Es Dhammo Sanantano #38

Naturally, where there is disease, there is medicine. When health comes, the medicine is useless. If someone goes on taking medicine even in health, it becomes harmful. What removes the disease can then reproduce it.

A path is needed only while the goal is distant; if, after reaching, you keep on walking, the very walking that brought you near will take you far again.

And the question is important, because this is what often happens: the illness drops, but the medicine grips you. The mind argues, “How can I drop what has brought me this far? What if, by dropping it, I lose all I have gained?” So many travelers, even on the verge of the goal, go astray. Many boats crash and sink close to the shore; very few sink midstream. The journey is not as difficult as dropping the long habit of moving on once you have arrived.

When the mind is restless, you meditate. Slowly restlessness departs, and peace is born. Then don’t cling to meditation; otherwise meditation itself will become the cause of new restlessness. Meditation too must go.

In the dark you take a good friend’s hand; when light comes, when dawn arrives, don’t go on clutching that hand. You must learn both to take hold and to let go.

Use the device; don’t become a slave to it. Walk the road, but never forget it is only a road.

There are many methods. Use what works, but drop it the moment the work is done. Even a moment’s delay can be dangerous, because when an empty space opens within you, the method, the discipline, the practice might occupy it and make camp there.

Then it is as if an enemy had seized your throne; you summoned friends, they expelled the enemy—and then seated themselves on the throne. You remain where you were, perhaps worse off than before. An enemy’s throne can still be wrested away; how will you take it back from friends? They are yours—through them you gained the throne—how will you strip it from them?

Therefore understand the definition of a true master: one who does not hold your hand even a moment longer than necessary.

You, of course, will want to hold on. You are entangled. When it is time to hold on, you are afraid of holding on; when it is time to take a hand, you devise a thousand ways not to. Your ego obstructs; you run, you hide. When you needed to surrender, you stiffened your back. With great difficulty you bend; with great difficulty you take a hand. But when the moment to let go arrives, then you obstruct letting go; you will refuse to release, you will dig in and say, “It was this very hand that brought me here; I will never leave these feet.”

The true master is the one who makes you hold on when you don’t want to—and makes you let go when you refuse to.

After that, sadhana has no meaning. Sadhana is like a thorn—use one thorn to remove another, then throw both away. Do not become a “lifelong seeker.” It is a means, not the end. As the goal draws near, begin loosening your grip on the means. You ride in a vehicle; when the destination is close, you get down.

Nature’s one law is this:
excess destroys itself.

One excess is lust—lost in the world, in the marketplace, in futility. Another excess is the feverish effort to save yourself—from the world, from futility, from the marketplace. Both are extremes. Neither holds equanimity.

Sadhana is necessary because you have fallen into one excess; then you must move to the other. But the moment the first excess is cut, drop the second at once; otherwise you will swing like a clock’s pendulum, left to right, right to left. Stop somewhere in the middle.

Notice: when the pendulum stops in the middle, the clock stops. The clock means time. Where you become balanced and excess ends, you step outside time. As long as you swing from one extreme to the other, the tick-tock continues—time goes on, the world goes on. It is the pendulum of your mind that keeps the whole world moving.

Have you seen a tightrope walker? The whole time he sways left to right and right to left. When he leans left, a moment comes when a little more and he will fall; instantly he leans right, to correct the excess. Then on the right the same brink appears; again he leans left. In this way, by swaying, he manages to stay on the rope.

But once he climbs down, will he keep swaying? He sits. Why would he lean then? He stands firmly; ground has been found. He is no longer on a rope.

Moving in the world is like walking a tightrope. Every moment you must lean: now love, now hate; now sympathy, now anger—left and right.

Lovers come to me and ask, “How can it happen that we never get angry with the one we love?” I say, it cannot be so—unless you climb down from the rope of the world. On the rope, if you love, you will have to be angry. Lean too far into love, and fear of falling arises; you pivot toward anger, and you steady yourself. Lean too far into anger, fear comes again—so you buy flowers for your wife, bring ice cream. A little love—then the danger returns. Whomever you love, you will also hate. To what you are attached, you will be both drawn and opposed.

Some years ago in the West, a striking book was published: The Intimate Enemy, about the husband–wife relationship—“the intimate enemy.”

But this insight is ancient. In Urdu there is a word used in Hindi too: khasam. Khasam means husband. And in Arabic the root means enemy or adversary. How did “enemy” become “husband”? It seems people had caught the thread: the one you love is also the one you oppose.

Where there is love, there is hate. Where there is attachment, there is detachment. Wherever there is passion, dispassion also comes.

Have you noticed how often you feel like running away from home? “Forget the wife and kids!” But you won’t reach the station before turning back. Don’t take it as something permanent; it isn’t. This feeling returns again and again. How many times does a person not want to die!

Psychologists say it is hard to find a person who has not contemplated suicide at least ten times in life. It is natural: when life becomes too much, the thought of dying helps you cope. When life is heavy, merely imagining death brings relief. Who actually dies? Relief comes, and you get on with living. It is only a way of staying alive. So if someone talks of dying, don’t be overly worried; say, “Fine, die!”

