Dhyan Ke Kamal #4

In life there is sorrow and there is joy, because there is birth and there is death. But so much depends on which of the two we choose as the foundation of our life.

If someone chooses death as the foundation, then even birth will seem like nothing but the beginning of death. And if someone chooses life as the foundation, then even death will feel like life’s fulfillment, the final blossoming of life. If a person chooses sorrow as life’s basis, then even happiness will look like just a means of falling back into sorrow. But if someone makes happiness the basis, then sorrow becomes only a link in the chain that moves from one happiness to another. It depends on choice. Both exist in life. What we choose changes the whole arrangement of our life. There is restlessness in life, and there is peace. Everything will depend on what we choose.

Meditation is the method of removing restlessness from the base of life and installing silence, a quiet mind, at the foundation. But we are very skilled at being restless. We don’t miss a chance. If there is any opportunity for disturbance, we don’t let it slip; we are eager. We wait for a reason so we can become agitated.

Can you recall ever letting pass an opportunity to be disturbed? You won’t. Has anyone abused you and you didn’t get angry? No; you’ll immediately find a reason to be angry. You cannot miss the chance.

But start missing a few chances—if you are to move ahead in meditation, begin to miss some opportunities. If someone insults you, in that moment don’t focus on the insult. Focus on this—can I miss this opportunity? And the one who never misses a chance to be disturbed, who gets disturbed regularly, goes on missing the chances for peace. Because the two cannot happen together.

There’s a case against Mulla Nasruddin that he hit his wife with a stick. The judge asks him, “Mulla, why did you strike her with that stick?”

He said, “The door was open, my wife’s back was turned, the stick was right at hand. I thought: I should not miss this opportunity. This is not the sort of chance you let go. Her back was turned, the door was open, the stick was right there. I thought: I must take a chance. A chance came—use it.”

Consider opportunity in two parts: there are opportunities for peace, and there are opportunities for disturbance. If you don’t miss the chances for disturbance, you will keep missing the chances for peace. Because your mind’s design becomes the design of choosing. You start choosing disturbance instantly.

If someone looks at you with anger, you never think his anger might be fake; but if someone smiles, you do think it’s put on, a fake smile. You never imagine anger could be fake. If someone expresses love toward you, you suspect there must be some motive behind it. But if someone expresses anger, you never wonder what his motive could be—the meaning seems obvious. This is our habit of choosing.

If someone tells you a certain person is very good, you feel, “That can’t be.” But if someone says that person is very bad, you’re certain he must be bad. If someone tells you someone is good, first you think, “What state is this speaker himself in—how would he even recognize the good?” But if the same person tells you someone is bad, you never ask whether the speaker himself might be bad. These are our choices. We choose the wrong, the negative, with great speed; we are sensitive to it, we grasp it at once.

Change this. If you want to go deep into meditation, keep this in mind for twenty‑four hours: miss the chances to be disturbed, seize the chances to be quiet. Whenever a moment to be quiet appears, be quiet—even for a moment. And whenever a chance to be disturbed appears, be kind to yourself—miss it. In a few days the direction of your choosing will change. And then you will be amazed to see that the sorrow you carried until now was your own choice.

This world is not eager to give suffering to anyone. Existence has not set up a hell for some and a heaven for others. Nature is utterly unprejudiced. It doesn’t care who you are. But you are the one who chooses hell. And the strange thing is that people trust hell a great deal. It’s hard to find someone who trusts heaven.

There are even people who don’t believe in God, but they believe in the devil. There are people who can doubt whether heaven exists, but about hell no one doubts.

Mulla Nasruddin’s daughter asked her father, “Should I marry the young man I love or not? He isn’t religious and he doesn’t believe at all in heaven and hell.”

Mulla said, “About heaven I can’t say anything. But you should marry him, and by marrying him you can prove that hell exists. Your mother proved it for me—now you prove it for him. About heaven I have nothing to say; I have no experience and no faith. But in one matter you can give him certainty—that hell is.”

Heaven does not easily come into trust; it’s not so believable. Hell is completely believable. But that belief reports something about us, not about hell. It tells that we are eager and ready to believe in hell. We are not ready to believe in heaven—because we have never chosen heaven in our life.

So remember: for those who set out on the journey of meditation, meditation alone is not enough—your mind’s habit of choosing must change.

Try to see the good, try to see the beautiful. Give indifference to the ugly; don’t pay attention to the grotesque. Why choose darkness? For you, there is plenty of light in this world. Darkness exists, yes, but there is no need for you to stand in it. There is enough light for you to stand in. And a person, if he wishes, can spend his whole life in the light.

