Diya Tale Andhera #2

Before entering this awakening tale, a few things about the mind must be understood. First: no matter how fierce the storm, only the ocean’s surface is disturbed; the depths are not. Winds may rage above, yet only the waves sway. The ocean’s innermost center remains unmoved. There the winds have no access, no impact. They simply cannot reach. It is only the surface that moves. The boundary moves; the center is always unshaken, unmoving.

The mind is the surface of your personality. It is not your soul. It is your boundary—where you become separate from others. Wherever you and your neighbor are divided, that is your mind. If you were the only person on this earth, there would be no mind. Hence those who want to dissolve the mind begin by being alone. Even in a crowded world, one who starts taking himself as alone soon loses the mind. Mind means the boundary line between you and the other—that is your surface. Remember, the surface needs the other. Therefore the divine cannot have a mind. The divine has no surface—there is no other to create a boundary.

The infinite is unshaken; the finite trembles. Mind is finite; you are infinite. Mind is the surface where the other is separated. You are that depth where both I and you are lost. No storm has ever reached your depths. And remember: wherever a storm reaches, know that you are still on the surface, not in the depths. For those who seek themselves, who seek self-knowledge, who wish to dispel the darkness beneath the lamp, the most important part of their quest is to discern how far outer things can disturb them. What is the boundary up to which the outer can agitate me? Wherever the outer agitates you, up to there is mind. There is a place within you where no disturbance can ever enter.

It happened: a German thinker, Herrigel, wrote his memoir. He lived for years with a Zen master. In Japan, at a three-story house, a farewell reception for him was organized on the third floor. Herrigel was returning home. Many friends, companions, acquaintances, fellow travelers, the master’s other disciples—all who had become close to him—were invited. He had also invited the master.

By chance, while the meal was going on, an earthquake struck. In Japan, earthquakes are common. The wooden house began to shake violently. It could collapse any moment. People ran. Herrigel also ran. The stairway was jammed with people. Then he remembered the master. He turned back and saw the master sitting in his place with closed eyes. One part of Herrigel wanted to run away, another part felt, I invited the master; is it proper for me to abandon him? Whatever happens to the master, let it happen to me. And when he is sitting so unshaken and at ease, why should I be so afraid! He too stayed, sat down beside the master. His hands and feet kept trembling until the tremors ceased. A great havoc had occurred. Many buildings had fallen. There was chaos in the streets; people were frantic.

As soon as the quake stopped, the master opened his eyes and, from exactly where the conversation had been interrupted by the quake and people’s flight, he resumed as if nothing had happened. Herrigel said, “Now I don’t even remember what we were talking about. Such a big event came in between. A big gap has occurred. I’ve forgotten what you were saying before. That question is no longer important. I want to ask something else—about this earthquake.” The master said, “It is always outside, only outside. And whatever is not inside has no value. The outside was all shaken. I slipped within to where no shaking ever reaches.”

This is the entire art of self-knowledge: to slip within to the place where no shaking ever reaches.

If you are agitated, troubled, restless, pained, there is only one reason: you have identified yourself with the circumference. You are standing where all storms arrive—winds shake you, fires burn you, pleasures and pains surround you, praise and blame touch you. And standing there you are trying to bring about the moment when blame will not bother you, praise will not intoxicate you; pleasure will not drive you mad, pain will not bring tears.

If you stand on the periphery and try this there, you will fail. For countless lives you have stood at the periphery and gone on failing. Whoever stands there will be touched by the winds. When pleasures come you will be happy; when pains come you will be unhappy. There is no way to avoid it there—no refuge there. Refuge is within. The real question is not how to become non-suffering while standing there in suffering. There are ways for that too, but they are very costly—worse than the disease! The remedy is even more dangerous.

It can happen that even standing on the periphery, suffering does not touch you—but then you must make yourself utterly insensate. You must kill all sensitivity. You must become almost like a stone. Then you are not a soul, for the soul is the ultimate flowering of sensitivity. It is the highest peak of sensation. There awareness grows denser and denser. But standing on the periphery, there is a trick—and people are practicing it.

Those you commonly call sadhus and renunciates differ from you only in this: you are a bit more alive; they are a bit less alive. You are more alive, so things touch you more. They have died. And their dying is no remedy—it is spiritual suicide. Put a corpse in a marketplace—its noise will not disturb it. But that is no achievement!

So what is the entire effort of those you call sadhus? What is their whole discipline? How to kill sensitivity! So he sleeps on a bed of thorns—foolishness; suicidal foolishness. Because if you lie on thorns continuously, stubbornly, then in a few days the pricking will cease—not because you have changed, but because the sensitivity of touch is lost. The sense of touch has died. You have killed a sense.

Touch is the greatest sense. In the child’s life, touch appears first—because in the mother’s womb, the child is first just skin. All other senses are specializations of skin. Your eye is skin trained in seeing. Your ear is skin trained in hearing. Your tongue is skin trained in taste. Your nose is skin trained in smell. They are experts—specialized arts of skin. All are skin.

Hence touch is the most fundamental sense. Therefore the sadhu first sets about killing touch. He will go naked, stand in the sun, stand in the cold, sit on ice, sit by a blazing fire. There is sun, there is heat—he will tend a sacred fire. What is he doing? Inside there is only one attempt—whether he knows it or not. Usually he does not; if he knew, no one would do such stupidity. And you too don’t know; otherwise you wouldn’t respect such foolishness. What is he doing? He is making the skin gradually insensate. And it does become so! You know—no need to be a sadhu. The skin on the soles of your feet has become dull because you must walk. If sensitivity were high there, you couldn’t walk. A pebble can lodge in your sole and you don’t notice. Those who walk barefoot have dead skin on their soles.

