Jeevan Hi Hain Prabhu #7

First of all, meditation is not an escape and inwardness is not an escape. In fact, those who dodge the soul and run in every direction are the ones escaping. Trying to avoid knowing that which is closest to me—that is escape. We run to get away from ourselves. And the joke is that this crowd of escapees, when someone turns to know himself, tells him, “You are running away from life.” Where else can life begin except with oneself? The first step of life is self-knowledge. My life cannot begin with the other; it begins with me. When the Ganga arises, it arises from Gangotri; it cannot come from the source of some other river. It has to spring from Gangotri. My life will move from within me outward. It will flow from me and spread. And if I am deprived of knowing myself, I will be deprived of knowing life too.

Therefore, those who say that people moving toward self-knowledge are escapists are simply wrong.

In truth, we are the escapists who are running everywhere to avoid the soul. One searches for alcohol to forget himself. Another for music so he doesn’t have to remember himself. Someone seeks sex; someone cinema; someone watches a cricket match; someone else, hockey or football; someone looks for friends; someone for gambling; someone for business; someone for politics—so that they never come upon their own trace. In some way, we try to live while remaining forgetful of ourselves.

That is why being alone becomes so difficult. If a person is left alone, he starts reading the same newspaper again, which he has already read twice. If alone, he switches on the radio. If alone, he begins doing the very things he has done countless times all his life—things that have no point. A person fears being alone lest he come face-to-face with himself. We fear ourselves more than we fear anyone else. And we are more angry with ourselves, more full of self-loathing, than we are toward anyone else. If I am left alone for an hour, I say, “I was alone for an hour—so bored.” What does that mean? It means that being with myself for a single hour is boring—with myself! And if I get bored in an hour with myself, with whom will I be able to stay long without growing bored?

And the very amusing thing is: you get bored with yourself in solitude; I get bored with myself in solitude. We come together to try to dispel each other’s boredom. Both are bored—bored of themselves—trying to relieve each other’s boredom. Like two beggars meeting on the road and each holding out his begging bowl to the other, hoping to receive something. Both have come to beg. The wife living with the husband thinks, “I will find joy with him”; the husband thinks he will find joy with the wife; and both are miserable when left alone. If both are miserable alone, then together they can at most be doubly miserable—what else can happen? For I can only give what I have. I can only share what I am. Yet we are people fleeing from ourselves. But we are a crowd, and a crowd has the convenience that what it loudly proclaims begins to seem true. Since the whole crowd is running away, one who turns within seems to be escaping, running from life.

The truth is: if life is to be discovered, first you must go home—within. From there the journey into the joy of life can begin. And when I say life itself is the Divine, I do not mean that life is everything except me. My life begins with me. And as my life expands, little by little my “I” expands and spreads. These trees will be included in me; people too will be included in me; the moon and stars will also be included in me. The more this consciousness of mine expands, the greater the joy, the vaster the life that becomes available to me. But that which is to expand must first be known. Who am I?

Yet we say, “No, that would be running away from life.”

I have heard: a man got married. All his life he drank every day. For two years after the wedding he kept drinking daily. He drank every single day; the wife never noticed. When someone drinks only occasionally, it shows. But he drank daily. From the first day the wife smelled that odor on his breath; she figured it must just be his natural smell. It was there every day. One day he didn’t drink and came home. The wife sensed something terribly wrong—it didn’t match the daily pattern. She said, “What’s the matter—did you drink today? Your hands and feet are wobbling.” The man said, “Devi, I’ve been coming home drunk every day. Today I didn’t drink—that’s the mistake. Even I feel my hands and feet are all off.”

When he came home drunk every day, there was a certain order, a pattern, a habit—a way life looked. Skip a day, and things go haywire.

We too are people who have been running from life. And when someone among us turns back toward life, we say, “Where are you going—leaving life behind?” What we are calling life is not life. If it were, our eyes would be brimming with joy. If it were, we wouldn’t go to temples searching for God; we would have found him in life. If it were, we wouldn’t be asking the way to peace, the road to bliss; we would have already attained it. If it were, we wouldn’t be talking about God, for we would have met him in life. But we have found nothing—no beauty, no truth, no music, no savor, no joy—and yet we call this life.

