Es Dhammo Sanantano #43

It is a mistake to break life into extremes. The very error lies in splitting life into two. Whenever you choose one, you choose it against the other. Even in your one, the flavor of two remains. You choose one shore by leaving the other—but by your leaving, does the other shore vanish? What connection is there between your letting go and the other bank ceasing to be?

In fact, by your grasping this bank, the other remains preserved. You hold this one only in opposition to that. If the other bank disappeared, how would this one survive? They go together; they remain together.

Nonduality—advaita—is not choosing one out of two. Nonduality is the disappearance of the two. Advaita means: the vision that no longer sees two, where the taste for dividing has gone, where you no longer look at things in opposites.

There is night and there is day—who told you they are separate? Where do you draw the line? Where do you set the boundary? Where does day end—at what hour, at what instant? And at what instant does night begin? The two are one. Light and darkness are two names for the same energy, two modes of expression of the same energy. God and the self are two ways of speaking about the same reality. So are devotion and knowledge, resolve and surrender.

Wherever opposition appears to you, be alert there. Be careful—some mistake is slipping in. These are only styles of saying. Then choose whatever style appeals to you, whatever tastes sweet to you. But don’t take a style of saying to be the expression of truth itself.

By your own delight, you may immerse your experience in the rasa of devotion and speak it. Call your experience “God”—that’s your joy. Or call your experience “the soul,” and use no word “God.” But the finger points to the same one.

Ghalib has a very significant couplet:
A drop too is, in truth, the ocean—yes, but
we do not care to imitate Mansur’s outcry.

The Sufi fakir Mansur said, “Ana’l-Haqq!”—“I am the Truth, I am Brahman, I am God.” Ghalib made a deep jest; no one has joked about Mansur so. Ghalib says:
A drop too is, in truth, the ocean—yes, but
we do not care to imitate Mansur’s way.

Granted, the drop is the ocean—this I too know. But Mansur’s way of saying it is a bit crude; that way of saying doesn’t please me. I too know “I am Brahman,” but it doesn’t suit me to proclaim it. Mansur was in a hurry. This was not something to be announced; it was something to be understood. Something to be silently drunk. That style doesn’t appeal to us. This is an important point Ghalib is making: the statement is perfectly true—there is not a hair’s breadth of error—but the manner of saying it does not please us.

A drop too is, in truth, the ocean—yes, but
we do not care to imitate Mansur’s way.

Ghalib says, in this saying there’s a whiff of smallness. For a drop to call itself the ocean—this makes it small. Let the ocean say it. For the drop to announce it itself—this makes it small. Let the ocean say it.

But if you ask Mansur, he will laugh. If you ask Mansur, he will say, “Ghalib is crazy. There must still be some distance left in his saying, otherwise why this talk of small and great between drop and ocean? If the drop is the ocean, then where is smallness? Whether you say it or you don’t, what difference does it make? If it has been seen, said or unsaid—what is the difference? Then whom to fear? In front of whom is there the fear of being small? Once the drop has known, why should it stop? Why not dance? Why not hum? Why not say it?”

Ask Mansur and he will say, “Even this is a hidden ego that says, ‘It becomes small to say we are Brahman with our own mouth.’ But it is Brahman who is saying it—there is no ‘we’ at all. If Brahman is saying ‘I am Brahman,’ how has it become small?”

Both are right. Both are wrong. If you cling to one viewpoint, the other will look wrong. If you look deeply into both, both will seem right. And I want you to find both right. Because in calling Mansur “crude,” Ghalib has made himself crude too—that is the slip in his criticism.

I want you to become so skillful, your vision so keen, that duality cannot deceive you. If someone sings the praises of devotion, you can hear the praise of knowledge within it. If someone extols knowledge, you can feel the current of devotion flowing there. You can see the formless in the form. You can taste meditation even in love. You begin to see lotuses blooming even in the desert. My whole effort is how to bring you beyond the conflict of opposites.

That’s why I say things to you each day that seem opposed. How long will you remain stuck? You have barely begun to set when I unsettle you. You are just preparing to sit on the throne when I pull the throne away. You were just getting ready to sit as a devotee when Buddha arrived. You were just about to catch hold of Narada’s reins when Buddha shook everything up.