I’ve heard of a hill-tribe man sitting and smoking his chillum. His wife, working nearby, placed her foot unknowingly on an ember. The man said, “Look, your foot is on a live coal—move it.” She continued working and asked, “Which foot—left or right?”

Such is the dead skin of the tribesman’s sole.

The sadhu is trying to make the whole body like the sole’s skin—dead. Hence he endures sun, heat, cold—remaining on the periphery. He tries to kill taste. Tastelessness is a vow among sadhus. Among Gandhi’s eleven vows was aswad—tastelessness. So Gandhiji used to eat neem chutney with his meals, to kill taste.

The American thinker Louis Fischer was a guest at Gandhi’s home. They placed the chutney in his plate too—as they did for everyone. Remember, whoever gives himself suffering will distribute suffering to all. It becomes his relish, his touchstone. Louis Fischer tasted it—his mouth turned to poison. Being a gentleman, he thought it improper to object. Gandhi had served it with such love, and he was sitting right there eating with relish. Better not be rude! And with that chutney, the whole meal would be spoiled. He thought it better to swallow it all at once quickly, so at least the rest of the meal wouldn’t be ruined. He gulped down the entire chutney. Gandhi said, “See, I told you Louis Fischer would like it. Bring him more.”

All your sadhus are putting neem chutney in your food. Neither you are aware, nor are they, of what is happening. The aim is to kill taste. If you eat neem chutney daily, taste will die. No surprise. The tongue’s specialized sensitivity will be lost. Your skin will become ordinary skin. The tongue will become like hand-skin. Put neem or sweetmeat on the hand—it feels nothing.

Is this an achievement or a loss? After millions of years of evolution, the skin of the tongue has become capable of taste—what a great achievement! Realize how sensitive the skin has become—to savor even taste; the nose, to catch fragrances—another dimension opened.

You see the sanitation worker carrying a basket of human waste on his head—he seems unbothered. Then he is a great sadhu! Worship him—he can no longer smell fragrance. You think he lives amid stench; you cover your nose passing by; he walks on, chatting, humming a song. You are mistaken. His nose is dead. If one must carry filth daily, how long can the nose survive? The delicate molecules in the nasal passage that sense odor are very fine, very fragile. Strike them hard enough and they die. So this man smells nothing—neither fragrance nor stench. Another sense has died.

There’s a symbolic story about Surdas. I don’t know if he actually did it; if he did, he was a worthless fellow—not worth two pennies. If he didn’t, some of his verses can have meaning. They say he gouged out his eyes after seeing a beautiful woman. “If there are no eyes, beauty won’t be seen.”

That is the arithmetic of the suicide-prone: no life, no restlessness. Is that any achievement? No patient, no disease. In hospitals you make a big mistake—kill the patients! As long as they exist, disease is a risk.

This is what your sadhus and saints have been doing for thousands of years. Hard to find people who have poured more poison into life than they. They are the poisonous ones. They have toxified everything. They won’t let you relish taste—they add neem to it. They won’t let you smell rightly—they inject sin into it. They won’t let you touch freely, because touch is the gateway to hell. They won’t let you see beauty. They have destroyed all subtle sensitivities.

No, I will not tell you that. I stand for life, not suicide. I won’t tell you to die. And no wise one ever has. Take this as a test for the wise—this is the touchstone. The wise will give you nectar, not poison. He won’t snatch what you have; he’ll give you what you lack. Surely, when something vaster arrives, the trivial will drop on its own.

I will give you so much taste that food itself won’t be needed. I want to give you so much fragrance that you become so subtle in scent that the whole existence becomes a flow of fragrance. Wherever you move, the subtlest aroma of existence grips you. I do not want to deafen your ears; I want to give them such sound that you can hear the supreme resonance hidden in this world—the Om. It is resounding all around. Every gust of wind carries its news. Every flower’s blooming bears its beauty. It peeks from every eye. And when you touch someone, you have touched That—whether you know it or not. Let all your senses become so alive that you can experience the divine hidden in matter.

Then what must be done? Because the more sensitive the senses, the more anxiety arises. The more sensitive a person, the more he worries. Have you ever seen fools being anxious? They seem like paramahansas. They sit drooping in front of their houses—no worry touches them. Do you want such a state? Then follow the sadhus and renunciates. Sooner or later they’ll make you stupid. Better go visit a madhouse and look at an idiot. Nothing bothers him. Even if a fire breaks out, he’ll sit peacefully.

But there is a vast difference between that peace and the Zen master’s peace—who sat quietly on the third floor during the earthquake. The difference is fundamental, qualitative. They are not the same phenomenon. Because all of Zen’s teaching is to make the senses sensitive. If you see a Zen monastery, you will be surprised.

Gandhi would look at it and say, “What kind of ashram is this? It is indulgence.” So Gandhi chose Wardha—by his mind the ugliest place in the land to build an ashram: nothing but scorching dust. This country has beautiful hills, trees, places with lovely seasons—he did not choose them.

A Zen master builds his monastery in the mountains, by a lake, near trees. In his ashram, flowers bloom, fruits ripen, birds sing. Ancient Hindu gurukuls were like this—there were birds, trees, flowers. Jains’ and Buddhists’ misunderstanding dried it all up. Flowers frighten them; beauty scares them—it instantly reminds them of sexuality.

It’s strange that whatever is delightful makes you afraid. Why do you want to run away from it? Your running shows that your effort is on the periphery.

