Es Dhammo Sanantano #6

The poison injected by religious leaders has become an obstacle. Until one is freed from that poison, love is impossible—because love has always been condemned. Love has always been called bondage. And since love has been condemned and labeled as bondage, woman too has been continually insulted. Until love is accepted, woman cannot be honored, because the nature of woman is love. And the surprising thing is that no one is as influenced by religious leaders as women are—yet those leaders go on striking at the very roots of women.
But once the poison spreads in your mind and the notion takes hold that love is bondage, you have learned the language of men—while your heart is a woman’s. Then you will naturally be in trouble. For a man, it is in one sense true that love feels like bondage. For a woman, love is liberation. What is poison for the man is nectar for the woman. And as yet, no woman’s religion has appeared on earth, no woman Tirthankara, no woman avatar; so no one has articulated the voice of the woman’s heart.

All religions are men’s, and naturally men have presented a male point of view. For a man that point of view is perfectly right. As soon as a man falls in love, chains arise—because his ego sees bondage in love. He cannot drown in it completely; if he did, love would be freedom, love would be moksha. He cannot fully dissolve; he yields out of helplessness, but within, the ego suffers. It keeps feeling, “This has become a prison. How can I get free of it?”

For a woman, love does not feel like bondage because she yields utterly. Surrender is her nature. No ego remains behind—so who is there to be bound? The very one who could be bound falls in love and disappears. A man never fully bends; therefore he feels bound. If the ego is erased, there is no one left to bind: what can love bind then? And when no one remains to be bound, love liberates; love becomes ultimate freedom—but after surrender.

A man’s difficulty is that he can make resolutions, but he cannot surrender. A woman’s difficulty is that she can surrender, but she cannot make resolute vows. But there is no need to turn these into obstacles. Begin from where you are; do not learn the other’s language, otherwise you will be blocked.

That is what has happened with Dharma Jyoti. She has been in the company of “holy men.” They have distorted her whole mind. What they taught will not leave her alone. She hears me, yes, but the holy men stand in between; they won’t let my words enter within. Their conditioning is old—perhaps not of one birth but of many. And until this crowd of holy men takes leave, love will not be possible.

And is love something to be sipped in palmfuls—little by little? Love is a flood. Love keeps no accounts; there is no arithmetic there. Love is only when you drown in it wholly; otherwise, it is not. But the very word “love” makes you tremble. Conditionings of centuries are upon you.

So when I speak of love to you, you do not really understand. It does not truly reach you. If it does not reach men, there is no problem—for meditation is more suitable for them than love. Bhakti—devotion—does not suit men; they do not find their rhythm with love. And if, as an exception, some man becomes a bhakta, then as an exception some woman becomes a meditator. But exceptions do not establish the rule.

A man will go by meditation. Meditation is the supreme resolve. Understand meditation: it is the capacity to be alone. No dependence remains on the other—so much so that even the very thought of the other is forgotten. All thoughts are thoughts of the other. When no thought of the other remains, the self alone is left. And in that aloneness of the self, the self also dissolves—for the self cannot exist alone; it exists only with the other. If one bank of the river collapses, the other will go too; banks exist together. If one face of the coin disappears, the other vanishes with it; the two sides are together. The day darkness is gone, that very day light also is gone.

Do not think that when darkness disappears, only light will remain. Do not fall into that illusion. They are two sides of one coin. The day death ends, that very day life ends too. Do not imagine that when death ends, life becomes immortal. Death and life are two parts of one event—mutually dependent. So when the other is completely dropped, then in that intimacy of the self, ultimately the very being of the self dissolves. Emptiness remains. This is the state of meditation; we have called it samadhi.

We should coin two phrases: dhyan-samadhi and prem-samadhi. Samadhi is one, but the paths are very different. The samadhi available to a man—what became available to Buddha—is dhyan-samadhi, meditation-samadhi: the other was dropped, the self dropped, samadhi arrived.

The samadhi that came to Meera is prem-samadhi, love-samadhi. She did not drop the other; she surrendered the self. She surrendered so totally that the self did not remain; only the other remained. And when only the other remained, the other too dissolved; samadhi arrived. Where the two disappear, there is samadhi. But Meera’s samadhi came through love; Buddha’s through meditation. Samadhi is one, but the ways differ greatly.

Hearing Buddha again and again, trust in love has waned. If a man’s trust goes, there is no harm; it is profitable. But if a woman’s trust in love goes, it is dangerous—because meditation’s path matches the male nature, not the female. And man and woman are opposites. That is precisely why the attraction is so strong. They are like negative and positive electricity, like day and night, like life and death—opposites; and therefore the attraction. Attraction lies in the opposite; the similar repels. The similar bores. In the opposite, inquiry and wonder stay alive.

It is good that man and woman are opposite; otherwise all savor in life would be lost. The more opposite they are, the more blissful. The more distance between them, the more dignity of relationship is created, the peaks of relationship arise.

In the past, humanity tried to make man and woman as different as possible—and great, unique love stories happened. In the modern West there has been an effort to bring man and woman close by making them alike; love is disappearing. Because man and woman are coming to seem almost the same. They should be equal in the eyes of justice, but not the same in the eyes of nature. They are profoundly unequal—in the sense of profoundly different.

