means responsibility,

so be careful.

If you can be that which is your potentiality,

if you can flower in your fullness

then there is bliss

then there is ecstasy, otherwise

ashes are in the hands

and anguish in the heart.

And ultimately everything depends on you:

heaven or hell –

and you and only you will be responsible for it.

So be careful.

My blessings are always with you.

332. Love.

Metaphysics is born out of childish curiosity,

so however sublime, it remains juvenile.

And all the ultimate answers are foolish in a way

because the ultimate is not only unknown,

it is unknowable.

A mature mind is one

who understands the impossibility

of knowing the ultimate,

and with this understanding

there is a new dimension:

the dimension of being.

Knowing is not possible, but being is.

Or in other words:

in relation to the ultimate, only being is knowing.

This dimension is the religious dimension,

and unless one is religious in this sense

one goes on asking absurd questions

and accumulating even more absurd answers.

In a little backwoods school

the teacher was at the blackboard explaining

arithmetic problems.

She was delighted to see her dullest pupil

paying fixed attention,

which was unusual for him.

Her happy thought was that at last

the lanky lad was beginning to understand.

When she finished she said to him:

You were so interested, Cicero,

that I am sure you want to ask some questions.

Yes’m, drawled Cicero, I got one to ask.

Where do those figures go when you rub them off?

333. Love.

Do not cling to anything,

to any idea,

because clinging is the bondage.

Even if one is clinging to the idea of liberation –

moksha or nirvana –

one will be in bondage.

With clinging meditation is impossible

because clinging is mind, the bondage;

and no-clinging is meditation –

the freedom.

In the Book of Amu Daria there is an old Sufi tale:

Once upon a time there was a monkey

who was very fond of cherries.

One day he saw a delicious looking cherry

and came down from his tree to get it,

but the fruit turned out to be in a clear glass bottle,

so he had to put his hand into the bottle to get it out.

As soon as he had done so

he closed his hand over the cherry

but then he found that he could not

withdraw his fist holding the cherry

because it was larger than the bottle’s neck.

Now all this was deliberate

because the cherry in the bottle was a trap laid

by a monkey hunter

who knew how monkeys think.

The hunter, hearing

the monkey’s whimperings, came along.

The monkey tried to run away,

but because his hand was, as he thought,

stuck in the bottle,

he could not move fast enough to escape.

But as he thought he still had hold of the cherry,

he consoled himself.

The hunter picked him up

and tapped the monkey sharply on the elbow

making him suddenly relax his hold on the fruit.

The monkey was now free –

but he was captured.

The hunter had used the cherry and the bottle

and he still had them.

This monkey-way of thinking is the mind-way also!

And in the end when death, the hunter, comes,

everyone is found caught in his own bottle.

Remember, before the hunter comes

make sure your hand is out of the bottle!

334. Love.

A life without meditation

is like a winter landscape with the sun hidden,

the flowers frozen and the wind whispering

through the withered leaves.

And everyone knows it

because everyone lives it that way,

though no one needs to live it that way.

But why is this so?

This is so because life’s needs require an occupied mind

and meditation means being unoccupied.

We train ourselves to be occupied

and then forget that one needs to be unoccupied sometimes

to know the ecstasy of sheer existence.

One is to be totally vacant inside

because only then is one a host to the divine guest.

335. Love.

Meditation is beyond knowledge.

You can be it but you cannot know it.

All knowledge is superficial.

It is never anything else

but an acquaintance from outside.

It is always about

but never the thing itself;

When the Chinese emperor Wu

came to meet Bodhidharma

he asked the master:

What is the holy, ultimate truth?

Bodhidharma laughed and replied:

Nothing holy, sir,

and it is emptiness itself.

Of course Wu was taken aback, but he asked again:

Then who is the one who at present

stands confronting me?

Bodhidharma simply said:

I don’t know.

Do you see the beauty of it?

And the truth?

