Bin Bati Bin Tel #2

A blind man was leaving his friend’s house at night, so the friend put a lantern in his hand.

The blind man said, “What am I to do with a lantern? Darkness and light are the same to me.”

The friend said, “You don’t need it to find your way, true. But in the dark someone else might bump into you. Please carry this lantern so others won’t collide with you.”

The blind man had hardly gone a little distance when a traveler ran into him.

The blind man flared up, “Why don’t you watch where you’re going? Can’t you see this lantern in my hand?”

The traveler replied, “Brother, your flame is out.”

Kindly help us understand the heart of this story.

Light can be received from another—but not eyes. Information can be received from another—but not wisdom. And if there are no eyes, what use is light? Without wisdom, information becomes a burden.

The blind man was actually safer without the lantern: he walked carefully, he walked alertly. “I am blind,” so he walked with caution and a little fear. Then with a lantern in his hand—though still blind—he began to walk with assurance. No fear now, no anxiety: “Who will collide with me? I carry light in my hand.”

But how could a blind man see whether his own light is burning or has gone out? Earlier too he must have passed by those paths many nights, and he got through without collisions. Today a collision became inevitable. The blind man put his trust in light and stopped walking carefully.

A sinner walks more warily than a pundit. A sinner remains more mindful than the scholar. The sinner has no confidence; a mistake is almost certain. The pundit is confident; he believes he is safeguarded against error. He has made his arrangements.

But doctrines received from others are like a lantern whose wick has gone out.

Borrowed erudition never becomes an eye; only an eye is a support.

That blind man was right when he said as he set out, “I have no eyes—what will I do with a lantern?” His logic was sound, rooted in experience. He has lived life as a blind man; he has somehow managed. He gets through the roads. The friend argued. Arguments sound right—but they are not right. Life does not move by accepting logic.

Life’s pathways are more illogical; logic is straight like mathematics.

The friend’s argument seems right. He says, “Granted, you cannot see the light—I know that, I don’t even need to say it; but the road is dark, night is dark. If there is light in your hand, others will avoid bumping into you. Take the light for the sake of others’ awareness.”

Even the blind man had no reply. The reasoning is clear, there is no flaw in the arithmetic. But neither the friend nor the blind man thought: if a gust of wind blows the flame out, the blind man will not know it, and he will keep walking under the assurance that the lantern is alight. Thus the daily habit of caution will be dropped—and this unfamiliar, borrowed light can go out. Neither of them saw this. Both were living by intellect. The logic was clear, the blind man accepted it. He took the lantern and started down the road. He had not gone even ten steps when someone ran into him. Anger is natural. On any other day, if someone had bumped him, he would not have grown angry. That is why you will see more anger in pundits than in others.

On another day, had someone collided with him, the blind man knew, “I am blind, the night is dark; a collision is natural.” He would have accepted it. There is nothing there to object to. It was fate, it was destiny: “I am blind and someone ran into me.” Anger arises only when we think something is happening that should not be happening. Anger arises when there is no acceptance of fate. Understand this a little.

One who accepts fate becomes un-angered, because he believes that what was to happen has happened. Nothing “unhappens”—so what is there to be upset about? People must have collided with this blind man before. It’s impossible that no one ever collided with him. Yet he must not have been angry then. He had understood his helpless condition. He understood, “I am blind—it is quite natural that people bump into me. There will be small collisions; it is my destiny, my fate. It is not easy to change this law.” What is there to be upset about? Perhaps earlier, when someone bumped into him, the blind man himself asked forgiveness, because he could not assume that the seeing collided with the blind. The blind man would think, “I, the unseeing, must have jostled the seeing.”

The ignorant can ask forgiveness; the pundit cannot. Because the ignorant accepts, “I am not wise; I can be at fault.” The pundit does not accept that he can err, that he is unwise. How could the learned be at fault—impossible!

Anger arose, the blind man grew indignant. And surely he said, “What, are you blind? Don’t you look where you’re going? Can’t you see the lantern in my hand?”

Whenever a person cannot accept his own condition, anger begins to be born. If anger keeps flaring in your life, breaking out here and there, it means you are walking with an extinguished lantern. You think you hold light in your hand—no one should collide with you; but collisions happen.