Inequality here does not mean woman is lower than man or man higher than woman. It means they are very different, like night and day, light and darkness—just that much of a distance. Let the law call them equal, but psychology cannot call them the same. And if we try to make them the same, the more alike they become, the more attraction will be lost. That sweet tension between them—of love and clash, of attachment and opposition; sometimes flowers bloom, sometimes thorns prick; they come near, they move away; there is invitation and there is refusal—that great play of life between them, that divine lila, is sweet, auspicious, beautiful. And the basis of it all is that the woman is adept at surrender. She wins by losing; that is her way of victory. She lays herself at the feet and becomes crowned. She loses herself and pervades the man’s every pore.

This is why man is afraid—because he knows his surrender is dangerous; in his surrender, bondage is born. The man feels bound because he has an ego. Naturally he wants to protect himself, to fight, to struggle. His journey is different. Man is outward-oriented; woman is inward-oriented. Even when they love each other, a man loves with eyes open; a woman with eyes closed.

Whenever a woman is in feeling, she closes her eyes—because when she is in feeling she turns inward. Even to truly see the one she loves, she will close her eyes. What kind of seeing is this? Yet this is the way of woman. With closed eyes she sees the spiritual; with open eyes she sees only clay. And whenever a woman loves someone, she never considers him less than God. Close the eyes and God appears; open them and it is a body of clay.

But a man’s relish is less within, more without. He wants to love with eyes open. Even in moments of love he wants light—so that he may see the woman’s body properly. Men have created countless nude statues of women; women have not made a single nude statue of men. In the name of women, men have produced so much obscene pornography—literature, pictures, paintings. Women have created none of that—because a man’s delight is in the body, in form and color, in the outer. Women cannot fathom why there is such eagerness for depicting the body—because they have the gift to see beyond the body. They have a window through which the body is forgotten and the Divine is seen. Men have not taught women that “the husband is God.” That is a woman’s own realization: whomever she truly loves, she sees God there. Wherever love’s shadow falls, God appears. With the first whisper of love, the footsteps of God are already heard.

But the man feels bound. His journey is outward—he must go to the moon and stars, he must conquer the far, he must win the world. If he gets tied up at home, then what of this far journey? Who will win the marketplace? Who will sit in Delhi? Where will he go, who will run, who will engage in all this hustle-bustle?

So the more ambitious the man, the more he will avoid woman. The ambitious politician will avoid woman; if the scientist is ambitious, absorbed in research, he will avoid woman; the meditator too will avoid woman. Because a woman so completely surrounds that nothing else remains doable. She won’t let you meditate, won’t let you pore over scriptures, won’t let you run for office, won’t let you amass wealth—because she will enclose you from all sides. A woman builds a house of love all around you; you feel suffocated within it because your ambition dies.

Only the man who is willing to drop his ego can agree to a woman’s love. That is very difficult for a man. His single remedy is meditation—that he go deep into meditation.

In my view, only when a man goes deep into meditation does he become worthy of love. And only when a woman goes deep into love does she become capable of meditation.

A woman will not be able to do meditation directly. Tell her a thousand times to sit silently and be still, she will ask, “But for whom? Whom shall I remember? Whose image shall I install? Whose form shall I behold within?” The idols in temples—women have placed them. The songs in God’s name—women have sung them. Bhajans, kirtans—their unique flavor has been savored by women. And between man and woman there is a great, puzzling riddle. They do not understand each other. How could they? The woman with whom you have lived all your life, or the man with whom you have lived all your life—you still do not understand. The language differs, the journey differs; their ways of thinking and of being differ.

The day true understanding dawns in the world, there will be a separate psychology of women and a separate psychology of men. Their minds are different. So merely saying “psychology” is not enough. Psychology of whom? Of woman or of man? The very framework of a woman’s mind is different; a man’s framework is different.

Therefore a man becomes a Mahavira or a Buddha. We have named Mahavira “Jina”—the Conqueror, the one who has won. We have named Buddha “Buddha”—the Awakened One. But ask Meera, “Did you win?” Meera will say, “I was defeated.” To talk of conquering God is absurd! The very language of conquering carries aggression and violence.

Understand this a little. Even for as nonviolent a one as Mahavira, we have used the word “Jina.” But in the very word “Jina” there is violence—victory, conquest. That is a kshatriya’s language; a man’s language. Mahavira attained supreme meditation and knowledge, but his language remained male.

Ask Meera, “Did you win?” She will say, “You have not understood—does anyone win in love? One loses. But that very losing is victory.” Ask Meera, “Did you awaken?” She will say, “What awakening there? There it is a losing of oneself; there it is dissolving; there unconsciousness itself is consciousness.”

Grasp this: for Meera, becoming “unconscious” is true wakefulness, and losing is winning.

Put Mahavira and Meera together and a great difficulty will arise between them; no discussion could proceed. Their language is different—as if one spoke German and the other Japanese, with no meeting point.