That Zen master on the third floor—I tell you, he also ran away. But his way of running was entirely different. He too moved—but in another way. He even said so: you also ran, but where you were running, the earthquake was there too. What sense did that make? It wasn’t that the quake was only in that house! It was on the second floor, the first floor, in the street too. Where were you running? From one quake-struck place to another. That was no safety. The real safety was what I took. I too ran—from the periphery to the center. I slipped within, where no earthquake reaches. The Zen master is wise.

As long as you keep running from one periphery to another, what difference will it make? Home or ashram, market or Himalayas—if you are on the periphery, you remain on the periphery. There too is an earthquake. Everywhere something will touch your periphery; movements will arise. Then a straightforward path appears—kill the periphery. Find some anesthesia so that the periphery becomes totally numb. You feel nothing. That is no revolution. You lost what you had, and ended the possibility of what could be.

Look at such sadhus—lying in the streets, legs up in the air, not sitting for ten years, not lying down, sleeping on thorns, lying on rocks, standing in cold water at night—watch them closely. You won’t see depth in their eyes. Hard to find shallower people: they are stuck on the periphery. Their entire struggle is to kill the periphery somehow. If there is no sensation, no anxiety will come. But that is no solution.

Go to the center where no anxiety ever reaches. This does not mean the periphery will stop trembling. Even if the Zen master goes within, this building will still shake. The body will tremble.

Rinzai died. His chief disciple began to weep. People said, “Don’t cry. Thousands are gathered here. What will they say? We think you have attained wisdom, and you are crying. Only the ignorant cry.”

The disciple opened his eyes and said, “So the ignorant have so much freedom and the wise not even this much—that I may not cry? And what are you telling me? You are worried that people respect you, and they will withdraw their respect if I cry.”

The disciple said, “To hell with their respect! When have I asked for it? My master has died. There is great joy in weeping. I am bidding him farewell—and what could be better than tears? I am not sad. At the inner center there is utter silence. There, who is master, who disciple? Who dies, who lives? What birth, what death? The tears are at the periphery. They are not coming out of my soul. They belong to the body.”

Someone said, “But you know well that no one dies. The master has not died. Then why cry?”

He replied, “I know the soul does not die. But the body that has died—ah, that too was much beloved. And such a body will never be seen again.”

First: in the total acceptance of life, accept tears too, accept laughter too—on the periphery. There is no need to be disturbed by them, nor to suppress them. Only this much is needed: do not identify with the periphery.

When the wind comes, trees will sway. Only a dead tree will not sway, whose leaves are all dry. A living tree will sway—and sway vigorously. No harm will come from the swaying. When the wind passes, the dust will fall away; the tree will be fresh and new. Cry when there is crying. Laugh when there is laughter. Taste! There is nothing in life to be renounced. Had there been, the divine would not have created it. You are trying to be wiser than God. Everything in life is essential and inevitable. Pass through it all, but remain at the center. Let everything touch you, yet remain untouched. Dance, but within remain unmoved. Sway, but within stay still. If you can hold both ends of this polarity, the flower that blooms in your life will have fragrance, meaning, music—because it will hold a harmony of opposites.

Have you seen an orchestra? Fifty instruments play, but a single music is born. You could also hand instruments to fifty madmen—then an uproar is born, not music; a disturbing din. Then what should be done? Smash the instruments? Or learn the inner capacity for music, for timing, for harmony within them?

Because of your five senses, your life is in great uproar—because you have not been able to link all five with the center. Otherwise life is an orchestra. And when even a single sense can give such juice, imagine when all five create music together—its name is samadhi. When the five senses merge and sing one song, one dance moves, and at the center you are still, unmoving—then you have arrived at that state which Hindus called rasa-lila. Krishna stands in the center and the gopis dance. The gopi is the symbol of the senses; Krishna is the symbol of the center. Rasa means the periphery dances while the center is still. Nothing is greater than rasa.

A few more points about the mind.

Second: because of the mind, whatever you see is colored by a particular hue. You do not see; the mind stands in between. Wherever you turn your eyes, pure perception does not occur, because mind stands between. You see through mind. And what is mind? Mind is past experience—memories, what you learned, heard, read, wrote, knew—all collected. Its layer has settled upon you, like dust on a mirror. Then you look at your face in it—your face is not seen clearly. Something else is seen.

Mind is dust, because mind is the past. And dust settles on the surface—never within. When you return from travel you bathe, and the matter is finished. You don’t tell the doctor to operate and remove the dust from within. Dust clings to the periphery.

But regarding the body you are more alert. You bathe daily, but you do not meditate daily. Meditation is the bath of the mind—so that no dust settles upon it. Daily you must dust it off, so the mind remains clean, transparent and the reflections formed upon it by the world are not distorted. As of now, all we see is distorted. You cannot see anything as it is, because your beliefs stand between.

I have heard—it may or may not be true; if it isn’t, so much the better—that Tulsidas was deeply absorbed in prayer to Rama. Later he went to Vrindavan, to Krishna’s temple. The friends who took him were shocked—Tulsidas remained standing, didn’t bow. He said to Krishna, “Until you take bow and arrow in your hands, I will not bow. I am a devotee of Rama.”

What does this mean? It means that even if God himself stands before you, your mind will say, “As per my concept!” If your view is that he has a thousand arms, you won’t tolerate a thousand and one—one must be cut off. And if there are only two arms, you will drive him out: “Go, come back as Sahasrabahu, only then will I bow.” Even before God, the mind imposes conditions. So you are not bowing; you are making God bow. What is Tulsidas saying? “I will bow when you meet my condition.”