And the innocence?

And the holiness?

And the fullness?

And how absolutely ultimate it is?

336. Love.

It is very easy to progress from one illusion to another

because no foundational transformation is needed.

There is no shaking of the foundations

because you remain the same.

So the real problem is not to change the objects of desire

from the worldly to the other-worldly

but to transform oneself;

not to change the seeking

but to change the seeker –

otherwise the problem remains as it is,

it just takes new shapes.

But how to change the seeker?

First find out where it is and what it is,

and then you will come to know a hidden secret:

the seeker exists only while it is not sought,

and when someone goes out to search for it –

it is never found.

It exists only in ignorance and in darkness;

in awareness it is not.

This realization of no-self is the jump.

Jump into the unknown.

Jump into the truth.

337. Love.

Whatever I say is nothing new,

nor is it anything old.

Or it is both –

the oldest and the newest.

And to know it you need not listen to me.

Listen to the birds in the morning

or to the flowers and grass blades in the sun

and you will hear it,

and if you do not know how to listen to them

then you will not know from me either.

So the real thing is not what you listen to

but how you listen,

because the message is everywhere, everywhere, everywhere.

Now I will tell you the art of listening:

walk about until exhausted or dance or

do vigorous breathing

and then, dropping to the ground, listen;

or repeat your own name loudly until exhausted

and then suddenly stop and listen;

or at the point of sleep

when sleep has not yet come

and external wakefulness vanishes,

suddenly be alert and listen.

And then you will hear me.

338. Love.

That which is never lost cannot be found,

and to search for it is absurd.

But the moment this absurdity is understood

all seeking stops by itself

and that which is never lost is found!

That is why I say:

Seek and you will not find,

because the very seeking is the barrier.

The search itself is the hindrance

because it creates the seeker, the ego,

the illusion that I am.

And I am not.

Do not seek and you will find it:

the I-am-not-ness.

This nothingness is the gate.

The Gateless gate.

Riko once asked Nansen

to explain to him the old problem of the goose

in the bottle.

If a man puts a gosling into the bottle, he said,

and feeds the gosling through the bottle’s neck

until it grows and grows and becomes a goose –

and then there is simply no more room inside the bottle,

how can the man get it out without killing the goose

or breaking the bottle?

Riko! shouted Nansen, and gave a great clap

with his hands.

Yes master! said Riko with a start.

See! said Nansen.

The goose is out!

339. Love.

Meditation requires understanding and not effort,

understanding is essential, not effort,

and remember always that you cannot

substitute understanding with any effort whatsoever.

But what do I mean by understanding?

By understanding I mean – living a natural life.

Of course, you cannot try to be natural,

that is self-contradictory!

You can be natural but you cannot try to be natural.

Do you understand this?

Suzuki tells a story:

A monk once asked one of the old Chinese masters:

What is the way?

The master replied: The natural one, the ordinary one,

is the way.

How, continued the monk, am I to be in accord with it?

When you try to be in accord with it, said the master,

then you deviate from it.

Does this mean that one should not try?

No, because that too is a way of trying.

Of course, indirect, but still intentional;

that too will not help.

But just see the dilemma clearly and you are out of it.

Are you not?

340. Love and blessings.

I received your letter.

I was waiting for it daily since you left.

I know that you have gone far away from here

but I also know that now you cannot go away from me –

and that nearness is all that counts.

You have come near me in a non-spatial and

non-temporal sense.

The meeting has taken place in the nowhere

or in the everywhere –

because they mean the same thing.

And the real meeting takes place only in this way.

All else is illusion.

Remember me whenever you need

and you will find me then and there.

Ask anything and wait – and you will be answered.

The barriers have fallen from your mind

and you have entered the meditative state.

Now the doors of the divine are open.

Do not hesitate, and take the plunge.

You are completely ready,

just be courageous enough to enter the uncharted

and the unknown.