For a man, woman has been a riddle; for a woman, man has been a riddle. A woman cannot even think why you are going to the moon. Isn’t the home enough? That is what Yashodhara asked Buddha when he returned: “What you found there—could it not have been found here? What need was there to flee to the forest? Was this home so bad? If you only wanted peace, the convenience here was far greater than in the jungle. Had you told us, we would not have hindered you. We would have left you in solitude and made every arrangement so there would be no disturbance.” But even if Yashodhara had arranged that there be not the least disturbance—had she not even cast her shadow upon Buddha—Buddha would still have felt bound. For those unseen threads would have spread all around Yashodhara and spread even more. Like a shadow, she would have woven her net all around. He grew frightened and fled.

Whoever has fled to the forest has fled in fear of love. And what is the fear? That love may bind; that love may become attachment; that love may turn into clinging. Women are not seen running to the forest—because a woman does not understand where to run; she has to drown. Drowning can only be here. And woman has not worried much about the God in the sky; she has cared for the God who is near and close.

A woman has no taste for what is happening in China; her interest is in what is happening in the neighbor’s house—nearby. Often the husband feels, “What petty matters! The neighbor’s wife has run off with someone; the neighbor’s house has a new baby; the neighbor bought a new car—what trivialities! There is Vietnam, there is Israel, such big issues face the world. O foolish one! A baby born in the neighbor’s house—is that any event? Millions are dying in war; what difference does this one birth make?”

But a woman does not understand why it isn’t an event when a child is born next door—such a great happening—a new life has descended. Or that the neighbor’s wife went with someone—there, a new love has dawned. You have no taste for this! What have we to do with Israel? The distance is so great that nothing imprints itself on a woman’s mind. The distance is too much.

A woman is not interested in the far God in the sky. She is interested in the near God—in the son, in the husband, in the family, in the neighbor. Her relish is in the near, not the far. She wants to drown here.

And one who wants to drown can drown anywhere. But one who wants to conquer cannot conquer everywhere. For victory one must arrange for war; for victory one must organize struggle. For losing, no arrangement is needed. Victory requires arrangement; losing can happen anytime—bare-handed. No weapons need be gathered, no armies assembled. Losing can happen right now, just as you are. But for victory, great means are needed—and even then it is not certain you will win.

So in Mahavira’s life there is great organization—it is a journey of victory. In Meera’s life there is no organization. Where she was, there she began to dance; where she was, there she went mad in love. Mahavira has to cultivate awareness; Meera has to cultivate ecstasy.

So I understand Dharma Jyoti’s trouble well. The sadhus have spoiled things. And they still weigh heavy on her mind. She has come to me, yet she has not really arrived. Her conditionings are those of rigidity. Therefore love is difficult. And meditation is difficult for a woman anyway. If love itself does not happen, meditation cannot happen. From love alone the way opens toward meditation. From intoxication awareness ripens; from defeat victory comes.

So as soon as possible, drop the conditioned poison that has been given to you. Remove it. Because of these conditionings you will not be able to be truly a woman; your heart will not rejoice; you will not blossom. Remember, if love does not ripen, how will meditation ripen? Master love, and meditation too will be mastered. In the innermost depth of love, the flower of meditation will bloom. That is the path for a woman.

Yes, sometimes there have been women, exceptionally, who have practiced meditation. But I do not make exceptions into rules.

In Kashmir there was a woman, Lalla. She would have conversed well with Mahavira. She remained naked as Mahavira did—no other woman on earth did so. She is the only woman in human history who fled to the forest and became naked. In Kashmir she is greatly honored. Kashmiris say, “We know only two words—Allah and Lalla.” But Lalla is not representative of women; she is an exception.

Similarly among men there was Chaitanya. He is an exception. He is not a symbol of men. The symbol is Mahavira. Chaitanya danced like a woman—intoxicated with devotion. All right. But rules are not made from him. And always remember: walk by the rule. The exception will not come to ask. The rule is who comes seeking. The exceptional does not ask.

If Dharma Jyoti were an exception, meditation would already be flowering. She is not. She is a woman—caught under the influence of wrong ideas; the male poison has prevailed upon her head. Now it is obstructing; it will not let love happen. And the more she tries to meditate, the more false it is. This attempt is only to escape from love. The “meditation” she is doing is just so that she need not get entangled in love. And love is sin, love is a hassle—so she must avoid it. Thus she turns to meditation. But I tell you, only through love will meditation happen. If you take up meditation to avoid love, you will be in difficulty; you will hang suspended—like Trishanku, neither here nor there.

It does not take long; if you understand, in a single moment all the rubbish can be dropped. Rubbish is only rubbish; it never becomes your nature. Inside, the pure woman is present. The “holy men” cannot spoil her. Their talk is like the leaves on the surface; beneath, the stream of feminine nature flows. Just move aside the leaves and the inner river will appear. A million leaves can cover a river—here in Poona the river is covered so completely by leaves that it becomes invisible—yet it is still there. Brush the leaves aside a little, and the river reveals itself.

I had asked, “Where is the goal of the journey?”
Khizr showed me the way to the tavern.

I had asked, “Where is the goal of life—the ultimate destination?” And my Master showed me the way to the tavern. He said, “In intoxication, in love.”

I had asked, “Where is the goal of the journey?”
Khizr showed me the way to the tavern.