Even surrender is conditional. “First you bow, then I will bow.” Man is not so rude before another man. The mind will be rude before God too, because the mind is God’s enemy. It says everything must align with me. What aligns with me is true. And then the mind gives such arguments you wouldn’t believe—but your mind is doing the same.

O. Henry has a short story: in a village a murder occurred. It was clear the man had not committed suicide; someone killed him. No clues were found; they called a great detective. He examined the corpse with a magnifying glass—found a hair on the coat.

He said, “The puzzle is solved. Now only one small task remains: to find whose hair it is. He is the murderer. Whoever killed him left this hair on his shoulder. This hair is not his own. Now we only have to find the man who has lost a hair.”

He was famous; the officials, though surprised, said, “Let’s try.” For four days in New York the detective wandered—streets, alleys, hotels, stations, airports. On the fourth day he saw a man boarding a ship at the harbor. From his gait and his clothes he looked suspicious. He wore a cap covering not only the head but also the ears. The detective thought, “He must be the one, trying to escape.” He ran after him, shouted, “Catch that man!” The authorities caught him on the ship. “This is the man,” said the detective. “From his gait it is clear. Now we only need to match the hair.” “Take off his cap.”

They removed the cap—and a great difficulty arose: he was completely bald, not a single hair. That’s why he was hiding it—not a suspect at all, just hiding his head. The officers laughed inwardly—they had suspected the line of reasoning was foolish. But what did the detective say? “This proves he has not committed one murder; he has murdered at least a million people—so many hairs lost!”

Such is the mind’s logic. It never retreats from its argument. It will go to the very end—and each argument, at the extreme, becomes ridiculous. Stretch any logic to its utmost, and you’ll find it turns absurd. What becomes absurd at the end was absurd from the beginning; you just couldn’t see it.

Therefore with logic you must always push it to the end. The mad do exactly that; hence they are mad. The madman is more logical than you.

I knew a man who spent all day washing his hands. They brought him to me. Psychologists say such a man is neurotic. I asked, “What’s the matter?” He said, “What’s the matter! You too will agree that if one’s hands get dirty, they should be washed.” I agreed. “How many times should they be washed?” he asked. I saw his logic was clear. I said, “Once.” He said, “And if they aren’t completely clean?” “Twice.” “That’s all I’m doing. I find that even twice they aren’t fully clean—so three hundred times! And these people think I’m mad. I’m only a lover of cleanliness.”

Once makes sense. Three hundred times does not. Why? He stretched logic to its ultimate.

I was once a guest in a home. The lady was a great lover of cleanliness—a big problem. She kept the doors closed. If someone came, she’d first look through the window to decide whether they were fit to enter. Even her husband couldn’t sit on the sofa. Her whole day went in cleaning. No benefit could come of it—if you are to live, there will be some dust. If you want to be dust-free, the grave stays clean; a home cannot—people will come and go, children will play. She didn’t have children because of cleanliness: “Why take that trouble?” She married—that’s the miracle. Her husband walked in the house like a culprit.

I told them, “This woman will drive anyone mad. If you sit, she looks at you as though you’re committing a crime—examining from head to toe lest some dust or disorder fall on her cushions.” But if you argue with her, you will lose. She says, “Is cleanliness a bad thing? It’s good.” Stretch it to the end, and you perish!

Look at your sadhus and saints. They took whatever is good and stretched it to the extreme, creating a mess. That is the final result of logic. They keep pulling, and it becomes ridiculous. If you pull anything from the middle to one extreme or the other, you become foolish. The middle is this: when hungry, fill the stomach. Extremes are: fill so much you have to vomit, or leave it so empty you starve. Both kinds exist in this world—the overeater and the faster. Both have gone to extremes. Both are logical. The overeater...

Like Emperor Nero—he ate so much he kept four doctors whose job was to induce vomiting after meals. He would eat twenty, twenty-five, sometimes thirty times a day. The doctors immediately made him throw up; without vomiting he couldn’t eat again. Nero said, “If eating gives such joy once, it will give more four times; more eight times. Life is for eating.” Hence four doctors.

You call him mad. But your fasting sadhus—Nero standing on his head! They say, “Food gives power to the senses. It keeps life’s wheel turning. It raises desire. If there is no energy, there is no desire. When there is weakness, how will sex arise? How will craving arise? So stop eating and drinking.”

Some fill the car with so much petrol there’s no room to sit themselves. Some don’t put any petrol at all—they sit on the handle, the car never moves. Some have filled so much petrol they stand outside—there’s no room to enter; all space is filled with petrol.

These two are extremes. The wise person stays always in the middle. A curious fact about the mind: only in the middle does the mind die; at extremes the mind grows. In the middle the mind cannot exist. Take this formula as deep as you can: at the exact midpoint, there can be no mind. Therefore the mind will never let you stay in the middle. Either eat a lot or fast a lot—both please it. Either become madly worldly or madly renunciate—both please it. Don’t come to the middle—samayik. Don’t stand in the present. Think of the past—fine; or the future—fine. Don’t stand in the present, because how can you think in the present? In the present, thought ceases. In the very moment, how can thought move? It cannot. Either past or future.

Those are the two extremes. Mind fears the middle. Those who come to the middle are freed from mind—they become masters of the mind. It is the mind that trembles; the more extreme you go, the more it trembles. The fasting person trembles; how can he be still? No one at an extreme can be still, because extreme means you have stretched your life energies to an exaggeration where peace cannot be. Overeat—you cannot be at ease. Work twenty-four hours in the shop—you can’t be at peace; abandon the shop and flee to the forest—you can’t be at peace.