The call from beyond has come –

now accept the challenge and be fulfilled.

Now close your eyes

and feel me and see me and let my blessings

be showered on you.

341. Love.

Don’t take life so seriously,

because seriousness is a great dis-ease,

and not only a disease but a suicide also.

Be playful – totally,

because that is the only way to be living.

Life is a play, a leela, and to know it as such is religion,

and to live it as such is sannyas – renunciation.

If you can act and live as if acting and living in a dream

and still be a witness to it

then you will be in the cosmic flow, the tao.

And to be in the cosmic flow is to be free –

free from oneself, the ego.

The ego is the seriousness, the disease,

and the tao, the egoless existence, is the bliss, the ecstasy.

That is why I have given you such an absurd name!

But I have given it to you knowingly.

I have given it to you so that

you may never be identified with it.

The name is so absurd

that you will have to remain nameless

and a nobody behind it.

The name is such that not only others

but you yourself

will be able to laugh at it.

SWAMI KRISHNA CHRIST!

What a name!

But perfectly suitable in a dream drama,

is it not so?

So feel at ease with it,

and laugh with it, and sing and dance with it,

and be Swami Krishna Christ

with all the letters capitalized!

And always remember that you are nobody.

Always be aware that

you are neither a swami nor a Krishna nor a Christ –

that is what is meant by a swami!

And Krishna himself is not a Krishna,

Christ himself is not a Christ,

because they are nameless, absolutely nameless.

They are nobodies – and that is what makes them divine.

The moment one is identified with any name

one is lost to one’s divinity.

Either one can be a name or a reality,

and no one can be both simultaneously.

Really be a name –

and your reality is lost.

Really be a reality –

and your name is just a dream, maya.

And what nonsense to be a swami!

But once one is at ease with the no-sense

one transcends it.

Please! Don’t try to be sensible

otherwise you will never have any sense at all –

because only stupidity tries to be sensible!

The existence is absurd

and meaningless

and irrational –

and that is why it is so beautiful,

and to be in it, such a blessing!

342. Love.

Man is free to decide, but not free not to decide –

because not to decide is to decide,

to waver is to decide,

to postpone and evade decision is to decide.

There is no escape:

one must say yes or no.

And there are a thousand ways of saying no,

only one way of saying yes,

and no way of not saying anything at all.

This is the human situation,

and the seeker of truth must be aware of it,

otherwise life is wasted unnecessarily.

A single moment lost cannot be regained –

and we have wasted so many lives –

so decide to decide,

and decide to transform and transcend.

With the decision comes crystallization,

and then one is ready to take the jump into the unknown.

343. Love.

A traveler stops at an inn:

he passes the night there,

takes his meal,

and as soon as he has done so

he packs and continues his journey again.

As for the host of the inn, he has nowhere to go.

The one who does not stay is the guest,

and the one who stays is the host.

Now who are you –

the guest or the host?

Meditate.

No answer is required,

rather, realize,

because all answers belong to the guest

and realization only to the host.

But do not believe me, I may be just deceiving you.

Go in and find out for yourself!

344. Love.

Meditation is the master key.

It can open the doors of the infinite

and it can unlock the mystery of the unknown.

But just by possessing the key nothing is attained,

unless one uses it.

Idries Shah tells a dervish tale:

There was once a wise and very rich man who had a son.

He said to him:

My son, here is a jeweled ring.

Keep it is a sign that you are my successor,

and pass it down on for posterity.

It is of value, of fine appearance,

and it has the added capacity of opening

a certain door to wealth.

Some years later he had another son.

When the son was old enough

the wise man gave him

another ring with the same advice.

The same thing happened in the case of his third

and last son.

When the old man had died and the sons grew up

one after the other claimed primacy for himself

because of his possession of one of the rings.

Nobody could tell for certain which was

the most valuable.

Each son had his adherents,

all claiming a greater value

and more beauty in his own ring.

