Kahe Vajid Pukar #6
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Read in Original Hindi (मूल हिन्दी)
Questions in this Discourse
First question:
Osho, in a letter to Sohanbai you once wrote—“Make your life musical so that poetry can be born. And then there is beauty and only beauty, and beauty is the very form of the Divine.” Would you speak on music, poetry, and beauty? Ultimately, for everything to become divine, are these three the practices?
Osho, in a letter to Sohanbai you once wrote—“Make your life musical so that poetry can be born. And then there is beauty and only beauty, and beauty is the very form of the Divine.” Would you speak on music, poetry, and beauty? Ultimately, for everything to become divine, are these three the practices?
Taru! The practice is one; the other two come of their own accord. The other two are outcomes. You sow only one seed; from that, many leaves and many branches appear—fruits and flowers too. The seed is one. There is a single practice: ik sādhē sab sadhē; sab sadhē sab jāe—master the one and all is mastered; try to master everything and everything is lost. If you try to practice all three, you will get entangled, because they are not separate. They are interrelated, beads on the same thread.
Music is the practice. From the practice of music, poetry arises by itself. Poetry is the expression of music; poetry is music’s body. And the very moment music is born, the sense of beauty awakens. What sensitivity in music experiences of existence—that experience is what we call beauty. Poetry is the body of music; beauty is music’s soul. Cultivate the one—music—and the other two, body and soul, begin to reveal themselves on their own.
But understand what I mean by music. I do not mean gross, outer music. Many people master outer music, yet there is no poetry there, no beauty, no glimpse of the Divine. They may be skilled in playing the vina, but the inner vina has not sounded. They may pluck the strings and draw forth notes, but the strings of their life-breath have not been touched. They may have become skillful in producing sound, but that skill remains external.
By music I mean inner music—the music that plays on the heart’s vina; that resounds in the cave of your breath; that awakens in your inmost core. The sages have called this the anāhata nāda—the unstruck sound. When you pluck a vina, a sound is produced; that is not anāhata, that is āhata—struck—because you must strike, you must make an impact. From the twang arises sound; hence it is struck. Your finger collides with the string; between these two in conflict a sound occurs: that is āhata nāda. It is born and it dies. It is an event within time: now it is, now it is gone. It has a beginning and an end.
But in samadhi the sages heard a sound with neither beginning nor end. In samadhi they heard what the Zen masters call the sound of one hand clapping. Outwardly, a clap needs two hands. Without two, there is no clap. But inwardly a strange phenomenon occurs: there are not two, yet sound is. In this land we have called it Omkār; its symbol is Om. Om is an important symbol; the word Om has no “meaning”—it is a symbol only. It points to that inner resonance which is already resounding, which you do not have to make. Go within and listen. Pause a little. Become a little still. Let the clamor in your head subside. And suddenly, with wonder, one discovers that this tone has been echoing forever; only I was so busy outside that I could not hear the within.
This tone is delicate, subtle. This tone is your very soul. This music is your very being, resounding. It is unstruck. There is no vina there, no vina-player. There is no knower and nothing to be known; no seer and nothing seen. All duality dissolves there. Only the One remains. Yet how to call it “one”? Where there is no two, “one” does not mean much. So the wise did not call it “one”; they called it advaita—not two. They spoke in negation lest affirmation trap you in the net of language. Say “one,” and your mind will at once ask, “If there is one, why not two? three?” One belongs to number; where there is no two, “one” becomes meaningless. Hence they said only this: not two.
This is what I am calling music. The moment you hear this music, your life becomes poetic. By poetry I do not mean that you start writing poems. Rising or sitting becomes poetry. When a Buddha rises, it is poetry; when he sits, it is poetry. In his rising and sitting there is a grace, a delicacy, a rare presence—otherworldly, divine—something not of this earth. As if nectar had descended into clay. Buddha’s rising and sitting have a meter, a cadence.
You may have noticed: when there is inner rhythm, there is outer rhythm as well. When there is inner tension and worry, then outwardly there is awkwardness. A worried person walks without rhythm or tune; there is dissonance. His gait is uneven, without savor—like a rough, rutted road; like a clumsy novice plucking a vina. There is no harmony among the notes. And if you are perceptive, by watching someone walk you can tell whether he is inwardly serene or disturbed.
It is said of Sigmund Freud that after analyzing thousands of minds he reached a state where, as a patient entered the door, he could tell what the trouble was. For your inner anxiety is written on your body; it glints from your eyes; it stamps your face. Your body speaks. It is not silent; it is articulate. When there is peace within, there is peace upon the face. When there is peace within, there is a depth in the eyes. When joy fills you within, there is an enthusiasm, an upsurge in your walk—as if flowers have bloomed; as if a lamp has been lit; as if all around your life is festival. When there is festival within, you see festival without. When you are playing Holi within, all existence fills with color. Existence is already suffused with color, but since there is no inner celebration, the outer colors remain unseen.
Outwardly you can see only what you are inwardly. When a Buddha sees, it is poetry; when he sits, it is poetry; when he rises, it is poetry; when he sleeps, it is poetry.
Ananda lived with Buddha for forty years, sleeping in the same room. One day he said to Buddha: “You amaze me! Even asleep you seem aware. In your sleep, the cadence of your twenty-four hours never breaks. Even in sleep you seem composed, as if a watchfulness were present within. I have never seen you thrash about in your sleep.”
How could it be otherwise? When the mind has no more anxieties, why would one thrash even in sleep? You thrash in sleep because all day you have been thrashing—hustle and bustle echoing into the night. Your sleep is your sleep after all: if you are restless, your sleep will be restless; if you are agitated, your sleep will be agitated; if you are troubled, a shadow of trouble will fall upon your sleep. You will see distressing dreams—someone is hurling you from a mountain, a stone weighs on your chest. Perhaps it is only your own hand on your chest, but it feels like a rock—because a rock indeed lies there: you placed it yourself. Ghosts are jumping on your chest!
These painful dreams are not accidental; they are your day’s earnings, your capital, your very life. The echo of the day resounds through the night.
Ananda asked Buddha: “What is the secret of this?” Buddha said: “Since the mind became quiet, dreams no longer come.”
To one established in samadhi, dreams do not come. Dreams belong to a mind burdened with thoughts. You know this too: when your mind is crammed with thoughts, your sleep is crammed with dreams; when thoughts are excessive, sleep vanishes—you toss and turn.
When rasa flows in your life—say you have fallen in love—your dreams instantly change; a sweetness comes, a melody, as if a flute is being played. You know this. When life goes well, dreams go well; when life is in disarray, your night is in disarray. From this you can infer the Buddha’s sleep. His sleep has no disturbance from you; it has a depth—the very depth of samadhi. Between deep sleep and samadhi there is hardly any difference.
So Buddha’s sleep is wakeful; your waking is full of sleep. You are awake only in name; Buddha sleeps only in name. This is what I call musicality. And when musicality begins within, poetry pervades your person. You may even sing—many saints have sung; not without reason. Meera danced—Pad ghunghru bāndh Meera nāchī re! Chaitanya, intoxicated, danced beating the mridang. It is not accidental. And even if one does not dance—Mahavira did not—sit near him and you will find every particle of the air around him dancing. Buddha did not dance, but there was dance there—if not there, then nowhere.
This I call poetry—expression. The forms of expression will differ: someone will write songs, someone will take up an ektara, someone will sculpt, someone will paint. A weaver like Kabir will weave cloth—but now it is not cloth he weaves, it is poetry. Even in his weaving there is poetry.
Hence he sings: Jhīnī-jhīnī bīnī re chadariyā, Rām-ras bhīnī—the sheet is finely, finely woven, soaked in the nectar of Ram. When Kabir wove his cloth he became as ecstatic as Meera in her dance—the very same ecstasy, no difference. For Ram will come to buy this cloth; it is being woven for Ram. For Kabir, none but Ram exists—Ram and only Ram. And when he sold his cloth in Kashi, whoever the customer, he would say, “Ram, take it—woven for you.” He used the very word “Ram.” “Woven with great care; it will serve you a lifetime.”
Gora the potter kept making pots as before, yet a vast difference arose—earth and sky apart. He still kneads the clay, still shapes pots on the wheel, but now there is a cadence in his hands, a magic; these pots have become enchanted; the sky has descended into them. They are no longer ordinary. As if the touchstone had touched iron and it became gold; so when Gora touched clay, it turned to gold.
When I say poetry, I do not mean you must compose verses. Your life will become poetry; your conduct will become poetry. And whatever obstructs poetry will fall away from your behavior. Anger will drop—for anger cannot become poetry. Compassion will deepen—for compassion alone becomes poetry. Lust will gradually fade—however you try, lust cannot become poetry. In place of lust, love will be born—love can become poetry. And out of love, the heights of devotion will rise; devotion is the epic.
Understand it so: lust is prose; love is verse. Lust is arithmetic—for lust is mutual exploitation, using the other as a means, as an instrument. Hence lust is bought and sold in the marketplace; you can buy it from a prostitute. And in “advanced” countries there are not only prostitutes but male prostitutes too—why should women lag behind? If men have their prostitutes, women have theirs.
Lust can be bought and sold; love cannot be bought or sold. Lust belongs to mathematics, to shops. Love has no shop; love has only a temple. And devotion—devotion is purely of the sky; it has not even a temple. In it no trace of clay remains.
Devotion is like the fragrance of flowers. Lust is like the seed. Love is the blossom. Devotion is the fragrance—unseen, untouchable—already taking wing!
Poetry is born within you from the experience of music. Your entire conduct becomes poetic. I call poetic conduct moral conduct—that is my definition. If you ask me, “What is morality?” I will say: poetic conduct—conduct imbued with poetry. My definition of ethics is aesthetic. Beauty is the touchstone. I do not call “moral” what you have imposed upon yourself with effort. I call “moral” that which begins to descend into your life from listening to your inner music. It has come; it has not been forced. It is not imposed; it is spontaneous, a spontaneous flowering.
Outwardly, poetry appears; inwardly, a seeing awakens—which I call the sense of beauty. The sense of beauty is the sense of God. The day the whole world begins to appear suffused with beauty to you, in that very moment know that you have met the Divine. God has no form, no color, no shape, no name. God is the dense realization of beauty.
So, Taru, in Sohan’s letter I wrote: “Make your life musical so that poetry may be born.” You cannot bring poetry; it is born—of itself. Do only this much: make life musical. And then there is beauty and only beauty; you cannot impose that either. And beauty is the very form of the Divine. Do not practice three; practice one. Only one! Ek Omkār Satnām. Listen to that one tone, that one sound. Drop all thought.