My whole effort is that you not settle anywhere. Because the moment you settle, the mistake begins. You settle—your darkness settles. You settle—your ego settles. You settle—a standpoint forms, a fixed view, a bias arises. And mind’s constant urge is to believe, “I am right, and the other is wrong.” The relish is in believing “I am right.” That is the very juice of the ego. What does it matter what the excuse is—whether devotion is right or knowledge is right? One thing must be clear: I am right. So you take a stand for devotion. You think you are standing for devotion; as I see it, you have made devotion stand for you.

Therefore I will not let you stick. So long as you are, I will not let you settle. The day I find you are no more—there is no one left who could settle, you have become fluid—then there will be no need to shake you. You yourself will be fluid. Right now you are very solid; many blows are needed.

Hence I speak now of knowledge, now of yoga, now of devotion. And when you hear me speak on devotion, your mind starts liking devotion; it begins to please you. But I won’t let it please you too much. Before it pleases you too much and you form a bias, I will have to uproot your roots.

I want you not rooted in the earth, but flying in the sky. I want you not to see opposites and extremes at all. I want you to sway so simply between the extremes that, in your swaying, the extremes are subsumed.

Tell me, with a single wing,
when has a bird ever flown the sky?

I am taking you on a journey of the sky. Your insistence is to fly with one wing, and I say:

Tell me, with a single wing,
when has a bird ever flown the sky?

What bird has flown with one wing? Birds have no partiality toward their wings; otherwise they would have forgotten how to fly long ago—fallen to the ground, covered in dust, their link with the sky severed. They fly with both wings. No doubt arises in them: “What a paradox—two wings spread in opposite directions!” Yet upon those very wings spread in opposite directions, the bird balances and weighs itself in the sky. I would have you, too, see wings wherever you see opposites—not opposition.

Understand this a little. With two legs you can walk. With two hands you can do things. Perhaps you don’t know within, you have two brains—that is why you can think. With only one brain you could not think. Your head within is also divided into two, like two wings. Your left and right brains are distinct, joined by a very slender bridge in between. That is why you can think. And because of those two brains there is the difference between woman and man: a woman thinks from the right brain; a man thinks from the left. Hence the mismatch. The emphasis of a woman is on the right—more weight there. A man’s emphasis is on the left—more weight there. In the left brain are logic, reflection, philosophy, politics. In the right are love, devotion, feeling, rasa, dance, song, music, rhythm. They are different.

And supremely free is the one who has drunk the juice of both completely—within whom there is no distance between right and left; who has weighed both wings together; whose two wings are balanced as one; who has put equal force on both and owned them both; for whom no wing remains “mine”—both have become his.

Therefore you will find difficulty with me. With Narada there is convenience—his emphasis is the right brain: devotion, feeling, rasa, song, bhajan, kirtan, tears, sobbing, gooseflesh—these are the traits of the feminine brain. Hence in the devotee feminine qualities start appearing. The devotee becomes feminine. Masculine traits fall away. The male sense of manliness is lost; he becomes tender—like a small child, or like a woman. In his color and manner, in his gait and posture, a feminine grace arises. A delicacy appears. Beauty comes.

Then there is the thinker, the knower, the yogi—his manliness appears even more strongly. The softness leaves his face; clear lines of logic appear. Gooseflesh will seem sheer silliness to the thinker—what childishness is that! What has thinking to do with gooseflesh? Will your hair’s standing on end help you think? That will obstruct thought. Who ever thought by getting goosebumps? Tears? That seems very far-fetched. What have tears to do with thinking? If you are to think, the eyes must be dry and clear. Wet eyes cannot think; thought will weaken; feeling will intrude. Feeling will wobble you. Where you were to be reasoned, if you become sentimental, then compassion, love, pity, a thousand things will enter. Justice will not be complete.

The thinker cannot remain tender; he becomes hard. On the scientist’s face the sequence of logic is written. The yogi does not become fluid like water; he becomes solid like stone—hard to shake. The knower fills with a deep indifference, a stance of neglect.

Where is gooseflesh there? Gooseflesh means no indifference at all—let the slightest thing happen and thrills arise. If even a bird falls, the devotee will weep. If a flower breaks, the devotee’s eyes will grow wet. The knower—even if the whole world is shaken—sits unmoving, unshaken, detached, empty, as if nothing has happened.

