Geeta Darshan #11

As long as there is wanting, there is attachment. Whether it is the desire to meet the Master, to attain knowledge, or to attain liberation—desire as such is attachment.

Where all desires drop, there is liberation. And where all desires drop, there too is union with the Master. For the Master who appears outside is only a reflection. When all desires fall, the inner Master manifests. And until you find the Master within, you will go on wandering in the world.

How long will you walk behind someone? In following, blindness persists. How long will you take someone’s hand as support? Support will cripple you. No one has ever become free through support; support manufactures helplessness. If you see in someone outside a manifestation of consciousness, use that to recall the consciousness within you.

The longing to merge into the Master is still longing. You will not be freed by this longing. It will keep you wandering and deluded. Ultimately one has to come to such a state of consciousness that beyond it nothing remains to be attained—where being itself is utter fulfillment, where not even for a moment does a future-ache arise. One has to come to such a state of consciousness in which the future becomes void and time dissolves. Where time dissolves, the nectar of immortality is tasted.

That is why we have called death kaal. Kaal means time, and it also means death. As long as there is time, there is death. When time is lost, the timeless—akaal—is experienced. Akaal means the immortal; akaal means your being eternal.

Who is it that wants to merge with the Master? The object chosen is excellent—the Master—but the urge to merge is very old. Once you wanted to merge with a lover and become one; once with wealth and become one; once with status and become one. Your craving has chosen thousands upon thousands of objects.

You can make the Master the point of your craving; nothing will change by that. Your craving remains the same. The object has changed, the peg has changed, but what you hang up is the very same bundle you have always hung. Choose Vaikuntha, choose heaven, choose liberation.

Buddha has said: as long as you want nirvana, there will be no realization of nirvana. And as long as you want to be free, you will remain bound—because wanting itself is bondage. Even the desire to be free is a desire.

So what is to be done? The matter seems tangled. The desire to be free is also a desire; the desire to attain God is also a desire. Then what should we do? How to be released?

Understand desire—do not change desire. Understand its nature: desire’s very nature is to bind. And the deepest strategy of desire is that whenever you come close to understanding its nature, it immediately changes its object. By changing the object it gives you the feeling that desire has changed. For a few days the load feels new—you have shifted the burden from one shoulder to the other.

This relief will last only a few days.

Tired of the world, desire changes its tune. Desire says, “Go to the temple—what’s in the shop? What’s in money? Seek religion. What’s in these potsherds of gold and silver? They will all be left behind.” It is desire itself speaking. Desire itself says, “All the pomp will be left when the caravan moves on. So find something that will not be left behind. Find some coins of liberation, some wealth that will go with you beyond death. Even if the tongues of fire burn you, they should not be able to burn your treasure.”

Then you are becoming clever. You are still seeking the world, only in a new form. Experience has not awakened you; from experience you have woven a new dream.

If you understand the nature of desire, you will find it makes no difference what you desire. If there is desire, bondage will remain. Desire itself is bondage. Therefore do not change the object, do not change the peg—bring down desire itself.

It seems very difficult. You say, “We can understand not seeking wealth but seeking religion; not going to the shop but to the temple. But it makes no sense to go nowhere at all, to seek nothing at all.”

But I tell you: the day you go nowhere, seek nothing, and begin to abide within yourself— Desire always carries you outward: sometimes left, sometimes right; sometimes north, sometimes east—it makes no difference; outward it goes. The day you go nowhere at all and remain and rejoice within yourself, that very day, that very day, liberation is found. That very day there is union with the Master; that very day the Divine is attained.

Understand desire so that desire dissolves. I do not even tell you to “drop” desire, because even in dropping there is a danger: you will drop it only when some other desire has arisen in your mind.

You will drop the world when the desire for liberation arises. You will drop wealth when the desire for renunciation arises. You will drop sexual desire when the desire for celibacy arises. But the craving has only become subtler; it has not vanished.

So I do not tell you to drop it, nor to change it; I tell you to understand it. Understanding is the only rule—the scripture of scriptures. Understand desire: how does it bind? What is its way? What is the law of desire?