If this is life, then what could death be? Is life merely the taking of breaths? Is life just getting up in the morning and lying down at night? Is life digesting food and excreting it every day? If that is all, fine. But no one is content with such a life. We expect other blossoms in life—blossoms that never seem to bloom. Yet we don’t grow suspicious. The reason we don’t suspect is that the people around us are just like us. There is no cause to doubt. As everyone lives, so do we. The way the crowd lives seems to define life. That’s why it has often happened that a person who moves toward life appears inverted to us, as though walking backward. A Socrates, a Krishna, a Buddha seems upside down to us. “Where are you going, leaving our life? We are living—why are you running away?” If we are “alive” and this is life, then I would say: let the runners run; they are right. They attain a vaster life than ours. Where is Buddha’s peace in our lives? Where is Krishna’s bliss, where is Lao Tzu’s nectar in our lives? It isn’t there.

There is a remarkable incident in Lao Tzu’s life. Lao Tzu was sitting on a riverbank, having cast a net, fishing. The emperor of China had sent men to find Lao Tzu and told them, “Wherever he is, bring him. We’ve heard he is a very wise man, that he has discovered the secret of life. We want to make him the prime minister so he can reveal the secret of life to the whole realm.”

At last they somehow found Lao Tzu on that riverbank. It was hard to find him in the first place because Lao Tzu never stayed in one place. Only the dead are stationary; the living keep flowing, flowing. Examine the dead and you’ll find them fixed in one spot. Lao Tzu had no fixed address. Wherever they went, people said, “Yes, Lao Tzu was here.” But Lao Tzu is like the wind—he came and went. “He must be in some other village.” With great difficulty they finally reached him by the river where he sat silently with his net in the water. They said, “Lao Tzu, what madness is this? Throw away that net. The emperor is eager to make you prime minister!”

Lao Tzu looked at them carefully and said, “Listen to something I’ve heard: in your emperor’s palace there is a golden turtle—a turtle covered with a layer of gold.” They said, “There is. It’s very ancient, passed down for thousands of years. It is worshiped. It sits on a throne surrounded by jewels worth lakhs.” Lao Tzu said, “That’s what I’m asking—such a turtle exists, right?” “Yes,” they said. Lao Tzu pointed to a turtle nearby, rolling in the sand, playing in the mud. “Now listen to me. If you told this turtle, ‘We’ll coat you in gold and seat you on a throne,’ would it prefer to go there or keep rolling in the mud?” They said, “It would be mad to prefer going there. No one sits on that throne without dying first. You must die before they plate you with gold.” Lao Tzu said, “Then I’m fine right here. I too will not sit on the throne. Forgive me; return. Tell your prime ministers and emperor: if they want to attain life, let them come to Lao Tzu. And when the day comes for Lao Tzu to die, he will come to them.” One of them said, “You sound like an escapist—an evader. Such a great opportunity is offered and you run away?” Lao Tzu said, “That is what you say. If I go, this turtle will laugh at me; these fish will laugh at me; these winds will laugh at me; these trees will laugh at me—‘The fool is trapped! Where is he going, leaving life?’”

Understand clearly where life is, and you will also understand what escape is. Where is life? Is it where we are living now?

No. We have made a deep mistake. We have taken the means of survival to be life. We have taken the arrangement of livelihood to be life. We earn bread; we build a house; we bring a wife; we set up a home; we bear children—and we think, “Life is complete.” This is only life’s arrangement. Life is not completed yet; now life should begin. This is merely the arrangement.

A man brings a bed, lays the bedding, hangs the mosquito net, fluffs the pillows, and then stands there and says, “Sleeping is finished.” He never lay down in the bed; he never slept in it. He did the arrangements perfectly and declares, “Sleeping is complete.” But arranging the bed is not sleep; it is only the preliminary step toward sleep.

What we call life is only the arrangement of livelihood. And we get lost in it. Almost always we remain lost in it until we die. We never get the chance to live. Nor will we, because the arrangements of life are on the outside; life itself is inside. Grasp this secret well: arrangements can be outside; life is within. The bed can be outside; the one who must sleep is within. The bread can be outside; the one who must eat is within. The wife can be outside; the one who must love and give and receive is within. All the arrangements of life are outside; life itself is within.