I once stayed with a family. New guest, I didn’t know their ways. One night around eleven-thirty I heard the husband and wife quarrel. I kept quiet—no reason to interfere—but it escalated till the husband said, “I’m going right now to die.” I grew a little concerned—guest though I was—still, I thought, let him go, I’ll see. He even walked out of the house, and then I ran to the wife: “Now we must do something!” She said, “Don’t worry; he’ll be back in five or seven minutes.” He was.

In the morning I asked, “How far did you go?” He said, “I don’t know what it is—this happens often. I go out in anger; the railway tracks are nearby; as soon as I get there, everything feels fine and I come back.” It is part of living.

We fool ourselves this way: “I’m going to die; it’s all over.” The thought of death alone sets the burden of life down for a moment; then we pick it up again. Who dies so quickly! And those who do—some rush and actually die—if you could meet them, you’d find them repentant: “We hurried; if only we’d waited a moment!” Some pass in haste. If the shift happens in an instant, well and good; if it delays a moment, you will return. Such is the mind.

That life is the celebration of hope,
that life is the mockery of hope,
that life cries out in hope,
that life cries out hopelessly—
sitting at the border of day and night,
what conclusion can I draw?
Every morning arrives laughing;
every evening departs in tears.

Morning seems to smile, evening seems to weep—not a contradiction but a continuum. Because morning smiles, evening becomes its tears. This is life’s natural rhythm.

Hope–despair, light–dark, friendship–enmity—thus we keep our balance like the rope-walker. Lust–sadhana; indulgence–yoga—thus we steady ourselves on the rope.

Know that you have found ground on the day when neither indulgence nor yoga remains; neither lust nor sadhana; neither love nor hate; neither anger nor non-anger. When all dualities drop, you have climbed down.

That is the ground of liberation. That is the sky of freedom.

You are no longer on the rope. There is nothing to manage. There is no risk of falling; why would you balance? We only balance when there is danger. When you climb down below both heaven and hell, that is the land of moksha. Between heaven and hell stretches the rope; on that rope the world walks.

Yes, sadhana certainly ends with lust. Sadhana and lust are twin sisters. It may surprise you. No “holy man” will tell you this; that is why the holy men are annoyed with me.

Sadhana and lust are twin sisters—their faces are identical. They are born together and die together.

Don’t mistake the need for sadhana as some great good fortune. Don’t carry a medicine bottle on your head in a victory procession; it only announces disease. If a doctor keeps visiting your house, don’t take it as a sign of glory.

A staunchly “Hindu-minded” gentleman once told me, “India is most fortunate.” “Why?” I asked. “Look—twenty-four avatars of the Hindus, twenty-four tirthankaras of the Jains, twenty-four Buddhas—all occurred here.” I said, “That sounds like misfortune. So many tirthankaras, so many avatars, so many Buddhas—so many physicians have to come—how sick must the patient be! Don’t wear their constant coming like a crown of glory.”

He was startled. He had never thought of it. “There is some sense in that,” he said. “If a land were truly religious, why would avatars be needed?” I said, “Turn the Gita and look: Krishna says, ‘When darkness spreads, when dharma decays and the virtuous are oppressed, then I come.’ Clearly, Krishna comes where adharma is. If he came here, adharma must have been here. Don’t call this a religious country. And where he didn’t come, they must be better off than we are.”

A physician is needed by the sick. An avatar is needed by the irreligious. A lamp is needed in the dark. With sunrise we blow the lamp out. What need then?

That is why we celebrate Diwali on the night of the new moon. When the darkness is deepest, we line the night with lamps. On the year’s darkest night we light the most lamps. If someone celebrates Diwali at noon, we call him mad.

If I meditate, I am mad; if you don’t, you are mad.

People ask, “When do you meditate?” I say, “Am I insane? Have I lost my mind?” They say, “Then why do you tell us to meditate?” I explain, “Because if you don’t, you’ll go insane.”

It is simple. It only appears upside down. When you have arrived, the journey ends; why keep walking? When you have found, the search stops; why go on seeking?

Use sadhana—that is what the word means: a means, not the end. When you are fulfilled and the end is attained, sadhana too will drop. Remember this—don’t get attached to sadhana.

Ramakrishna practiced devotion for many years. He did the practice of bhakti, but a thorn pricked within: the experience of nonduality had not happened. When he closed his eyes, the glorious image of the Mother would arise; but that utter aloneness—what Mahavira called kaivalya—did not occur. The second remained present. God, yes, but the other is still the other. As long as there are two—“I” and “Thou”—there is world and duality.

Ramakrishna suffered. Then he met a sannyasin, a siddha of Advaita, named Totapuri. Ramakrishna asked, “What shall I do? How do I cross beyond this duality?” Totapuri said, “Not difficult. Take a sword and cut the Mother into two.”