You must stand somewhere between action and nonaction. That’s why Buddha called his way the Majjhima Nikaya—the Middle Way. Because in the middle, the mind dies. Right now, whatever you see is filled with the mind’s tremors.

Mulla Nasruddin reached a liquor shop—already quite drunk. The shopkeeper saw he had had too much. “I won’t serve you today.” Nasruddin said, “What do you think? You’re the only shop in town? Don’t be so arrogant. I’ll never set foot here again. Will you serve me or not?” The shopkeeper said, “Go. Come back when you’re sober.”

Nasruddin staggered out. After much searching he found another shop—it was the same shop’s back door. A drunk! He groped this way and that, walked in circles and parikrama, and arrived. He went in happily: “What do those fellows think? The other shopkeeper has become arrogant. He lives off customers and swaggers.” “Nasruddin, you’ve come here again,” said the shopkeeper. “You won’t get a drink today.”

Nasruddin went out, searched again. At midnight he entered through the third door—again, the same shop. “What a nuisance! The shops are so far apart. If one shop won’t serve, it takes hours to reach the next.” Then he looked closely: “What is this? Have you bought all the shops and installed yourself everywhere?”

Whichever door the mind enters, it ends up at the same shop. One extreme brings you there, the other extreme brings you there. The mind cannot enter through the middle—there lies its death. So it swings from one extreme to the other, like a pendulum. In this swinging exists the mind’s being.

Don’t choose extremes, or you’ll get into trouble. In everything, everywhere in life, find the middle. It’s not difficult. If you can find the extremes, how can the middle be hard? Stop in between the two extremes. Neither go mad after indulgence nor mad after renunciation. Neither be a slave of the body nor its enemy. Neither get so entangled in the senses that you are lost, nor fight them so violently that you cut them off and they are lost. Stand in the middle.

The middle is difficult; it requires finesse. The whole art of life lies in finding the middle.

When someone comes to me who overeats, he says, “Send me on a fast.” I tell him, “Eat a little less.” He won’t agree to that. He agrees to fasting. I say, “Eat rightly—samayak bhojan. Eat as much as necessary.” He says, “That’s hard.” He’s ready to fast. Why? Because by overeating he was destroying the body; by fasting he will destroy it again. He is the body’s enemy.

The tricks differ, the doors differ; the shop is the same. Here he was running after women and men, tormented in the chase.

There’s Don Juan—always running. They say Byron was in love with some sixty women at once. There must be some pathology. If there is love, one woman is enough; if there is no love, six thousand are not enough.

I was a guest in a friend’s home, sitting in the drawing room. He was scolding a boy: “You insulted my daughter. You proposed marriage to her last night, and I hear you went to another girl’s house the same night and proposed to her too. And not only that, you went to a third girl and proposed to her also. How did you do that?” The boy said, “What’s the difficulty, sir? I have a bicycle!”

Byron with sixty women! That doesn’t look like love; it looks like sickness. It is not love; something else is being pursued. Perhaps love is a journey of the ego—how many women can I conquer, how many can I possess? Ego! And ego is love’s enemy. This hunger will never be satisfied. Give him all the women in the world and he will remain unfulfilled.

One type is Don Juan, like Byron, who wants to enjoy all women. He gets exhausted, the body breaks—and then this very Don Juan, when worn out, begins to sing the glories of celibacy. He becomes the body’s enemy. He cannot tolerate anyone being in love. Whoever is in love he plans to roast in hell. “There the fire will burn; you will rot!”

Your scriptures have been written by such Don Juans. First they ran after women; now they have become women’s enemies. Because they found nothing there—and the cause is themselves, not women. Otherwise the divine is everywhere; not in women? They say God is in every atom—yet beware of women! Woman is amazing! She defeated God thoroughly. He triumphed over all, but could not enter the woman. “Be fearless—but beware of woman.” If you fear women, whom will you be fearless before?

The mind always wants to blame the other. If you are astray, someone is leading you astray.

Wake up! No one is leading you astray. If you are wandering, you are the cause. No woman is pulling you; no wealth is calling you. No position awaits, saying, “Come and sit.” No one is troubling you. You are troubling yourself. And when you are very troubled, you instantly choose the opposite—then you are troubled by the opposite.

Here I see householders troubled by women; there I see sadhus troubled by the absence of women. Sadhus come to me: “What to do? Woman is a difficulty.” Householders come and say the same: “What to do? Woman is a difficulty.”

Then I marvel—these two are opposites, yet the difficulty is the same. They cannot be truly opposite; if they were, the problem should differ. They are entering the same shop from different doors. Otherwise the difficulties would be different.

And the wonder is this: the sadhu is more troubled than you the householder. Because at least you chose a natural excess; he chose an unnatural one.

Remember: the overeater will not die today. He’ll live at least fifty years—in difficulty, but he’ll live. The faster will die in three months. That excess is unnatural. But whatever the excess, it feeds the mind. On it the mind stands. So keep in mind, the mind lives on extremes.

Excess is the mind’s food. Come to the middle—the mind is gone.

Now let us understand the little story.

Two monks were arguing about a flag...

In a Zen monastery a flag was flying in the morning breeze. Two monks passed by. They stopped and began to argue.

The mind loves to argue; any excuse will do. What has a flag to do with anything? But the mind relishes disputes. Whether you argue about God or about which film actress is the most beautiful—no difference.