For a woman that is the way—the tavern, intoxication, losing; to be absorbed, to be utterly immersed; to efface oneself such that no one remains within. Let only the one you love remain. Let the lover remain, let the beloved dissolve; let God remain, let the devotee be lost. And then suddenly God, too, disappears. When the devotee is gone, where will God remain? God is in the devotee’s eyes; God is in the devotee’s being. When the devotee is gone, God too goes. What remains then—that is it.

There is a great difference—an elemental, fundamental difference.

Western psychology—say today’s psychology, because what is Western is modern, of this century—treats those who are mentally ill. It treats those who are abnormal, unhealthy. Buddha’s psychology treats those who are normal and healthy.

If someone goes mad, modern psychology treats him. Until a person goes mad, he has little to do with modern psychology; it is a device to fix the sick. But those who go to Buddha are not mad; in fact, if we understand rightly, they have become alert, and now they do not want to remain mad or become mad. They are normal, healthy. In Buddha’s vision, the ordinary crowd is even more mad. Those who have come to their senses about life, who have understood life, say to Buddha: What is the point of being merely healthy? Truth is needed too. Health is not enough. What will we do with health without truth? So Buddha’s psychology is an arrangement to take the healthy toward ultimate health.

If you are shaky in ordinary life—cannot run your shop properly, cannot go to the office properly, memory weakens, you keep making mistakes—then modern psychology is your ally. But if everything is running fine, nothing seems wrong; and precisely when everything runs smoothly and no trouble is visible, suddenly you realize: even if all this goes well, it will end in death. Even if all goes well, where will I go, where will I arrive? Even if all is well, death is coming. Even if all is well, I am dying, I am disappearing. Even if all is well, it is futile and without essence.

The day you feel the hollowness even while everything is fine, that day you go to the Buddhas and ask: Everything is fine—money, wife, child, house, all is fine—no hindrance anywhere, I live comfortably and will die comfortably; but is living comfortably and dying comfortably the final goal? Is this the aim of life? Is it enough that I live at ease and die at ease? Is comfort enough? That is where Buddha’s psychology begins—when it becomes clear that comfort is not the essence, that becoming normal has no value, that even health is nothing until truth is found.

There is an episode in Jesus’ life: he came to a village and saw a man drunk, fallen in the gutter by the roadside, abusing passersby. He went to him, shook him with compassion, raised him up and said, Why are you wasting your life drinking? You are lying in the gutter. The man opened his eyes; on seeing Jesus he came to. He said, My Lord, I was sick; I could not even leave my bed. You touched me and healed me. Now I am healthy—what am I to do with this health? I can think of nothing but drinking. I had never drunk before. I was bedridden; I could not even reach this tavern. By your grace!

Jesus pondered: So this is the result of my grace. He moved on, saddened. He saw a man running after a prostitute. He caught him and said, Eyes were not given by God for this. Why are you chasing lust? What madness is this? The man stopped and looked carefully; he said, My Lord—and he fell at his feet—I was blind; you touched me and gave me sight. Now what shall I do with these eyes? I had never run after any prostitute. I did not even know what beauty was; I was blind from birth. It is your grace that gave me eyes. What am I to do with them now?

Jesus became very sad and left the village, deeply pensive: These are the results of my grace! He saw a man tying a rope to a tree to hang himself. He ran and said, Brother, stop! What are you doing? The man said, Don’t stop me now—enough is enough. I was dead; you raised me. Now what am I to do with this life? It is your grace that I am suffering. Enough now—do not prevent me. And if I die, do not bring me back to life. Why have you come again! Somehow I had managed to arrange for my own death. I had already died once before.

What is the outcome of what you call health? You will squander it somewhere on the road of life—you will end up in some gutter. What will you do with eyesight? You will get deluded by forms. And what is the use of life except suicide? Some do it quickly, some slowly. Some take one leap; some take seventy years to commit suicide. It makes no difference. It does not show that there is any difference between you and the one who hangs himself. He is perhaps a little braver, wanting to do it in one stroke; you are weaker, doing it slowly, dying every day. What are you doing here on the earth except dying?

Buddha’s psychology begins where you have everything and feel that you have nothing. Today’s psychology is for the poor and the sick. Buddha’s psychology is for emperors and the able—the one who has everything and has discovered that he has nothing, his hands are empty. His hands are full of diamonds and jewels, yet the diamonds and jewels are useless. To one who finds life desolate in the midst of a full life, sees calamity in the midst of wealth, who, in the midst of health, sees nothing but a house of diseases, and to whom life appears only a journey toward death—he goes to Buddha.

Buddha’s psychology is the psychology of ultimate life, a life that has no end—the eternal, the timeless. Esa dhammo sanantano. They speak of the Dharma, the law by which the eternal is realized, the timeless is attained.

Western psychology is slowly moving toward Buddha’s psychology. It will have to. Look: the Western discipline is called “medical science,” the science of medicine. In the East, the discipline we created was named Ayurveda—not the science of medicine, but the science of life; and not just a science, a Veda: a scripture of life. Medicine is negative; it is used when there is illness. Even when there is no illness, Ayurveda is applicable, because it concerns life itself. It does not merely worry about removing disease with a drug; even when there is no illness, it asks how to multiply life, how to enhance life.

