Chapter #7 Eighty Four Thousand Poems #7

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been copy-typed on to the computer. It is for reference purposes only.]

Man can live life either as prose or as poetry.
If you live life as prose
Life remains business, arithmetic.
If you live life as poetry
Life becomes an incredible experience
Of beauty, of love, of joy and ultimately of god.

Poetry is a way towards god.
Prose takes you away from all that is significant
From all that is intrinsically beautiful.
It keeps you engaged with the utilitarian .
But beauty has no utility, love has no utility
Bliss has no utility, meditation has no utility.
They are all part of a poetic vision.
Poetry is non-utilitarian.

I would like my sannyasins
To be absolutely non-utilitarian
Because that is the only possible door
To enter into the divine.

Life can be lived either
As a downhill phenomenon or as an uphill task.
If you are moving downhill
It is convenient, comfortable.
No effort is needed on your part, no risk
No challenge -- but no gain either.
You simply drift from birth to death.
Life remains a vast emptiness.
Now you have to make it a point
To be constantly blissful.
That is the meaning of anand.
Life should be a dance, a song, a celebration.
And come back -- this is your home!

Man is homeless in this world unless he finds god.
Man is homeless unless he becomes enlightened
Because only in ultimate awakening
Is there shelter.
Otherwise we go on passing
From one caravanserai to another
From one life to another.
It is a long, long weary pilgrimage
Utterly futile, meaningless;
We almost go on in circles
Reaching nowhere, finding nothing;
Always hoping, dreaming
But ultimately
There is only frustration in the hands.

The home certainly exists
But only very few people have found it up to now.
And the few who have found have found it in the most unexpected place:
They have found it within themselves.
And everybody is searching for it
Everywhere else except within themselves.
That's why we remain homeless.

We are not aware of how precious we are.
We are not aware of the inexhaustible treasure
That we are carrying within us.
And because we are not aware of it
We go on desiring small things
Quarrelling about mundane things
Fighting, competing for something trivial.

The moment you become aware
Of your own inner beauty
All this struggle on the outside disappears.
Life becomes calm and cool
Life attains to a grace.
One is no more interested in the non-essential.

That's what sannyas is all about:
Awareness of the inner, and the transformation
That it brings on the outside.
Inside you become more and more meditative
Outside you become more compassionate.

The universe is vast, unbounded
And so are we because we are part of it.
And the part is indivisibly one with the whole
So whatsoever is the quality of the whole
That is the quality of th part too.

Just remember a very small formula:
That if all the parts are finite
Then the total cannot be infinite.
If the total is infinite
Then all the parts must be infinite too.
And we are part of this infinite existence
We are also infinite.
Hence the Eastern seers have declared
'Aham Brahmasmi' -- I am god.
Al Hillaj Mansoor says 'Ana'l Haq' -- I am truth.

These are tremendously important declarations.
They have declared it
On behalf of the whole humanity.
These are not egoistic assertions
They are simply statements of facts.
And just to feel it,
That you are part of an infinite existence
Which begins nowhere, ends nowhere
You immediately feel uplifted, weightless.
Your small worries and small problems drop.
they become so insignificant
Compared to the vastness that you are.
They lose all meaning
They simply become irrelevant.

So remember it again and again:
Seeing the sky know that you are also the sky.
Seeing the stars know that the stars are within you.
As much as you are within the sky
The sky is within you.
Slowly slowly your whole gestalt will change
And in that next gestalt
Small problems can't arise
They become ridiculous.

Somebody has insulted you --
Now can anybody insult the sky?
If you spit on the sky
The spit will fall upon you.
It is absurd, it is ridiculous,
The person is stupid, that's all.
You will feel all compassion for the person
You will not be angered by his insult.

That's how the real man of religion
Passes through life:
Unaffected, calm and cool and tranquil
Centred and rooted in his being.
Nothing can make him waver, not even death
Because even death
Cannot take anything away from him.
He has become one
With that which is eternally abiding.

Rosemary is a flower
Which symbolises remembrance.

It is very significant to understand
The word 'remembrance'.
The whole religion
Is contained in that small word.
God is not lost but only forgotten.
We have only to remember him.
It is not a question of seeking and searching.
He is already here, he is with us
He is our very life, our very being.
We cannot lose him, there is no way to lose him.
The only possiblility is that we can
Forget all about him and he is so close
That it is very easy to forget him.
There is no distance, hence we become oblivious.

All meditations, all prayers, all methods
Developed down the ages are nothing but
Devices to make you remember
That which you have forgotten.
The moment you remember it you cannot believe
How for so long you remained in darkness
While the light was waiting within you.
How did it happen in the first place
That you remained a beggar
When the whole kingdom of god was yours?
It is the ultimate puzzle, with no solution.
But it is a fact that we have forgotten.