The truth is: except for collisions, nothing else seems to happen along the road of your life. You collide with those you know. You collide with those you don’t. With friends and with enemies. What is the story of your life except collisions? Whoever comes near—there is a clash—and then you fill with great anger. And the other always appears to be at fault. You cannot accept that your lamp has gone out; that the light you thought you were carrying has been lost. You are carrying darkness in your hand, but that you cannot admit. Whenever a collision occurs, the responsibility belongs to the other; he is to blame. Hence anger arises.

Anger means: the other is responsible, the other is to blame. Try as you may to escape anger—you will not succeed so long as your vision is to hold the other responsible. The day you understand, “I am responsible,” that day the root cause for anger to arise will be gone. You cut the root.

People come to me and say, “There is so much anger—how can we calm it?” Anger cannot be calmed once it has arisen. Once it rises, you will have to live through it. You can cut anger at the root; it is hard to soothe it after it has been aroused. It is possible to arrange things so anger doesn’t arise at all. But then you will have to change the whole style of your life. Your entire way of living will have to be transformed.

Right now, your style is to always feel the other is responsible. If you are unhappy, someone is making you unhappy. If you are troubled, someone is troubling you. You cannot accept that trouble may arise from within you, that sorrow may come from inside you. Your blindness may be responsible for the collision—but your mind refuses to accept it. And then you pounce. When the other is responsible, you try to prove the other’s fault. As long as you do that, you will keep feeding the fire of anger. You pour ghee on the flames and expect the fire to go out. You ask, “How can anger end?” Ask instead, “How does anger arise?” Stop it there. Stop it at the seed, at the very first step.

Mahavira has a very unique aphorism: If the first step has been taken, half the journey is already done. Now it is difficult to stop. Before the first step, stopping is easy. Once the step is taken, the journey has begun. Turning back from the middle is very difficult, almost impossible; because energy has already started a movement.

Eat food—once it passes the throat, it is more or less out of your hands. Until you put it in your mouth, it is in your control: you could choose not to eat, you could fast. Once it has gone below the throat, it is beyond your volition. Then your body takes over; digestion is not in your will. You don’t digest food; the body digests food. It does not ask you; you are not needed. The body works. And if you want to get rid of what has reached the stomach, you will have to do something unnatural—vomit. Then the whole system will convulse, the entire mechanism will be shaken. And the harm from vomiting will be greater than the harm the food might have done.

If anger has taken the first step, the matter has gone below the throat—now turning back is difficult; you will have to vomit. And vomiting is painful. The damage from vomiting may be worse than the damage from anger. You will shatter yourself.

Or there is another way: repression. If you do not want to vomit, you can swallow anger in such a way that it remains inside as waste that never exits. Then too you will be in trouble, because when waste accumulates in the body it is toxic; it reaches into every layer of the blood, into every pore. Those who repress anger—gradually anger becomes their entire way of life. They don’t “get” angry, they “are” angry. Always simmering, merely waiting for an excuse to erupt. If no excuse comes, they will invent one. Then any excuse will do.

You know this from your own experience. Often you look for excuses; you don’t even check whether they are relevant or irrelevant. Later, when you look back, you laugh—“What did I do? It was ridiculous.”

A man once came to borrow a farmer’s axe. The farmer said, “Today it’s hard to give it to you, because today I have to shave.” The borrower was startled, but said nothing. The farmer’s wife was more startled. She said, “Have some sense! He is asking for an axe, and you say you have to shave!” The farmer replied, “When you don’t want to give, any excuse will do. What difference does the excuse make? He understood well enough that I’m not giving it.”

So too, when you’ve repressed your anger, you don’t care about the excuse. Any excuse will serve. If you are determined to be angry, any pretext works. Then anger erupts where there’s no need for it at all. You boil and burn. Everyone around you is baffled. The wife cannot understand why the husband is upset; there seems to be no cause. The husband can’t understand why, the moment he stepped in the house, the wife exploded; there seems no reason. Ninety-nine out of a hundred times, you cannot understand why the other is angry. But the one who is angry is not in his senses. Anger is a poison—it intoxicates.

It is hard to stop anger once it is underway. If you try to stop it midway, you will either vomit or repress. Repression is dangerous, because then anger pervades every layer of your life. Even your love will be filled with anger. Even when you eat, your anger is present.