As Wajid said yesterday:
Kahe Wājid pukār: sīkh ek sunn re.
Wajid cries out: learn the one void.
Learn the void—let the mind become thought-free. Let the crowd within fall silent; let the clamor cease. The moment the clamor stops, suddenly that which has been sounding within forever—the life of your life, the breath of your breath—begins to be heard. That music has two expressions: its soul is the sense of beauty; its body is the expression of poetry. Then your life becomes a cadence. Master the one, and the other two follow of themselves.
Music is the practice. From the practice of music, poetry arises by itself. Poetry is the expression of music; poetry is music’s body. And the very moment music is born, the sense of beauty awakens. What sensitivity in music experiences of existence—that experience is what we call beauty. Poetry is the body of music; beauty is music’s soul. Cultivate the one—music—and the other two, body and soul, begin to reveal themselves on their own.
But understand what I mean by music. I do not mean gross, outer music. Many people master outer music, yet there is no poetry there, no beauty, no glimpse of the Divine. They may be skilled in playing the vina, but the inner vina has not sounded. They may pluck the strings and draw forth notes, but the strings of their life-breath have not been touched. They may have become skillful in producing sound, but that skill remains external.
By music I mean inner music—the music that plays on the heart’s vina; that resounds in the cave of your breath; that awakens in your inmost core. The sages have called this the anāhata nāda—the unstruck sound. When you pluck a vina, a sound is produced; that is not anāhata, that is āhata—struck—because you must strike, you must make an impact. From the twang arises sound; hence it is struck. Your finger collides with the string; between these two in conflict a sound occurs: that is āhata nāda. It is born and it dies. It is an event within time: now it is, now it is gone. It has a beginning and an end.
But in samadhi the sages heard a sound with neither beginning nor end. In samadhi they heard what the Zen masters call the sound of one hand clapping. Outwardly, a clap needs two hands. Without two, there is no clap. But inwardly a strange phenomenon occurs: there are not two, yet sound is. In this land we have called it Omkār; its symbol is Om. Om is an important symbol; the word Om has no “meaning”—it is a symbol only. It points to that inner resonance which is already resounding, which you do not have to make. Go within and listen. Pause a little. Become a little still. Let the clamor in your head subside. And suddenly, with wonder, one discovers that this tone has been echoing forever; only I was so busy outside that I could not hear the within.
This tone is delicate, subtle. This tone is your very soul. This music is your very being, resounding. It is unstruck. There is no vina there, no vina-player. There is no knower and nothing to be known; no seer and nothing seen. All duality dissolves there. Only the One remains. Yet how to call it “one”? Where there is no two, “one” does not mean much. So the wise did not call it “one”; they called it advaita—not two. They spoke in negation lest affirmation trap you in the net of language. Say “one,” and your mind will at once ask, “If there is one, why not two? three?” One belongs to number; where there is no two, “one” becomes meaningless. Hence they said only this: not two.
This is what I am calling music. The moment you hear this music, your life becomes poetic. By poetry I do not mean that you start writing poems. Rising or sitting becomes poetry. When a Buddha rises, it is poetry; when he sits, it is poetry. In his rising and sitting there is a grace, a delicacy, a rare presence—otherworldly, divine—something not of this earth. As if nectar had descended into clay. Buddha’s rising and sitting have a meter, a cadence.
You may have noticed: when there is inner rhythm, there is outer rhythm as well. When there is inner tension and worry, then outwardly there is awkwardness. A worried person walks without rhythm or tune; there is dissonance. His gait is uneven, without savor—like a rough, rutted road; like a clumsy novice plucking a vina. There is no harmony among the notes. And if you are perceptive, by watching someone walk you can tell whether he is inwardly serene or disturbed.
It is said of Sigmund Freud that after analyzing thousands of minds he reached a state where, as a patient entered the door, he could tell what the trouble was. For your inner anxiety is written on your body; it glints from your eyes; it stamps your face. Your body speaks. It is not silent; it is articulate. When there is peace within, there is peace upon the face. When there is peace within, there is a depth in the eyes. When joy fills you within, there is an enthusiasm, an upsurge in your walk—as if flowers have bloomed; as if a lamp has been lit; as if all around your life is festival. When there is festival within, you see festival without. When you are playing Holi within, all existence fills with color. Existence is already suffused with color, but since there is no inner celebration, the outer colors remain unseen.
Outwardly you can see only what you are inwardly. When a Buddha sees, it is poetry; when he sits, it is poetry; when he rises, it is poetry; when he sleeps, it is poetry.
Ananda lived with Buddha for forty years, sleeping in the same room. One day he said to Buddha: “You amaze me! Even asleep you seem aware. In your sleep, the cadence of your twenty-four hours never breaks. Even in sleep you seem composed, as if a watchfulness were present within. I have never seen you thrash about in your sleep.”
How could it be otherwise? When the mind has no more anxieties, why would one thrash even in sleep? You thrash in sleep because all day you have been thrashing—hustle and bustle echoing into the night. Your sleep is your sleep after all: if you are restless, your sleep will be restless; if you are agitated, your sleep will be agitated; if you are troubled, a shadow of trouble will fall upon your sleep. You will see distressing dreams—someone is hurling you from a mountain, a stone weighs on your chest. Perhaps it is only your own hand on your chest, but it feels like a rock—because a rock indeed lies there: you placed it yourself. Ghosts are jumping on your chest!
These painful dreams are not accidental; they are your day’s earnings, your capital, your very life. The echo of the day resounds through the night.
Ananda asked Buddha: “What is the secret of this?” Buddha said: “Since the mind became quiet, dreams no longer come.”
To one established in samadhi, dreams do not come. Dreams belong to a mind burdened with thoughts. You know this too: when your mind is crammed with thoughts, your sleep is crammed with dreams; when thoughts are excessive, sleep vanishes—you toss and turn.
When rasa flows in your life—say you have fallen in love—your dreams instantly change; a sweetness comes, a melody, as if a flute is being played. You know this. When life goes well, dreams go well; when life is in disarray, your night is in disarray. From this you can infer the Buddha’s sleep. His sleep has no disturbance from you; it has a depth—the very depth of samadhi. Between deep sleep and samadhi there is hardly any difference.
So Buddha’s sleep is wakeful; your waking is full of sleep. You are awake only in name; Buddha sleeps only in name. This is what I call musicality. And when musicality begins within, poetry pervades your person. You may even sing—many saints have sung; not without reason. Meera danced—Pad ghunghru bāndh Meera nāchī re! Chaitanya, intoxicated, danced beating the mridang. It is not accidental. And even if one does not dance—Mahavira did not—sit near him and you will find every particle of the air around him dancing. Buddha did not dance, but there was dance there—if not there, then nowhere.
This I call poetry—expression. The forms of expression will differ: someone will write songs, someone will take up an ektara, someone will sculpt, someone will paint. A weaver like Kabir will weave cloth—but now it is not cloth he weaves, it is poetry. Even in his weaving there is poetry.
Hence he sings: Jhīnī-jhīnī bīnī re chadariyā, Rām-ras bhīnī—the sheet is finely, finely woven, soaked in the nectar of Ram. When Kabir wove his cloth he became as ecstatic as Meera in her dance—the very same ecstasy, no difference. For Ram will come to buy this cloth; it is being woven for Ram. For Kabir, none but Ram exists—Ram and only Ram. And when he sold his cloth in Kashi, whoever the customer, he would say, “Ram, take it—woven for you.” He used the very word “Ram.” “Woven with great care; it will serve you a lifetime.”
Gora the potter kept making pots as before, yet a vast difference arose—earth and sky apart. He still kneads the clay, still shapes pots on the wheel, but now there is a cadence in his hands, a magic; these pots have become enchanted; the sky has descended into them. They are no longer ordinary. As if the touchstone had touched iron and it became gold; so when Gora touched clay, it turned to gold.
When I say poetry, I do not mean you must compose verses. Your life will become poetry; your conduct will become poetry. And whatever obstructs poetry will fall away from your behavior. Anger will drop—for anger cannot become poetry. Compassion will deepen—for compassion alone becomes poetry. Lust will gradually fade—however you try, lust cannot become poetry. In place of lust, love will be born—love can become poetry. And out of love, the heights of devotion will rise; devotion is the epic.
Understand it so: lust is prose; love is verse. Lust is arithmetic—for lust is mutual exploitation, using the other as a means, as an instrument. Hence lust is bought and sold in the marketplace; you can buy it from a prostitute. And in “advanced” countries there are not only prostitutes but male prostitutes too—why should women lag behind? If men have their prostitutes, women have theirs.
Lust can be bought and sold; love cannot be bought or sold. Lust belongs to mathematics, to shops. Love has no shop; love has only a temple. And devotion—devotion is purely of the sky; it has not even a temple. In it no trace of clay remains.
Devotion is like the fragrance of flowers. Lust is like the seed. Love is the blossom. Devotion is the fragrance—unseen, untouchable—already taking wing!
Poetry is born within you from the experience of music. Your entire conduct becomes poetic. I call poetic conduct moral conduct—that is my definition. If you ask me, “What is morality?” I will say: poetic conduct—conduct imbued with poetry. My definition of ethics is aesthetic. Beauty is the touchstone. I do not call “moral” what you have imposed upon yourself with effort. I call “moral” that which begins to descend into your life from listening to your inner music. It has come; it has not been forced. It is not imposed; it is spontaneous, a spontaneous flowering.
Outwardly, poetry appears; inwardly, a seeing awakens—which I call the sense of beauty. The sense of beauty is the sense of God. The day the whole world begins to appear suffused with beauty to you, in that very moment know that you have met the Divine. God has no form, no color, no shape, no name. God is the dense realization of beauty.
So, Taru, in Sohan’s letter I wrote: “Make your life musical so that poetry may be born.” You cannot bring poetry; it is born—of itself. Do only this much: make life musical. And then there is beauty and only beauty; you cannot impose that either. And beauty is the very form of the Divine. Do not practice three; practice one. Only one! Ek Omkār Satnām. Listen to that one tone, that one sound. Drop all thought.
As Wajid said yesterday:
Kahe Wājid pukār: sīkh ek sunn re.
Wajid cries out: learn the one void.
Learn the void—let the mind become thought-free. Let the crowd within fall silent; let the clamor cease. The moment the clamor stops, suddenly that which has been sounding within forever—the life of your life, the breath of your breath—begins to be heard. That music has two expressions: its soul is the sense of beauty; its body is the expression of poetry. Then your life becomes a cadence. Master the one, and the other two follow of themselves.