The law of desire is this: desire always says that where you are is not the right place to be, and where it would be right to be—that is where you are not. You have ten rupees; this is not a good state. There should be ten crores—then there will be bliss and more bliss. You are in the body—there is only suffering in the body: ailments, diseases. When you become disembodied and revel in heaven, only then will there be bliss. This is the scripture of desire.

Impatience with what you are. Restlessness with what you are. No contentment, no acceptance with what you are. A denial of what you are. And a longing for what you are not; craving for it; schemes to get it. This is the scripture of desire.

Then apply it wherever you like—on wealth or on religion, on objects or on liberation—it will make no difference. One thing will remain certain: wherever you are, there you will remain unhappy. And where you are not, there will shimmer the mirage of your heaven. And heaven is within you. Heaven is right where you are.

Kabir says, “Kasturi kundal basai”—the musk resides in the navel. In the deer itself is the musk-pouch. The fragrance seems to him to be coming from somewhere; he runs madly, searches in the forests, cries and screams, becomes deranged, because that fragrance keeps calling him. And the fragrance is in his own navel; it comes from within. But he knows nothing of the within. He thinks, “It must be coming from somewhere. If it comes, it must come from somewhere.” His logic is the same as yours. The mirage glitters in the distance; he runs, crying and screaming, deranged—for that which was within.

What you have always had, you will not be able to see as long as your eyes are set on obtaining what you do not have. Drop liberation, drop thoughts of the Master, of heaven, of truth. Grant yourself just this grace: awaken to what you are, where you are, as you are. Open a little the musk-pouch within. Kasturi kundal basai!

Then you will find you were running without cause. There was no need to run at all. You already had that which you were searching for.

Therefore the wise say: with non-wanting it is found; with wanting it is lost. Thirst leads astray; it does not deliver. Non-thirst delivers; it does not mislead.

So do not change the names. Changing names will not help. In new forms desire will again and again be revived. Understand the very life-breath of desire, its root, so that it can no longer take new forms, no longer don new disguises. In whatever guise it comes, recognize it on the spot: “Desire has come. The old call of tomorrow has come; the invitation of the future has come. The trick of being pulled outward has begun. This will dislodge me from my place. Where the flame of my awareness burns unwavering, it will begin to flicker. Once it flickers, everything becomes dim, everything becomes dark.”

Non-desire will take you into meditation; meditation is liberation. That is why we have called meditation samadhi, because meditation is the final solution. But the path to meditation is non-desire.

There is a little relationship, a very deep relationship. And it often happens that you will find people who meditate but have no patience. And you will also find people who are patient but have no meditation. Neither will reach anywhere. Their boat is like one with only a single oar.

There was a Sufi fakir named Junaid. He asked his master, “Is meditation not enough? Then why this patience in between?”

Sufis do not escape life; they live in it. The master was a boatman. He ferried people from one shore to the other. The master is also a boatman. That’s why the Jains called their great masters Tirthankaras. Tirthankara means a ferryman—one through whom you cross to the other shore. Tirtha means a ford, a ghat; Tirthankara means one who carries you across—from this ghat to that.

Junaid’s master was such a boatman, a Tirthankara. In the outer world he ferried people across; in the inner world his work was the same. He said to Junaid, “I’m going to the other side to take some passengers. You come along too. Who knows—your question may be answered on the way!”

Junaid was a little surprised, because the answer could be given right there. What need to go onto the river and sit in a boat! The master usually rowed with two oars. But that day he put one oar inside and, as soon as the boat reached midstream, began to row with only one. The boat started circling round and round.

Row with a single oar and the boat will go in circles. Balance is lost. If you row only with the left oar, the boat will turn left and keep circling.

The passengers shouted, “Boatman, have you lost your mind? What are you doing? At this rate we’ll never reach!”

The master said to Junaid, “Tell me—can one reach with a single oar or not?” Junaid replied, “With one, it will be difficult.” The master said, “Then look closely at the two oars.” On one he had written “Meditation,” and on the other “Patience.”