Ramakrishna trembled and wept—“The Mother—and cut her! And this man talks thus, calling himself religious!”

Ultimate religion speaks in the language of the sword. Jesus said, “I have brought a sword.” I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. I will break everything. Only in breaking will there be peace.

Totapuri said, “Where is the obstacle?” Ramakrishna said, “Where will I find a sword in there?” Totapuri laughed: “Where did you bring the Mother from—where did you get her? She is a web of imagination. Sweet, very sweet; lovable—but you conjured, believed, invoked, adorned your imagination in a thousand colors, and it took shape. You yourself breathed life and light into it. In the same way, fashion a sword—and cut.”

Ramakrishna would close his eyes and shiver. As the Mother appeared, courage failed—“A sword—and upon the Mother! Who cuts God with a sword?” He would open his eyes in panic: “No, I cannot.”

Totapuri said, “If you cannot, let kaivalya go. I’m leaving! I have no time to waste. If you want to do it, this is the last chance. Drop this childishness—this crying and shedding tears! Pick up the sword and, with courage, cut in two.”

Ramakrishna pleaded, “Help me a little. It seems you are right, but I have adorned this with such devotion, built this temple with such feeling; I have spent my life in it. I cannot do it.”

Totapuri said, “Then I will help.” He picked up a shard of glass. “When the inner image of the Mother arises, I will cut a line on your forehead with this glass. As the pain flares and blood flows, find your courage and raise the inner sword and cut the image in two. Then I will not remain. If you are to do it, do it now.”

As he was leaving, poor Ramakrishna had to act. Totapuri drew the line on his forehead with the glass; blood flowed. In that very instant, Ramakrishna gathered his courage, raised the sword within, and shattered the image. As the imagination broke, kaivalya was revealed. But the obstacle was great; it took many days.

One can become attached even to the means. If you build an image in the mind, dropping it will be hard. If you have meditated, dropping meditation will be hard. If you have prayed, dropping prayer will be hard. And remember: it will have to be dropped, because these were treatments—adopted for a reason. The very condition for holding them has vanished.

It is like this: when you build a new house, you put up scaffolding. With its support, the house is built. When the house is complete, you take the scaffolding down. If you become attached to the scaffolding and refuse to remove it, your dwelling will not be livable; the scaffold will not let you live. Once the house is built, drop the scaffold. Once you have climbed the stairs, leave the stairs behind.

Therefore, from the very beginning, keep this in mind: use sadhana, but do not hand ownership over to it. That is auspicious.