Buddha was asked again and again
'How have we forgotten?'
He said,'Don't ask that
Ask how to remember.'
When you have remembered
Then you can enquire how you forgot
Because nobody knows how we have forgotten.
But there are methods to remember.
And that is the real thing.

Sannyas means now it is going to be
A twenty-four-hour-a-day remembrance
In every possible way.
Seeing a flower remember god.
Not only rosemary, but each flower and each tree
And each cloud and each person
Should represent him
Because in fact only he exists and nothing else.

One has to learn to see
Divineness even in darkness.
It is easy to see light as god
It does not need much intelligence.
But to see darkness as god
Needs tremendous insight.
It is easy to see life as divine
But to see death as divine needs
A total transformation of your vision.

Only very few religions have achieved that peak.
Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Zorastrianism --
They all remain confined to the duality
The fight between good and evil, god and devil.
They have not been able to reconcile this conflict.
And this conflict has to be reconciled
Because the universe is one
It can't be divided into two.
Darkness and light are not two different forces.
Darkness simply beans less light,
Light simply means less darkness;
The difference is only of degree.
The difference is exactly like that
Between cold and hot.
They are not two things.
It is the same phenomenon, so you can measure it
By the same method, by the same thermometer.

The good and the bad, the sinner and the saint
Are not separate but two sides of the same coin.

This is one of the greatest synthesis
That has been achieved in the East.
This is the ultimate synthesis
Where god and the devil
Are no more thought to be enemies;
They disappear into each other
They become one energy.

And that's what I would like you
To see, feel, understand:
That darkness too is divine, death too is divine.
Even the sinner is a phase of divine energy.
There is nothing bad in existence
Because all is god
All are manifestations of one energy.

The cloud represents a few things.
One: it represents absolute freedom.
It is not tethered to anything.
It is completely free, it floats in freedom.

That's how a sannyasin has to be:
Like a cloud, untethered.

Secondly, the cloud has no fixed form.
It is not static
It is constantly moving and changing.
Not even for the consecutive seconds is it the same.
That represents something very essential:
Life is movement; only death is not a movement.
Only dead thins don't change
Things which are alive are constantly changing.

That's how a sannyasin has to be:
Always on the move, changing
REaching for newer horizons
Exploring for newer pastures.
A sannyasin is as unpredictable as a cloud;
Nobody can say what form
It is going to take next moment.

And thirdly, the cloud has no ego of its own.
It is utterly surrendered to the winds
So wherever the winds take the cloud
It moves without any resistance.
It has no will of its own
It does not insist that
'I want to go to the East or to the West'
It simply goes with the wind
Wherever the wind goes.
That also has to be an essential quality
Of a sannyasin.
He should not have his own will.
His will is surrendered to god.
He says to god, every moment, with every breath
'Thy will be done.'

Gratitude is in essence
The very foundation of all religion.
Gratitude is prayer.
It is trough gratitude
That one becomes aware of the presence of god;
Not vice versa.
People thing that when they become aware of god
They will feel very grateful towards him.
That's nonsense! It can't happen that way.
First you have to learn how to be grateful
Only then can you become aware
Of the presence of god.

Gratitude means that you have become
Aware of one thing:
That the existence has done so much for you
And you have not even thanked it.
On the contrary
You have been continuously complaining.
This is my experience here
Working with thousands of sannyasins:
You go on doing everything for them
But they don't have any sense of gratitude.
And every day I receive letters of complaint
That this has not been done for them
That they are not being taken care of
That nobody is taking any note
That they are here.
But very rarely
Does somebody come to feel gratitude.
We have lost the very sense of gratefulness.
So whatsoever happens to us we accept it
As if we deserve it. We don't deserve a thing!
But we start taking everything for granted.

I am always surprised
By the insensitivity of human beings.
For a few people I have done so much for years
But no sense of gratitude ever arises in them.
And there seems to be no possibility
That it will ever arise.
And if whatsoever has been done for them
Is dropped, if something is no more done
Then they are there immediately
To make a complaint.
They take it for granted
They think they have earned it:
It has to be given to them.

And man has not earned anything
We have not earned these trees
And these flowers and these birds
And these stars and these mountains.
This immensely beautiful existence
Has been given to us.
Start feeling grateful for it!

It is not a question of to whom,
That is not the point, it is irrelevant.
Just start feeling grateful
That you have been showered with so many gifts
From some unknown energy, x y x,
Whatsoever it is.
Call it god, or if that word annoys you
Then call it something else.
But some unknown force
Has been showering its love on you.
Start feeling grateful
And soon you will be connected with it
And soon you will be bridged
And more will start happening.

And you will be surprised
That one cannot feel grateful enough.
It is never enough because the existence
Goes on doing so much for you.
We cannot repay it
But at least we can be thankful.
That is prayer and that is sannyas.