Psychologists say that when an angry person eats, he chews as if assaulting the food. When we are angry, we say, “I’ll chew him up.” Our language betrays it. The angry person grinds food between his teeth. An angry person even in sleep grinds his teeth in dreams; his teeth wear down.

Even his love becomes anger-like.

In the West there was a notorious thinker, the Marquis de Sade. He carried a bag like a doctor’s bag. He was wealthy, a great landowner, a marquis. In that bag he kept his instruments of love—whips, thorns, and other devices he invented. He was handsome, rich, and lived in the colorful world of France. It was not hard to find women. But whenever he made love, he would lock the doors and post guards outside. First he would whip the woman thoroughly. He would prick her with thorns, torment her in every way—and then he would make love. Hence a whole pathology is named after him: sadism. Whoever torments others through the medium of love is a sadist. The word was coined from his name.

The Marquis de Sade used to say, “Until I beat and batter, love does not arise in me. When I see a woman writhing, then love dawns.” Think about this a little. When you see someone suffering, compassion arises in you. The Marquis simply took the arithmetic further: torment first, then enjoy love.

But you too, when you see someone suffering and compassion arises, are taking some subtle relish in the other’s suffering. Compassion that waits for another’s suffering is sick. Compassion should be spontaneous; it should not depend on someone else’s pain. Even if another is not suffering, compassion should be there. It should be your nature. If your compassion only arises when someone is suffering, surely your bottled anger is being released through that scene.

Whenever anger is discharged, compassion arises—it’s a little complex. Religious teachers have taught, “See others suffer, and be compassionate.” I tell you: why do you wait to see others suffer? Will you be compassionate only when someone else writhes, only when someone is dying of hunger will you give? Why wait so long? Somewhere within you, repressed anger is hiding. The Marquis de Sade pushed the logic to its extreme: why wait on circumstances? Torment first, then love arises.

Even small children understand that when they fall sick and are distressed, then their parents love them. So they sometimes pretend to be ill. Or if a child falls, he looks around to see if anyone is there to show affection. If no one is around, crying is useless—he gets up and walks on. But if the mother is nearby and he falls, he raises a great cry, because that cry will draw the mother’s love. What kind of love is this, that waits upon pain? There is a little sickness in it. The mother too is taking some relish; in the child’s pain, some catharsis is happening for the mother—her anger, her dammed-up energies flow out.

Repressed anger is like pus—hidden inside, it will find some outlet. And whenever it does, you feel lighter.

That is why people feel lighter after anger. As if a weight has been lifted off the head. So no matter how much the saints say anger is useless, people know that anger brings a kind of relief. And when you swallow anger, your head grows heavy. Repressed anger becomes a headache.

Doctors say women suffer less from heart disease, from heart weakness. Fewer women die of heart failure. Men die—and at a particular age. Between forty and fifty, men die of heart attacks.

Psychologists say women do not repress anger as much as men do. Because a man’s ego is stronger. Even if anger is burning inside, he smiles. Even if he is inwardly ready to murder, he remains polite. He cannot vent his anger on others nor on himself. He cannot cry, he cannot scream, he cannot shout, because these are “not manly.” From childhood boys are told, “Don’t cry, don’t show anger. Be controlled, composed.” If a man cries, he is called womanly. If he gets angry over small things, he is childish, not mature. Even small boys understand there is this difference between man and woman.

I have heard: a woman was distraught. Her three-year-old son had locked himself in the bathroom. He would neither speak nor respond. It was hard to tell whether he couldn’t open the door, or wouldn’t. When the mother was exhausted, she called the police. The inspector arrived and asked, “Is the child inside a boy or a girl?” The mother said, “What kind of question is that? What difference does it make? Just get him out—he’s a boy.” The inspector said, “Wait.” He went to the door and said, “Daughter, come out.” The boy came out at once—furious that he had been called “daughter”! The inspector said, “This trick always works—even on a three-year-old man.”

The tear glands in the eyes are the same in men and women—not a speck of difference. Nature made both sets of eyes to cry. But the man will not cry. The glands of anger are the same in men and women; there is no difference. The body’s chemical capacity to be filled with anger is identical.

But men repress; they are taught to repress. Around forty, it becomes impossible to bear. The heart weakens, because repression weakens the heart. Men die of heart disease; women don’t. Women cry and lighten themselves. They settle their accounts daily—nothing accumulates. They get angry, they get upset; if they can’t strike the other, they beat themselves.