You have to understand.
Lust is entirely outside. Desire is the name of energy rushing outward—so outward that it has even forgotten there is an inner. Desire is extraverted energy, running out.
Practice, prayer, devotion—call it what you will—is energy moving inward, so inward that it forgets there is an outer, it does not even recall that “outside” exists.
Desire is outward; prayer is inward—these are the two extremes. Love is in the middle, between the two. As if one stands upon the threshold—neither going out nor going in, just pausing; as if looking both ways while standing in between.
Love is the midpoint between prayer and desire.
Desire has been defeated; prayer has not yet been born. Desire has begun to look futile; the meaningful has not yet arisen. The journey seems to have halted. Love is a paused state. Going out no longer feels right—there you were defeated; you found only ashes, the mouth left with a bitter taste; and the inner is not yet known. One thing has become certain: the outer is futile, and the inner doors have not yet opened. The energy that stands paused in the middle—that is love.
If you are not quick to transform love into prayer, it will become desire again. Whenever moments of love arrive there are only two possibilities; energy cannot remain poised for long, for poise is not the nature of this world. No energy can remain still; it must go either outward or inward—it has to go.
Energy means motion, dynamic flow.
So it can rest only for a moment. If you use that moment well, love becomes devotion, becomes prayer. If you do not, love again turns into desire, into lust.
That is why the lover’s pain is great. The pain is precisely that the energy often pauses, and again and again it starts flowing outward. Very few know how to use the precious moment of love. Those who do, in them prayer dawns from within.
Now keep this clearly in mind: desire means outward; prayer means inward; love means the space between. And there is a fourth state—beyond both. The fourth state is God.
Hence Jesus said: God is like love. He did not say love “is” God—otherwise there would be no need to speak of God at all. He said: like love. There is a kinship, a sameness of flavor between love and God. Love is between outside and inside; God is beyond both. Love is in the middle of outer and inner; God is above and beyond outer and inner.
Among all the experiences of life available to us, love is the most indicative of the divine state. Love is a pause; God is a complete stillness. For a moment love becomes God; God is love forever. Love is a brief stop between two extremes, a little relief, a little rest, a comma. God is the full stop—beyond both.
In the state of God there is no “outside” and no “inside.” Outside and inside both are in God. Nothing is outside God; therefore to say something is inside God carries no meaning either—there is only God. Simply God is; the notions of inner and outer lose all meaning. If nothing lies outside Him, how can anything lie inside? The duality drops.
Even in love this duality halts for a moment; therefore in love there is a glimmer of the divine. In this world, the hour that gives you a glimpse of God is the hour of love.
That is why you may be surprised if I say: prayer is not as close to God as love is; for prayer is again an extreme. You dropped the outer, only to cling to the inner; you fled from the outer, only to grasp the inner. It is necessary—you will have to take hold of the inner to escape the outer. To avoid one extreme, you grasp the other. And you still cannot abide in the middle. The only way to remain in the middle is to go beyond both.
But when you do go beyond, you will discover: ah! That pause which came for a moment as love—God is just like that, but eternal and beginningless. What came as a drop in love—God is the ocean of the same.
In lust you are, in prayer you are. In lust the gaze goes outward; in prayer the gaze goes inward. In moments of love you are not. But the moment is very small. Perhaps you cannot even catch it; it is atomic, it can slip through your grasp.
So either you keep calling lust “love,” desire “love”—which is not love—or, if you change, you start calling prayer, devotion “love.” But love is the very small interval between the two.
Understand it like this: one breath goes in; then breath comes out. Have you noticed? Between going in and coming out, for a moment the breath goes nowhere. But the moment is very small; pay attention to it. The breath went in—there is a tiny pause; then it is neither going in nor going out—then it goes out; again a tiny pause, and again it is neither going out nor going in.
Whoever has caught hold of this tiny pause will also succeed in catching the pause that is love.
In the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra this method is given great value: when breath neither goes out nor in, when everything has come to a standstill—dive into that; there you will find the door to the Divine.
Love too is such a moment. Desire goes outward; prayer goes inward; love is that hour when you go neither outward nor inward. And the wonder is: when you neither go outward nor inward, you cannot be. Because you can be only in going, not in stillness. When your breath stands still, you are not; you have vanished. Ego cannot remain there. Ego needs movement. Ego needs activity. Ego needs doing. If something is happening, ego can survive; if nothing is happening, how will ego survive? Ego is disturbance. Therefore the egoist cannot sit silently.
Egoists come to me; they say, “We want to meditate, to sit silently”—but they cannot sit silently. The egoist cannot sit still, because he feels the time is being wasted; “In this much time I could have earned some capital for the ego—got a position, moved ahead, tricked someone, done something. Something would have happened—this is sheer waste.”
To the ego nothing seems more futile than meditation. Even doing something futile seems better—at least something is done! Play cards, gamble, gossip—at least something is done! Spread your empire somehow! But meditation—nothing is done, you just sit empty. To the ego, meditation seems utterly useless—nothing more useless.
In the West they have made a joke that people of the East sit with eyes closed gazing at their navels. Who knows what these crazies are doing! Do something!
Meditation is the state of being; ego is the state of doing.
Between two breaths, when nothing is happening, then you too are not. Between lust and devotion, when the pause falls, then too you are not; this is the twilight, the sandhya.
At night when you go to sleep—wakefulness has gone, sleep has not yet come—again for a moment there is a pause when you cannot say you are awake, nor can you say you are asleep—half-and-half, standing in the middle, on the threshold. Going out has ceased—the marketplace is no more; going in has not yet begun; standing in the middle—twilight has come again; if you dive in that twilight, what is worth attaining is attained; what is worth becoming, you become.
In life, these twilights alone have been called the real doors. Therefore we have even named prayer “sandhya,” the twilight. People say, “We are doing sandhya.” They do not understand its meaning. To do sandhya means: to seek the middle between two extremes. To seek the pause between two movements. The sun has set, night has not yet come; light is gone, darkness is about to descend—just a little while; miss it by a moment and it is gone.
The moment of love is very subtle. If you want to catch love, begin with the breath. Practice the breath; where the breath halts, fix your gaze. And you will be amazed: if you succeed in catching the pause, the breath will remain halted longer. Sometimes it may happen that many moments pass and the breath remains still. Many minutes can pass, even many hours, with the breath at rest.