But the curious thing was that

the door to wealth remained shut

for the possessors of the keys

and even their closest supporters.

They were all too preoccupied with

the problem of precedence,

the possession of the ring, its value and appearance.

Only a few looked for the door to the treasury

of the old man.

The rings had a magical quality too.

Although they were keys

they were not used directly

in opening the door to the treasury.

It was sufficient to look on them

without contention or too much attachment

to one or other of their qualities.

When this had been done

the people who had looked

were able to tell where the treasury was

and could open it merely

by producing the outline of the ring.

The treasuries had another quality too:

they were inexhaustible.

Meanwhile the supporters of the three brothers,

repeated the tales of their ancestors about

the merits of the rings,

each in a slightly different way.

The first community thought they had

already found the treasure

because they had the key.

The second thought that it was allegorical

and so consoled themselves.

And the third transferred the possibility

of opening the door

to a distant and remotely imaginable future

and so for them there was

nothing to do at present.

There is every possibility

for you too to belong to one of these three communities,

because anyone who begins to search

is always prone to fall into the trap of any one of the three.

Really, these are the three basic tricks the mind can play

to save itself from meditation.

So beware of these old tricks.

345. Love.

Look at yourself without thinking, evaluating, or judging,

without any liking or disliking;

that is, without any movement of the mind

or without the noise of the mind.

Then you have eyes

which are altogether different from your eyes

because they are not burdened by the past.

They are innocent and silent,

and in this silence there is neither

the observer nor the observed –

but that which is,

undivided and one,

beginningless and endless.

You can call it God or nirvana or anything whatsoever –

the name does not matter

because the name is not the thing,

and when one has known the thing

one does not bother about the value.

346. Love.

Begin the following meditation from tomorrow –

and know that this is an order!

Now you are so totally mine

that I cannot do anything other than order you! Prerequisites:

Do it cheerfully.

Do it relaxedly.

Be playful.

Do it in the morning after taking a bath.

The meditation:

First: breathe deeply and rhythmically,

not fast but slowly,

for ten minutes.

Second: dance rhythmically and slowly;

be ecstatic, as if flowing in it,

for ten minutes.

Third: use the mahamantra: hoo-hoo-hoo.

Continue dancing and moving,

do not be serious, do not be tense,

for ten minutes.

Fourth: close the eyes and be silent;

do not move or dance now.

Stand, sit or lie down, as you feel to do,

but just be as if dead,

feel a sinking in,

surrender and be in the hands of the whole,

for ten minutes.

Post requirements:

One: live the whole day in ecstasy,

in intoxication of the divine,

flowing and flowering in it,

and whenever depressed say inwardly: hoo-hoo-hoo,

and laugh outwardly,

laugh without any reason, and accept the madness.

Two: before sleep chant the mahamantra: hoo-hoo-hoo

for ten minutes,

then laugh at yourself.

Three: in the morning as you feel awake

chant again the mahamantra: hoo-hoo-hoo

for ten minutes,

and then begin the day with a hearty laugh.

Four: remember always that I am with you.

347. Love.

Everything belongs to the man who wants nothing.

Having nothing, he possesses all things in life:

renouncing all he becomes the master of all.

But why?

Because into his emptiness enters the divine.

348. Love.

Live humbly and in wonder

and then meditation comes by itself.

Relax, and there is ecstasy.

But effort is needed

because unless this fails completely you will not

be effortless!

349. Love.

Be aware of the mind before it is stirred by a thought,

or, be aware of the gap between two thoughts,

and – you will meet yourself!

And this meeting is the meeting with the divine.

350. Love.

Buddha says: If the mind does not arise

all things are blameless.

What more is there to be said?

And even this much is enough to blame everything!

351. Love.

The eyes are blind. One must look within the heart.

So do not believe the eyes,

believe the heart

and remember to look through it,

and then you will come to know things unbelievable.