You may be surprised to know that men go insane twice as often as women. And if you think women commit suicide more than men, you are mistaken. Neither insanity nor suicide is higher among women; men lead in both. Women also commit fewer crimes; men commit them.

As if men commit all the mischief! Psychologists say the root cause is that men keep accumulating pus. Then when it bursts, it yields catastrophe.

Anger can neither be repressed nor vomited out without harm. Vomiting also damages; the entire organism shudders. Often you do vomit anger. Food is visible; anger is not as visible. But anger-vomiting happens in many ways.

A man is seething, he takes out his car and his foot presses the accelerator harder. He does not think that this sixty or seventy mile speed may be the vomiting of anger. But it can lead to an accident. Fifty percent of car accidents happen due to anger. Speed becomes the channel of expulsion. As the speed of the car rises, anger is discharged. But it’s dangerous; your life and others’ are at risk.

Who knows how many illnesses arise so that anger can be vomited out through them? Actual vomiting may occur. If you are full of anger, you can feel nausea. Physiologists say: when you are angry, food takes twice as long to digest. What digests in four hours will take eight. And after eight hours it is so cold that digestion becomes difficult.

That is why people say angry persons are thin: they cannot digest properly. Their food remains undigested and is expelled. That too is a vomiting. If you have ever actually vomited in anger, you felt lighter—even though you may think the vomiting “just happened.” Something wanted to come out and you stopped it—food came out along with it.

Many illnesses are forms of vomiting. Perhaps fifty percent of illnesses are mental expulsions that shake the whole system.

It is hard to find a greater enemy to man than man himself.

Neither repression nor vomiting will work. Real work begins when you stop at the very first point—before the journey starts. Only there can it be stopped. If you stop there, your energy remains healthy and flowing. Anger will not spread poison through your body; the nectar of compassion will flow through you.

What is the root point? It is where we first made the other responsible.

This blind man had always held himself responsible. Whenever a collision happened, he would have said, “Forgive me, I am blind.” But not today—today the blind man had a lantern in his hand. He shouted, “Are you blind? Can’t you see? The lantern is right here in my hand—and still you bang into me!”

When you shout at another, “Can’t you see? What are you doing? Why do you keep colliding?”—pause once and consider: is it perhaps you who are colliding and blaming the other? Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, that is the case. We always blame the other. In blaming the other, the ego is protected. We save face. Each of us has crafted a self-image—as if you are a god. Others may see a devil in you, but in the mirror you never see a devil; you see a deity. And if this deity is ever distorted, then it is the others, the circumstances they create, that distort him. Your image is perfect. Remember the blind man’s situation. The other person said, “Friend, the lantern in your hand is out. The darkness is thick. I am not blind—but there is no light in your hand.”

If there is much distress in your life, understand: the light of your life is out. Everyone who comes near collides with you; whoever becomes your friend turns into an enemy; love transforms into hate; whoever draws close brings pain; anyone near becomes your hell—then think a little: the lantern in your hand is extinguished.

Certainly, the light of our life is out—that is why others keep colliding with us. Our self-knowledge is feeble, almost nil. The lamp, as if it were not there. We have no idea who we are. Yet each of us thinks we know. This is the extinguished lamp we carry. There is not a grain of self-knowledge, yet everyone assumes, “At least I know myself.”

You may know others—you may be an expert on plants and animals, on earth and sky—but in one relationship you live in utter delusion: “I know myself.” There the lamp is out. We have no news of the self, no recognition. And this unrecognized self—this self filled with ignorance and darkness—draws others to collide.

A person falls in love. In love or in friendship, he shows a second face, which is not his real face. That is why love-marriages almost always fail. A successful love-marriage is a rare event.

A young man falls in love. He shows a face that is not real, because his real face would drive the girl away. He exhibits a perfect image. The young woman too displays a face that is not real. Both are busy attracting each other. Their words are sweet, not harsh. Their bodies are groomed, perfumed; there is no smell of sweat. They wear fresh clothes and meet after bathing. And the meeting lasts for an hour or two—by the sea, in a garden. No one lives twenty-four hours in a garden. No one can sit by the sea all day. It is false. It is surface.