But we get lost in the outer arrangements and forget. If someone turns within, we say, “What madness is this? Where are you running, leaving life behind?” It happens. If enough people say the same, the poor fellow going inward also starts to wonder—after all, when thousands say it, they must be right.

You must have heard a little story, a small one.

A Brahmin was returning from a village with a goat he had bought. The story is famous, but you may have heard only half. Let me tell the whole. He was carrying the goat on his shoulder, heading home at dusk. A few rogues saw him. They said, “Ah, that goat looks delicious. It’s going with this naive Brahmin—what pleasure will it get with him, and what pleasure will he get? We should snatch it.” One rogue went up to the Brahmin and said, “Namaste, Panditji! Such a fine dog you’ve bought!” The Brahmin said, “Dog? It’s a goat, sir! Are your eyes weak?” The rogue said, “You call that a goat? Strange. We also know what a goat is. But as you wish; to each his own—if someone wants to call a dog a goat, let him.” He walked on. The Brahmin thought, “The people of this village are crazy—calling a goat a dog.” Still, a slight doubt arose; he felt it and touched the animal—but found it was a goat, plainly. “Nonsense,” he thought.

He had taken only ten steps. He had just soothed his doubt when a second rogue met him. “Namaste, Panditji! But what’s this? A Brahmin with a dog on his head! Will you break caste?” The Brahmin said, “Dog?” But he couldn’t muster the same confidence to say, “It’s a goat.” His courage faltered. “It looks like a dog to you?” he asked. “It doesn’t just look like a dog—it is a dog,” the man said. “Put it down. If someone from the neighborhood sees, you’ll be in trouble.”

When that man left, the Brahmin set the goat down and examined it closely. It was absolutely a goat. “It’s definitely a goat. But two people mistaking it—how can that be?” Still, he thought, “Maybe they’re just joking.” He put it back on his shoulder and walked on, but now he was walking nervously, keeping to the shadows. He started taking alleys instead of the main road. At the corner a third man met him. “Panditji, you’ve crossed all bounds! Where did you get such a dog? I’ve been looking for a dog too. Where did you find it? I want one like this!” Now the Brahmin couldn’t even ask, “What are you saying?” He said, “Yes, yes, I bought it.”

As that man left, the Brahmin didn’t even look again. He dropped it in a corner and ran. “Now it’s better to flee from this,” he thought. “There will be trouble. If the villagers see it, I’ll lose caste. The money is gone anyway; better the caste not go too.”

When three people repeat the same thing, it begins to feel very true. That is half the story. In his next birth the Brahmin was again walking with a goat. He was returning with a goat—but he remembered his previous life. The one who remembers—that is whom you should call a Brahmin; don’t call anyone else a Brahmin. He was returning with a goat; the same rogues—actually, we forget, so we don’t notice that the same ones keep meeting us again and again; across many births the same people recur. The same three rogues saw him. “The Brahmin is carrying a goat! Let’s grab it.” They had no idea they had already done this before. Who knows such things? If we knew we’d done it before, it would be hard to do it again. They plotted once more. One rogue met him on the road, “Namaste, Panditji! Such a fine dog—where are you taking it?” The Brahmin said, “Truly a fine dog.” He looked intently. The rogue thought, “We see a goat. We call it a dog to trick him.” But the Brahmin said, “Truly a fine dog—very hard to find. I paid a lot, begged and pleaded with a man to get it.” The rogue peered closely, thinking, “Have I made a mistake?” But he said, “No, Panditji, it is a dog, right?” “What are you saying?” said the Brahmin. “Of course it’s a dog.”

Now the rogue was in a fix; he couldn’t say it was a goat—he himself had called it a dog. At the next corner the second rogue met him. “Bravo, Maharaj—you carry a dog on your head?” The Brahmin said, “I love dogs. Don’t you like this one?” The man looked closely. “Dog?” he thought. At the third crossroads the third rogue arrived, but the other two had already warned him, “Seems we’re the ones mistaken. We see a goat.” The third inspected it. The Brahmin said, “What are you looking at so carefully?” “Nothing,” he replied, “I’m just looking at your dog. Quite a good one.”

We are living and moving with the crowd, and repetition has become our foundation. What is done all around gets accepted by us. And if an untruth is repeated often enough, it begins to appear true. This line has been repeated many times: a sannyasin is one who runs away from life.