So if you understand Mahavira, you are understanding the knower; if you understand Patanjali, you are understanding the knower—that is half the brain. It has great excellences. If you understand Narada, if you understand Chaitanya, you are understanding the other half of the brain; that too has great excellences.

If you have agreed to stand with me, know that I have no bias. Therefore I will put you in great difficulty—until you are gone. As long as you are, the trouble will remain. Because again and again you will build a house, and again and again I will demolish it. Many times you will be angry with me: “What is this? Somehow we bring ourselves to trust; we are just about to be pleased by it, we were just about to sit—‘Now we’ve found our place’—and again he has uprooted it. Will you let a house be built or not? Or will this arrangement go on, and the house never be allowed to rise?”

No, I will not let the house be built. I tell you: all are inns. Stop everywhere—but don’t stop. Rest everywhere—but don’t stay. Let your stream flow continuously—touching both banks, joining the extremes, transcending the dual. Become nondual. For you, neither devotion nor knowledge. The language of duality is itself mistaken.

But one can speak only on one at a time. That’s where the tangle arises. If I spoke of both at once, nothing would make sense to you. Therefore sometimes I speak on devotion, sometimes on knowledge—don’t think from this that I am entangling you in extremes.

It is only a matter of language. Whoever goes toward himself reaches God. And have you ever heard of anyone who went toward God and did not arrive at himself? If you go toward God, you will arrive at your own being. Coming toward yourself is a way of going toward God. If you go toward yourself, you will reach only God. Coming to yourself is also a way of going to God. Because you are God. Let this ultimate distillation sink deeper and deeper within you: you are God.

Come toward yourself and you’ll arrive at God; go toward God and you’ll arrive at yourself. There is not a whit of difference between your being and God’s being.

This is a palace of mirrors
where every reflection is yours.
In this veil of illusion
how many secrets you have adorned.

It is you. In any mirror you look, you will find only your own shadow. Whatever, wherever you have found or seen—it is your own vastness. Your understanding, however, is not that vast. Understanding is shrunken; existence is immeasurably vast. The whole endeavor is that your understanding become as great as existence is—that your understanding spread over the whole of existence. Then you will find no difference at all.

Right now you are very contracted, existence is very great. Hence you seem separate from existence—because of your contraction. Expand, scatter, become fluid, flow. Do not remain like stone or ice. Melt, become water, flow in all directions. Suddenly you will find you have arrived. Gradually you have touched the Infinite. It was yours all along; you had let it slip from your own hands.

Beyond the door,
another door;
each time there will be light,
a stream of nectar will pour.

Keep opening door beyond door. Keep opening door beyond door.
Each time there will be light,
a stream of nectar will pour.

Therefore I keep opening door after door—sometimes by the doorway of devotion, sometimes of knowledge, sometimes yoga, sometimes tantra—these are all doors of the same One. For this entire existence is His temple. Come from anywhere and you arrive in Him. Leave aside knowledge, devotion, yoga, tantra—I have even tried to unite those extremes that make your mind tremble, even samadhi and sex. Through them too, if you arrive, you arrive only in Him, because there is nowhere else to go. You cannot go anywhere else. You may delude yourself that you have arrived somewhere else, but you will arrive only in God. Call it by any name—it is That.

Through wealth you have searched for Him; through status you have searched for Him. The search may be deluded, mistaken, but it is Him you have desired. No one has ever desired anything but Him. He is the Beloved. Wherever you have seen the Beloved—in a beautiful body, a lovely flower, a shining moon or star—wherever you have glimpsed the image of the Beloved, the Beloved is the same. From wherever you have written a letter to the Beloved, the address is His. No address other than His is even possible. Even if you write the letter in your own name and post it, it will reach Him.

I understand your difficulty, because you take these matters as extremes. From the outset you accept that there is some opposition—between devotion and knowledge, between tantra and yoga, between Hindu and Muslim, between Christian and Jew. You walk carrying the assumption of opposition. You have never re-examined this assumption. You have not even wondered how opposition could be possible.