And unless one comes to know the unbelievable

one has not known at all.

352. Love.

Remember always the one who is inside the body.

Walking, sitting, eating or doing anything,

remember the one who is neither walking nor sitting

nor eating.

All doing is on the surface,

and beyond all doing is the being;

so be aware of the non-doer in the doing,

of the non-mover in the moving.

One day Mulla Nasruddin’s wife,

hearing a tremendous thump

ran to his room.

Nothing to worry about, said the Mulla.

It was only my cloak which fell to the ground.

What! And made a noise like that? asked his wife

Yes – I was inside it at the time, said the Mulla.

353. Love.

A monk asked Daishu Ekai, What is nirvana?

The master answered: Not to commit oneself

to the vicious circle of birth and death

or pleasure and pain

is great nirvana.

What then is the vicious circle

of birth and death and pleasure and pain?

The master said:

To desire nirvana!

Now be silent and feel what is meant by to desire nirvana,

and remember that I am not saying think about it

because to think is to miss it.

Feel it.

Feel it.

Feel it.

354. Love.

In this world everything is upside down

and anyone who is meditating

will have to put everything right side up!

One should not try to know life but to know death,

and then the mysteries of life are revealed to him.

One should not ask for any security

and then there is no insecurity at all.

Bunan says in a poem:

While living be a dead man,

be thoroughly dead,

and then behave as you like

because then all is well.

355. Love.

Materialistic societies produce hollow men,

men with dead emptiness within,

and because of this dead emptiness

one dies before one is really born.

Remember that man cannot live by shops alone,

and today the holy of holies is the shop.

The outer is meaningless without the inner richness,

and the outer richness

only makes the inner poverty prominent.

Man is hollow because there is no inner growth

and the inner grows only when one lives in the inner.

Inward is the way of growth, grace and God.

356. Love.

Never suppress any thought,

or fight with it,

otherwise you will never be without it.

Fight it, and you invite it more.

Suppress it, and it will be back with double the force.

I have heard

that someone advertised something for women

but with the heading, Only For Men.

It is reported that

out of ninety thousand women who came across it

eighty-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-four

read the advertisement.

The other six were blind.

357. Love.

It is impossible to conceive of the divine intellectually,

and that is why the intellect denies it

or creates fictitious systems about it,

which is even more dangerous than plain denial.

The mind works only in the circle of the known;

it cannot transcend the world of the known.

For the mind the unknown is not.

Says Attar: You know nothing of your real self

here and in this state.

You are like the wax in the honeycomb –

what does it know of fire or guttering?

But when it gets to the stage of the waxen candle

and when light is emitted

then it knows.

358. Love.

Life is not a detective story,

and you do not have to deduce a thing.

Life is before your eyes as clear as the sun

and as open as the sky.

Just be out of your thinking disease

and open your eyes,

and nothing is hidden at all.

Even the hidden one is not hidden then.

I have heard a dialogue between

Sherlock Holmes and Watson:

Holmes: Ah, Watson, I see you have put on

your winter underwear.

Watson: Marvelous, Holmes, marvelous!

How did you ever deduce that?

Holmes: Well, you have forgotten

to put on your trousers.

359. Love.

Life goes on flowing.

It does not wait.

But mind thinks and therefore takes time.

To exist, no time is needed,

but to think – time is necessary

Really there is no time in existence.

There appears to be only

because of the mind and its thinking.

Existence exists not in time but in eternity.

It exists in the eternal now.

There is neither past nor future

but only the present –

or not even that –

because without the past and future

it is meaningless to call it present.

Do not live out of the mind,

otherwise you will always lag behind,

because life never waits for you and your so-called mind.

That is why the mind always feels

as if something is missing –

because it is missing life itself – and always!

Once a master said to his disciples:

If you utter a word – thirty blows of my stick for you.

But if you utter no words

just the same, thirty blows of my stick.

Now – speak, speak!