The one who runs away is not even a good householder, let alone a sannyasin. To be a sannyasin is far more difficult. The one who is truly living life is a sannyasin. The one who only arranges for living—and does not live—is a householder. The one who only makes the arrangements and does not live is a householder; the one who lives life is a sannyasin.

If you must speak the language of escape, then the householder may be the one escaping from life; the sannyasin cannot be. But we are familiar with “sannyasins” who are escapees. In truth, we have mistaken escapees for sannyasins, hence the great confusion. Will the sannyasin run from life? Then who will live life? Who will live life? And if the sannyasin runs from life, who will know the Divine? For if the Divine is anywhere, it is hidden in life itself.

No, a sannyasin lives life in its fullness. Naturally, to live in fullness many things fall away from him. Do not think that he abandons them. If my hands are full of pebbles and I find a diamond mine and I drop the pebbles to gather diamonds, and you say, “What a madman—he renounced pebbles,” then who is mad—you or I? You cannot see the diamonds; you cannot see the mine. You only see that pebbles were in my hands and I let them go. “What a great renunciate!” you say.

No true sannyasin has ever renounced anything. Only the unknowing renounce—and that is another matter. The sannyasin attains a vaster joy; therefore the trivial must be let go so the hands are free. He doesn’t drop things; they drop of themselves—they become meaningless. If you find a diamond, will you still keep a stone in your hand? Or will the stone have to be dropped? You won’t even notice when the stone slipped from your hand and the diamond arrived. Yes, others whose hands still hold stones will think, “What a great renunciate!” They cannot see the diamond. And there are diamonds that cannot be seen. Religion concerns those unseen diamonds. There are enjoyments that cannot be seen.

A sannyasin is not one who has left enjoyment; a sannyasin is one who has attained the fullness of enjoyment—who is now savoring the Divine as well.

Understand this rightly—one who is savoring even God. When he eats, he isn’t just eating food; the taste of the Divine is infused in it. And if he looks at your beautiful face, he isn’t only seeing your face; he also sees the endless stream of beauty within you that is joined to the Divine.

Sannyas means: one who has discovered the secret of enjoyment, who has learned the art, the alchemy of attaining life’s juice.

But we have kept thinking the runner is the sannyasin. The runner is sick, not a sannyasin. The runner is deranged. He has dropped the pebbles he held—and he has found no diamonds. He is in great trouble. Thus, the people we call sannyasins in this country—in the whole world—are in great difficulty. They have left the house, the wife, the children—and they have not found the Divine. Like Trishanku, they remain hanging in between.

I meet many sannyasins every day. If they speak to me in public, they talk of soul and God. In private they say, “We are in great trouble. What we had, we left; what we hoped to find, we have not found. We are in hardship.” You do not know the difficulty of the sannyasin—how difficult it is for him. Why doesn’t the sannyasin run back from sannyas?

We have closed all the roads of return; otherwise ninety-nine out of a hundred sannyasins would go today and come back tomorrow. That is why we have shut the roads—so they won’t return. We honor the one who goes from householder to sannyasin; we dishonor the one who returns from sannyasin to householder. Dishonor becomes a barrier. We insult him; insult becomes a barrier. Once a person takes sannyas, we do not allow him the option to return. We say, “That’s it.” In sannyas there is an entrance, but absolutely no exit. There is a way in; there is no way out. We have not kept a way out because if we did, the hall would empty; everyone would come back. They would enter by this door and be seen leaving by that door the next day. For the one who leaves without having found will be in trouble.

Attainment comes first; leaving comes later. Leaving is the shadow of attaining. The one who attains the Divine can leave the world. Talk of leaving is useless. In truth, when one attains the Divine, all those petty things that he was clutching yesterday drop away by themselves.