The relish of dispute! What is its juice? To defeat the other. Man is civilized, but the animal within hasn’t died. He doesn’t strike with a club; he strikes with argument. If you batter someone’s head, the police will catch you. We’ve arranged that. But if you batter him with logic, no one can catch you. The relish is the same: make the other bow, topple him. “I am right; you are wrong.” Why is there such relish? Why does the Hindu tell the Muslim, “You are wrong”? Why does the Muslim say, “Your Vedas are wrong”? Why does the Jain say, “There is nothing in your Vedas”? Why do Hindus say, “What is there in Mahavira?” Why does the whole world dwell in disputes? There must be a deep juice in it—and any excuse...

Sometimes the excuses are so petty that if you are outside the dispute, you will laugh; if inside, you will be serious. What is the dispute between Shvetambaras and Digambaras? Whether Mahavira wore clothes or not. Heads have been breaking for twenty-five centuries over this donkey’s riddle. Whether Mahavira wore clothes or not—that was his business. How does it concern anyone else? What is the relish? Whether he married or not—they argue. Learned men are employed—gathering proofs of whether he did or didn’t. Why enter Mahavira’s troubles? If he did, he bore it; if he didn’t, he bore that. Where do you come in?

But that’s not the point. The real point isn’t whether the flag or the wind moves. Heads can break over this too. People burn each other’s temples and mosques. The one with a little awareness will conserve his energy for his own life. Why spend it breaking a temple or a mosque? Some build, some break—both lost outside, while inside life is draining away. Ultimate foolishness! But the mind enjoys folly. The purpose is to defeat the other somehow.

How many devices man has invented—civilized ways to prove our animality. Playing chess—moving elephants and horses is difficult in real life; keeping real elephants and horses is a hassle—so we made counterfeits: elephants, horses, pawns, king. Watch the chess player—how serious he is! His life is at stake. He has no idea what he is doing. It’s a substitute.

We stopped murder outwardly, but the murderer hides within. We can’t cut people’s throats inside because that’s expensive—so we found easier substitutes. Look: football—thousands come to watch. It shows a heavy inner sickness. Cricket—millions glued to TV and radio, as if their lives are at stake!

I know a gentleman whose favorite team lost; he hurled his radio to the ground and broke it in a rage. If you want to see madmen, go to the racecourse. Horses run; the people are distraught! Try convincing horses to race humans—no horse will come. Not one will relish it. “You run. What’s it to us?” But a man puts his bet on a horse—not for the horse, but to declare somehow: “I have won. The other has lost.” The relish of victory!

Any excuse will do. All excuses are equal. Recognize the inner tendency. What purpose could those two monks have? They were arguing about a flag.

One said, “The flag is moving.”

The other said, “The wind is moving.”

A tough dispute to settle—like the chicken and the egg: which came first? Great scholars and philosophers have argued about this. You will laugh—why would great thinkers get stuck here? Which came first—the chicken or the egg?

Rahul Sankrityayan, a great Buddhist philosopher, finally proved in a book that the egg came first. But who needs it? The hen doesn’t care—why are we bothered? Both sides are wrong—that’s why such disputes cannot be resolved. Remember: wherever a dispute has no solution, both sides must be wrong.

On God, it has not been settled whether he is or isn’t. For millions of years man has argued. The theist cannot defeat the atheist; the atheist cannot defeat the theist. The matter must be of such a kind that it is foolish and cannot be decided. Some questions are such that any answer given will go wrong.

Like someone asking you, “What is the fragrance of the color red?” The question seems perfectly fine—grammar correct. “What is the fragrance of red?” You will find two answerers. They will always be found. And then the dispute will begin—never to be solved.

“God is or is not”—this is such a dispute. How will you prove he is? If he is infinite, no pointer can reach him. If he is invisible, he cannot be shown. How will you prove he is?

If he created the world, one thing is certain: you were not present while he created. There is no witness, no testimony. For such a colossal deed to be accepted, who will accept it without a witness? Such a tumult! He also never repeated the mistake of creating again.

They say he made all creatures—plants, trees, earth, moon, stars; on the sixth day he made man. After that he made nothing. People ask, “Why did he make nothing more?” They say he was so frightened after seeing man—what might this creature do! He stopped right there. His final creation!

But there is no witness; it is all talk. Hence Buddhas do not answer. Ask them, “Is God?” They say, “Don’t raise futile issues. Ask something meaningful.” And the one who says “He is not” cannot prove that definitively either. How will you prove he isn’t? Until you have searched every speck of the infinite and nowhere found him, how will you prove non-existence?

That can never be done—because the expanse is infinite. Something will always remain unsearched—always remain. To know, there will always be more. Man’s mind is small; existence is vast. So the theist will say, “Until you have known all, at least keep quiet. He will be hiding somewhere.”

The dispute goes on. How will you decide if the chicken or the egg came first? The hitch is in the question. You have assumed chicken and egg are two different things; therefore the problem. They are not two. The chicken is one form of the egg; the egg is one form of the chicken. They cannot be separated. It is one event—egg at one end, chicken at the other. Can you mark exactly where the egg ends and the chicken begins? There is no line. The egg is becoming chicken moment to moment; chicken is becoming egg.

Exactly so are the Creator and creation. They are not two, hence the question is false, and all answers false. This existence cannot be without the Creator—and the Creator cannot be without the creation. What meaning would “Creator” have without creation? They are two ends of one event. The Creator is becoming creation moment to moment; the creation is becoming Creator.