Understand this a little.

If a person meditates without patience, meditation itself will not happen—because he will be in a hurry. He wants to get the fruit before doing the work. The human mind longs to receive without doing—to get the fruit without the labor.

So he will somehow “do” meditation, but his desire will cling to the result: “Let it happen quickly so I get the fruit! If there is such a thing as liberation, then every two or five moments he will open his eyes to check—has liberation come yet, or not?”

How can meditation happen? Meditation can happen only when there is no desire for results. If desire for results is there, the mind is fixed on the fruit; the steadiness of meditation never comes.

Meditation means becoming free of tension. Desire for results is tension. Meditation means to be totally immersed in the here and now. But the desire for results is the desire for tomorrow. Meditation means the act itself becomes the fruit, the means becomes the end, the path becomes the goal. As long as the mind is fixed on the fruit, this cannot be.

People come to me and say, “I can’t sleep at night. Will meditation fix it?”

I tell them, meditation is a great sword. Don’t try to use it for the work of a needle. If you try to sew with a sword, the cloth will only tear; sewing is impossible. Meditation is a great sword. And you bring such a petty issue: “I can’t sleep at night—will meditation make me sleep?”

Yes, those who meditate do sleep well—better, deeper. That is true. But if you meditate to get sleep, then meditation itself won’t happen. Sleep is a far-off matter. That small craving will keep dogging you.

People say, “My mind is restless; will meditation give me peace?” A gentleman told me, “I have no desire for God, no need for liberation.” He said it as if he were some great renunciate—renouncing the world, renouncing liberation and God too. “There’s just a bit of restlessness in the mind; I want a way out of that.”

If you sit to meditate to remove mental restlessness, you will keep looking back again and again: “Has it gone yet?” And the irony is that when you begin to meditate, restlessness will increase. Because what has been repressed will start surfacing; catharsis will begin.

The rubbish you have kept hidden within and never allowed to express—meditation will break open those doors too. It will clean the house. Dust piled up for years, for births, will rise again; there will be gusts and storms. For a while even the little peace you had will be lost.

Then you will panic: “I came for peace, and even what I had is gone.” Without patience, you could even become unhinged, because meditation brings such a great storm. The disease is not from a day or two; it’s from lifetimes. Meditation will break through all the layers to reach your innermost core.

In breaking those layers, your whole structure of repression will be uprooted. A tempest! Everything will shake. What seemed solid and settled will melt; what was built will collapse. If you run away in the midst of this, without patience, you could lose your balance.

Many people meditate but have no patience. They do it for two days, then stop for two years; then one or two days again, then forget.

People of seventy come to me and say, “We started many times; many times it dropped.”

Can meditation be “dropped” once the taste has come? Once the flavor arises, how can it be dropped? If it keeps dropping, it was not meditation—that much is certain. There was no patience. So for a little while your boat turned in circles; then you got tired, because it didn’t seem to go anywhere.

Sit without patience and the mind will whirl in circles. After a bit it will go round and round, and you will say, “What’s the point of this! Better to read the newspaper, or go to the shop. Handle a few customers, go through a few files. Even playing cards would seem more meaningful. What’s the use of sitting here spinning the boat in my head!”

No—without patience, the roots of meditation will not take hold. Meditation without patience is like sowing a seed and then digging it up to see if the sprout has emerged. Many times you sow it, and after a short while you dig it up to check. Will you even allow the sprout to come? Let the seed rest in the soil for a while.

A woman came to me. She said, “I don’t have much time. I’m a schoolteacher. I’ve taken seven days’ leave. Will I get a vision of God? Seven days of leave.”

I said to her, “You are doing great kindness to God—taking a full seven days’ leave! God will be forever obliged. Who takes seven days off for God? You have performed a marvel.”

She was a bit startled. “No,” she said, “two days are regular holidays; I’ve taken only five.”

Even so, such grace! But will such a person ever be available to God? Such a person cannot be available to anything. Her state of mind is dull. She doesn’t even know what she is saying.