But because this has not entered our understanding, we have made a renunciation of, a leaving of, a negative…

I am not talking about renunciation at all. I am not speaking in the negative. I am saying something entirely affirmative. I am simply saying that life itself is the divine, and the art of how we can live it totally—that is religion.
Secondly, he has asked that—

It is like someone saying: There is illness—how will we get rid of it by merely taking medicine? Show me some direct way to remove the illness. A man says, I have a cough, a cold, a fever; I have TB, cancer. The doctor hands him a bottle. The man says, Have you gone mad? Here I am dying of cancer and you hand me a bottle? What will this bottle do? He says, I am dying of cancer and you give me red-colored water to hold? What will this red-colored water do? But it does not occur to him that cancer or disease is not going to be pulled out and placed outside directly. To remove cancer or illness, to bring about a change, something opposite has to be introduced.
We are ill; by applying what is opposite to the illness, the illness will be cut off. It is necessary to understand this a little: there is evil because we are not at peace. If we become peaceful, evil will disappear. Evil is the disease; meditation is the medicine. Meditation is the remedy. And remember, on this earth no medicine greater than meditation has yet been discovered. Many medicines have been found, but none greater than meditation. There is a reason. The greatest reason is that it is from the absence of meditation that our illnesses, our evils, are born.
For example, you have anger. You ask someone, How can we remove anger directly? There is no direct method to remove anger. If there is anger, it is giving the news that inside you are unquiet. From inner restlessness, anger is born. You say, I want to remove anger; I have nothing to do with the restlessness. Then you will never be able to remove anger. You say, Give me a positive, direct path. There is none. The fact that you are in anger is the news that anger is only a symptom—that inside you are unquiet. You will have to bring peace within. When inner peace comes, anger on the surface will dissolve.
A man has a fever; the body is hot. The body’s heat is not the real fever. The fever will be within; the disease will be within. The heat is only the message that inside there is fever, there is illness; the body has become heated. The heated body is giving the message that inside there is disease. Now a man says, Tell me a direct method to cool the body. All right, go bathe in cold water; put ice on your body. By that the fever will not go—and the patient will go. Heat is only a symptom; temperature is only a symptom. It is not the disease. The disease is deeper. And the body’s arrangement is such that by heating it sends the message that within there is disease so that the news reaches the surface—otherwise how would you know? Anger is a symptom. And the disease? The disease is an inwardly restless mind. And that restless mind is calmed by the experiment of meditation.
That friend asks me...

I want to tell you that what you are calling diseases and evils are not evils in themselves; they are only outer symptoms, surface messages.

It is like a room filled with darkness and someone comes and says, “Show me a direct way to remove the darkness.” We say, “Light a lamp.” He replies, “I have nothing to do with a lamp. I want to remove the darkness. Give me a direct method, a straight method. I won’t get into the fuss of lighting lamps; I want to dispel darkness.”

He seems reasonable: “If the goal is to remove darkness, why light a lamp? Give me a sword that cuts darkness, a box to pack it in and throw it away. Give me a technique to deal with darkness directly. Don’t involve me in lamp-lighting; if I start fussing with lamps, who will remove darkness?”

There is no direct way to remove darkness. What can be done is to light a lamp. And when the lamp is lit, darkness doesn’t go anywhere—truly, it was never there as a thing. The lamp doesn’t push darkness out some side door. Darkness is not an entity; it is the absence of light.

What we call evil is simply the absence of good. What we call anger is the absence of peace. Meditation is the lighting of the lamp. When the lamp is lit within, these absences depart on their own. Show me one truly meditative person who has committed evil—then we can talk.

There was a wondrous fakir, Nagarjuna. He was passing through a town where the queen held him in great reverence. She fed him; he was a naked fakir. She placed in his hand a golden bowl studded with diamonds and said, “Leave your wooden bowl here; take this.” Its price would have been in the hundreds of thousands. Nagarjuna took it and walked on. The queen was surprised; she had thought, “He is a renunciate; he will refuse to touch gold.” We recognize renunciation through gold! Until someone says, “I won’t touch gold,” we don’t consider him a renunciate. When someone says, “It’s all dust; I won’t touch it,” we applaud. But he touches actual dust every day and refuses gold. If it is all dust, touch it without worry. No: he says, “Gold is dust; I won’t touch it,” and fondly handles real dust. Then one suspects that gold isn’t dust to him—he is saying “gold is dust,” but sees gold as gold.

The queen said to the fakir, “You didn’t refuse? You should have said, ‘A golden bowl!’” He said, “What golden bowl? Where is a golden bowl?” She said, “I spent hundreds of thousands on it.” He replied, “That is your foolishness. You know your business; what have I to do with it? I need a vessel to ask for bread. I will eat from it; that is all that matters. That it is a bowl is relevant to me; whether it is wood or gold is your accounting. My ‘business’ is simply that it holds bread and lentils so I may eat. Will it do that?” The woman said, “Yes, it will do that.” “Then why would I refuse? I am a fakir—what have I to do with gold? If it is gold, it is relevant to those for whom gold is relevant.”