Second question:
Osho, I feel that although I am of course very far from you, I am yet so close to you—perhaps hardly anyone is this close. I have neither taken sannyas from you nor received the blessing of your lotus-hands. Even so, what is the reason for such a feeling?
Osho, I feel that although I am of course very far from you, I am yet so close to you—perhaps hardly anyone is this close. I have neither taken sannyas from you nor received the blessing of your lotus-hands. Even so, what is the reason for such a feeling?
Salahuddin! The preparation for sannyas is underway. You are a little afraid. Don’t mistake the mind for yourself on this account. This is only the beginning. It’s just a drizzle; soon the flood is on its way. This is the first blossom of spring, merely the news that spring has arrived; now millions upon millions of flowers are yet to bloom. Don’t stop here, Salahuddin! From your question I feel you are thinking, “It’s done.” It has only started, and it is only the beginning—the A, B, C. Hold this thread. A long journey still lies ahead. What has happened is auspicious, is beautiful.
To be near me does not require physical nearness, because nearness is a bond of love, not of the body. Nearness means simply that your heart is now beating with my heart. You may live a thousand miles away; if your heart is attuned with mine, you are near. And your body may sit right beside me, our hands may be clasped, and yet if our hearts do not beat together, if our nerves do not quiver together, then there is distance of thousands of miles between us. Nearness and distance are not matters of the body. If only bodies could bring people close, then all husbands and wives would be close. But you will not find anyone more distant than husbands and wives.
Your name reminded me of Mulla Nasruddin, Salahuddin! Nasruddin once went to see a play. The hero was performing in a marvelous way—so tenderly in love. Nasruddin said to his wife, “What an astonishing performance! I have seen many actors, but the way this man acts love—how real it is—I have never seen anything like it.”
Nasruddin’s wife said, “And you know, the woman he is expressing love to is, in real life, his wife.”
Nasruddin said, “Then he is the ultimate actor; he has no equal! To show such love toward his own wife—this is an impossible feat.”
Husbands and wives become distant by living close. By living close, no one necessarily becomes close. By being far, no one necessarily becomes far. Nearness and distance are inner phenomena. That you are feeling me near is auspicious. But you must come still nearer—so near as the moth comes to the flame. Not even a hair’s breadth of distance should remain. The way to come that close is sannyas.
Now don’t start thinking, “If I have come close without sannyas, then I am different, special. Others take sannyas to come near; I have come anyway.” Don’t play such tricks. The mind is very clever, very cunning. Whatever it wants, it finds arguments to support. The mind will say, “Look, Salahuddin, I didn’t take sannyas, I didn’t take initiation, and still I have come so close. What is the need of sannyas now?”
And I know—you are a Muslim; there will be hurdles if you take sannyas, more difficulties than most others would face. You will be in trouble. My Muslim sannyasins have been in great difficulty! But every difficulty becomes a challenge. The greater the difficulty, the greater the doorway that opens for growth. You will become a sannyasin—you will have to. I see no way back now, no place to escape to. So obstacles will come. And your mind will weave a web of them: “So many troubles will arise! And you are coming close without it anyway.”
Many people say, “We are close inwardly. What is the need to take sannyas outwardly? Inwardly we are sannyasins.” And I know they are talking trickery. They talk trickery because they think there is no test for the inner. There seems to be no way to verify inner sannyas.
If one is a sannyasin within, why would one fear being a sannyasin without? As within, so without; there should be a harmony. Yes, to be only a sannyasin on the outside has no meaning. To the one who is a sannyasin outwardly I say: Become a sannyasin inwardly too. For if only the outer changes, it is futile. What use is changing the garment? The inner must change. But to the one who says, “I am a sannyasin within,” I say: Then be one without as well. The outer and the inner should become one.
Jesus has a famous saying: When the outside becomes the inside, and the inside becomes the outside, and the two become one, then know that you have begun to approach God.
But the mind is cunning. It avoids risks as far as it can. It tries to secure itself wherever possible.
Mulla Nasruddin is very miserly. One day he went strolling on the seafront with his wife. After quite a while he said to her, “What do you say—shall we have another bhel?”
“What do you mean ‘another’? I haven’t had any bhel at all!”
Nasruddin’s heart was deeply hurt. He said, “You’ve forgotten—when we came here a year after our marriage, we had a bhel.”
It had been thirty years since then. But a miser’s mind works in a certain way—always securing itself.
Once a guest came to Mulla Nasruddin’s home. Nasruddin sat him down to eat. As the guest neared finishing and was about to rise, Nasruddin called out to his wife, “Hey, bring one more hot puri for the doctor sahib.” The guest waved his hand, “No, no, Nasruddin! I have already eaten four; that’s enough.” Nasruddin said, “Who’s counting, my friend? You’ve already eaten seven. Take one more—what difference will one make?”
“Who’s counting?”—and yet counting all along. Such is the mind’s arithmetic.
So, Salahuddin, it is good that you have felt near without coming near! But remember: if you are so near without coming near, then once you do come near, how much nearer you will come! Don’t get caught in the mind’s miserliness. Don’t get entangled in its counting. The mind’s greatest miserliness is that it keeps you deprived of love.
You may be surprised to know that miserliness is born from the absence of love. Therefore a miser cannot love, and a lover cannot be a miser. A person becomes miserly because he could not risk love. Failing to love persons, he starts loving things. Loving things has one convenience: there is no danger. But loving persons is dangerous. Fall in love with a woman, and you are in danger. Fall in love with a man, and you are in danger. Bind yourself in friendship, and the risk begins! For when your friend falls ill, you will have to help; when your friend is in trouble, you will have to care. In loving things there is no risk. Hence the miser loves things.
And the greatest risk is to fall in love with a man like me; because to love me means to arrange your own death with your own hands. This is suicide of the ego! Sannyas means the death of the “I.” It means: now I drop my “me.” This is the supreme risk. There will be defamation, social obstacles. It is a costly bargain.
But remember: some things never come cheap. And if they do come cheap, they are worthless.
Mulla Nasruddin was miserly,
a real fly-squeezer,
one day he came to the market,
went up to the fruit-seller
and said,
“Here—take this five-paisa coin,
and quickly give me
a first-rate banana!”
The shopkeeper was bewildered,
picked up the five-paisa piece,
couldn’t quite believe it,
and, smiling at the Mulla, said,
“Here you are, sir! Take this banana—
but do me the favor of telling me:
is there some party being planned
at your place,
that such a grand purchase is being made?”
A single banana! Cash—five paisa!
“Is there a party being planned
at your place,
that such a grand purchase is being made?”
No one had ever seen the Mulla
buy even a five-paisa banana.
The ego knows only how to add—only to accumulate. The ego is supremely miserly. Sannyas is the process of being egoless. Sannyas is freedom from this old habit of adding and hoarding. Sannyas is only a symbol; inside it is a long alchemy, the transmutation of life. And life’s transformation does not happen cheaply.
A husband, tormented by his wife, asked the cost of “talaq”—divorce.
The lawyer said, “A thousand.”
The husband said, “Wonderful! At the wedding the priest charged only four.”
The lawyer said,
“You’re right—
what you are suffering
is exactly the result
of a cheap job.”
Salahuddin, coming near from afar is a cheap business. Now come near from near. If from a distance it has been possible—good, a blessing. But don’t stop there; don’t bring in miserliness. If you have started moving toward me, keep coming until you are no more. Give me the chance to erase you; give me the chance to bring you to an end—so that not even your outline remains, not even your trace. For where you are utterly gone, there the Divine manifests utterly in you.
Says Wajid, calling out: Learn a single lesson—emptiness alone.
Learn this one nothingness. Call that emptiness death if you wish, or call it sannyas—these are only names. These ochre robes I have given to the sannyasins are merely symbols of fire. They announce: now I am ready to be burned, ready to burn myself; I mount, with my own hands, my own funeral pyre!
Sannyas is a declaration that I now cut myself off from my past; that the way I have lived until now, I change that style. Now I will live as if God is; until now I lived as if God is not. Now I will live as if I am a soul; until now I lived as if I am a body. Now I will live as if I am a void; until now I lived as if I am an ego. Until now I only did the accounting of life; now I will also consider, reflect upon, and meditate on what lies beyond death and before birth. Now I will live in the eternal—not in time, not in the fleeting. Not in birth and death, but in the search for the deathless.
Sannyas is only an outer declaration. But from the outer declaration the inner journey begins. And it can begin only from the outer, because for now you are outside. Therefore the work must begin from the outside.
O Beloved,
the bougainvillea has caught fire!
On the full-moon sky
a cloud has gathered,
as if the whole pain
of the heart has scattered,
my being shivers and shivers,
O Beloved!
In the lamp-lit waves
memories are trembling,
my heart longs
to tell you
everything,
how in longing
each moment
I have lived,
O Beloved!
In the west wind’s breath
gusts of fragrance,
the forbidden heart returned
empty as ever,
the lamp of hope has begun to tremble,
O Beloved!
Within you a lamp of hope has begun to tremble, Salahuddin! There are great storms—protect it. Fierce squalls, great tempests are there to blow it out—protect it.
The lamp of hope has begun to tremble,
O Beloved!
For now it is a small flame; it can become vast. It may have been lying dormant for lifetimes. Perhaps you have sat with true Masters before—impressions remained in the depths, seeds remained buried in the unconscious. Perhaps you sat by a Buddha, by a Muhammad, by a Nanak. Perhaps you sat near a Kabir. Perhaps you saw Meera dance—or Chaitanya—or Rumi; perhaps you heard from Mansoor the cry of “Anal Haq.” Somewhere a seed must have remained; hearing my words, that seed has begun to sprout.
The lamp of hope has begun to tremble,
O Beloved!
Now don’t let it go out. When a sprout is small it is delicate; it can die quickly. Put a fence around it, a hedge—sannyas is that hedge.
There is much yet to happen. The drop has just slipped below the throat; now I will give you a pitcher, and then I will give you the ocean! Move ahead, and take courage!
Drop hesitation; drop the mind’s webs of argument. Obstacles will come. Obstacles always come. Without obstacles there is no growth, no maturity. Crises arrive; if you use them rightly, they become blessings. Every crisis can turn into grace.
And I am concerned for you; I am aware of your difficulties. To take sannyas while being a Muslim brings many hurdles. If a Hindu takes sannyas, people think, “Fine!”—no special obstacle arises. But a Muslim… Some people come here secretly from Pakistan, wanting to take sannyas. But they say, “We will keep our mala hidden, because if anyone in Pakistan learns that we carry a mala with a picture on it, it will be hard to stay alive.”