If existence is one, then if opposition appears, it must be an error in seeing—it cannot be. Correct your way of seeing. There is no opposition anywhere—not between body and soul, not between matter and God, not between the world and nirvana. And the day this glimpse begins to appear, that very day, wherever you are, you will attain supreme bliss.

As long as you see opposition you will remain restless. Sitting in the shop, you will remember the temple—because temple and shop are “opposed.” Your heart will writhe: “I am wasting life sitting in the shop. These moments were for preparing the plate of worship; these moments for adoration, for prayer; this hour was to be given to meditation—what am I squandering on money?” You will condemn yourself. You will think yourself sinful, guilty. You will shrink under the weight of your own guilt.

And if you go to the temple, the shop will pursue you. You will feel, “By now I could have earned something; who knows what I’m doing sitting in this temple! Is this idol true or mere belief? Did those who worshiped truly worship, or did they only deceive themselves? Is this religion some opiate? Is it a web of hypocrisy spun by priests and pundits?” A thousand questions will arise in the temple, and a thousand in the shop.

But you will resolve neither the shop’s questions in the temple nor the temple’s questions in the shop. Because the root of the questions lies in a fundamental assumption within you: you have accepted opposition—that temple is separate, shop is separate; the world is separate, nirvana is separate. They are not separate. Live in such a way that their separateness falls away. This living I call sannyas.

Therefore my sannyas cannot be understood by the old sannyasi. His very conception was sannyas against the world. His assumption was that renouncing the world is sannyas. My view is that renouncing duality is sannyas. Dropping conflict is sannyas. Not seeing extremes as extremes is sannyas. To see the One in temple, mosque, market, shrine, matter, and God; to see the One in maya and Brahman.

The sannyas I speak of goes beyond even Shankaracharya’s nonduality. For Shankara still accepts an opposition between maya and Brahman. He says, abandon maya and you will gain Brahman. But the Brahman that is obtained by abandoning maya cannot be very precious—not more precious than maya, because you have paid with maya as the price. How could it be more valuable than the price you paid? You paid with maya, so it can be worth only maya.

Shankara too was in a bind: where to place maya? It is not, and yet it is. How to explain it? He could not gather the courage to say, “It is the expression of God.” Because then there was a fear: if maya is God’s expression, how will you lift people from their shops into temples? They will say, “God is manifest in the shop.” How will you prise people away from their wives into celibacy? They will say, “If maya is God’s expression, then the wife is His, the children His, the family His. If even God is not without maya, how can we be without maya?”

So Shankara is in difficulty. He is a man of logic—half-brain! A mind of thought, logic, mathematics—highly skillful in argument. Therefore the difficulty: what fits thought, logic, mathematics—that is Brahman; what does not fit—maya.

Hence you will be astonished: the God whom devotees call God, Shankara places under maya. The devotees’ God is maya. You are weeping! singing bhajans!—this is but the expansion of your own emotional raga. Shankara’s Brahman is beyond the devotees’ God—beyond, where even “God” is left behind.

Shankara’s Brahman is an invention of the male mind.
Narada’s God is an invention of the female mind.

I expect from you a great, unprecedented happening: that you be free of male and female—or be both at once; it is the same thing. See in such a way that there is no gap between love and meditation. Let your meditation be steeped in love. Let your love be born of meditation. Let your thinking be filled with the tears of your feeling. Let the distance between your heart and your head go on decreasing, decreasing—until a moment comes when they have a single center. In that very moment the undivided appears, the nondual is born.

Therefore my sannyas is a bridge: not to break the world, not to “choose” liberation, but to seek the One wherever opposition seems to be. Wherever you see opposition, there acknowledge your own error and strive to rise above it, so that the One can be seen.

Therefore I will very often move you from one shore to the other; I will bring your boat now to that bank, now to this, so that you come to recognize both banks and understand that both are banks of the same Ganga. This is possible only when you become thoroughly acquainted with both banks, recognize them, relate to them, and are connected to both. If you settle on one bank, the other begins to seem unfamiliar, then foreign, then an enemy.

So I do not let you settle on one bank. My speaking is not to settle you on a bank; my speaking is like a boatman ferrying you from one shore to the other. I do not even let you disembark. Once you have had a glimpse of the other shore, I turn the boat: “Come, again!” Slowly, slowly... How long will you delay? How long will you linger? Someday you will see—Ganga is one, the banks are two. Both banks are necessary. The river cannot flow supported by a single bank. Both are necessary—and beneath the river the two banks meet. They are parts of the same earth. Both have held the Ganga.