If you place your hand precisely on the pause—if your meeting with the pause matures—you will be absorbed into a transcendental state in which even the need to breathe is not remembered; everything stops. This stopped state is what we call samadhi, the moment of satori.
When this becomes natural to you—whenever you wish, you close your eyes and descend; the steps become clear, the door remains open—you are accomplished. Then even if you go out, you cannot go out; even if you go in, you cannot go in—because you are gone. You are no more; the inner-outer has also gone. What remains is God alone.
“I could find no path to the Beloved’s lane—
I could not find the way to the Friend.
I could find no path to the Beloved’s lane—
I closed my eyes, and the road opened.”
What does it mean for the eye to close? You close your eyes many times; does the path open? You could close your eyes right now; does the path open? Then surely it is not these physical eyes that are meant. Your eye closes only when no desire remains.
Prayer too is a kind of desire; even there the asking continues. The hands outstretched after prayer in God’s temples are hands of craving. The heads bowed before God are bowed by desire—something is still being asked. Now not outer wealth, but inner wealth is being asked—the asking continues.
As long as asking continues, the eye is open. As long as you think there is something to get, the eye is open. When you stop thinking there is anything to obtain, when there is nothing left to be gained; you simply are—as you are, you sink into it—then the eye has closed. Then even if the physical eyes remain open, it makes no difference. The eye has closed.
Have you seen the statues of the Enlightened Ones? The eyes are neither open nor closed; they are half-open. Half-open is symbolic; it means: neither outside nor inside; just slightly open so that the lower white of the pupil shows.
Therefore in yoga there is the prescription that when the meditator sits to meditate, he should sit so that only the tip of the nose is visible—no more. This means the eyes are half-open, half-closed. It is symbolic; the point is only this: do not go inside, do not go outside; abide in the twilight in between.
Love is twilight.
You say you have known love. Very few people ever know love. For had they known love, what obstacle could remain to knowing God? If someone has found a few diamonds in hand, then the whole mine has come into his hand. The diamonds must not have come; pebbles and stones must have been mistaken for diamonds—therefore the mine was not found.
A man came to Ramanuja and said, “I want to meet God.” Ramanuja looked at him carefully and said, “Have you ever loved anyone?” The man said, “I have never gotten into such entanglements. Leave such things—what have I to do with love? My quest is for God.”
But Ramanuja said, “Think a little—have you ever loved anyone? Anyone at all? Is there any memory that comes to you?”
He said, “What are you talking about! I am speaking of God, and you raise a different subject. I am a seeker, a renunciate; I have never fallen into the snare of ‘love’ and such.”
But Ramanuja insisted, “Still, think—because everything depends on this. If you have known a moment of love, then you can know the eternity of God. If you have not tasted even the drop of love, how will you taste the ocean? First recognize the wave—then you will recognize the sea.”
The man could not understand. Perhaps he went away annoyed. How will those you call “dispassionate” understand? Those you call “mahatmas” sit as enemies of love. Their God is opposed to love.
The God I am speaking of has love as his door. The God your “mahatmas” speak of is no God at all; it is merely hostility toward love; it is but the other extreme opposed to the world. The God I speak of is not an extreme; He is the transcendence of both outer and inner. He is the state of perfect balance, the full stop.
People come to me and say, “You speak of God; our guru speaks of God; it’s all the same.” I tell them: not so easy. To say “all the same” is not so simple. Try to understand a little more carefully. The word is the same; I too use the word “God,” your guru too may use it, but seeing you I can say that your guru’s God must be something else—afraid of love, opposed to love, an enemy of love.
The God of your “mahatmas” is their invention, not the real. The real God goes on playing the play of love. The real God keeps creating ever-new forms. The real God takes on so many colors, so many forms, weaving the dance of love in myriad hues and shapes.
God cannot be the opposite of the world. He can be beyond the world, not its opposite. What is opposite will vanish when the world vanishes. What is beyond will remain beyond the extremes.
God is not practice; He is the accomplished state. God is not a method, as Patanjali considered—where God is a device, that by taking His support, surrendering to Him, one reaches the supreme. Patanjali’s God is a method, a part of practice; its use is only that through it you surrender. But such a “God” will be dropped when you are accomplished. When you arrive at the fulfilled state, what need remains for such a God? He was only a part of the road; He will be left behind.
God is not the path; He is the destination. God is not right or left. If you can get a glimpse of God at all, you will get it at the very middle of the path. Therefore Buddha called his way the Middle Way—Majjhima, the middle.
But even from the middle there is only a glimpse. Yet from the middle, transcendence is within reach. If you find that midpoint, you can find the ladder to go beyond.
Remember, people are deprived of love because the condition of love is hard to fulfill. Love’s condition is: disappear for a moment—even if only for a moment, vanish.
“No one ever completed the path of love:
Qais remained in the desert; Farhad, in the mountains.”
No lover has ever fully traversed the path of love. Majnun got lost in the wilderness; Farhad in the mountains.
The lover never reaches; he is lost. There remains none to reach. The lover melts away on the path and is lost. But in this very losing is the arriving. Where you are lost, there God happens. Where you dissolve, there He densifies. Vacate the throne—only then is there a possibility that He may sit upon your throne.
If you keep sitting on the throne—where is the room? You call God, but where is your preparedness? Where will you seat Him? Where will you enthrone Him? The ego fills every pore. The sense of “I” is soaked into every breath. Where is there any space left within you? Make space.
The experience of love happens only to those who are willing to drown and to efface themselves. Those who drown—this river is such that only they arrive. Those who drown, are saved. Those who are “saved,” drown. If you want to reach the shore, the way is to drown in midstream.
These lines are apt—
“No one ever completed the path of love…”
Who has ever fully traversed the path of love? Not because the path is long, not because it is vast and therefore people could not complete it—no. The only reason is this: this is a path that is completed only when the traveler gets lost midway. The only meaning of “complete” here is to vanish in the middle. If you reach the other shore as “you,” then the path has been lost; it has not been completed. Those who do not “complete” it—those who in completing it become complete in losing themselves—they alone arrive.
“Qais in the desert, Farhad in the mountains”—all lovers got lost somewhere: someone in the desert, someone in the hills; someone in prayers, someone in practices, someone in temples, someone in mosques. All lovers got lost somewhere. Wherever they were lost—right there is the hour of the supreme good fortune, the supreme blessing, the supreme grace.