This is the difference in outlook between East and West. The West worries about removing the thorn; the East also cares to place the flower. The West worries about removing suffering; the East cares to give birth to bliss. Removing sorrow is not enough. Even if there is no sorrow in life, it does not follow that there is bliss.

Many people have no sorrow in their lives; but does that bring joy? In fact, the truth is: those who still have sorrow also still have hope—“We will find a way, we will remove the sorrow, tomorrow it will be all right.” Those in whose lives sorrow has ceased suddenly ask, “Now what?” The sorrow is gone—there is nothing left to remove; the race to remove it is over; there is no trouble; but there is no joy either. Their lives fill with sadness and boredom. Life becomes ashes; the ember of hope and joy is extinguished.

You will be surprised: even a beggar’s steps may show some momentum—he has somewhere to reach, some suffering to remove, some pain to fix; but the emperor’s feet become heavy. There is nowhere to go, nothing to attain; what was to be reached has been reached; what was to be gained has been gained. Now? Now a huge question stands before him. Now he only drags himself along, only waits for death to come and release him.

The disappearance of suffering is not bliss. It may be a necessary condition for bliss, but it is not sufficient.

So Western psychology is also moving, step by step. From where Freud left it, it has gone far ahead. New humanistic thinkers—Abraham Maslow and others—have begun to give psychology new directions. These directions say: we are not concerned that man be merely healthy; he should be more than healthy—he should be joyful. It is not enough that there is no illness; what will that do? There should be celebration. It is not enough that you can walk and your legs are sound. You should be able to dance. Walking is one thing.

A man is there whose leg is not sound; he cannot walk; he is paralyzed. It is necessary to remove the paralysis. If paralysis goes, he can walk; if paralysis goes, he can also dance—but no one starts dancing merely because paralysis is cured. The removal of paralysis is a necessary condition for dancing; it is not sufficient. How many people are there who have no paralysis—and yet you do not see them dancing. To dance, one needs to feel some inner wealth. To dance, some ray must descend within, some song, some melody; life must receive some hint of the mystery, a glimpse of the divine—only then can one dance.

Slowly Western psychology will keep moving. It will have to. Because only a few people are ill; many are healthy—and still there is no joy in their lives. They too will have to be cared for. It is not enough to fix only the lame and the crippled—otherwise the work would be easy. Those who are not crippled must be made to dance—and that work is far more difficult.

But once the first step is taken, the second begins. The first step: a man laying out a new garden pulls out the weeds, removes the useless growth, turns the soil, digs out the roots and throws them away. This is necessary. But if he stops there, flowers do not appear. Then seeds must be sown, water must be given, the garden must be guarded. A thousand obstacles come, and one must contend with them. So if a man gets comfort in life, gets health, a good house; if bread, livelihood, shelter are arranged—that is only the preparation of the garden. The seeds have not yet been sown. Whoever is satisfied with only that is foolish. He has settled for the inessential. He has settled for the negative. He has settled for medicine. It is not enough.

Those with a deep experience of medicine say that often two patients with the same disease, in the same condition, receive the same drug; it works on one and not on the other. Why? Investigation has found that the one on whom the drug works wants to live; there is a will-to-live, a longing for life; the medicine works. The other does not want to live. He has become sad and tired; he has dropped hope—then the medicine does not work.

In my view, those who are mentally ill are precisely those who have found no clue to joy in life and have given up hope. You can pull them up with effort, even push them to walk. You can give them crutches and somehow bring movement to them. But dancing does not come with crutches. Nor can anyone shove you into a dance. For dance to happen, something must descend into their inner home; a door must open, a window must open; new light must come in, new air; God must be reborn within—only then.

In the East we have created a science of bliss. The West has created a science of how to get rid of suffering. Therefore in the West, suffering has been reduced, and people have become very restless—joy does not appear. That is why Western psychology is moving forward, step by step. And sooner or later, it will be linked with the psychology of the Buddhas.

Then live—live exactly as you feel. Experience will show that what seemed pleasant was not truly pleasant. From the question I can only see that you are not mature yet; you are still raw. Life has not yet baked you. You are like an unfired clay pot; when the rains come, you will dissolve. The fire of life has not fired you yet. Because when the fire of life cooks someone, one thing becomes clear. What becomes clear? Only this: to see happiness in the future means that the present is misery. That is why dreams of the future feel pleasant.

Think a little! A person who has been hungry all day dreams of food at night. But one who has eaten to his fill—does he also dream of food at night? If he does, he is mad. You do not dream of what you already have; you dream only of what you do not have. Your present is full of misery. To forget it, to appease your mind, to entice it, for relief and consolation, you grope with your eyes into the future: some dream that tomorrow everything will be fine. On the hope and trust of that tomorrow, you endure today’s suffering. In hope of the destination, the hardship of the road does not seem like hardship. You feel you are about to arrive—though that arrival never comes.

This “today” you call today was also “tomorrow” yesterday. You dreamed for this very today, and those dreams were not fulfilled. The same happened the day before, and the day before that. And the same will happen ahead. If your today is not full of joy, how will a joyful tomorrow emerge out of a sorrowful today? Think a little!