The queen was astonished. The fakir moved on: a naked fakir, a golden bowl, diamonds flashing in the sun. A thief in the village saw him. He thought, “Strange! We slog and suffer, and neither diamonds nor gold come our way. This naked man—where did he get such a fine bowl?”

But life is like that. The more you chase things, the more they elude you. Turn your back on them, and soon they tiptoe after you, curious: “Where is he going?”

The thief thought, “How long can this fakir keep that bowl safe?” He followed him. The fakir stopped outside the village, in a cremation ground, in a ruined building. At noonday he heard footsteps behind and thought, “No one ever follows me; someone must be after the bowl. This world is strange: no one follows a person; if there is a golden bowl in his hand, many follow. The person has no value; it’s the bowl that matters. No price here for the soul; what clothes you wear and whether your pocket is hot with money—that is what counts.”

The fakir went inside. He thought, “Why make this poor fellow steal? I could have given it to him on the road. Now he’ll have to crouch and hide for who knows how long. It’s my time to nap.” He threw the bowl out through the window and lay down to sleep. The thief, hiding below the window, saw it fall and was stunned. “What a strange man! He threw away such a valuable bowl!” Standing up, he said, “Thank you! I came to steal, and you threw the bowl out.”

The fakir said, “Why should I make myself responsible for making you a thief? In truth, thieves exist because there are people with locks on their safes. Why should I get involved in useless complications? I threw it away so I could sleep peacefully and you could have it without becoming a thief.”

The thief said, “You are a strange man. May I come inside for a moment?” The fakir said, “That’s why I threw the bowl out. You would have come in anyway—only after I fell asleep. I threw the bowl so you could enter while I’m awake. Then perhaps, besides the golden bowl, I might give you something more.”

The thief came in, held the fakir’s feet and sat down. He said, “I have never seen a man like you. I feel jealous: when will the day come when I can throw a golden bowl out of the window like that?”

The fakir said, “Good. Then the work is done. That’s all I wanted. Now go; it’s settled.” “No,” said the thief, “don’t send me so quickly. Where did you find such peace that a golden bowl has no value? Such joy, such life that gold counts for nothing? Will you show me a way? But one thing first: I have gone to other saints too. Thieves often go to saints. Maybe only thieves go! They always tell me, ‘First stop stealing, then something can happen.’ But it doesn’t stop by itself; it cannot. So please, don’t tell me to stop stealing.”

The fakir laughed: “Then you have not met saints—you have met ex-thieves. Those who begin by demanding you quit stealing—there’s some hitch; they still have a subtle tie with theft. Is that what they say?” “Yes,” said the thief. “Everyone knows I’m a thief; they begin, ‘Stop stealing’; the matter ends right there. That condition never gets fulfilled.” The fakir said, “I won’t say such things. I have nothing to do with your stealing.” Hearing this, the thief said, “Then perhaps we can meet on common ground. Tell me what to do.” The fakir said, “Do one thing: steal with awareness.”

“What do you mean—steal?” “Yes,” said the fakir, “go ahead without worry—but with full awareness. When you steal, be utterly awake, with a quiet mind, filled with consciousness. Don’t do it in unconsciousness. Raise your hand fully aware; break the lock knowing you are breaking it; take the money knowing you are stealing. That’s all—nothing else.” The thief said, “I can do that. When shall I report back?” The fakir said, “I’ll be here fifteen days. Come when you feel you need to ask something more.”

The thief came the next day in tears. “You’ve put me in trouble. People are so strange. I went to steal yesterday. Never in my life had such an opportunity: I reached the king’s palace; the vault opened. I stood before it in great difficulty. If I put my hand in with awareness, the hand wouldn’t go in. As soon as the thought arose, ‘I am stealing,’ my hand stopped. I too don’t want to be a thief. If someone calls me ‘thief,’ I’d cut his neck! I don’t want to be a thief. When awareness slips, the hand goes in; as soon as awareness returns, the fist opens, the hand withdraws. Midnight passed; I returned without stealing. You’ve put me in a fix. Why not say straight out: don’t steal?”