One disciple came forward

and when he was about to bow

before the master he was struck.

The disciple protested: I have not uttered a single word

nor did you allow me not to utter.

Why the striking?

The master laughed and said

If I wait for you and your speech or your silence,

it is too late, and life cannot wait!

360. Love.

Goethe is said to have cried when dying:

Light, light, more light!

And Miguel Unamuno has responded with his:

No – warmth, warmth, more warmth! For we die of cold

and not of darkness!

But I say to you that we die neither because of cold

nor because of darkness

but because of our lust for living

or because of our fear of death –

which is to say the same thing in different ways.

Do not look at death as opposite to life, because it is not.

And live death moment to moment.

Do not postpone it for the end

because that creates fear.

Die each moment to the past,

and then each moment you will be fresh,

young and reborn.

And then there is always light

because the very darkness becomes light;

and warmth also,

because only the dead past is cold.

The present is always warm.

361. Love.

Man is not the end

but only the means.

Man is not really a being

but only a tension

between two planes of being.

Man is only a bridge,

that is why he cannot remain satisfied with himself.

His heart is nothing but a continent of discontent

and his very being is anguish.

Religion is man’s wish to pass beyond himself

as he now is.

That is why I say man can never be irreligious;

that is impossible.

He can pretend to be but he cannot be.

Religion is not something accidental or circumstantial,

it is in the very nature of man:

man is a religious animal.

And man is nothing if he is not a desire

to transcend himself.

He can go below himself,

or he can go above,

but he cannot remain himself.

He cannot be at rest.

That is why there is restlessness.

362. Love.

Use dreaming consciously as meditation

and know well that conscious dreaming opens

new doors of perception.

Lie down, relax,

and dream, but do not fall asleep;

remain conscious in the background.

Wait and watch;

dream anything that happens to your mind.

Do not plan beforehand –

dream anything, because in dream

the whole world is yours.

Dream your existence as you please;

dream and be content…

content with your dreams because they are yours.

And remember that nothing can be yours

like your dreams are

because you yourself are a dream entity! –

and also because your wishes

come to be true in your dreams,

and only in your dreams.

But do not fall into identification.

Be a witness.

Remain aware.

And then suddenly there will be no dreaming.

Only you

and illumination.

363. Love.

You write to me that without me you cannot pass through the gate

and with me you will not pass through the gate.

I know that!

But you need not do either.

You need not pass through the gate

with me or not with me,

because I am the gate.

I am no-one, so how can you be with me or not with me?

And only one who is no one can be the gate.

The gate means the emptiness

because the gate is nothing

but the space to pass through.

Pass through me –

not with me –

and know.

I appear to be someone only from without,

but the deeper you penetrate me

the less you will find me.

And in the end – no one.

364. Love.

Walk as if you are not walking,

stand as if you are not standing,

sit as if you are not sitting –

and then you will begin to feel

something completely new arising within you.

This is the real one.

The false you walks, stands and sits,

and the real you just remains in suchness.

Feel this – this very moment,

because there is no need to postpone it.

And if you postpone it you postpone it forever

because there is no tomorrow for the real one,

there is no there for it,

it is always here and now.

365. Love.

You will become more deeply tied

to whatever you desire to become free from.

Because freedom is not negation.

Freedom is not ‘from something’ or ‘for something’.

Freedom is not positive either.

Freedom is the transcendence

of negation and affirmation both.

Freedom means freedom from duality.

Where is a ‘for or against’ there?

With what to react?

What rebellion?

Reaction is not wisdom.

And, rebellion is nothing but a continuity of the old.

Hence, understand – do not fight.

When has anybody attained anything through fighting?

Except pain? – except defeat?

Hence, do not escape, but wake up.

By escaping one has to keep on escaping.

And then there is no end to that.

Knowing is freedom.

Not the fear, not the anger,

not the enmity, not the rebellion.

Only knowing is freedom.