Certainly both things are said, because both are right. There is no contradiction; if opposition appears, it is only an appearance.

When meditation happens, share it. But until it has happened, protect it and keep it hidden. When it is, then you will share! Do not be in a hurry to distribute it.

Often, even when it hasn’t happened, the desire to distribute arises. There is great relish in giving sermons. In explaining things to someone you get the taste of being knowledgeable. In telling someone—whether you know or not—for a few moments there is the illusion that you know.

That is why so much advice is given in the world, and no one takes it. How many sermons are delivered—who takes them? Preachers roam after you; they catch hold of you and explain. It is hard to get past the preachers; they have blocked every road and path. Wherever you go, there they are—giving knowledge with open hands, ready to give it for free. Not only free—they are ready to offer you some prasad along with it—“take plenty!” Even so, no taker is to be seen.

Be alert that your sharing is not arising from ego; if it arises from compassion, that is another matter. But compassion will only be there when meditation has become dense, when it has become a cloud. That is why Buddha called it cloud-samadhi. When, like a thick, rain-laden cloud, you are filled to overflowing—only then can it rain. Before that, the cloud gathers drop by drop. Only when it has gathered can it pour.

A mother is pregnant; if she carries the pregnancy carefully for nine months, only then can she give birth. Do not get entangled in the fantasy of giving birth to children without becoming pregnant, without carrying for nine months. That will create deception. It will not deceive others; you yourself will be deceived. And there is a danger you may harm others’ lives. This is a very subtle, delicate matter. Only when you know it rightly, then tell anyone. When your feet stand firmly upon this ground, when your roots have spread fully into this soil, only then explain to someone.

So Buddha speaks rightly: share. But you will share only when it is there, will you not!

The Sufi fakirs also speak rightly: guard it. For only by guarding will it come to be!

It must be guarded for many days, for years and years, for lifetimes. When it becomes dense within you, it will rain. First there is a need to guard; first it must be yours, your own lamp must be lit—only then go to light another’s lamp. Your own lamp is not lit, its wick lies extinguished, and you set out to light the lamps of others.

Do not fall into this delusion. Keep well hidden whatever is beginning to happen within. The day it truly happens, news will begin to spread of its own accord. When a flower blooms, fragrance rises upon the winds. When it is with you, even if you try to hide it you will not be able to. Those who are seeking, those who are thirsty, those who have a yearning and search—they will be drawn from afar. Mountains and oceans will not be obstacles for them. Those who have no thirst, no search, will remain deprived even while sitting close by.

Do not worry. First fill yourself—so brimming that it starts to overflow—and then those who are thirsty will come seeking; they have always been seeking. And then give with an open hand. You will share! You will have to share!

Parched earth, searing sky,
the whole world is sorrowing;
at every step, thorns are met—
this path is burning sand.
Flow forth as a wave of compassion;
this life burns like a moth—
flow forth as a wave of compassion.

Flowing will have to happen. It happens of itself. Because the inevitable outcome of meditation is compassion. Just as when a lamp is lit, light spreads, so the inevitable outcome of meditation is compassion.

Buddha has spoken of a symbol: prajna (wisdom), samadhi, and karuna (compassion). The threefold confluence—the essence of all of Buddha’s words. The three happen together. Here, samadhi; within, the lamp of knowing is lit; and outwardly, waves of compassion begin to spread.

All three happen together. This is the Trimurti. This is Buddha’s trinity. These are Buddha’s Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh. This is Buddha’s confluence, the sacred Prayag. Of these, two are visible; one is invisible. Saraswati is unseen; Ganga and Yamuna are seen. Prajna and karuna will be seen; samadhi will not be seen—it is Saraswati.

You cannot see anyone’s samadhi. I am sitting right before you—how will you see my samadhi! Samadhi is invisible. Compassion can be seen, because compassion showers upon you; samadhi is within me. Prajna can be seen, knowledge can be seen, because knowledge showers upon you. The light of wisdom can be seen, because rays will descend into your darkness; by recognizing those rays you will understand that somewhere the sun has arisen.

Compassion can be seen, because without so much as the sound of gentle footsteps, a current of love will begin to flow within you. A lullaby will begin to be sung within you. Fingers will begin to pluck music upon the veena of your heart. Into your life full of sorrow, a wave of joy will begin to arise.

These two can be seen, because whether it is wisdom or compassion, both will be related to you; samadhi is utterly unrelated to you. But without samadhi, these two do not happen. Therefore Buddha has said: where there is compassion and where there is wisdom, know that samadhi is also there. For first samadhi happens; then these two arise.

Guard meditation first, so that one day you may share it as compassion. Guard meditation first, so that one day its flame may burn as wisdom. Certainly people are deeply afflicted; there is suffering all around.