Then they marry, and the whole structure of life changes. To maintain the surface twenty-four hours is very difficult; it will become a burden. One has to be real to relax. Gradually, the upper mask is taken off. Woman appears as she is, man appears as he is—and quarrel begins. The body begins to smell; flaws appear; the sweetness of voice goes, it becomes raspy.

I have heard: whenever his wife practiced harmonium and sang, the husband would stroll outside. Finally she asked, “What is the matter? Whenever I practice music, why do you go out?” He said, “So the neighbors won’t think I’m beating you.”

To the husband the wife’s voice sounds shrill—the same voice that was once the sweetest music, before which the cuckoo paled. The husband’s voice no longer pleases the wife. Whenever he speaks, it means trouble; so the husband grows quiet. Husbands become almost mute. Dialogue disappears from homes. The wife goes on talking; the husband hides behind his newspaper.

Methods of avoiding each other begin once reality appears. Inside, the lamp is out. How can we show our reality when we ourselves do not know it? We are a disorder, not a person; not a music, a noise. We cover this noise somehow and live.

This blind man trusted the lantern given by another. You too have trusted the self-knowledge given by others. Someone relies on the Upanishads, someone on the Gita, someone on the Vedas, someone on the Koran—but all these are lights given by others. Someone may hand you light, but who will give you eyes? A friend cannot pluck out his eyes and give them to you: “Take these—use them in the dark.” He can give a lantern. But a lantern has no meaning for the blind—indeed it becomes a danger. It will not support him. It becomes an obstacle; because of it someone collided.

And remember: light given by another is always already going out. Because there is a lamp within you that burns without wick, without oil. It never goes out. But you do not know it. And a lamp that can be given from outside always goes out. It needs oil; it will run dry. It has a wick; it will burn down. A gust of wind will snuff it out. Any cause will do. It is not eternal.

An old legend says there was a lighthouse in Alexandria that burned perpetually. No oil needed to be added, no wick changed. It was hundreds of feet high; there was no way even to reach it.

But it seems to be only a story. It was said to be one of the wonders of the world. It cannot be. Outside, no lamp burns without oil and wick. The sun is such a vast lamp—yet it too will go out, because it too has fuel and wick.

Scientists say the sun can burn about four thousand more years; its fuel is running out daily. So much light pours forth each day, the sun is being depleted. In four thousand years the sun will be extinguished. The sun runs out! It is gigantic—sixty thousand times bigger than the earth—yet its light too fades over billions of years. Still larger suns have gone dark. Our sun is not very big; only sixty thousand times the earth; even suns thousands of times larger than it have gone out and are going out.

Whatever is outside is not without cause; it depends on causes. Causes exhaust; lamps go out.

The friend must have given it carefully—but what of the wind? Do not trust friends where lamps are concerned. And do not depend on a guru for lamps either. However much a guru gives, the lamp will go out in your hands. You will remain blind, because the guru’s eyes cannot become your eyes.

Therefore a real master does not give lamps. He only gives the method to open the eyes. The real master gives only treatment for the eyes, a medicine. What reliance can be placed on lamps? How long will they last? That is why a true master does not hand you rules and regulations, for every rule has its limits. What is right today may be wrong tomorrow. What is a discipline in one situation may be indiscipline in another. What is medicine in one circumstance may be poison in another. So a true master doesn’t give you rules, nor a code of life. He gives you only treatment for the eyes, so that in every circumstance you can see. If the lamp goes out, you know it; if it burns, you know that too. If the road is dark, you see; if the road is full of light, you see. If someone is about to collide, you recognize it; if you are about to collide, you know it beforehand.

There was a Zen master, Lin-chi. A man came and asked, “Tell me, what conduct should I adopt? What behavior will lead me to truth?” Lin-chi said, “That I will not tell you. You have come to the wrong person. Conduct is not a fixed thing. What I tell you today may be wrong tomorrow. And I will not be with you twenty-four hours a day. Today I am here; tomorrow I will not be—whom will you ask then? You will ask someone else, and he will give you a different answer.”

Every religion has laid down different codes. Ask a Jain: he will say vegetarianism—pure vegetarianism—is essential; until you avoid harming even the subtlest life, you cannot reach truth. But Christians and Muslims are unconcerned with vegetarianism, and yet people among them too have reached truth.