So I tell them—be ready to stake your life for this. In any case, everyone must die; let that death be meaningful. If life has to be risked for sannyas, then it is being risked for truth. What will you do by merely surviving? And if you somehow live another ten or twenty years, what will come of it? What will life be then?
Remember one maxim: Only the person who has something for which he is willing to lay down his life truly has life. Only the one who holds something greater than life truly possesses life. The one who has a treasure for which he would even be ready to die, without hesitation—only he has known life. Upon such people God’s grace descends; upon them alone His prasad showers.
To be near me does not require physical nearness, because nearness is a bond of love, not of the body. Nearness means simply that your heart is now beating with my heart. You may live a thousand miles away; if your heart is attuned with mine, you are near. And your body may sit right beside me, our hands may be clasped, and yet if our hearts do not beat together, if our nerves do not quiver together, then there is distance of thousands of miles between us. Nearness and distance are not matters of the body. If only bodies could bring people close, then all husbands and wives would be close. But you will not find anyone more distant than husbands and wives.
Your name reminded me of Mulla Nasruddin, Salahuddin! Nasruddin once went to see a play. The hero was performing in a marvelous way—so tenderly in love. Nasruddin said to his wife, “What an astonishing performance! I have seen many actors, but the way this man acts love—how real it is—I have never seen anything like it.”
Nasruddin’s wife said, “And you know, the woman he is expressing love to is, in real life, his wife.”
Nasruddin said, “Then he is the ultimate actor; he has no equal! To show such love toward his own wife—this is an impossible feat.”
Husbands and wives become distant by living close. By living close, no one necessarily becomes close. By being far, no one necessarily becomes far. Nearness and distance are inner phenomena. That you are feeling me near is auspicious. But you must come still nearer—so near as the moth comes to the flame. Not even a hair’s breadth of distance should remain. The way to come that close is sannyas.
Now don’t start thinking, “If I have come close without sannyas, then I am different, special. Others take sannyas to come near; I have come anyway.” Don’t play such tricks. The mind is very clever, very cunning. Whatever it wants, it finds arguments to support. The mind will say, “Look, Salahuddin, I didn’t take sannyas, I didn’t take initiation, and still I have come so close. What is the need of sannyas now?”
And I know—you are a Muslim; there will be hurdles if you take sannyas, more difficulties than most others would face. You will be in trouble. My Muslim sannyasins have been in great difficulty! But every difficulty becomes a challenge. The greater the difficulty, the greater the doorway that opens for growth. You will become a sannyasin—you will have to. I see no way back now, no place to escape to. So obstacles will come. And your mind will weave a web of them: “So many troubles will arise! And you are coming close without it anyway.”
Many people say, “We are close inwardly. What is the need to take sannyas outwardly? Inwardly we are sannyasins.” And I know they are talking trickery. They talk trickery because they think there is no test for the inner. There seems to be no way to verify inner sannyas.
If one is a sannyasin within, why would one fear being a sannyasin without? As within, so without; there should be a harmony. Yes, to be only a sannyasin on the outside has no meaning. To the one who is a sannyasin outwardly I say: Become a sannyasin inwardly too. For if only the outer changes, it is futile. What use is changing the garment? The inner must change. But to the one who says, “I am a sannyasin within,” I say: Then be one without as well. The outer and the inner should become one.
Jesus has a famous saying: When the outside becomes the inside, and the inside becomes the outside, and the two become one, then know that you have begun to approach God.
But the mind is cunning. It avoids risks as far as it can. It tries to secure itself wherever possible.
Mulla Nasruddin is very miserly. One day he went strolling on the seafront with his wife. After quite a while he said to her, “What do you say—shall we have another bhel?”
“What do you mean ‘another’? I haven’t had any bhel at all!”
Nasruddin’s heart was deeply hurt. He said, “You’ve forgotten—when we came here a year after our marriage, we had a bhel.”
It had been thirty years since then. But a miser’s mind works in a certain way—always securing itself.
Once a guest came to Mulla Nasruddin’s home. Nasruddin sat him down to eat. As the guest neared finishing and was about to rise, Nasruddin called out to his wife, “Hey, bring one more hot puri for the doctor sahib.” The guest waved his hand, “No, no, Nasruddin! I have already eaten four; that’s enough.” Nasruddin said, “Who’s counting, my friend? You’ve already eaten seven. Take one more—what difference will one make?”
“Who’s counting?”—and yet counting all along. Such is the mind’s arithmetic.
So, Salahuddin, it is good that you have felt near without coming near! But remember: if you are so near without coming near, then once you do come near, how much nearer you will come! Don’t get caught in the mind’s miserliness. Don’t get entangled in its counting. The mind’s greatest miserliness is that it keeps you deprived of love.
You may be surprised to know that miserliness is born from the absence of love. Therefore a miser cannot love, and a lover cannot be a miser. A person becomes miserly because he could not risk love. Failing to love persons, he starts loving things. Loving things has one convenience: there is no danger. But loving persons is dangerous. Fall in love with a woman, and you are in danger. Fall in love with a man, and you are in danger. Bind yourself in friendship, and the risk begins! For when your friend falls ill, you will have to help; when your friend is in trouble, you will have to care. In loving things there is no risk. Hence the miser loves things.
And the greatest risk is to fall in love with a man like me; because to love me means to arrange your own death with your own hands. This is suicide of the ego! Sannyas means the death of the “I.” It means: now I drop my “me.” This is the supreme risk. There will be defamation, social obstacles. It is a costly bargain.
But remember: some things never come cheap. And if they do come cheap, they are worthless.
Mulla Nasruddin was miserly,
a real fly-squeezer,
one day he came to the market,
went up to the fruit-seller
and said,
“Here—take this five-paisa coin,
and quickly give me
a first-rate banana!”
The shopkeeper was bewildered,
picked up the five-paisa piece,
couldn’t quite believe it,
and, smiling at the Mulla, said,
“Here you are, sir! Take this banana—
but do me the favor of telling me:
is there some party being planned
at your place,
that such a grand purchase is being made?”
A single banana! Cash—five paisa!
“Is there a party being planned
at your place,
that such a grand purchase is being made?”
No one had ever seen the Mulla
buy even a five-paisa banana.
The ego knows only how to add—only to accumulate. The ego is supremely miserly. Sannyas is the process of being egoless. Sannyas is freedom from this old habit of adding and hoarding. Sannyas is only a symbol; inside it is a long alchemy, the transmutation of life. And life’s transformation does not happen cheaply.
A husband, tormented by his wife, asked the cost of “talaq”—divorce.
The lawyer said, “A thousand.”
The husband said, “Wonderful! At the wedding the priest charged only four.”
The lawyer said,
“You’re right—
what you are suffering
is exactly the result
of a cheap job.”
Salahuddin, coming near from afar is a cheap business. Now come near from near. If from a distance it has been possible—good, a blessing. But don’t stop there; don’t bring in miserliness. If you have started moving toward me, keep coming until you are no more. Give me the chance to erase you; give me the chance to bring you to an end—so that not even your outline remains, not even your trace. For where you are utterly gone, there the Divine manifests utterly in you.
Says Wajid, calling out: Learn a single lesson—emptiness alone.
Learn this one nothingness. Call that emptiness death if you wish, or call it sannyas—these are only names. These ochre robes I have given to the sannyasins are merely symbols of fire. They announce: now I am ready to be burned, ready to burn myself; I mount, with my own hands, my own funeral pyre!
Sannyas is a declaration that I now cut myself off from my past; that the way I have lived until now, I change that style. Now I will live as if God is; until now I lived as if God is not. Now I will live as if I am a soul; until now I lived as if I am a body. Now I will live as if I am a void; until now I lived as if I am an ego. Until now I only did the accounting of life; now I will also consider, reflect upon, and meditate on what lies beyond death and before birth. Now I will live in the eternal—not in time, not in the fleeting. Not in birth and death, but in the search for the deathless.
Sannyas is only an outer declaration. But from the outer declaration the inner journey begins. And it can begin only from the outer, because for now you are outside. Therefore the work must begin from the outside.
O Beloved,
the bougainvillea has caught fire!
On the full-moon sky
a cloud has gathered,
as if the whole pain
of the heart has scattered,
my being shivers and shivers,
O Beloved!
In the lamp-lit waves
memories are trembling,
my heart longs
to tell you
everything,
how in longing
each moment
I have lived,
O Beloved!
In the west wind’s breath
gusts of fragrance,
the forbidden heart returned
empty as ever,
the lamp of hope has begun to tremble,
O Beloved!
Within you a lamp of hope has begun to tremble, Salahuddin! There are great storms—protect it. Fierce squalls, great tempests are there to blow it out—protect it.
The lamp of hope has begun to tremble,
O Beloved!
For now it is a small flame; it can become vast. It may have been lying dormant for lifetimes. Perhaps you have sat with true Masters before—impressions remained in the depths, seeds remained buried in the unconscious. Perhaps you sat by a Buddha, by a Muhammad, by a Nanak. Perhaps you sat near a Kabir. Perhaps you saw Meera dance—or Chaitanya—or Rumi; perhaps you heard from Mansoor the cry of “Anal Haq.” Somewhere a seed must have remained; hearing my words, that seed has begun to sprout.
The lamp of hope has begun to tremble,
O Beloved!
Now don’t let it go out. When a sprout is small it is delicate; it can die quickly. Put a fence around it, a hedge—sannyas is that hedge.
There is much yet to happen. The drop has just slipped below the throat; now I will give you a pitcher, and then I will give you the ocean! Move ahead, and take courage!
Drop hesitation; drop the mind’s webs of argument. Obstacles will come. Obstacles always come. Without obstacles there is no growth, no maturity. Crises arrive; if you use them rightly, they become blessings. Every crisis can turn into grace.
And I am concerned for you; I am aware of your difficulties. To take sannyas while being a Muslim brings many hurdles. If a Hindu takes sannyas, people think, “Fine!”—no special obstacle arises. But a Muslim… Some people come here secretly from Pakistan, wanting to take sannyas. But they say, “We will keep our mala hidden, because if anyone in Pakistan learns that we carry a mala with a picture on it, it will be hard to stay alive.”
So I tell them—be ready to stake your life for this. In any case, everyone must die; let that death be meaningful. If life has to be risked for sannyas, then it is being risked for truth. What will you do by merely surviving? And if you somehow live another ten or twenty years, what will come of it? What will life be then?
Remember one maxim: Only the person who has something for which he is willing to lay down his life truly has life. Only the one who holds something greater than life truly possesses life. The one who has a treasure for which he would even be ready to die, without hesitation—only he has known life. Upon such people God’s grace descends; upon them alone His prasad showers.