But our choice is such that if light and dark are both present, we will go stand in the dark. And standing in the dark we keep shouting, “It’s all darkness! Nothing but sorrow! Not a single ray of joy!”

Remember, if you want to attain bliss, your way of choosing has to change completely. And it is in your hands. From the moment you wake in the morning...

There was a Zen master, Bokuju. The emperor of Japan came to meet him. The emperor asked, “Is there a hell?”

Bokuju gave no direct answer about hell. He looked the emperor up and down. The emperor was all dressed up in a soldier’s uniform. Bokuju said, “Whenever I see someone in a soldier’s uniform, I think there must be a coward hiding inside.”

The emperor’s expression changed at once. He had come full of reverence—suddenly it turned into disrespect. And Bokuju said, “Your face doesn’t look at all like an emperor’s. It looks as if someone in a play has been made into an emperor.” The emperor’s hand went to the hilt of his sword. Bokuju said, “Don’t try to frighten me—if I shout loudly, you’ll run away.”

This was the limit! He had come to ask something, and what was this man saying! The emperor drew his sword and placed it on Bokuju’s neck.

Bokuju said, “Look—you are opening the gate of hell. Hell exists, and you are opening its door. I said only three things to bring you to the threshold and show you: here is hell. Now just open it a little more and you’ll be inside. It’s your choice—turn back if you wish, or enter.”

Your own choosing brings you to hell’s door every day. Choice is crucial—pleasure and pain are not so crucial. Pleasure and pain are ordinary events; your inner choosing is what matters. So remember this aphorism for meditation.

Now, about meditation, let me say two or three more things, and then we will move into the experiment. Perhaps some new people have come.

There will be fifteen minutes of kirtan. The more you become absorbed in feeling, the deeper you will go. The more madly you can enter into it, the more momentum there will be. The more you can be carried away in it, the easier it will become. Those who have come just to watch will sit on the chairs—they won’t be inside here. Anyone who has come to watch should go to the chairs. Whoever has come to do should leave the chairs and come into the courtyard. If you have come to do, don’t sit on a chair. I see some people trying to do while sitting on chairs; the chair becomes quite an obstacle. The outer chairs are an obstacle—and inside you also have chairs; those too become obstacles.

Many of you are sitting on the ground, yet you can’t let go of your chair. You’re also sitting here, but your chair is held tightly behind you. You know, “I’m a magistrate—how can I dance?”

What has dance to do with being a magistrate! A magistrate can dance—there’s no opposition. A dancer can be a magistrate—there’s no contradiction anywhere.

“I have a million rupees—how can I dance?”

If you have a million rupees and you still can’t dance, then when will you dance? A person earns money so that one day he can dance. But there is no end to foolishness. The money accumulates and he forgets how to dance. Then he says, “I have so much money—how can I dance?”

Why did you gather the money? So that someday a moment would arrive when there would be no hindrance, the mind would be free, and you could dance. Now the time to dance has come—but you clutch the money to your chest and say its weight is too much—how can I dance?

So those who are sitting here without a chair yet are still seated on their inner chair—please go to the chairs. And those who by mistake are sitting on chairs but can dance—come down. All the watchers will be on the chairs; no one will be below. Even one person who stands in the middle half‑heartedly becomes an obstacle. It breaks the rhythm. As you enter deep silence and kirtan in fifteen minutes, you are no longer so many separate people—you become one stream, one rhythm, one movement. In that movement all are joined. If even one person stands in between insincerely, he breaks the rhythm, breaks the flow.

Do whatever you like with yourself, but please take care that others are not harmed. So move aside. And stand spread out, at a distance from one another. Standing close together is a way of cheating—it’s a trick to avoid dancing. Spread out so you can dance with a free mind.

Second: fifteen minutes of kirtan, then fifteen minutes of free movement. The kirtan will stop, the melody will continue. Then keep moving with the melody.

After thirty minutes I will ask you to rub your forehead.

Some questions have come about this. One is: what if it’s painful to rub with the right hand?

If so, you can rub with the left. There’s no problem. If anyone finds it difficult to rub with the right hand, they can use the left. Second: if it feels that rubbing very hard creates trouble, then don’t rub so hard that a wound forms or the skin abrades. Work out your own measure. Everyone’s skin has its own thickness. Decide for yourself how much to rub. Everyone has their own strength for rubbing—set your own limit. Just take care the skin doesn’t get scraped.