If you meet God in seven lifetimes, that is quick. She has come with seven days’ leave. And even in that, two days were holidays anyway—she took only five more. And with the attitude that if God isn’t found, it will prove He doesn’t exist.

I told her, “Better save your leave; go back. It won’t happen so quickly, and for no reason you will feel, ‘I did such a favor to God, and there was no reply from that side.’ You will needlessly become an atheist. You are already an atheist—because a believer never thinks that God can be found in seven days. Sometimes God is found in seven moments, but a believer never thinks, ‘I’ll get Him in seven days.’”

Even if you find Him in seven births—it was early. What is our merit? What is our worthiness? Whenever He is found, it is grace. It is not won by our effort.

But the mind is in a hurry. We want meditation the way we want instant coffee—drop it quickly, stir, ready. Everything should happen fast. Press a button and the work is done.

If only life were like that! It is good that it is not.

Press a button—God appears; press a button—meditation happens, samadhi descends. Then Kabir and Krishna would be sold on the streets—not singly, but by the dozen. There would be no meaning, no worth in anything.

Many people begin meditation without patience; then it breaks again and again. Its continuity does not establish, because continuity needs patience. The chain does not form; the beads remain beads and the mala doesn’t get made. The thread that strings the beads—patience—is missing within. So there is a heap of beads, but no mala. And until meditation becomes a mala, nothing happens. The inner thread is not seen, but it is what holds everything together.

Among meditators you may not even notice patience; you may not see it, because the beads are visible. But the real thing that holds them is patience. Beads of meditation, thread of patience—then the mala is made.

Then there are many who are patient but have never meditated. Their “patience” is nothing but laziness. In truth they are saying, “We are perfectly patient—when it has to happen, it will happen.” The reality is they have no longing, no aspiration, no thirst. “Sitting like this, walking like that, it will happen. If it appeals, fine—we’ll take it; otherwise, no hurry.”

Look closely within them and you will see: there is no longing, no urge, no thirst. They are lazy, tamasic.

Understand it this way: the one who meditates without patience is rajasic. The one who holds “patience” without meditation is tamasic. And the one who balances meditation and patience is sattvic. Then you will understand Krishna’s sutra—what sattva means.

Patience like that found in lazy people—oh, they have great patience! If you want to learn patience, learn it from them. They are in no hurry to gain anything. The very idea of gaining is not there; there is no race. They just sit—heaps of clay. No life, no energy, no movement.

Then there are rajasic people. They run a lot; they have no capacity to stop. They cannot be still, cannot wait—only rush.

When the energy of the rajasic person and the patience of the lazy person meet, there is the confluence of meditation and patience. Then fragrance enters gold. Then sattva is born.

Meditation alone, without patience, will not take root; it will not form, the wires won’t connect. Patience alone, without meditation, is meaningless—only indolence.

Some sow seeds and keep pulling them up to check; they cannot wait. Some haven’t sown at all and are waiting comfortably. If no seed is sown, nothing will come from waiting. If seeds are sown but there is no waiting, they will rot; nothing will come.

Life is an art. One must have the capacity to bring opposites together. Meditation and patience are two opposites. Their union means: I want to attain now, and I am willing to wait forever. Understand this.

I want to attain in this very moment, and I am willing to wait forever. I will put in my total energy so that it may happen now—but I know, what can happen by my energy! It will happen by your grace. So even if it comes after infinite births, it is your grace. I will immerse myself totally, but what is my worthiness! How far can my hands reach! I will stretch my hands fully, leave no lack in my effort—but my hands are small. So I know you will not come right now, and yet I will strive as if you are coming now. I will prepare the house as if the Guest is arriving today. If births pass, there will be no complaint. Whenever you come, I will understand—you have come today; this was the right moment.

Where meditation and patience meet, the supreme music of life plays; the melody of sattva resounds.

Keep an eye on both. You will often find that when you meditate you lose patience, and when you hold patience you lose meditation. But with one oar the boat goes nowhere. Both oars must be rowed, and rowed together.