Now, it is difficult to decide whether the flag is moving or the wind. Both can find arguments. The curious thing about untruth is that logic can support it. Logic is not opposed to untruth—only to inconsistency. It demands coherence. The difficulty is that life is inconsistent; truth is inconsistent; logic wants consistency.

The one who says the flag is moving will argue: “Can you even see the wind? How can the unseen move that which is seen? How can the invisible touch the visible? Where is the link? Show me the wind! Why base your argument on what cannot be seen? The flag is visible; plainly it moves.”

This is the quarrel between materialists and theists—wind and flag. Hence the story is delightful and symbolic; it shows philosophers’ folly.

What does Marx say? Exactly this: “How can the unseen God have created the world? How can the unseen soul drive the body?” The opposite must be true: what is seen drives what is unseen. So Marx says consciousness is a by-product of matter—your soul is just a product of matter. It arises from the matter that is visible. That is the base. What is unseen is only its by-product.

“The flag is moving”—that’s visible. The materialist will say the flag moves, and the flag’s movement creates ripples in the invisible wind.

Throw a stone in a lake—waves arise in the water and spread to the lake’s far shore. Will you say the waves caused the stone to be thrown? Or that the stone was thrown, therefore the waves arose? The flag is moving; like the stone it creates waves—those waves stir the wind. The flag is visible; the wind is not.

The other will also find his reasons. He will say, “When the wind is still, make the flag move without any agent. Without anything moving it, does the flag ever move? You can move it by hand—otherwise, how will it move by itself? When there is no wind, pray to the flag to move—will it? The wind moves it. Whether visible or not—what difference? We feel it. When the wind blows hard, we sway, our clothes sway—we sense it; touch is also a perception. It is the basis; the wind moves it.”

They will never conclude—a conclusion that satisfies both is impossible. If you introspect, you will find yourself split into two regarding this. Some of you will feel, “The wind moves it”—those who consider themselves religious. Those who consider themselves scientific will say, “The flag moves.”

Their master suddenly happened to pass by.

The sixth patriarch was passing. He said, “Not the wind, not the flag. The mind is moving.”

This is a whole third dimension. Here religion begins—an inner door opens. What did the Zen master say? Many things. He said: both of you are talking about the outside. One says wind, the other flag—but one thing is certain: both are outside. Your reasons are outside. I say the reason is inside. If you must find the cause, it is within.

What is the Zen master saying? You are curious whether the flag moves or the wind moves. The curiosity is arising from the place where there is real movement. When you stop, everything stops. When your inner trembling ceases, all questions drop.

Therefore a true master doesn’t give you answers; he gives you the art of being unshaken. He gives you the method to become still. Thinking is trembling; meditation is becoming still. Meditation is stopping. The Zen master says, “Stop this nonsense about the flag and the wind. It has been going on for centuries. No one has ever decided it; no one ever will. Children’s play.”

I once saw a toy in a shop—made of many pieces. Children were to assemble it. I tried my best; it would not assemble. I said to the shopkeeper, “A very difficult thing—I cannot assemble it. Have you ever tried? How will a child assemble it?” He said, “I have tried too. It doesn’t assemble. Many others have tried. When no one could, I wrote to the company. They replied, ‘It’s not meant to assemble at all. It is to give the child a taste that life is like this.’ The toy is designed so the child starts to understand that life will not ‘come together.’”

However much you try, it will remain unassembled—the nature of the outside. Outer questions and answers will never assemble. However much you assemble—so many philosophies, so many traditions of thought—what on earth has assembled? Not a single answer anywhere. Yes, if you were born in a house where a scripture is worshiped, you may feel answers are there—because you were blinded from childhood. Otherwise, if you’re a little free of your conditioning, you’ll see every scripture is saying odd things. The fundamental questions have no answers in them.

Hindus say God created the world—because without a maker, how can anything exist? And you never ask: who created God? If you ask, they say, “That is a metaphysical question.” When they have no answer, it becomes “meta.” But the first question—“Who created the world?”—was not meta? You argued that without a maker nothing can be. Now we use your own argument: who created God? You say, “Hold your tongue—don’t ask meta-questions.”

Yajnavalkya, so thoughtful a man, told Gargi in King Janaka’s court, “You are asking a meta-question; your head will fall.” Janaka convened a great assembly. He had tethered a thousand cows with golden horns studded with jewels—worth crores—as a gift to whomever proved himself the greatest knower of Brahman. Yajnavalkya defeated all the scholars, but one woman gave him trouble.

There is a reason. Men and women reason differently. Yajnavalkya was caught. The woman’s logic is different. It’s not linear—it leaps. That is why a husband and wife can never truly converse. You say something; she says something else—no meeting point. The toy won’t assemble. However you try. At last the husband falls silent—because there’s no use.

A man read in the paper and told his wife: “A horse kicked a man and he began to speak.” The wife asked, “Was he married?” “Yes,” said the man, “and had four children.” The wife said, “It would have been simpler if he had got a divorce.”

Husbands stop talking; slowly they give up—because nothing matches, and talking only increases the mess. A woman’s logic is different—intuitive. The husband is Euclid’s geometry; the wife is non-Euclidean. Their definitions, their ways of thinking differ—as they should. Different bodies, chemistries—how can their logic be the same?

Yajnavalkya defeated all the male scholars; what he said they understood. But Gargi created trouble—and Yajnavalkya had to do what every husband does. It’s an amusing fact that whether fool or wise, in the end one must do the same with a woman.

Yajnavalkya said, “The world was created by Brahma.” Gargi asked, “Who created Brahma?” And Yajnavalkya did what husbands do—hit on the head or prepare to fight. “You are asking a meta-question. If you ask further, your head will fall.”