Tell me, when has a bird
ever flown the sky with a single wing?

Before answering the question—whenever I say something to you, my intention is one thing, and you take it to mean something else.
I say, flowers are needed, so that you set out in search of flowers and a rain of fragrance may fall upon your life. But you do not go in search of flowers; you fill yourself with the pain of thorns. I tell you the lotus must blossom; therefore cleanse the water, purify the lake. But you drop concern for the lotus and sit beating your chest on the bank of this stagnant water, crying, “The water is rotten—what can we do now?” I am telling you: my intention is one thing, and you take it to mean something else.
As I said yesterday, life should not be an accident. There should be a direction in life. There should be a harmony, a sequence. Do not keep drifting here and there on the buffets of the wind—if something happens, it happens; if it doesn’t, it doesn’t—do not let the pushes of the crowd carry you anywhere. If someone asks you, you should be able to say where you are going. Have you seen in a crowd: when a great crowd is moving, you start walking too. Then it becomes such that it is difficult to stop, because the crowd is moving so fast that you have to walk as well; otherwise you will fall. Many people died at the Kumbha fair. They were dragged along with the crowd. They could not stop.
Walk once in a big crowd and you will see that then you are not walking—the crowd is walking. You are made to walk by the crowd. If the crowd is going east, you cannot go west, because trouble will arise. You will collide with the crowd; it will turn into death. You will die, be crushed. You have to go with the crowd.
By accident I mean: let your life not be such that if someone asks, “Where are you going?” you cannot answer. Let your life not be such that if someone asks, “Who are you?” you stand there without a reply. Someone asks you what your destiny is, what you wished to attain, which flowers you wanted to make bloom, which stars you wanted to kindle—and you cannot answer anything; your eyes remain empty, stony. Accident means that you are answerless.
Seek the answer. To seek the answer means: walk a little within. Turn your eyes a little less toward the crowd; go a little within. Because within you there is someone in whom all answers are. There your destiny is hidden. There is the seed that will become the lotus. There is the possibility that will become truth. Go within.
Accident means you have lived so far by looking only outside. You have lived by looking at others; hence you have gone astray. Now live by looking at yourself.
I am not saying that you should be capable of doing something.

There is no question of doing. What is there to do? By doing what will you feel capable? Earn money, gain office, acquire prestige, become president, become prime minister—by doing what will you feel you have become capable? There is no question of doing at all; all doing leads to accident. Whatever you do—whether you become a president or cook meals at home—in both cases it remains an accident.

Do not imagine that presidents are outside the crowd. They may have reached the front of it. There the turmoil is greater, because the whole crowd pushes. In the middle you can still slip away somewhere. At the back—if you are doing a cook’s work—there isn’t much worry; even if you slip out the back, no crowd will raise a ruckus over you. Presidents are not even allowed to leave. First they are not allowed to reach there; then, once there, they are not allowed to leave. A poor person can slip out of the crowd—who cares? People are even happy: good, one nuisance is gone. If a poor man stands by the roadside, who invites him in?

But first people struggle to get to the front; then people don’t let them get there—because they too want to be ahead. Not everyone can be in front. If everyone must stand at the head of the line, there is great conflict. And if somehow you do reach the front, then returning becomes very difficult. You yourself don’t want to return, and people won’t let you either.

There is no question of doing. Doing only leads to accident. Being. Put your emphasis on being. Understand this dimension clearly.

Doing means that which can be seen by others. You paint a picture—others can see it. You sculpt a statue—others can see it. You build a house—others can see it. You acquire wealth and position—others can see it. But you attained peace—who will see it? Unquiet eyes cannot recognize it. A flower of feeling blossomed within you—who will see it? To see the flower of feeling, a devotee is needed. A fragrance of knowing arose within you—who will see it? Only the wise can recognize it. A flute of repose began to play within you—who will hear it? It takes very trained ears to hear.