And Quakers—a Christian sect—will not even drink milk. They consider Jains meat-eaters, because milk is blood; milk involves violence. When you take milk from a cow you are stealing the calf’s milk. But the Jain and Hindu scriptures call milk the purest food. Yet there is violence: the milk was meant for the calf, not for you. You have stolen the calf’s food and call it pure. And milk is made from blood—that is why milk builds blood quickly; it is a complete food. An infant needs nothing but the mother’s milk. Quakers do not drink milk; but a Quaker will eat eggs. He says, “As long as the chick has not formed in the egg, there is no violence.”

Whom to listen to? If you follow Jain thought to its limit, even plucking fruit from a tree is sin—the wound is deep. Then eating wheat or any grain is sin too, because wheat is a seed from which countless plants would have been born. If a chick is going to be born from an egg, innumerable plants would have grown from wheat. You ate them all. The tree has life, as the hen has life. Wheat is an egg. From it trees were to be born—you ate them. If one begins to ponder conduct, one will never reach a conclusion. There is no final conclusion. One may die thinking about conduct; there will be neither time nor ease left to live.

Lin-chi said, “I will not give you rules of conduct. Stay with me; I will give you meditation so your eyes open. Then, with open eyes, whatever feels right to you—do that. That is conduct.” Thus the sages say: whatever seems right to an open eye is conduct. Whatever is done with a closed eye is misconduct. With a closed eye, even nonviolence is misconduct; with an open eye, even violence can be conduct.

That is why Krishna could say to Arjuna, “Do not worry; just keep your eyes open and plunge into battle. Then there is no violence.” It is a bit subtle. With open eyes, sex too can be celibacy; with closed eyes, celibacy is merely repressed sex. Hence Krishna could weave such a vast dance of love, could love so many women.

If the eyes are open, conduct is always right. If the eyes are closed, conduct is always wrong. And when the eyes are closed, whatever conduct we adopt is a lamp given by another. It is not our own realization; it is not inner wisdom.

The friend was loving, kind. Out of compassion he said, “Take the lamp so no one collides with you.” But logic is small; life is vast. Logic arranges everything; then a light breeze comes, lamps go out, and all the arrangements collapse.

As for the lamps you are relying upon, ask yourself one question: are they given by others, or are they self-kindled? Are your eyes in them—or only your friends’ sympathy? Sympathy is not enough. And if someone offers you a lamp, thank him—but don’t take it. Say, “I will find my own lamp.”

There is another Zen tale much like this one. A young man came to a true master, seeking. His questions were long, his inquiry deep—and night fell. The master said, “It is a dark night. Are you afraid?”

The young man said, “You have read me well; I am afraid. There is a large forest between here and the village; there are wild beasts.”

The master said, “Ah, if only I could go with you! But in this world, everyone is alone. The forest is dense, the animals fierce, the path tangled—there is every possibility of losing the way. If only in this world one could accompany another!”

The young man was a little startled, thinking, “What a clever way to avoid coming! He could accompany me. He knows the forest; he lives here.” But to say so would be rude, so he stayed quiet.

Then the master said, “But I can do one thing: I can give you a lamp. The night is dark—take this light.”

He put a lamp in the young man’s hand. The young man thought, “This is much. Something is better than nothing. To a drowning man even a straw is support. At least I’ll see the path in the dark.” But as he began to descend the steps, the master blew a breath and snuffed the lamp. The young man cried, “What are you doing? Is this some kind of joke?”

The master said, “A lamp given by another cannot be of use. Not only is the path lonely, not only is each born alone, walks alone, and dies alone—nothing can be done with borrowed light. I am not your enemy; I cannot give you the delusion that borrowed light will help. Before the winds blow your lamp out, let me do it. Go in the dark, find your own way.”

“Be alert! That is within you. I cannot give it. And this is a precious night—the darkness is thick, wild animals are near. The path is unknown, the village far. In such danger perhaps you will gather awareness. In danger one walks carefully—because on highways no one walks carefully. We build highways precisely so we can walk drunk—where awareness is not needed. We build houses so we can live without alertness; there everything is safe. In the forest, you must be awake.”