Because in truth you do not come close. Do not mistake nearness for real closeness. Do not take being near to mean being truly close. Physical proximity is very easy.

Many times you have brushed shoulders with Buddhas and passed by. But don’t imagine that means you came close to them. Many times on the endless roads of life you have met awakened ones. For a moment you walked with them, exchanged a few words—said a little of yours, heard a little of theirs. But don’t take that to mean togetherness happened. If true togetherness had happened, you would long since have dissolved into the Vast. Togetherness did not happen.

To be in togetherness is a wondrous event. That is why we value satsang so much. We have called satsang the doorway to truth. Truth is the greatest of happenings; its majesty has no end. And its doorway, too, we have called satsang.

What is the meaning of satsang? Heartfelt nearness.

The nearness of bodies has little value. Bodies can be close, while the life energies are millions of miles apart. You may be sitting here before me, take two steps and stand by my side, yet your heart may be millions of miles away. And the reverse is also true: you may be millions of miles away, and your heart may beat right next to mine.

Love is needed; love alone is nearness. You can come to me for a thousand reasons and still not arrive. Only one reason can truly bring you to me, and that is love.

You may come to me because my words seem right to you—then it is logic that has brought you. That is not coming close. No exchange of the heart has happened; it was a bargain of the intellect. My words suited you; reason nodded its assent. You said, “Yes, that sounds right.” Then you are close to the words, not to me. Tomorrow the words may not seem right and you will go far away; someone else’s words will seem right and you will go there. You are a connoisseur of ideas—you will go wherever they take you.

And even the words that pleased you pleased your own intellect. So don’t say, “Osho’s words were right.” Say instead: “Given the way my intellect is, Osho’s words seemed right within it.” Ultimately you are choosing your own intellect, not me. The decision belongs to your reason, kept by you—so how will you come to me?

Perhaps you are near me out of some other desire: to win a lawsuit, to be cured of an illness; a child is not being born in the house and you want one.

Just the other day a gentleman came for this very reason—no child was being born to him. I told him, “Go to a physician. What has coming to me to do with it? And why should I be responsible for whether a child is born to you or not? Spare me.”

But he said, “No, I have come with great hope, and I always remember you.”

You remember me? Even here it is the craving for a child—what has that to do with remembering me? If a child is not born by your coming here—which has no causal link—you will go somewhere else. There too you will say, “I always remember you.”

No, if you have come for any other reason—some craving, some desire to be fulfilled—then you have not come to me at all. Then there will be no glimpse of bliss. You never came; you were under the illusion that you had come because you traveled by train and reached Poona. To come to me requires a different, inner, subtler journey. It is a journey of the heart; you come without cause.

If someone asks you, “Tell me exactly, why are you with this man?” and you cannot say—if you say, “It is hard to say; it is causeless”—then you are near. In truth there are every reason to go far and no reason to be near. Yet there is an attraction; something throbs in the heart. This man may be right or wrong; logical or illogical; what he says may be correct or incorrect—none of that is the account. This man has appealed. What he does or doesn’t do is not the point either.

As someone falls in love—love is blind. If you can be that “blind” in coming to me! And I tell you, love is the only eye. People say love is blind because they have no eye of love. They have only the eye of doubt. They have no acquaintance with the eye of trust.

If you come with the eye of doubt, you will remain far; the distance will remain, the boundaries will not break.

If you come with the “blindness” of trust—or what I call the eye of trust, which is the same—the boundaries will dissolve. Then you will find your inner temple filling with an incomparable bliss; a new thrill enters your life, a new quiver you were unfamiliar with; a new melody plays. You join a new dance, a new celebration. You come inside me.

To come to me means you have entered within me. To come to me means you have allowed me to enter within you. You drop all concern for safety. You abandon all arrangements for security. You take down all the walls.

It is dangerous. That is why love has become difficult—because love means you will become unprotected. Love has gradually become difficult.