Third question:
Osho, the scientific relationship of yoga, meditation, and spirituality—hearing your sweet words and beholding your presence, I consider myself truly blessed. Still, why do some religious and political people oppose such a beloved Master? I don’t like this opposition; what should I do?
Osho, the scientific relationship of yoga, meditation, and spirituality—hearing your sweet words and beholding your presence, I consider myself truly blessed. Still, why do some religious and political people oppose such a beloved Master? I don’t like this opposition; what should I do?
Dharmeshwar! This opposition is absolutely natural. That you don’t like it—this too is natural. But those who oppose are also compelled; understand their compulsion as well. Have a little compassion for them. Look into their hearts. They have strong reasons to oppose: their vested interests are being hurt. How can they suddenly stop opposing me? This opposition will grow; it is not going to diminish—until the day I am gone. After I am gone, yes, the opposition will disappear, and even the opponents will become collaborators. It has always been so. But as long as I am here, opposition will increase. And the more I grow—meaning the more my sannyasins grow, the more my people grow—the more the opposition will grow, because vested interests will feel the blows more.
How can the temple priest not oppose? Have a little pity on him. How can the mosque’s mullah not oppose? How can the gurdwara’s granthi not oppose? How can the church’s pastor not oppose? I am drawing away his people. The one who went to church yesterday now comes here. The one who went to the gurdwara yesterday now comes here. The one who worshipped in the temple yesterday has turned his back to it. How will he not oppose when his very roots are shaking?
And what I am saying is fundamentally different from their beliefs—just as Jesus’ words were different from theirs, and Buddha’s too. Know this: it was not “the Jews” who opposed Jesus, but the Jewish priests. Do not emphasize “Jewish”; emphasize “priests.” If Jesus came today, Christian priests would oppose him just as much, because their vested interests would be threatened.
What are a priest’s vested interests?
His vested interest is that there must be no direct relationship between God and the individual. Because if there is a direct relationship, the middleman is redundant. The priest is a broker; he stands in the middle. He says: whatever you have to say, tell me; I’ll convey it to God. Don’t speak directly. If you speak directly, his whole raison d’être is gone. “I will perform the sacrifice, I will offer oblations to God, I will chant the Vedas, I will call upon him; you pay me the cost of calling. I will pray; you pay the fee for prayer. I will speak to God; you speak to me. Whatever you have to do, whatever you want, tell me. Don’t pray to God directly.” Priest means middleman.
I am telling you: there is no need for any middleman. Call upon the Divine directly. You don’t hire a servant to whisper love to your wife on your behalf! Imagine you keep a servant and tell him, “Go, express my love to my wife!”
Mulla Nasruddin fell in love with a woman. He wrote many letters—at least three a day: morning, noon, evening. In a month or two, his house filled with letters. Then, as loves come and go, this love too came and went. So Mulla went to the woman and said, “At least return my letters.” She asked, “What will you do with them?” Mulla said, “Now why hide it—since the story is over. I had a pundit write them. Not for free—each letter cost money. My life isn’t over yet; this love is over, tomorrow another will happen. I’ll reuse the same letters there. These letters can serve me a lifetime. Give them back.”
People even outsource love letters! You won’t even write your own love letters! You won’t even make your own prayer! And I tell you, even if your prayer is lisping and halting, it must be yours—that is how it reaches God. Another may sing it perfectly in the exact Sanskrit of the Vedas; even then it won’t reach, because it is borrowed. It is not a question of Sanskrit; it is a question of the heart. Not of Arabic; of the soul. Call with your own life-breath; let your tears fall. The priest weeps on your behalf—what on earth would a priest weep for? He acts the part of weeping. The priest dances and you sit watching; you have become spectators. God wants you to be participants, involved.
So what I am telling you here is the direct relationship with God. The priest will be hurt. And I am saying other things he has never told you—indeed, the opposite. He has always frightened you. I say: do not be afraid, or you will be cut off from God. Tulsidas said: “Without fear there is no love.” I say to you: where there is fear, love cannot be. So if a follower of Tulsidas is angry with me, it is no surprise. I say fear and love are opposites. Where there is love, there is no fear; where there is fear, there is no love. I say: do not be God-fearing; be God-loving. And all the old religion stands upon fear. Why? Because to exploit a man you must first frighten him; without frightening him you cannot exploit him. First scare him, unnerve him.
I knew a doctor; I was his guest and watched him scare his patients. Someone came with a cold and he would talk as if it were pneumonia—double pneumonia! I saw this a few times. I asked, “What is this? You terrify patients!” He said, “If you don’t frighten them, they don’t fall into the net. I know it’s only a cold, but mention pneumonia and they panic. And since it is a cold, it will get well quickly—no problem—and the patient will believe I cured pneumonia! Then he is mine forever. Double benefit!” I said, “This is wrong, unjust. You are doing what religious priests do!”
Many doctors live like this—making a minor ailment sound huge. And the irony is patients like such doctors. The ones who make their illnesses sound big seem like big doctors. If you think you have pneumonia and a doctor says, “Nonsense—just a cold; two days and it’s gone,” you are not pleased; you feel slighted. You brought such a great illness—are you a small person that you should get small illnesses? Great men get great diseases! You bring a grand malady and this insolent man says it’s just a cold—will go away on its own. Patients don’t like the doctor who says, “It will pass by itself.”
In my village a new doctor came—simple, straightforward. His practice wouldn’t run. Someone introduced him to me. He asked, “What’s the matter—why doesn’t my practice pick up?” I said, “I’ll come sit at your dispensary and watch.”
I sat there a day or two. It became clear. He wouldn’t frighten patients. The patient described a big illness; he would say, “This is nothing—take this mixture; you’ll be fine.” Sometimes he would say, “You have no illness at all; no medicine needed.” And before the patient finished telling his tale, he would start making the mixture. I asked his patients. They said, “It doesn’t suit us. We haven’t even finished describing our illness and the gentleman starts compounding medicine.”
He was a skillful doctor but not a skillful politician. The patient doesn’t only want the illness cured—he also wants an audience for his saga. He wants attention. At home he says, “I have a headache,” and the wife says, “Lie down; it’ll go.” No one pays attention. No one sits by the bed and massages his hands and feet. No one says, “Ah! No one ever had such a headache! What a plight you’re in! What suffering you bear! For the children, the wife, the family—you carry the great Himalaya upon your head; from that the headache comes.” No one attends to him. He comes to the doctor, and the doctor starts making a mixture without listening.
One reason homeopathic doctors are so popular is that they listen at great length—not only to you but also to what diseases your father had, and your father’s father. From childhood till now—what illnesses—everything. The patient feels great relief: “Here is a man who takes such interest!”
In the West, psychologists are in demand because they listen to your nonsense for hours—yet so attentively as if you were uttering nectar.
Two psychologists worked in the same building—one old, one young. Every evening they came down together in the lift. The young one always wilted, exhausted—listening all day to the talk of the mentally disturbed. But the old one left as fresh in the evening as he came in the morning. Finally the young man said, “This is too much—though I’m young, these patients kill me! Such babble I have to hear, such frivolity—and yet I must listen, because that’s how I earn my fee. You never tire?” The old man smiled: “Who listens? I sit there smiling; they think I’m listening. Who listens? I am deaf anyway.”
Listen or don’t, but at least appear to listen. First frighten them, sow doubt. As soon as a man becomes doubtful, he is no longer self-possessed; his trust in himself lessens. And only when trust in oneself lessens can one trust another—otherwise not. Remember this.
This is the priest’s basic business formula: first strip a man of his own trust, frighten him—“You are a sinner, a great sinner; heaps of karmas lie upon you; you will rot in hell.” Paint a horrific picture of hell: how you will be burned, melted, thrown into boiling cauldrons. Terrify him until he trembles, hair standing on end. Then say, “I can save you! So long as I am here, do not fear. I am the savior.” That is the trick.
I tell you: you are not sinners; you are divine. I tell you: there is no burden of karma upon you, because what you did you did unconsciously; it cannot weigh on you. If a man drunk hurls an abuse, we forgive him—he was drunk. The same man sober abuses you—you won’t tolerate it. You were about to grab his throat but someone says, “He’s drunk.” You relax: “Let it be; he’s not in his senses; why tangle with him?” You are not yet in your senses—what responsibility can there be? Yes, if a Buddha commits a sin, he is responsible. If you commit a sin—what responsibility? You are not yet; no ray of awareness has dawned. Whatever you have done—sins and merits alike—has been done in sleep. You became a saint in sleep; you became a thief in sleep. I say to you, there is no burden of the past upon you. You have never truly sinned. Your innermost core is luminous, virgin; no smear of soot has ever touched it.
This is troublesome for the pundit, the priest; his whole business collapses. His anger is natural. The politician too is disturbed, because I say you have no need of politicians either. You only need them because you do not trust yourself. You have lost self-confidence, so you want someone’s shoulder to lean on, someone to walk ahead. You can follow the most foolish people, but you can only follow. You are always in doubt; you cannot believe, “If I walk in my own way, I will arrive.” The politician does not want your self-confidence to awaken. The less self-confidence in you, the more power the politician has.
The more a nation’s people become self-trusting, the less power politicians will have. Where people rely on their own intelligence, live by their own awareness, what need remains for politicians? Yes, there will be civil servants. Politicians won’t be needed. Civil servants are fine—their job is to serve the people and take salaries for it. But there is no need to put them on your head. The food minister should not be worth more than the cook in your house. He is but a cook for a province or the whole nation. If he does good work, let him be respected, rewarded—but there is no need to enthrone politicians.
As man becomes more enlightened, politics will diminish. The days of politics are over; there is no future for it—and good that it be gone. What has politics given but quarrels, bloodshed, wars? Politicians rule by pitting people against each other. Hence every democracy needs at least two parties, so they can fight and divide people—and in all cases you will be looted.
You know the story of the two cats who brought their food to a monkey to divide. The monkey took a scale and began to weigh. If one side was heavier, he would take a bite from it; then the other became lighter, so he added a bit—nibbling again and again until he had eaten the whole thing. The cats watched helplessly.
If you keep fighting, someone will exploit you. An intelligent society will be free of politics, free of priests, free of politicians. The days of organized religion are over, and of politics too—and those were ill days.
I also say: your body is as beautiful as your soul. I do not want to create a split, a duality between body and soul. All your so-called religions are body-negative, life-negative. Their rule has been: the more enmity you have with life, the closer you come to God. I counsel: the more you dive into life, the more you relish it, the more rapture you allow, the nearer you come to God. And I say I am right and they are wrong. Why? Because life is God’s extension—his play, his work.