So when I say, guard meditation, I am not saying, lose compassion; I am saying, let the moment for compassion arrive—become a cloud. The rain will happen. The real thing is the cloud’s forming. Let there be pregnancy; birth will happen.

Parched earth, searing sky,
the whole world is sorrowing;
at every step, thorns are met—
this path is burning sand.
Flow forth as a wave of compassion.

In existence nothing is useless. Whether you recognize it or not is another matter. It cannot be without use; it can only be useful. The whole of existence is interconnected. Everything is entangled with everything else, bound together, not separate. And accidents do not happen. Whatever happens has a deep coherence.

So if it ever seems to you that something has no use, understand that you are mistaken. Look a little deeper.

Forgiveness befits that serpent
who carries venom.
What of the one who is toothless,
venomless, meek and mild?

If there is no anger, the entire glory of compassion is lost. Only with a dark night does the dawn bring joy. In life, whatever is, its opposite serves as the background.

Hatred—what does it mean? Don’t worry about the word; I have nothing to do with the dictionary. What does hatred mean in the existential language? It means only this: you want to move away from the other—nothing more. You do not want to go near. Repulsion! You want to withdraw, to go far away—that is one meaning.

If this possibility of moving away did not exist, the very possibility of love would disappear. Only when you move away from the whole world can you truly come close to one person. Imagine that hatred vanished—love would vanish with it. So hatred is a step toward love.

Yes, if you stop at hatred, you miss. That is your mistake; hatred is not to blame. Hatred only says: there is a longing to be far from someone. Love says: there is a longing to be near, to draw someone so close that all distance dissolves—no gap remains, nothing stands in the way; such a longing is love.

And sometimes one feels like being so far apart that one is on some other moon and stars, and the other too—so far that there is never again a chance to come close; the whole existence stands in between. This too is part of coming close.

But if you get entangled in this and forget the coming-near, if you make hatred your whole business, become so adept in the art that you forget it was a staircase—not a house to sit and live upon—then there is danger. If you remember, you will find that enmity is an indispensable step to friendship, and hatred the necessary background of love. And the day you come upon the fragrance of love, you will not feel that hatred had no use; you will feel gratitude even toward hatred.

Learn how to use, and even poison becomes medicine. And medicine too can become poison. It depends on how you use it—on your understanding, on how keenly you look at life.

So hatred has, first, this meaning: the urge to be distant from someone.

Second, hatred means the urge to destroy someone. The one you hate, you want to annihilate. This too is an indispensable part of creation. Because the one you love, you want to gift eternity, to make immortal. The one you love, you want to build up in every way; to make them such that no other is like them.

In love your creativity awakens; in hatred your destructiveness awakens. Both are necessary, because any significant creation, any great act of creativity, must employ destruction. To build a new house, the old has to be pulled down. To bring health, disease must be destroyed.

Now the question is: how will you use it? If you have understanding, you can put even the principle of destruction in the service of construction, of creation. And if you go mad, you can use your capacity to construct for destruction—as is happening. People make the atom bomb—a most significant creation—but they make it to destroy the world. It seems people have placed their creative capacity at the service of destruction. It should be the reverse: your entire capacity for destruction should be harnessed in the direction of creation.

In existence everything is meaningful. If your understanding is partial, blind, riddled with mistakes, great errors will occur.

So it is with jealousy and malice. What does jealousy mean? It means: someone has—and I do not.

A Buddha passes along your path and you feel no jealousy—it should arise; and then jealousy will become auspicious. Your very life-breath should fill with jealousy—it should. Someone became a Buddha? People came, sat, even rose and left; you only kept hunting for a seat? Spring came and went, and you kept thinking—where to build a nest, where not? Seeing Buddhas, does no jealousy arise? It should.

Then jealousy too becomes auspicious, meaningful. Then a flare will ignite in your life. Your whole life will be infused with a new movement. Your gloom will break, your lethargy will shatter—someone has shaken you. A storm came and passed. What you could have become, someone has become; why have you not?

But your jealousy takes wrong paths. Someone passes in a car and jealousy grabs you: I too should have such a car. Even if you get it, not much will happen. If you must be jealous, be jealous of Buddhas.

You see someone’s clothes—you become jealous. You see someone’s house—you become jealous. Even if you build the house, nothing happens. Look at the one whose house aroused your envy—what has happened to him? Nothing. He may be in a state more wretched than yours.

If you must be jealous, be jealous of the one in whom all jealousy has disappeared.

It may well be that the one whose house you envy is envying your health. Even emperors are filled with jealousy.

I have heard: An emperor’s elephant used to go through the town. A young man—a fakir who lay by a tomb—grabbed the elephant’s tail and stopped it. Think of the poor emperor’s condition! His very life trembled; his whole empire turned to dust. In an instant that fakir unmanned the emperor. He went home, but deeply dejected. A naked fakir!