The fakir said, “I have nothing to do with theft. Just do it with awareness. I know this much: no one has ever stolen with awareness, nor can they.”

Can you be angry with awareness? How will you be angry, mindfully?

A friend of mine is very hot-tempered. He asked me for a simple method. I wrote a strip of paper for him: “Now I am getting angry.” I told him, “Keep it in your pocket. Whenever anger arises, first take it out, read it, put it back—then be angry.” He said, “That I can do; no difficulty.” But it didn’t work. The very moment the thought arose to pull out the strip and read, something inside scattered and dissolved. Anger became impossible.

You cannot be angry with awareness. You cannot do evil with awareness. Sin cannot be committed consciously. And whatever can be done consciously is virtue; it cannot be sin.

That is why I emphasize: worry less about evil, and more about living with awareness—let your life become meditative. Then you’ll find life changing from all sides, because evil simply cannot be done attentively. What remains is only what can be done. In my view, this is the definition of sin and virtue. If someone asks me, “What is sin and what is virtue?” I say: whatever can be done in wakefulness, consciously, attentively—that is virtue. Whatever cannot be done attentively—that is sin. No other definition makes sense to me. No one can knowingly, attentively plunge a knife into another’s chest. It can be done only when awareness is lost. Only in awareness can we do the auspicious. The inauspicious is never possible.

(A man interrupts rudely)
Don’t bother about him. Why get worried over such a small thing? Don’t be childish. If someone behaves childishly, let him; he is not doing it attentively. But don’t you get disturbed. You can listen attentively. Don’t worry about him; don’t take on that concern. Your worrying helps him succeed; he feels, “Good—others are childish too; they’re pleased with me.”

Evil can be removed from this earth—root and branch. But it hasn’t been eradicated; in fact, it has been growing day by day. We have made a mistake: we tried to remove evil directly. Five thousand years of morality, sages, scriptures, and religion have been engaged in this direct attack: “Eliminate evil.” They say, “Do not lie. Do not sin. Do not steal.” The result? None. Theft has increased; sin has increased—daily. The sinner is not to blame; the diagnosis is wrong.

If you want someone not to steal, don’t tell him, “Don’t steal,” because that has no meaning. It is like telling a man with a fever, “Don’t bring fever.” He will say, “What are you talking about? I came for medicine, and you are preaching. I need a remedy; the fever has come.” You say, “You are a great sinner. Don’t bring fever. Fever is a bad thing.” He agrees that fever is bad. “Then why bring it? Don’t bring it!” He says, “I understand—but it comes. The remedy?” “The remedy is: don’t bring it.”

That is no remedy. To remove fever, medicine is needed; sermons are not enough. I am saying: to remove evil we have used sermons—“Don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t do that.” Not doing doesn’t help. What you force yourself not to do only gathers energy within and erupts one day with a bang. That is why when “good” people turn bad, they become very bad. A bad person is only mildly bad. A man who vents his anger two or three times a day will never kill anyone; he cannot accumulate that much anger. But beware of the one who hasn’t expressed anger for two or three years: if he explodes, it will not be less than murder; nothing less will suffice, he has stored up too much.

Those who commit great sins are the ones who, in the zeal to avoid small sins, stockpile the tendencies. So when a “good” man falls, he falls terribly, into deep ravines. When a “good” society collapses, it falls into great chasms. Our society was once very “good.” Today, there is none worse on the earth. What happened? It swore off small evils and amassed so many within that now boils and sores are bursting everywhere. The whole national personality is rotting.

We have taken the wrong approach to eliminating evil. If you want to dissolve evil—the inauspicious, the sinful—first understand why it arises. It arises because the mind is restless. A restless mind can commit any number of sins; counting them is impossible. A restless mind cannot do virtue, because virtue requires a background of peace. For the flower of virtue to bloom, the soil must be peace. In the soil of restlessness, only the flower of sin blooms. We have prepared the wrong soil. I am urging a change of soil.

People misunderstand. They think that by “meditation” I mean what has always been meant: sitting and remembering some god, focusing on an image, chanting a mantra, turning beads. No. I have nothing to do with those practices. By meditation I do not mean sitting and recalling a god. If you don’t know God, how will you remember him? Which image? What form? What name would you take? Which name is his?