What happened after we don’t know—the assembly was full of men; they would have decided in Yajnavalkya’s favor. Janaka’s mind too was male.

But it’s clear: the question remained. Yajnavalkya lost. He had no answer. When there is no answer, anger arises. Otherwise, why should a head fall? Gargi had caught the nerve—asked the final question. Yajnavalkya knew if he answered, he’d be in trouble—she would keep asking, “Who created him?” and “Who created him?” and finally there would be a dead end—because there must be.

All philosophies are in this condition. The Jains tried to avoid one mess by saying there is no creator. A philosophy tries to avoid another philosophy’s mess, but falls into its own. They avoided the trouble of “Who created God”—by saying there is no God; the world exists by itself.

But then how did the soul fall into bondage? Big trouble. They say the soul will be liberated. But the question is: how did it get bound at the start? If you say “by karma,” then karma implies past births. But at the very beginning, before any birth—how?

A meta-question! The Jains say, “This is sophistry.” Your arguments are logic; the other’s are sophistry?

Every philosophy has a hole. Don’t touch that hole—or the philosopher will be angry. Until you touch his hole, he will take you around and around—so you never notice it. He will give you answers to everything—just don’t ask that one thing. If before that you get tired and say, “Enough—forget the trouble. We’ll follow you,” he is pleased. Followers arise like this. They did not see the basic hole—everywhere. Because thought has never given an answer and never will. Philosophies are expansions of thought. Thought cannot give the ultimate. It can only reinforce beliefs. No belief is truth. In the belief-free mind, truth is understood, experienced, revealed.

The master is saying: do not enter this discussion. Both of you are outside. Do not seek answers out there. Come within. The trembling is in the mind. End the mind’s trembling. In the ending of the mind’s tremors lies the answer. And the day you no longer tremble, you will find the whole world is still. The day you are whole, the world is whole. The day you are full of light, there is no darkness anywhere. Keep trying to rid the outer world of darkness—you will never come to an end. You pull here, it thickens there. All outer problem-solving is like the poor man’s blanket—cover your head, your feet stick out; cover your feet, your head is bare. The blanket is small.

Logic is too small; truth is too big. You will never cover truth with logic. Cover your feet; your head lies bare. Cover your head; your feet lie bare. The logician says, “Then trim your feet and head to fit the blanket.” Some do that—we call them pundits. They have trimmed their head and feet to fit the blanket. The wise one knows truth is such that no blanket can cover him—he is too vast. He seeks a garment vast enough to cover his immensity.

Nothing less than the divine can cover you—because you are the divine. You are not smaller than That. All other covers will fall short. If you cut yourself to fit, you will become a corpse. I do not ask you to shrink because the blanket is small. I say: expand—become as vast as this universe. Only then will this vastness clothe you. Your garment cannot be less than the sky. Your capacity cannot be less than Brahman. If you settle for less, it is a mistake—you have stopped before the goal.

The Zen master said rightly: “Not the wind, not the flag—the mind is moving.”

Concern yourself with the mind.

The philosopher seeks answers to questions. The religious one quiets the mind from which questions and answers arise. The day the mind is silent, no questions arise.

This does not mean that the one who attains supreme knowing has all answers. Don’t fall into that illusion. He has no answers—nor questions. He is questionless, answerless, utterly at peace.

People have erred here too. They think that when Mahavira attained enlightenment, he became omniscient—had all answers. Ask him how to fix a bicycle puncture—will he tell you? He will not. And if he doesn’t, you will say, “What kind of omniscient!” When Buddha attained, people thought he knew everything—past, present, future; what happened in the past, what will happen—he will tell you. Nonsense! That twenty-five hundred years later, in 1974, you will slip on a banana peel in the market and fracture a bone—will Buddha tell you? Then there would be no bigger fool. Who will keep track of your bones and your banana peels? But you think with enlightenment should come omniscience.

Enlightenment does not mean omniscience; it means self-knowing. It means knowing oneself.

Yet in a deeper sense you can call it omniscience: one who has known himself has nothing left to know. He has known the source of knowing. Nothing remains. Catch the Ganges at Gangotri, the whole Ganges is in your hand. Get the seed, the whole tree is in your hand. In this sense, omniscience: because now there is no question, no answer—no scripture, no dispute.

The master says: seek the source from which your dispute arises. Close your eyes—not flag, not wind. Look at the mind from which this dispute arises. That is your wave-tossed state. There is the wobbling. This is religion’s formula. In this small story, the whole of religion is present.

Do not wander in futile questions.

The day before yesterday someone came asking, “Did Vishvamitra live a thousand years or not?” What is it to you! If he erred, he did. “But I am curious,” he said. What will you do with such curiosity? Not every curiosity is meaningful! Otherwise you will wander endlessly. Curiosities will rise endlessly. What purpose will it serve? None.

Mind is like an itch. Scratch—and the itch increases. A little sweetness comes, and because of it you scratch more. Keep scratching; finally you find wounds have formed. If you pursue the mind’s titillation, your whole soul will be full of wounds. It is an itch—a disease.

The mind is a disease; don’t listen to it too much. Find a medicine to quiet the mind. Learn how to become still at the center. How to return to your home. How to unite with the source. And that source is waiting for you.

This is what the sixth patriarch said: don’t worry about whether the wind or the flag moves. Worry about only one thing—that you are moving. Become unmoving, and all will be yours. Become still, and you will find yourself. To find yourself is to find truth.

Enough for today.