And when even love has become difficult, trust has become almost impossible. For trust is the clotted essence of love; the purest extract of that love. If love is milk, trust is the freshly churned butter. Out of many measures of milk only a little butter is obtained.

But milk—if not today, then tomorrow—turns sour. Therefore all love turns sour. Whoever does not bring his love to trust—his love will sour.

Now this is the amusing thing. If milk grows old, it rots; but if ghee grows old, it becomes valuable. The older the ghee, the more nourishing it becomes. In medicine they use very old ghee. If ghee of several years’ age is found, its coolness is unique; it draws the feverish heat out of the life-breath.

Milk will surely sour. Before the milk spoils, turn it into yogurt. If you have made yogurt, you have saved it from rotting. Before the yogurt spoils, churn and separate the butter. Then you have saved the eternal.

All love sours—you know this too. Love your wife, it sours; your children, it sours; your friends, it sours. All love sours. It is not love’s fault. Love is milk—only a possibility. You sit clinging to the milk itself; it will rot. Hurry! Churn the butter! Bring love up to trust. Then love, too, is preserved in trust. And trust never rots; the older trust becomes, the more unique it becomes, the more its medicinal virtue grows; it turns into nectar.

If you are with me in trust—if you have learned, lived, and created the butter of love here—then you will be filled with bliss. There can be no two opinions about it. It cannot be otherwise.

But if you are not filled with bliss, understand that you never truly came close. You remained far. You mistook bodily nearness for nearness—and that is not nearness. It is an illusion, an appearance of closeness.

There is only one nearness—that of the heart. There is only one intimacy—that of love. There is only one butter—that of trust.

If you want to avoid, your style of life will inevitably become one of negation. The very act of avoiding is negation. You want to run away. You don’t want to meet anything face to face.

If there is suffering, where will you run? And if suffering were caused by circumstances, then running away might help. But suffering is because of you. This is the analysis of all the wise.

Suffering is not due to circumstance. Circumstances can be changed. If there is suffering in Poona, run to Calcutta. For a couple of days you may feel there is no suffering because of the change of scene. But as soon as you settle down, you will find it has arisen again—because you arrive with yourself. Where will you leave yourself behind?

You carry with you the whole arrangement of your suffering. If here you used to quarrel with people and got angry—won’t it happen in Calcutta? It will. If you go to the Himalayas, what will happen? The same will happen there too. If here you were sad and miserable, then in the Himalayas you will sit sad and miserable.

Your being as you are is the cause of your suffering. Do not run. Do not be escapist. The earth is full of escapees; the whole history of humanity is full of them. Nothing changed through them. They only brought a style of negation into life. People learned from them: wherever you feel panic, trouble, difficulty—flee. But where will you go? What you created here you will create again in the new place—it will only take a little time.

When people carry a bier to the cremation ground, along the way they change shoulders: from one shoulder to another; there is relief for a moment. The tired shoulder rests a bit; the rested shoulder seems a little stronger. But after a while, the same condition returns.

Don’t change shoulders. There is no point. That is why I say: do not run away by abandoning the world. If you run once, it will become your style of life. You will keep fleeing and reach nowhere—because the disease is within you; the disease is you. The remedy must be applied there; the therapy must be done there; the resolution must be found there, not outside.

Why do you flee suffering? If suffering is there, you must have invited it; nothing comes uninvited in this existence. If suffering is there, you have cultivated it—unwittingly perhaps, in unconsciousness. Perhaps you desired happiness. Perhaps out of the desire for happiness you did certain things. But suffering has arrived. That makes it clear you had sent out invitations to suffering.

You sowed seeds. You were waiting for mangoes, but no mangoes appeared; bitter neem fruit appeared. Will you say mango seeds bore neem fruit? That never happens. The only possibility is that what you thought were mango seeds were actually neem seeds. The mistake was in sowing.

You strive for happiness, but what you get is misery. You are not understanding that you are sowing neem and hoping for mangoes. You do this day after day, and still you don’t wake up.