If God is against life, why does life exist at all? Think on this small point: if God were life-negative, why would life be? Is God not powerful enough to stop it? What kind of omnipotence would that be? Could he not at least arrange that children are born without the seed of desire—no longing for flavor, no sense for melody, no eye for beauty—children who are not bodily at all, only soul upon soul?
But God does not heed your “holy men.” He brings forth children with bodies and fills them with the entire longing of life. All this vastness is God’s; it is not against him. Is a poem against the poet? Is a painting against the painter? Is music against the musician? Then why compose it? If I were against the veena, why would I play it? And if God desired only that man be liberated from the world, why create the world?
No. God wants you to pass through the world, to experience it—because through experience awareness is refined and the soul revealed. This is a school of experience. Therefore I say: do not renounce the world, do not flee. Do not cultivate enmity with the body. Do not deny life. Embrace life—take it into your arms, put your arms around it, let it be your embrace. Life is a celebration.
Therefore the religious leaders are angry, because I stand for life. They go about saying I am corrupting people because I teach them about life and joy. They call me an atheist, a Charvaka, because I teach happiness. And I tell you: arrangements have been made till now to keep you miserable. The more miserable you were, the more you remembered God.
But note: one who remembers God because of misery does not truly remember God. Because if the remembrance arises from misery, there is a motive: “Take away my suffering!” There is self-interest. Such prayer is not pure; it is tainted.
“If it isn’t the weakness of the craving hand,
then what shall we call these hands long-stretched after prayer?”
If it is not the feebleness of desire, then why, after praying, do you spread your hands toward the sky? For what?
“If it isn’t the weakness of the craving hand,
then what shall we call these hands long-stretched after prayer?”
What else are those outstretched hands?
If you ask anything of God, your relationship with God will not happen. Ask for nothing. Asking is desire; asking is beggary. I say: don’t ask—give thanks. He has given so much; be grateful, and do not ask. If you remember God because of suffering, the remembrance will be wrong; remember him because of joy. Understand my difference: I am making a revolution. When you pray out of suffering, beggary creeps in.
“Then what shall we call these hands long-stretched after prayer?”
Those hands you raise like a beggar’s bowl—what shall we call them? It is craving, motive. Love should be without motive. Motive-less love is possible only when you live joy, taste and experience life. Then you become so grateful that in moments of gratitude you bow and give thanks.
Prayer should be thanksgiving—then you have prayed like an emperor. I want you to pray like emperors, not beggars. Even God must be tired of beggars. At least in your prayer, let your royal heart show. Ask for nothing; offer thanks, for much has been given. I teach joy so that from joy your prayer may well up—and when prayer rises from joy, it has a fragrance, a beauty. And as for your asking prayers, they are rarely fulfilled—yet you go on asking, and only deepen your beggary.
“Prayer does not lessen the fury of the storm;
such is God’s way—why blame the helmsman?”
Who listens to beggars’ prayers? Beggar-prayers have never been heard.
“Prayer does not lessen the fury of the storm;
You may pray as much as you like; tempests are not tamed by prayer.”
“Such is God’s way—why blame the helmsman?”
When this is how God runs things, why blame boatmen!
Yet you keep blaming the boatmen: “It wasn’t fulfilled at the mosque; now we’ll go to the temple. Not in the temple? To the gurdwara. Not there? To some fakir’s tomb.” You keep changing boatmen while your beggary goes on.
I am teaching an altogether different lesson. That is why the religious leaders are angry. They taught you life-denial; I teach life-acceptance. They taught enmity toward the body; I teach love for the body. They taught condemnation—this wrong, that wrong, all wrong. They loaded you with wrongness from all sides and made you mean and crushed.
I say: nothing is wrong. Whatever you do with awareness is right; unawareness is wrong. A simple sutra: awakened, whatever you do is right; asleep, it is wrong.
Nagarjuna was once asked by a thief: “You say whatever is done with awareness is right. If I steal with awareness?” Nagarjuna said, “Then even stealing is right—only remember the condition: awareness!”
The thief said, “Good! You and I can talk. I’ve been to many gurus; I am an open thief—famous, as famous as the gurus. Everyone knows me. Yet I’ve never been caught; even the emperor knows me. I’ve stolen from his palace too, and still no one has caught me. Whenever I went to a guru he said, ‘First drop stealing, then something can happen.’ I cannot drop stealing. You say there’s no need to drop it?”
Nagarjuna spoke wondrous words: “Those gurus who told you to drop stealing were thieves themselves—ex-thieves at best. Otherwise what have I to do with your stealing? I say: hold to awareness; then do whatsoever you will. I give you a lamp. With the lamp in hand, if you still want to walk through the wall, walk—but I know one who has a lamp finds the door. I don’t say, ‘Don’t go through the wall.’”
To one in darkness, what is the point of saying, “Don’t go through the wall”? He will bump and fall anyway. How will he find the door? The wall is big; walls are everywhere; we ourselves erected them. You will not get out; you will keep falling. And the priests keep shouting, “You hit the wall—sin!” Again you hit it—again sin! The more frightened you become, the more you stumble; your legs begin to shake.
Nagarjuna said rightly: “I give you a lamp. If you choose to go through the wall, that’s your freedom—only keep the lamp from going out.”
The thief returned after fifteen days: “I’m defeated; you have won. You are very clever; you tricked me! All my life I’ve tricked others; you outwitted me. For fifteen days I tried to steal with awareness—I could not. When awareness comes, the urge to steal disappears; when the urge to steal comes, awareness is not there.”
You try it too. Try telling a lie with awareness: awareness comes and truth comes to the lips. Awareness gone—you can lie. Enter sexual passion with awareness: as awareness dawns, the passion cools as if frost fell; awareness gone—you heat up. Heat belongs to unconsciousness; fever. Awareness is cool. No one has ever entered lust with awareness, nor can. Hence I do not say drop lust; I say, bring awareness. Then whatever falls away, let it fall; whatever remains is right. That which remains in a life of awareness is virtue; that which you are compelled to drop because of awareness is vice. I do not give you lists of sins and virtues; I give you only a lamp.
But your priests, politicians, moralists—they make lists, rules, laws: so many that a man is crushed beneath them. In Buddhist scriptures there are thirty-three thousand moral rules. You cannot even memorize them. And if you did, how could you live? The condition would be like a centipede I once heard about.
A centipede has a hundred legs. He was walking; a mouse saw him and said, “Excuse me—one hundred legs! Which foot first, which next—how do you keep the count? If I had a hundred legs I would topple right there—the legs would get entangled. How do you manage: first, second, third… all the way to a hundred? Isn’t the arithmetic impossible?”
The centipede had never thought about it. He was born with a hundred legs and had simply walked. He said, “Brother, you’ve raised a question! I’ve never looked down, never thought which foot first. But now you’ve asked; I must consider.”
He began to think—and promptly stumbled and fell, utterly confused: which first, which later?
Life has a spontaneity. Your rules, your laws, destroy all spontaneity. Thirty-three thousand rules! Which first, which later? Just keeping track will kill you; mountains will sit on your heart. I give you only one rule—awareness. Drop unconsciousness, hold awareness. And even thirty-three thousand rules cannot stop the cunning; they will find loopholes. There is an English proverb: “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” I modify it: “Where there’s a law, there’s a way.” Make as many laws as you like; man will find a way around.
A monk came to Buddha. Buddha had a rule: whatever falls into the alms bowl must be accepted—so that monks would not start asking for tasty foods. Whatever falls into the bowl—dry bread or delicacies—accept in silence; no gestures, no statements. Just present the bowl.
One day a hawk dropped a piece of meat from above into a monk’s bowl. He was in a quandary. The rule said: whatever falls into the bowl must be accepted. But if he accepted, it would be eating meat; if he threw it, the rule would break. He came to Buddha and said before the sangha: “Master, there is a conflict of two rules. If I accept, it is violence; if I reject, your rule breaks. What to do?” Buddha pondered. If he said “accept,” there was danger of approving meat-eating. If he said “reject,” a larger danger: hawks don’t drop meat every day—this is an accident. If he allowed “reject what seems improper,” from the next day monks would reject whatever didn’t suit them and start demanding. Householders’ food would be wasted.
He thought, and said, “Don’t worry—whatever falls into the bowl, accept it. A hawk won’t be dropping meat every day; it is an accident.”
Buddha did not know that accident would become a rule! Today in China, Japan—Buddhist lands—meat-eating is common because of that incident. They argue: “If meat were sinful, the Blessed One would have forbidden it. The point is: you must not kill yourself; but if a hawk drops it, no harm.” Hence you will find hotels in China and Japan with signs: “Only meat of animals that have died naturally is sold here.” But not enough animals die naturally to feed the whole country; everywhere there are slaughterhouses. Then why do slaughterhouses run? The hotelier is not bothered; he puts up a sign and the customer’s scruples are soothed. Both know the truth. But that one small incident—the hawk created a revolution. Much of Asia eats meat on that pretext.
People find paths through laws. Where there is law, there are loopholes. I do not give you laws; I give you awareness, so that you live by your own understanding. Whatever seems right in a given moment—thoughtfully, consciously—do that. And know: what is right in this moment may not be right in the next; rules become rigid. So priests and politicians shout that I am making people licentious. I am not. Or we must redefine freedom as I do. By “freedom” I mean: one who has found his own inner rhythm—his own music. I do not mean debauchery. Freedom means attunement to one’s own cadence. Then poetry is born from it, and beauty too.
This cadence is dharma. The universe moves in rhythm; its meter never breaks. We are the ones out of step, flung aside. We must regain our own cadence; find that and the world’s cadence is found. Find the soul and God is found. Hear the inner music and the music pervading the skies is heard; then inside and outside are not two—they become one. Where they are one, life reaches its highest peak.
Their opposition is natural. It will continue, Dharmeshwar—don’t be saddened. It cannot be stopped, nor need it be. Their opposition even furthers my work. Because of it, many become curious about me; they come here drawn by the controversy. Just yesterday a couple from Calcutta came for this very reason. They had no interest in religion or meditation; but they heard so much opposition that they thought, “We must go and see with our own eyes what this is!” Here they were startled. They became interested in meditation—danced, sang, did vipassana—got so immersed they stayed ten days, and now say they will return for good. Even opponents do not really harm truth.
They’ve gone back to wind up their work there. Who can say by what causes someone may come? God’s ways are strange. So don’t be upset. What I am saying is rebellious; opposition is natural.
“Had we worn chains, what would become of your world?
A few rivers gone dry; a single desolate desert.”