Being. Care about being. Then, whether outwardly you are a cook or a president, it makes no difference. If the inner flute plays, you will be free of accident. Then do anything outside—you will have to do something outwardly. Just don’t give so much value to outer doing. It has no real value. Do A, or do B, or do C—ultimately it is the same; death will snatch everything away.

Yes, there is something within that death cannot take. Create something inner. What is outer can be erased by others. What is outer can be destroyed by others. Only the inner is truly your possession.

That is why we call a sannyasin “Swami”—the master. He alone is the master, because he is earning something within that no one can snatch away, that no one can erase. He is making such a painting that centuries may pass and its colors will not fade—because he has not used colors that can fade. He has sung such a song that will never grow stale—because he has not used words that go stale. He has sung from the void. He has poured color into the formless. He has grasped the shapeless.

Go within. If you want to escape accident, go within. To escape accident does not mean changing things outside: that you used to run an oil shop and now you won’t, you’ll sell cloth—or you’ll sell gold and silver. Shops are shops—whether of cloth, oil, or gold and silver—just clutter.

What is outside has no ultimate value. Go inward. Take the inner path. Free a little time from outer entanglements and dive within. And I tell you: the simpler your outer life, the more facility you have to go within. Make use of it. The more wealth, the harder it is to go within! The higher the position, the harder it is to go within! A thousand disturbances, nets, entanglements. If there isn’t too much outer commotion, if there is only a little work to do, there is much ease and leisure for going within. If a poor person is a little intelligent, he can be richer than the rich.

But things are upside down. Here even the rich are unintelligent; they become poorer than the poor. You can turn your misfortune into good fortune. The alchemy is in your hands—use it. But you do not turn your misfortune into fortune; you even look at your good fortune as misfortune.

Now, women—this is a woman’s question—across the whole world are trying to enter the race alongside men. Because men have authority, positions, wealth, prestige; this and that—women too have joined the race. In that race they will become even more accident-prone. They had a chance: the shelter of the home, means of silence—children have gone to school, the husband has gone to the shop, the world is finished for a while—there was a way to sink into oneself for a little while. Women are eager to lose that. They too want to go to the office, to struggle, to stand in the marketplace and jostle. Until they too are sweating like men, and restless, harried, and deranged like men, they won’t be at peace—because woman must be equal!

We even turn our good fortune into misfortune. What should happen is that we turn even misfortune into fortune.

In China there was a great fakir. He went to his master, and the master asked him, “Do you truly want to become a sannyasin, or do you want to appear to be one?” He said, “If I have come to be a sannyasin, why would I bother with appearances? I want to be.” The master said, “Then do this: this is our last meeting. There are five hundred sannyasins in this monastery; you take up the work of pounding rice for them. Do not come here again. When the need arises, I will come to you.”

They say twelve years passed. That sannyasin stayed behind the kitchen, in a dark room, pounding rice. There were five hundred sannyasins. He would rise in the morning and pound rice; rise in the morning and pound rice. At night he would tire and sleep. Twelve years passed. He never went to the master again, because once the master had said it, the matter was finished. “When the need arises he will come”—he trusted.

For some days the old thoughts went on. But if you must pound rice day and night, what is the point of keeping old thoughts running? Gradually, the old thoughts took their leave. There was no meaning in their repetition. They became empty, worn out. By the end of twelve years all thoughts had left. He just kept pounding rice. In peace he would sleep at night, at dawn he would rise and pound rice. No obstacles, no entanglements. A simple task, and rest.

After twelve years the master announced, “My time to go has come. Whoever wishes to be my successor should write four lines on my door at night which reveal his realization of truth.” People were afraid, because it was not easy to deceive the master. Many had read the scriptures. Then the greatest scholar among them went at night and wrote: “The mind is like a mirror on which dust gathers. Clean the dust, and dharma is attained. Clean the dust, and truth comes into experience.” In the morning the master rose and said, “Which fool has spoiled my wall? Catch him.”

The scholar had run away in the night, for he himself was afraid of deceiving. What he had written sounded very fine—but it was taken from the scriptures. It was not his own. It was not from his own experience. It was not existential. There was no resonance of it in his life-breath. He had told his friends: “If in the morning the master says ‘Good!’, send me word; if he says ‘Catch him!’, don’t tell him where I am.”