He asked an elder, “What should I do? Something must be done. I cannot go out anymore—if I go through the village, I will feel ashamed. What is the meaning of me on an elephant if a man can hold its tail and the elephant cannot move? The mahout could do nothing.” The elder said, “Don’t worry. Send word to that fakir: he will get one rupee a day, only light a lamp on the tomb each evening at six.”

The fakir thought, “Good! Until now I had to beg for food; that nuisance is gone. I’ll get a rupee.”

In those days one rupee was a big thing—a small estate. A rupee could last a month. He said, “This is a great blessing. And all I have to do is light a lamp at six. I lie at that very tomb—what trouble is that? I’ll get up and light it.”

A month later the elder said, “Now go out on the elephant again. Don’t go out for a month; then go.” After a month the emperor went. The fakir again grabbed the tail—but this time he was dragged along. The emperor was amazed. He now felt jealous of that elder: “What a wonderful knower! He neither met the fakir nor went there, yet sitting here he gave such a tip—and it worked!” He asked, “How did this happen?”

The elder said, “Simple. His carefree abandon was his ecstasy, his strength. Plant a slight worry, and he is finished. Now he keeps thinking, two–four times a day he looks up at the clock—has it struck six yet? Because he might miss, he might forget. He had never cared about time; he lived timelessly. So we planted a small worry; the tick remains with him twenty-four hours. Even at night he sleeps with the thought: at six I must light the lamp; I’ll get a rupee. And once rupees begin to come, he starts counting, adding: one rupee lasts a month; twenty-nine will be left. How many in a year? In ten years? I’ll build a mansion. Earlier he slept in peace, without dreams; now big dreams come. A little trick—and he is finished.”

Even an emperor is filled with jealousy. If you must be jealous, be jealous of those whose jealousy has vanished. But there is nothing wrong in jealousy itself. Only do not be jealous of the wrong things, for if you envy the wrong, you will become the wrong. Envy the auspicious, the benedictory, and your journey will begin in the very direction of the one you envy. Jealousy is a direction-indicator—where you want to go, what you want to become.

There is nothing at all wrong in jealousy. Nor in malice. Nor in anything. It is only a matter of aligning everything in the right direction. Thorns become flowers—only a little understanding is needed. Flowers become thorns—only a little foolishness is enough.

Certainly. As long as there are thoughts, you do not have the power of thought. There is a crowd of thoughts, not the power of thought. The power of thought arises only when the crowd of thoughts has departed. Then within you there is the pure energy of thought—uncovered by thoughts, laid bare; a burning fire of thought-power, with no ashes of thoughts upon it, only the glowing ember.

Exactly the same holds for desires and willpower. The more the desires, the less the willpower. The fewer the desires, the greater the willpower. If you drop all desires, then whatever you will, the very moment you will it, it will be fulfilled. Your willpower will become that immense. When you do not desire, you have such vast energy that the very act of willing brings fulfillment.

This is the secret of life: those who are eager to have their desires fulfilled have no willpower; those who no longer want, have it.

I have heard: A poor man went to visit a rich man. The rich man had a golden spittoon beside him—worth millions, studded with diamonds—and he kept spitting betel into it. The poor man felt deeply hurt, even angry. All his life he had struggled in search of Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth. At last he could not contain himself; he kicked the spittoon and said, “Damn it! Here she sits to be spat upon. We chased her all our lives, prayed, worshipped—she didn’t grant even a glimpse in a dream.”

The rich man began to laugh. He said, “We too were in the same state. As long as we kept chasing, nothing came to hand. Since we turned around and stopped running after things, they come on their own.”

When you drop all your desires, suddenly you will find you have immense energy. Then you will not want to desire—and willpower will be there.
When you do not want to think, there will be the power of thought.
When you no longer want to live, you will have deathless life.
When you are willing to be effaced, no power can efface you.
When you stand at the very back, you come to the front.

Jesus has said, those who are last here become first in the kingdom of my Father. And Lao Tzu has said, “No one can defeat me, because I have no aspiration to win.”

Such victory becomes final, ultimate. This formula of life is most precious. Whoever knows it, knows much. And whoever keeps missing it will circle around life like a beggar and will never gain entry into the palace.

A hair’s-breadth of space is needed,
A little open sky is needed;
Then where can the seed’s power be stopped?
Where can the heart’s expression be stopped?

Only a little space is needed within you—space! Then the seed lying within you begins to crack open; the vast is born from it. But the layers of your thoughts do not let that seed crack. The layers of your desires do not let that seed crack. There is simply no room for the seed to sprout. You are so full!

So, empty yourself a little. The art of emptying is meditation—the art of emptying of thought and of craving is meditation. As soon as you become empty, your seed breaks open and begins to fill you. Then the fullness comes from within. Then the fullness is your own, of the soul. That fullness no one can ever take from you; it is yours.

What you are filled with now is all borrowed and alien.

A hair’s-breadth of space is needed,
A little open sky is needed;
Then where can the seed’s power be stopped?
Where can the heart’s expression be stopped?

Enough for today.