Today has not descended from the sky; it has arisen from within you. Your today is different; my today is different. Do not be deceived by the calendar. On the calendar, your today and my today bear the same name. But here, as many people as are sitting, so many todays there are. On the whole earth, as many people as there are, so many todays there are. And if you count animals, birds, and plants, the number is the same. The calendar is a complete lie. It makes it seem as if everyone has the same day. Sunday—so everyone’s Sunday? Not necessary. If the sun has risen in someone’s life, it is Sunday; if there is darkness in someone’s life, what kind of Sunday is that!

Today does not descend from the sky. Time does not come from outside. Time is born within you. By living your today, you will give birth to tomorrow. Tomorrow is formed in your own womb. Tomorrow is being created today.

And that is why I say: live today, live now. And live with such joy, so abundantly, that what is being formed in your womb is transformed too—that it catches hold of your joy. If today you are living in misery and hoping for a happy tomorrow, tomorrow will not be born out of hope; it will be born out of you. It will be born out of the way you are living. It will be born from your being, not from your dreams.

Consider: a mother is ill, and there is a son in her womb; she is diseased, her body worn out. The son will be born from this worn-out, diseased body. However many dreams the mother may see—that the boy will be very healthy, strong like a great hero—it will change nothing. The child will not be born from the dream. He will be born from the reality. Your tomorrow will not be born from your dream; it will be born from the reality of your today.

What are you today? If you are dancing, you have already danced for the coming tomorrow. If you are delighted, radiant, tomorrow’s flower has already begun to open. For the bud that is to bloom tomorrow is being prepared today. Moment by moment you are producing the next moment. Each instant the next instant is being fashioned within you, prepared within you. You are the creator. You create your own time.

Therefore I say, live today. But you feel the present does not feel worth living. If the present does not feel worth living, tomorrow too will come only as the present; then that too will not feel worth living. The day after tomorrow will also come as the present; that too will not feel worth living. I call this self-destruction. Then you are committing suicide, not living.

There is no other way to live. Only today exists, and it is today that has to be lived. Whether it feels worth living or not makes no difference. There is no other way. Living will happen only here. Do not fall into the delusion of tomorrow. The mirages of tomorrow have drowned many.

Live today. Do not let this moment pass empty. This moment is an opportunity. Do not waste it like this. Make something of it. Take some juice out of it. Savor it. Recognize something of it. Let its flavor sink into your very life-breath. Do not let it slip by like this. Because if time keeps going like this, the habit of letting time go like this grows stronger and stronger. Then, slowly, squandering time becomes your nature. Enjoy it. Suck this moment dry, squeeze it completely, let not a drop of its juice be lost. This is gratitude towards the divine. For he gave you the opportunity, gave you life—and you just let it slip away. God will not ask you...

There is a Jewish book—the Talmud. A very unique book; there is no scripture like it in the world. The Talmud says that God will not ask you which mistakes you made. He does not keep accounts of mistakes—his heart is vast. God will ask you: I gave you so many opportunities for happiness; why did you not enjoy them? Who bothers about mistakes? Who keeps accounts of slips? He will ask: I gave you so many chances for joy—why did you not take them? The Talmud says there is only one sin in life, and that is letting life’s opportunities pass without enjoying them. When you could have been blissful, you were not. When you could have sung a song, you did not sing. You kept postponing forever to tomorrow; you kept deferring.

When will a postponing person live? How will he live? Postponement becomes your very style of living. When you were a child you postponed to youth; when you are young you will postpone to old age. And in old age people postpone to the next life. They say, we will see in the other world.

This very world is the only one. And this very moment is it. This moment is the moment of truth. Everything else is false—a net of the mind. But if you like it, your choice. If you like it, who am I to obstruct you? Dream on. Someday you will wake up; then you will weep, you will repent. Then you will regret that so much time was wasted for nothing. And remember, the more grief you pour into life, the denser your tears become, the more remorse accumulates, the harder it becomes to stop the sorrow and the tears.

Have you ever noticed: laughter stops at once, but crying does not stop at once. You are laughing—you can stop at once. Crying does not stop at once.

Tears will halt only by and by;
Weeping is something; laughter is not.

Sorrow soaks you like that; it penetrates to such depths, it saturates your very roots, that even if you want to stop it, how will you stop it?

Tears will halt only by and by;
Weeping is something; laughter is not.

It is no joke that you cry and then just stop. It is not some laughter you can laugh and simply switch off. Laughter is on the surface; it can stop. Weeping goes very deep. Weeping fills your life on all sides. And if day after day you keep cultivating weeping like this and keep postponing living to tomorrow—saying, we will laugh tomorrow, we will cry today—and the argument you are giving is that the present does not feel pleasant, therefore you will see pleasant dreams. Ask why the present is not pleasant. It is not pleasant precisely because yesterday too you dreamed of today. You wasted the day called yesterday, in which today could have been made pleasant, in which the foundation of today could have been laid. You wasted yesterday; that is why today is painful. And now you are making the same argument that you will waste today too, because the dream of tomorrow feels good.

As you wish. The arithmetic is clear. Then do not tell me that no one warned you. You will not have this chance to say, remember, that no one warned you. Others may at least have the excuse that no one warned them. But I have been warning you every day.