The whole monastery was anxious. Such beautiful words—what fault was there? The mind is like a mirror; dust from words, thoughts, experiences settles upon it. That is all. Clean the mirror and the reflection of truth appears again. People said, “This is exactly right; the master is a bit too harsh.” But now they wondered where the master would bring a statement higher than this. Four monks were talking thus as they passed by the man pounding rice. He too began listening. The whole monastery was aflame with this one matter.

He heard them and began to laugh. One of them said, “You laugh! What is it?” He said, “The master is right. Which fool wrote that?” The four were startled. They said, “You’ve been pounding rice for twelve years—have you too become a knower? We have battered our heads on scriptures. Can you write a better verse than this?” He said, “I have forgotten how to write; I can speak it—someone can go and write it down. But remember one thing: I have no desire to be successor. Tell the master this condition—that I will utter the words, someone may write them—but I myself will not write, because I have forgotten; it has been twelve years since I wrote anything. I do not wish to be successor. If by writing I must become successor, then I raise my hand in refusal—don’t even write it for me.” They said, “Speak! We will write it.” He dictated: “Write this—What mirror? What dust? There is no mirror, nor any dust. Whoever knows this attains the dharma.”

At midnight the master came to him and said, “Now you must flee from here. Otherwise these five hundred will kill you. Take my robe. Whether you wish to be my successor or not is irrelevant—you are my successor. But go now. They will not tolerate that the rice-pounder attained truth while they battered their heads to death.”

The effort to become something in life will push you deeper into accident. Keep pounding rice—there is no harm. Any simple act is enough. The real question is going within. Arrange your life so that there is not too much outer entanglement. Do the little necessary work, and then slip inside. Let slipping inward become more and more delightful for you. Soon you will find that the accident has ended; you have begun to recognize yourself. You begin to meet yourself, to come face to face with yourself. Glimpses of yourself begin to come. Lotuses will start to bloom. The seed will sprout. Your destiny, your fortune, will draw near.

But do not misunderstand me. I have not said that you should become capable of doing something; I have said, become capable of being something. Being, not doing. Doing is the language of the outer; being is the language of the inner. And if this fits in your understanding, then every moment becomes useful.

It is my good fortune that till now
I am without a goal in life.
I have neither past nor future;
in the present I am ever new.
There is no fixed direction,
no bondage to my restless motion.
With no haste to arrive anywhere,
my mind is neither anxious nor agitated.
Standing at the world’s crossroads,
I am effortlessly absorbed in myself.
With a free gaze, unconditioned, stainless,
I am both enraptured and indifferent.

Drop your concern for the outer. The outer directions, destinations, goals—I have not spoken of them at all. I want you to be—

Standing at the world’s crossroads,
I am effortlessly absorbed in myself.

Then, if there is not much hustle in the outer life—good fortune!

It is my good fortune that till now
I am without a goal in life,

Because those whose lives have outer goals find it very difficult to go within. Outer goals are never fulfilled. Life is short; outer goals do not get completed. How to go within? The palace was to be built—it isn’t built yet; how to go within? The vaults were to be filled—they are still empty; how to go within? “Let me complete everything outside first.” Has anyone ever completed the outer? Not even an Alexander completes the outer. The empire of the outer remains incomplete. The very nature of the outer empire is to be incomplete; it never completes—completion is not its nature.

It is my good fortune that till now
I am without a goal in life,

When there is no goal outside, there is great freedom to go within.

I have neither past nor future;
in the present I am ever new.

There is no past, no hoard from bygone days to guard; no grand plan for the future to keep me worried, distressed, harried.

There is no fixed direction,
no bondage to my restless motion—

No direction holds me.

Then going within becomes possible. There are eleven directions. Ten directions are outward; the eleventh is within. When you are bound to none of the ten directions, your energy begins, by itself, to flow into the eleventh.

With no haste to arrive anywhere,
my mind is neither anxious nor agitated.

There is nowhere to reach, no hurry—therefore no anxiety, no agitation, no bustle.

Standing at the world’s crossroads,
I am effortlessly absorbed in myself.

Then, standing at the world’s crossroads, you are immersed in nirvana. Standing in the marketplace, liberation draws near.

With a free gaze, unconditioned, stainless,
I am both enraptured and indifferent.