It is no surprise that the day man left the forest to build houses, that day he left awareness and became secure. If you know nomads, you will find a kind of alertness in them that you cannot find in householders. Some tribes still wander. The Baloch have a group that still roams. There are African tribes that wander. The “civilized” world is against them; laws are being made everywhere to stop them from entering, to settle them by force, not to let them roam—because wandering folk are uncivilized.

But those who have lived among such wanderers have seen in them something that householders have lost: a certain awareness. One who must wander day and night, rain or cold or heat; who has no camp to settle in, no shade, no shelter—he naturally has a kind of alertness. In man’s nomadic state there was awareness.

So it is no surprise that in India many left house and home to become sannyasins. Sannyasin means: become a wanderer again. A sannyasin is a peripatetic, a nomad. He will not build a house or seek security. He will keep moving. Unknown paths, dangers. Night brings danger, day brings danger. Today there is food; tomorrow there may not be. In such risk, awareness is born.

The true master said, “Go—the darkness is auspicious. Wild animals are friends, if you can go with awareness. One who walks with awareness does not lose his way—he reaches.”

This friend was compassionate, but not awakened. He was intelligent—but worldly intelligence is not enough. He was clever at argument, but knew nothing of life’s mystery. He made an arrangement—and it broke. Two steps, and it broke.

All our arrangements are like that: they don’t last even two steps before breaking. Life is too vast to fit into mathematics. What we plan does not happen; something else does.

Never take light from another. It will be false. And because of it, you will collide. But all the knowledge we have is borrowed. Whatever we “know” is someone else’s knowing. Soul, God, liberation—these are heard-of things. Words from scriptures, not realizations.

The story is sweet. And it whispers: you are blind. Many friends full of sympathy surround you. Even if they want to hand you lamps, thank them—but don’t take the lamps. Ask them, “If you must give something, give the medicine for eyes.”

Those who give lamps will hand you scriptures. Scriptures are lamps long extinguished—who knows when they went out! How long has the Gita been out? It went out the moment Krishna gave it to Arjuna. How long since the Koran went out? It went out as it was dictated to be written. This knowledge cannot be transferred alive. The moment anyone gives it to another, it goes out. There is no way to pass it on living. It dies in the giving. Those who preserve scriptures are preserving lamps whose light was lost long ago.

Therefore the true master does not give you scripture; he gives you knowing. He does not tell you what is right; he gives you eyes to see what is right. And meditation is a treatment, not a doctrine.

That is why those who know Buddha say he is a physician. Those who recognized Nanak said he is a physician. What they give is not a theory; it is a device, a method, a technique by which closed eyes open.

And you are not blind—you only have your eyes closed. But they have been closed for so many lifetimes that you have forgotten they can be opened. The lid has grown palsied, heavy. Because you haven’t opened it for so long, you’ve forgotten that you can.

Meditation means: the knack of opening the eyelid.

And the moment your eyes open, all darkness disappears. With eyes, even in darkness walking is easy. Without eyes, even in light walking is hard. So the real light is the eye. The eye within you is a fragment of the sun. When the inner sun burns, it connects with the outer sun. If the inner sun is dark, the outer sun is useless; no bridge forms.

This story is sweet. Hum it within. Remember it. Do not be in a hurry. Lamps are cheap. Scriptures are sold in the marketplace. There are many ignorant friends full of sympathy; they are always ready to advise you. Even if you don’t ask, they are ready. Gurus sit in bazaars waiting for you; they have wares to sell.

Remember this story. If someone offers a lamp, return it. Thank them for their compassion, their love, their sympathy—but don’t take borrowed knowledge. The more you are filled with the borrowed, the harder your own search becomes. The more you trust the borrowed, the less urgency you will feel to seek. And because of borrowed knowledge, if you begin to strut, a collision is not far. Then anger will be born. The cause of anger is not the other—it is the extinguished lamp in your hand.

Seek the lamp that burns without oil and without wick. It is within you. You have never lost it, not for a single instant—otherwise you could not be.

You are listening to me—who is listening? That lamp.

You walk along the road—you may stagger—but who is walking? That lamp. You make a mistake—and then remembrance comes: “I erred.” Who remembers? Awareness is within! However suppressed, however layered with smoke, the lamp is within. You have only to clear a few veils of smoke.

Religion, then, is a process, a therapy, a medicine. Religion is not a philosophy, not a scripture—it is a science: the search for the inner eye.

Anything more?