If a few people wore chains—Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna, Christ, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu—what would your world be? Dry rivers, a barren waste.
“Had we worn chains, what would become of your world?”
What would become indeed! This world has any luster because of a few rebels—the fire of revolt some have kept burning, not letting it die. Because of them there is a little sparkle, a little grandeur, some glory. Otherwise this is a crowd of the dead—somehow living, shoved about, and somehow dying—nothing of worth in their living or their dying.
“I am one who has lost his heart, O Ravish—
who would become my fellow traveler?”
I have drowned my heart; I have squandered myself. I am a madman, a drunk, a wild one.
“Who would become my fellow traveler?”
Only a few mad ones will come along, a small band of the intoxicated. That is natural. What I say can only be borne by the few who dare; the rest will be angry—their shops are being hit!
“Here bandits and guides were one—
Who was not a barrier on your path?”
On the path to God, robbers hinder, yes; but those you take as guides hinder too.
“Here bandits and guides were one—
Who was not a barrier on your path?”
Everyone obstructs the path to the Divine: robbers do not want you to move beyond their domain; and your guides are hidden robbers—they also do not want you to go that way. Otherwise who will go to temples? Who will go on pilgrimages? Who will perform the foolishness of sacrifices? This vast web of exploitation would collapse. No, none of them want that. Their anger is natural. Do not be frightened by it, and don’t be angry with them either.
“What strange fest is this, O cupbearer,
where blood is ladled into goblets?
Give me a thirst enough
to shatter this tavern!”
Make such a prayer to God now:
“What strange fest is this, O cupbearer,
where blood is ladled into goblets?”
Here, in the foundations of temples and mosques, there is blood. In the name of nectar, poison is being served. In the name of religion, people have been butchered and still are.
“What strange fest is this, O cupbearer,
where blood is ladled into goblets?
Give me a thirst enough
to shatter this tavern!
Nights are weaving darknesses; the sun is forging splendors—
this factory seems to run in partnership
between God and the Devil.”
It seems as if Satan and God have conspired together; their partnership runs this factory. Because here the Devil and the priests are great friends. The Devil is the real god of the priests!
“Tell the turbaned heads: this is the court of history,
where even God’s attributes
are judged by man’s critical gaze.
Tell them: here even prophethood
stands arraigned in line.”
“Let those who remained heaps of ash
rise now as dust upon the road;
the speed of the wind is whispering:
the caravan has already set out.”
This is a small caravan of the mad.
“Let those who remained heaps of ash
rise now as dust upon the road;
the speed of the wind is whispering:
the caravan has already set out.”
We have started walking; a few mad ones have joined us. Let go of worry about people. People always say something; they always will. One who bothers about them lands in trouble. They condemn everything; they have nothing but condemnation. They have no eyes to see. And even if they have a little capacity to see, they don’t have the courage, because if they see they will have to change—and change is difficult. They have arranged their whole life in one pattern, and then they would have to alter it.
I used to visit my village to meet an old teacher of mine. The last time I went, his son came and said, “Father keeps looking for you to come; whenever you come, life returns to him. But he is also afraid of you. Now he is old and cannot bear your words. He heard you have come—please don’t come to our house. Though he longs for you, he fears you.”
I told his son, “I will come once more, only once—perhaps never again after this. I went to him and asked, ‘You are so restless! What is the fear?’ He said, ‘The fear is this: I am near death, and what you say seems right. Then my whole life has been wasted! Let me die in peace, believing my rituals and prayers were right. I don’t want to hear now that my rituals were in vain, my prayers wasted, my religion hollow. It is frightening to hear, because I stand at death’s door. There is no time left to change.’
I told him, ‘Life does not change in time; it changes in a moment. You are alive still. And let me say: whether I come or not makes no difference—you already know it within; that is why you are afraid. What is this fear saying? It is saying you know the house you built was a palace of cards. It lacks truth. Whether I speak or not, death will show you. Better you see before death does. There is still time—never is it too late. Revolution can happen in a single instant.’
It takes thousands of lives to go far from God, but to come back takes only a moment. Imagine a man walking with his back to the sun. He goes farther and farther away—thousands of miles. If today we say, ‘Turn to the sun!’ he will say, ‘Impossible—I am old, near death. It took thousands of years to come this far; it will take thousands more to return.’ I will say, ‘No. Just turn around. Where your back is, turn your face—and the sun is there.’
No one can go far from the sun—nor from God. You can only turn your back. Whether for a thousand years or ten thousand—no difference. Turn. Where your back is now, turn your face; be face-to-face. That is the meaning of satsang. And the one who turns you face-to-face—that is the true Master.
The true Master has always been maligned. We have always arranged crosses for him. We have given him poison and bullets. It is our old habit. So, Dharmeshwar, do not be bothered. My words hurt priests and politicians because I speak bluntly—as it is.
“I am mute in this market-world—
a great misfit am I.
It is a childish world:
cry and you get milk—
but how will the capital of the inner
ever earn its interest?
These are the times of orders and authority—
how can I be a battle-cry?
I am only a sigh.
In a golden cage
a pet parrot dozes,
on a patted back
a puppet sways.
Here, life’s religion is ‘Yes, sir’—
how shall I be beloved,
I who speak two-edged truth?”
Speaking bluntly brings difficulty—and I must speak. I can only say what is—without a grain of deviation. I will say what is. You too hear what is, and drop your worry.
Birth and death, happiness and sorrow, come and go; truth abides—truth is eternal. They crucified Jesus, but truth was not crucified. They crucified Jesus—and truth sat upon the throne. So do not be sad, or troubled, or angry. Do not get into useless wrangles with them. Let them do their work; you do yours. Do not waste your energy in quarrels. I tell my sannyasins again and again: do not get into futile disputes. Your energy will get entangled and you will lose. Let people say what they want. You walk your path; sing your song. Some courageous ones who love the song will join you. Some connoisseurs of rasa, lovers of taste, will join you. The company of those few is enough.
Life is burnished by struggle, made bright. Truth must pass through great touchstones—and it can. Falsehood fears the touchstone; truth invites it. So I am saying what I have to say—aloud. You too let the resonance of your life resound. Do not hide; do not conceal. Let there be proclamation.
Jesus said: Climb the rooftops and shout what you have known. I say the same: climb the rooftops and shout what you have known. Some will be connoisseurs, some lovers, some intoxicated ones—your call will draw them; they will join you. The caravan has set out. Do not get entangled with this and that, with side issues. Keep calling out—perhaps some stuck on the banks will come along.
And do not be angry with those who oppose; their opposition too is natural. The worn-out will oppose the new; the dead will oppose life; untruth will oppose truth. Whenever a ray of truth descends, all the forces of darkness gather—because their very life is in danger. So whatever is happening is right. Accept it. And remember: God has very strange ways of working—he even gets his work done through opposition!
Enough for today.
How can the temple priest not oppose? Have a little pity on him. How can the mosque’s mullah not oppose? How can the gurdwara’s granthi not oppose? How can the church’s pastor not oppose? I am drawing away his people. The one who went to church yesterday now comes here. The one who went to the gurdwara yesterday now comes here. The one who worshipped in the temple yesterday has turned his back to it. How will he not oppose when his very roots are shaking?
And what I am saying is fundamentally different from their beliefs—just as Jesus’ words were different from theirs, and Buddha’s too. Know this: it was not “the Jews” who opposed Jesus, but the Jewish priests. Do not emphasize “Jewish”; emphasize “priests.” If Jesus came today, Christian priests would oppose him just as much, because their vested interests would be threatened.
What are a priest’s vested interests?
His vested interest is that there must be no direct relationship between God and the individual. Because if there is a direct relationship, the middleman is redundant. The priest is a broker; he stands in the middle. He says: whatever you have to say, tell me; I’ll convey it to God. Don’t speak directly. If you speak directly, his whole raison d’être is gone. “I will perform the sacrifice, I will offer oblations to God, I will chant the Vedas, I will call upon him; you pay me the cost of calling. I will pray; you pay the fee for prayer. I will speak to God; you speak to me. Whatever you have to do, whatever you want, tell me. Don’t pray to God directly.” Priest means middleman.
I am telling you: there is no need for any middleman. Call upon the Divine directly. You don’t hire a servant to whisper love to your wife on your behalf! Imagine you keep a servant and tell him, “Go, express my love to my wife!”
Mulla Nasruddin fell in love with a woman. He wrote many letters—at least three a day: morning, noon, evening. In a month or two, his house filled with letters. Then, as loves come and go, this love too came and went. So Mulla went to the woman and said, “At least return my letters.” She asked, “What will you do with them?” Mulla said, “Now why hide it—since the story is over. I had a pundit write them. Not for free—each letter cost money. My life isn’t over yet; this love is over, tomorrow another will happen. I’ll reuse the same letters there. These letters can serve me a lifetime. Give them back.”
People even outsource love letters! You won’t even write your own love letters! You won’t even make your own prayer! And I tell you, even if your prayer is lisping and halting, it must be yours—that is how it reaches God. Another may sing it perfectly in the exact Sanskrit of the Vedas; even then it won’t reach, because it is borrowed. It is not a question of Sanskrit; it is a question of the heart. Not of Arabic; of the soul. Call with your own life-breath; let your tears fall. The priest weeps on your behalf—what on earth would a priest weep for? He acts the part of weeping. The priest dances and you sit watching; you have become spectators. God wants you to be participants, involved.
So what I am telling you here is the direct relationship with God. The priest will be hurt. And I am saying other things he has never told you—indeed, the opposite. He has always frightened you. I say: do not be afraid, or you will be cut off from God. Tulsidas said: “Without fear there is no love.” I say to you: where there is fear, love cannot be. So if a follower of Tulsidas is angry with me, it is no surprise. I say fear and love are opposites. Where there is love, there is no fear; where there is fear, there is no love. I say: do not be God-fearing; be God-loving. And all the old religion stands upon fear. Why? Because to exploit a man you must first frighten him; without frightening him you cannot exploit him. First scare him, unnerve him.
I knew a doctor; I was his guest and watched him scare his patients. Someone came with a cold and he would talk as if it were pneumonia—double pneumonia! I saw this a few times. I asked, “What is this? You terrify patients!” He said, “If you don’t frighten them, they don’t fall into the net. I know it’s only a cold, but mention pneumonia and they panic. And since it is a cold, it will get well quickly—no problem—and the patient will believe I cured pneumonia! Then he is mine forever. Double benefit!” I said, “This is wrong, unjust. You are doing what religious priests do!”