No, nothing comes of that. I mean something else by meditation; let me say it plainly so it stays with you—perhaps many friends didn’t come to the morning meditation; let them know too.

By meditation I mean: total surrender. Becoming one with the vast life that surrounds us; coming into rhythm with it; to be immersed, to be lost, to be absorbed in it. When one enters this state, such peace arises within that it defies measure. Why? Because as long as we keep ourselves separate from the whole, at depth we stand as its enemy. An enemy is never at peace. As long as I am separate from the whole world, the whole world is my enemy. As long as I am other than the world, I must protect myself from it; I must conquer it; I must not be erased. Then I fight; fighting breeds unrest and tension. But if I recognize myself as one with the whole—even for ten moments—if all opposition drops and I become one, how can unrest remain? The mind becomes quiet.

In the stillness of that mind, the door opens to That which we may call God, or Life. A first glimpse appears. And with that glimpse, you become a different person—instantly. You don’t have to become; you are other.

Let me remind you with a small story, then I will finish.

An emperor’s son ran away from home—or rather, no child runs unless a father drives him out. The father was quarrelsome; often fathers are. Children come innocent; unless they are troubled and cast in molds, how can they become troublesome? Harassed by his father’s harshness, the boy fled. For five years the father did not care, angry as he was. But he had only one son. As the father grew old, he began to miss him. He told his ministers: “Find him and bring him back. I am ill; who will hold the reins of the kingdom?”

The boy, poor thing, was a prince: not properly educated; never worked a day. If a prince ceases to be a prince, what can he be but a beggar? He began to beg. In five years he forgot he was a prince. How can you remember when you must beg? For a while he might have remembered; then it faded.

The ministers searched and came to a village where, in the blazing noon, he stood before a grimy little inn where gamblers played, begging alms. He showed his feet—blistered; his clothes were torn—the same clothes he had left in five years earlier, now unrecognizable, never washed, caked with dirt and mud. Wearing those rags, hands folded, he begged—for shoes. His shoes were gone; the sun was fierce, the roads burned; his feet were blistered; he had wrapped cloth around them and pleaded, “Have pity; give a few coins so I can buy shoes.”

No one paid him any attention. Just then a royal chariot stopped at the door. A minister stepped down, looked closely—it seemed to be him. He ran over, saw his face—yes, it was. He fell at his feet, “The emperor calls you back. Your father is ill; who will govern the realm?”

In the boy’s hand was a dented aluminum bowl with a few coins. In a single instant, everything changed. He flung the bowl down hard on the road. The gamblers jumped up, startled; seeing the chariot, the game stopped; the inn’s people rushed out. He said to the minister, “Go, first bring fine clothes, bring shoes, arrange a bath, arrange a meal.”

His eyes changed; his face changed. The clothes were the same, the road the same, the bowl lay on the ground—but he had become the emperor. The innkeepers said, “Your face has completely changed.” He said, “Mind your words; think before you speak—who are you speaking to? I am the emperor.” The minister trembled; people ran; clothes arrived; arrangements were made; perfume was sprinkled; he bathed. He climbed into the chariot. The inn folk were eager: “Remember us a little.” But everything had changed. A moment before they ignored him; now he did not even glance at them. He was elsewhere. What happened in that instant? A ray dawned; a remembrance; a chariot at the door that said, “You are the emperor.”

In the depths of meditation, that ray comes; that chariot arrives and says, “You are the emperor; you are the Divine; all is the Divine; all life is the Divine.” The day that ray comes, everything changes. Life becomes other. On that day, being a thief becomes impossible—are emperors ever thieves? Anger becomes impossible. Misery becomes impossible. A new world begins. The search for that world, that life, is religion.

In these four talks I have said a few things about what we can do to find this life, this Divine. My words will not bring that ray; my words will not bring that chariot; my words will not take you there. But yes—my words can make you thirsty; they can leave a wound in your heart; they can jolt your sleep a little. Perhaps you will be startled awake and set out on the journey that is meditation.

Be assured: whoever has embarked on the path of meditation has arrived at religion’s temple. Meditation is the path; realized religion is the temple. And the Lord who dwells in that temple is not an idol; the Lord is life itself.

On “Life itself is God,” you have listened to my words over these four days with such peace and love—I am deeply obliged. And in the end I bow to the Divine seated in each of you. Please accept my salutations.