The end lies in realizing this truth: you are not your samskaras, you are not your habits. The end lies in awakening to the truth that you are separate. The end is in awareness. The end is in the witness-state.

Certainly you were angry yesterday, and the day before too—the habit formed. Today someone barely provoked you; the ember was already inside—tended day after day—and it flared. There was ash settled, just a thin crust on top. Someone blew on it, the crust fell away, the ember came alive, and you were filled with anger. You get angry today, and the preparation for tomorrow deepens again.

Thus day after day you go on practicing. The samskara will become deeper. And the deeper it becomes, the more mechanical you will be. Anyone can press your button and make you angry. Anyone can press your button and make you pleased. Someone bows and flatters you, and you melt with delight! Someone hurls a small insult, and you are in tears! You become mechanical. And people come to know your buttons. Everyone knows each other’s buttons—where to press so that everything goes right, and where to press so that everything goes wrong. Are you a machine? Or are you a human being!

To be human means at least this: someone may keep pressing your anger-button, but you say, “I will not do it,” and the button keeps being pressed, the other fellow gets tired, yet you do not get angry. You say, “I am my own master. When I choose to act, I will act; when I choose not to, I will not.” This is the difference between reaction and action. In reaction, the other is the master, not you. In action, you are the master, not the other.

And the delightful thing is: reaction binds, action liberates. For one who is master of his actions, no samskara is formed from his act. But one who is not master of his act, who merely reacts—his life accumulates fetters. Day by day the net grows stronger. In the end you find you are not there at all—just a heap of habits, a dead heap, from which the life-bird flew away long ago. The bird is gone; the frame remains, the cage remains.

Wake up before it is too late. And begin to be free of habits. I am not telling you to drop bad habits and cultivate good ones. Your so-called saints tell you that—drop the bad, adopt the good. I say to you: drop habit as such. Whether a habit is labeled bad or good makes no difference. Whether the cage is iron or gold, what difference does it make?

A man has the habit of smoking; the whole world condemns it. Another has the habit of turning his rosary; the whole world praises it. If the smoker does not smoke, he feels in trouble; if the rosary-man is not allowed to turn his beads, he too feels in trouble. Both are slaves. One needs a cigarette the moment he gets up, the other needs his rosary the moment he gets up. If the bead-turner does not get his beads, he has a craving for beads; if the smoker does not get a cigarette, he has a craving for a cigarette. Basically there is not much difference. Smoking too is a kind of rosary. Smoke in, smoke out; in, out—you are turning the beads. Out, in. A rosary of smoke—just subtler. Someone else is turning pebbles and stones—that is a little grosser.

The real issue is freedom from habit.

I am not saying, “Don’t turn the rosary.” Nor am I saying, “Smoke.” I am saying: remain the master. Do not let any habit become the master—any habit. Let not even the habit of going to the temple become the master. Let not even the habit of meditation become the master. You remain the master.

To preserve your mastery and use habit—this is sadhana. Lose your mastery and the habit sits on your neck; then you become mechanical. Then your life is in a swoon. Some people come to me and say, “If we don’t perform worship daily, we feel restless.” They think something very religious has happened in their lives. I ask them, “Do you get any joy out of worship?” They say, “Joy? Not really. But if we don’t do it, we feel uneasy.”

That is exactly what the smoker says. Ask him, “Do you get any joy from it?” He says, “Joy? What’s there! There is no joy—sometimes a cough, yes. Nothing like joy. But if I don’t smoke, I feel restless.”

Think about this a little. This is what I call becoming a machine: something from which you get nothing, yet if you don’t do it you feel uneasy. There is nothing to be gained, nothing available, and yet there is trouble in dropping it—because the habit has you. This is all a habit can do: if you do it, you get nothing; if you don’t, it feels as if something is being lost.

Now this is the amusing thing: how can you lose by not doing something that yields nothing? Nothing is lost; only, when you don’t walk in the old grooves of habit, it feels awkward.

I knew a very great lawyer. He had a habit that whenever he stood in court to argue—he was a top lawyer, of international renown, with offices in London, Peking and Delhi—whenever he got stuck, he would start twirling a button of his coat. Everyone has something like this: someone scratches his head, someone does something else. Such a habit serves just like a button to be pressed. So whenever his thoughts got entangled, or no answer occurred to him, he would begin to twirl a coat button. Whether he got anything by twirling it is not certain—for what can twirling a coat button give? And if the mind is tangled and nothing occurs, will twirling a button make an idea arise? But the opposition noticed that whenever he got stuck, he twirled a button.

There was a major case—of a large princely state—before the Privy Council. A matter of lakhs. The opposing counsel bribed his chauffeur and said, “Just do this much: break off the top button of his coat.” When he came into court with his coat over his arm, that button was missing. He didn’t notice at the time and put the coat on. When he began to argue and the moment came, his hand went to the button—and that was it, everything collapsed! It was as if the brain deserted him; no clarity at all, a kind of dizziness. He sat down. He lost his first case.

He told me, “I never got anything from that button, but I lost a lot. It wasn’t that twirling the button gave me insight; but when I couldn’t find it, I simply didn’t know what to do—as if some weapon had slipped from my hand. I had come to rely on it, and at the crucial moment the thing I relied upon betrayed me.”