Do not run. If suffering is there, it is because of you. If suffering is there, you invited it, so it has come. If suffering is there, you waited for it for years; now it has arrived—where are you running now? Welcome this guest. Let it stay awhile; get acquainted with it. Become so acquainted with it that you will never again, by mistake, send it an invitation. Learn its name and address, its way of life, its position—so that you never again write to it. Otherwise, you will repeat the same mistake.

The one who runs keeps repeating the same mistake. Now stay awake and understand your suffering.

My vision of life emphasizes awakening, not fleeing; understanding, not escape. Escape is the way of the coward. Be even a little courageous, and you will face whatsoever comes.

Suffering is there—fine. Look at it. Why is it there? How did it come? How did you invite it? And how can you avoid inviting it in the future? Otherwise you will keep repeating the same mistake.

A strange trait of man is that he does not learn from experience. You enact the same episodes every day. Yesterday you were angry, the day before you were angry; you’ve been angry all your life; today too you were angry—and tomorrow you will be angry. Are you doing anything new? If you wrote down your daily life, you would find it is the same daily repetition. You are like the wheel of a cart, going round and round to the same place; nothing changes.

Now stop and understand. There is suffering. Certainly, there is much suffering—because up to now you have sown the seeds of suffering. Now you are harvesting the crop.

Do not put the responsibility on anyone else. Otherwise you will miss again. Take the whole responsibility upon yourself: what I did, I am suffering. This is the whole doctrine of karma. As a man sows, so shall he reap. The one who sows is the one who will harvest. The one who does is the one who will fill his own store. It is perfectly clear.

Understand. Suffering has come to your door; don’t waste this opportunity. It is a most auspicious moment for understanding. Recognize it rightly, so that you do not sow these seeds again.

And I am not telling you to swear an oath that you will never sow these seeds again—only the unwise swear oaths. Once you understand, what need is there to swear? If you’ve really understood anger to be suffering, will you go to a temple and swear, “I will never again be angry”? That would be foolish. If you have understood anger as suffering, the matter is finished. If there is understanding, you will not go down that road again.

A man once tries to get through a wall, breaks his head—does he go to the temple to swear, “I will never again try to pass through the wall. No matter how the wall tempts me, no matter how people advertise it, I will henceforth go only through the door”? No. Such a man naturally goes through the door. The matter is finished.

Look rightly at suffering—there is a wall there. If you thought there was a door, it was your illusion. There is only a place to bang your head, to know pain, to bleed. Look for the door. The door is close by, not far. There is no door in anger; the door is in compassion. There is no door in violence, none in hatred—for no one has ever attained happiness through them.

The door is in love, the door is in kindness. Those who passed through these have entered the temple of the divine.

So recognize suffering rightly. Then you will find that happiness begins to shower in your life of its own accord.

Understand it like this: suffering has to be earned; happiness showers. Suffering is your acquisition; happiness is your nature. Happiness needs no causes; suffering has causes.

If you go to a physician, he can look for the causes of your illness; he cannot look for the causes of your health. Health has no cause. Health is natural. When there is illness, there are causes. So the physician diagnoses illness.

Medicine does not even have a definition of health—only this much: when there is no illness. Is that any definition? Defining health by illness! If there is no disease, you are healthy.

This means that health is your nature, disease is alien. Illness comes from outside, so causes can be sought. Health blossoms from within you; it is without cause. That flower is causeless.

Peace is also causeless; restlessness has causes. Suffering has causes; happiness is without cause. If this becomes clear to you, then whenever there is suffering, search for the cause; and whenever there is happiness, simply enjoy it—there is no cause there to seek.

Enjoy happiness; understand suffering—and the divine is not far. Live happiness; recognize suffering—and liberation is not far. You are on the right path.

In recognizing happiness, supreme bliss will dawn. In recognizing suffering, the causes of suffering will dissolve. That moment we have called sat-chit-ananda. Then your style of life will be affirmative.

Right now your style of life is negative: run away; don’t do this; don’t do that; move away; avoid. Through this you have reached nowhere—and you cannot reach anywhere.