Then you appear both enraptured and indifferent. Extremes meet within you. You are outside and inside. Extremes unite within you.

So understand me rightly. Otherwise you will think there is some goal to fix, something to become at any cost, something to show the world, a name to leave in history—these insanities I am not preaching. The thing you call history is the saga of madmen. Only the one who discovers something within has truly discovered. The hustle and bustle of the outer are children’s toys.

If there were a contradiction, we would remove it. There is no contradiction. It only appears so to you. Sharpen your vision a little; make it keen.

One can have faith in you only
when you have some faith in yourself.

How will you trust God if you don’t even trust yourself? Who will do the trusting? If you have no trust in yourself, how will you trust your own trust?

One can have faith in you only
when you have some faith in yourself.

Everything is connected. Only the one who is capable of being an individual is capable of surrendering to the Whole. If you are not yet even yourself, what kind of surrender can there be?

People come to me and say, “We surrender everything.” I say, “Let me at least know what this ‘everything’ is that you surrender.” “No,” they say, “we surrender ourselves.” I ask, “Where are you? What have you brought? Empty-handed! What illusion are you in? Before surrender there must be something. And if there is nothing, who will surrender?” Such surrender is an impotent cry; it has no value. Only one with resolve can surrender.

It looks like a contradiction to you. You say, “With resolve!” Yes—only the resolute can surrender. Only one who has something can offer. Only one who possesses can place it on the altar.

The individual has to be awakened. The individual has to be raised up. The individual has to be brought to his supreme dignity. Only then does he become worthy to surrender at the feet of the Divine, to be lost in the Whole. Give the drop its glory; refine the drop so that it can become the ocean. Give the drop such majesty that it agrees to abandon its cramped smallness and become the ocean. And everything—whether the individual or the Whole, whether the soul or the Supreme—all are beautiful in their own place. Because it is the play of the One. Understand it like this—

When it spread, it was the full moon;
when it waned, it was the crescent.
Whatever the form, in its place it was peerless.

The first-day moon and the full moon—which is more beautiful? The first-day moon or the full moon?

When it spread,
as it grew larger, it became the full moon.
And when it waned,
as it grew smaller, it became the first-day moon again.
Whatever the form, in its place it was peerless.
Comparison is meaningless. The first-day moon is peerless; the full moon is also peerless.

I have heard: the Shah of Iran sent a vizier to India. There was great enmity between Iran and India. He sent the vizier to see if some settlement could be made. The vizier came and said to the emperor of India, “You are the full moon.” The emperor was very pleased. He asked, “And what do you call your Shah?” He said, “He is the second-day moon. You are the full moon.” The emperor was delighted. His viziers too were delighted. They gave this vizier great wealth, bid him farewell, and a great friendship was established. He calls his own emperor the second-day moon and the emperor of India the full moon!

When he returned, his enemies had already carried the news to Iran. The Shah was angry—court politics. They had entangled him: “He has insulted you; he is returning with trickery. He called you the second-day moon—this is defeat, this is insult—and he called the Indian emperor the full moon.”

When the vizier arrived, he was surrounded by naked swords. The gallows were ready. The vizier said, “Before I die, may I ask the reason?” The Shah said, “We were insulted. We sent you to make a settlement, not to be defeated, not to flatter. If the matter was to be solved at such a price, it would have been better to fight. You called the emperor there the full moon and me the second-day moon!” The vizier began to laugh. He said, “Of course. Because the second-day moon has the possibility of growing. The full moon is already near dying. The second-day moon will grow, become bigger, expand; the full moon will now shrink and wane. I spoke in your honor.”

Who is greater—the second-day moon or the full moon? The very question is wrong. There are not two moons. Comparison is futile. The second-day moon itself becomes the full moon. The full moon itself becomes the second-day moon. They are journeys around the same circle.

The individual becomes the Whole. The Whole keeps becoming the individual. The soul sinks into the Divine; the Divine keeps dissolving into the soul.

You are the second-day moon, growing toward God. And God, diffusing Himself, becomes again the second-day moon. So do not see contradiction. There is none.

When it spread, it was the full moon;
when it waned, it was the crescent.
Whatever the form, in its place it was peerless.

Enough for today.