What you call habits, whether bad or good—it makes no difference. All habits are bad if they become the master. If you remain the master, no habit is bad. Slavery is bad; mastery is good. This is my definition. Samskaras are being formed every moment; habits are being made. Stand a little apart; do not lose your mastery.

Of course, life needs habits. Without them life would be very difficult. Habits make life smooth. You learn typing, or you learn to drive a car: if no habit formed and every day you were back at the first day—“Now there is a chance to type; let me learn again,” or, “Now I have to drive; let me learn again”—life would become impossible. You learn to drive once; it becomes a habit. Then the hands function on their own; you hardly need to give attention. A driver hums a tune, chats, listens to the radio. Some even doze, and the car keeps going.

Habits are needed in life—only keep this in mind: let them not become the master. If you remain the master, nothing in the world is bad. If the ownership is yours, everything is good. Lose the ownership, become a slave, and the slavery is dangerous no matter how precious it looks. Even if the bars of your cage and the chains are studded with jewels, do not mistake them for ornaments. They are dangerous; that is a costly bargain.

There is nothing in this world worth gaining at the cost of losing yourself.

Yes, preserving yourself, you can play as many games as you like. When the Divine himself is at play, why should you be troubled? But God is the master; and when you too become master of your habits and samskaras, then in your small world you too become divine.

Buddha called this “awareness”: do everything, but do it consciously. Even to lift a foot, lift it with awareness. Getting up, sitting down, lying down—with awareness. Do not do anything in a stupor. If you go on cultivating awareness, habits will still form and you will use them, but behind the habit a current of awareness will be flowing. The lamp of consciousness will be burning. That too will be taking shape, its intensity increasing, its light deepening.

If in life there remain only habits and more habits, the soul is lost. Be there behind the habits as well—separate, distinct. And have so much mastery that if you want to drop a habit, you can drop it this very moment, without looking back or needing to think twice.

I have heard that when travelers first reached the North Pole, they ran into big trouble. They had food for three months; it was used up. For some fifteen or twenty days they had to fast, hungry. Sometimes they caught fish—fine; sometimes they couldn’t—trouble. The ship was trapped, stuck in the ice. But the greatest problem for the captain was not food. The crew were ready to go without food—the real crisis was cigarettes. The cigarettes ran out. So people began cutting ropes from the ship and smoking them. The captain panicked. He said, “If this goes on for twenty days, we will never make it back! If you keep cutting the ropes, how will this ship move? The sails will fall.” But the men were so crazy for a smoke—what could the captain do? One man alone, with all the others smokers—what could he do? They would cut some at night on the sly, here and there.

When somehow the ship returned and the story was in the newspapers, a man in America—he was reading the paper while smoking—suddenly found this detail strange: that people had cut filthy ropes and smoked them. He too was a chain-smoker. He thought—with a cigarette in his hand—“Would this be my state too if I had been with them? Would I also have cut ropes to smoke?” The thought came, and he set the cigarette down in the ashtray and said, “I will pick this up only when my condition becomes such that I feel I could even smoke dirty ropes; otherwise I will not pick it up.”

Twenty years passed. That cigarette lay on his table. People would ask him, “Why is this half-burned cigarette here?” He would say, “I have to pick it up someday, but only on the day when my craving becomes so great that the habit is big and I am small. I am waiting.” The moment never came. Twenty years passed. I have not smoked for twenty years, he wrote, and it has not even come to mind. I try to remember it sometimes, so that it might arise, because I want to know in what desperation those sailors had to smoke ropes. But it never comes.

He wrote his memoirs; I was reading them. In them he wrote, “I can’t understand what happened. Earlier I had tried many times to quit smoking, but I couldn’t. Many times I did quit, but after a day or two I would start again. But what happened now? I didn’t even quit. I was only waiting—whenever the habit seized me and shook me, I would smoke. I only want to know whether, had I been on that ship, I too would have smoked ropes. For twenty years the urge has not come. I can’t understand what happened!”

He cannot understand because he knows nothing of meditation, nothing of awareness. He did not “give up” the cigarette; it fell away because of awareness. He was holding only one awareness: “I will smoke only when the craving becomes so strong that I would smoke ropes.” But because of that awareness the craving does not take hold. Where there is awareness, craving does not catch. If he meets someone who knows awareness, he will get the answer. Unwittingly, he has cultivated awareness.

I say to you: whatever habit has seized you, seized you by force—bring awareness to it. I do not say, “Quit smoking.” I say, “Smoke consciously.” I am even going to have a room built here in the ashram for conscious smokers—so that they can go there and certainly smoke, but for as long as they smoke, they must remain mindful. Not for a single moment in unconsciousness—just that. Then if you still want to smoke, enjoy it; no harm.

But I know: if awareness takes root, who will commit such foolishness? Such foolishness happens only in unconsciousness.

So I do not tell you to give up anything. Because I know: by “giving up” no one has ever truly given up. I tell you only to cultivate awareness; because I know that through awareness, whatever is useless drops away by itself, and what is meaningful remains.

Awareness is the final alchemy of the spiritual life—the ultimate chemistry. Apart from that, all else is elaboration.

Enough for today.