Many doctors live like this—making a minor ailment sound huge. And the irony is patients like such doctors. The ones who make their illnesses sound big seem like big doctors. If you think you have pneumonia and a doctor says, “Nonsense—just a cold; two days and it’s gone,” you are not pleased; you feel slighted. You brought such a great illness—are you a small person that you should get small illnesses? Great men get great diseases! You bring a grand malady and this insolent man says it’s just a cold—will go away on its own. Patients don’t like the doctor who says, “It will pass by itself.”
In my village a new doctor came—simple, straightforward. His practice wouldn’t run. Someone introduced him to me. He asked, “What’s the matter—why doesn’t my practice pick up?” I said, “I’ll come sit at your dispensary and watch.”
I sat there a day or two. It became clear. He wouldn’t frighten patients. The patient described a big illness; he would say, “This is nothing—take this mixture; you’ll be fine.” Sometimes he would say, “You have no illness at all; no medicine needed.” And before the patient finished telling his tale, he would start making the mixture. I asked his patients. They said, “It doesn’t suit us. We haven’t even finished describing our illness and the gentleman starts compounding medicine.”
He was a skillful doctor but not a skillful politician. The patient doesn’t only want the illness cured—he also wants an audience for his saga. He wants attention. At home he says, “I have a headache,” and the wife says, “Lie down; it’ll go.” No one pays attention. No one sits by the bed and massages his hands and feet. No one says, “Ah! No one ever had such a headache! What a plight you’re in! What suffering you bear! For the children, the wife, the family—you carry the great Himalaya upon your head; from that the headache comes.” No one attends to him. He comes to the doctor, and the doctor starts making a mixture without listening.
One reason homeopathic doctors are so popular is that they listen at great length—not only to you but also to what diseases your father had, and your father’s father. From childhood till now—what illnesses—everything. The patient feels great relief: “Here is a man who takes such interest!”
In the West, psychologists are in demand because they listen to your nonsense for hours—yet so attentively as if you were uttering nectar.
Two psychologists worked in the same building—one old, one young. Every evening they came down together in the lift. The young one always wilted, exhausted—listening all day to the talk of the mentally disturbed. But the old one left as fresh in the evening as he came in the morning. Finally the young man said, “This is too much—though I’m young, these patients kill me! Such babble I have to hear, such frivolity—and yet I must listen, because that’s how I earn my fee. You never tire?” The old man smiled: “Who listens? I sit there smiling; they think I’m listening. Who listens? I am deaf anyway.”
Listen or don’t, but at least appear to listen. First frighten them, sow doubt. As soon as a man becomes doubtful, he is no longer self-possessed; his trust in himself lessens. And only when trust in oneself lessens can one trust another—otherwise not. Remember this.
This is the priest’s basic business formula: first strip a man of his own trust, frighten him—“You are a sinner, a great sinner; heaps of karmas lie upon you; you will rot in hell.” Paint a horrific picture of hell: how you will be burned, melted, thrown into boiling cauldrons. Terrify him until he trembles, hair standing on end. Then say, “I can save you! So long as I am here, do not fear. I am the savior.” That is the trick.
I tell you: you are not sinners; you are divine. I tell you: there is no burden of karma upon you, because what you did you did unconsciously; it cannot weigh on you. If a man drunk hurls an abuse, we forgive him—he was drunk. The same man sober abuses you—you won’t tolerate it. You were about to grab his throat but someone says, “He’s drunk.” You relax: “Let it be; he’s not in his senses; why tangle with him?” You are not yet in your senses—what responsibility can there be? Yes, if a Buddha commits a sin, he is responsible. If you commit a sin—what responsibility? You are not yet; no ray of awareness has dawned. Whatever you have done—sins and merits alike—has been done in sleep. You became a saint in sleep; you became a thief in sleep. I say to you, there is no burden of the past upon you. You have never truly sinned. Your innermost core is luminous, virgin; no smear of soot has ever touched it.
This is troublesome for the pundit, the priest; his whole business collapses. His anger is natural. The politician too is disturbed, because I say you have no need of politicians either. You only need them because you do not trust yourself. You have lost self-confidence, so you want someone’s shoulder to lean on, someone to walk ahead. You can follow the most foolish people, but you can only follow. You are always in doubt; you cannot believe, “If I walk in my own way, I will arrive.” The politician does not want your self-confidence to awaken. The less self-confidence in you, the more power the politician has.
The more a nation’s people become self-trusting, the less power politicians will have. Where people rely on their own intelligence, live by their own awareness, what need remains for politicians? Yes, there will be civil servants. Politicians won’t be needed. Civil servants are fine—their job is to serve the people and take salaries for it. But there is no need to put them on your head. The food minister should not be worth more than the cook in your house. He is but a cook for a province or the whole nation. If he does good work, let him be respected, rewarded—but there is no need to enthrone politicians.
As man becomes more enlightened, politics will diminish. The days of politics are over; there is no future for it—and good that it be gone. What has politics given but quarrels, bloodshed, wars? Politicians rule by pitting people against each other. Hence every democracy needs at least two parties, so they can fight and divide people—and in all cases you will be looted.
You know the story of the two cats who brought their food to a monkey to divide. The monkey took a scale and began to weigh. If one side was heavier, he would take a bite from it; then the other became lighter, so he added a bit—nibbling again and again until he had eaten the whole thing. The cats watched helplessly.
If you keep fighting, someone will exploit you. An intelligent society will be free of politics, free of priests, free of politicians. The days of organized religion are over, and of politics too—and those were ill days.
I also say: your body is as beautiful as your soul. I do not want to create a split, a duality between body and soul. All your so-called religions are body-negative, life-negative. Their rule has been: the more enmity you have with life, the closer you come to God. I counsel: the more you dive into life, the more you relish it, the more rapture you allow, the nearer you come to God. And I say I am right and they are wrong. Why? Because life is God’s extension—his play, his work.
If God is against life, why does life exist at all? Think on this small point: if God were life-negative, why would life be? Is God not powerful enough to stop it? What kind of omnipotence would that be? Could he not at least arrange that children are born without the seed of desire—no longing for flavor, no sense for melody, no eye for beauty—children who are not bodily at all, only soul upon soul?
But God does not heed your “holy men.” He brings forth children with bodies and fills them with the entire longing of life. All this vastness is God’s; it is not against him. Is a poem against the poet? Is a painting against the painter? Is music against the musician? Then why compose it? If I were against the veena, why would I play it? And if God desired only that man be liberated from the world, why create the world?
No. God wants you to pass through the world, to experience it—because through experience awareness is refined and the soul revealed. This is a school of experience. Therefore I say: do not renounce the world, do not flee. Do not cultivate enmity with the body. Do not deny life. Embrace life—take it into your arms, put your arms around it, let it be your embrace. Life is a celebration.
Therefore the religious leaders are angry, because I stand for life. They go about saying I am corrupting people because I teach them about life and joy. They call me an atheist, a Charvaka, because I teach happiness. And I tell you: arrangements have been made till now to keep you miserable. The more miserable you were, the more you remembered God.
But note: one who remembers God because of misery does not truly remember God. Because if the remembrance arises from misery, there is a motive: “Take away my suffering!” There is self-interest. Such prayer is not pure; it is tainted.
“If it isn’t the weakness of the craving hand,
then what shall we call these hands long-stretched after prayer?”
If it is not the feebleness of desire, then why, after praying, do you spread your hands toward the sky? For what?
“If it isn’t the weakness of the craving hand,
then what shall we call these hands long-stretched after prayer?”
What else are those outstretched hands?
If you ask anything of God, your relationship with God will not happen. Ask for nothing. Asking is desire; asking is beggary. I say: don’t ask—give thanks. He has given so much; be grateful, and do not ask. If you remember God because of suffering, the remembrance will be wrong; remember him because of joy. Understand my difference: I am making a revolution. When you pray out of suffering, beggary creeps in.
“Then what shall we call these hands long-stretched after prayer?”
Those hands you raise like a beggar’s bowl—what shall we call them? It is craving, motive. Love should be without motive. Motive-less love is possible only when you live joy, taste and experience life. Then you become so grateful that in moments of gratitude you bow and give thanks.
Prayer should be thanksgiving—then you have prayed like an emperor. I want you to pray like emperors, not beggars. Even God must be tired of beggars. At least in your prayer, let your royal heart show. Ask for nothing; offer thanks, for much has been given. I teach joy so that from joy your prayer may well up—and when prayer rises from joy, it has a fragrance, a beauty. And as for your asking prayers, they are rarely fulfilled—yet you go on asking, and only deepen your beggary.
“Prayer does not lessen the fury of the storm;
such is God’s way—why blame the helmsman?”
Who listens to beggars’ prayers? Beggar-prayers have never been heard.
“Prayer does not lessen the fury of the storm;
You may pray as much as you like; tempests are not tamed by prayer.”
“Such is God’s way—why blame the helmsman?”
When this is how God runs things, why blame boatmen!
Yet you keep blaming the boatmen: “It wasn’t fulfilled at the mosque; now we’ll go to the temple. Not in the temple? To the gurdwara. Not there? To some fakir’s tomb.” You keep changing boatmen while your beggary goes on.
I am teaching an altogether different lesson. That is why the religious leaders are angry. They taught you life-denial; I teach life-acceptance. They taught enmity toward the body; I teach love for the body. They taught condemnation—this wrong, that wrong, all wrong. They loaded you with wrongness from all sides and made you mean and crushed.
I say: nothing is wrong. Whatever you do with awareness is right; unawareness is wrong. A simple sutra: awakened, whatever you do is right; asleep, it is wrong.
Nagarjuna was once asked by a thief: “You say whatever is done with awareness is right. If I steal with awareness?” Nagarjuna said, “Then even stealing is right—only remember the condition: awareness!”
The thief said, “Good! You and I can talk. I’ve been to many gurus; I am an open thief—famous, as famous as the gurus. Everyone knows me. Yet I’ve never been caught; even the emperor knows me. I’ve stolen from his palace too, and still no one has caught me. Whenever I went to a guru he said, ‘First drop stealing, then something can happen.’ I cannot drop stealing. You say there’s no need to drop it?”
Nagarjuna spoke wondrous words: “Those gurus who told you to drop stealing were thieves themselves—ex-thieves at best. Otherwise what have I to do with your stealing? I say: hold to awareness; then do whatsoever you will. I give you a lamp. With the lamp in hand, if you still want to walk through the wall, walk—but I know one who has a lamp finds the door. I don’t say, ‘Don’t go through the wall.’”
To one in darkness, what is the point of saying, “Don’t go through the wall”? He will bump and fall anyway. How will he find the door? The wall is big; walls are everywhere; we ourselves erected them. You will not get out; you will keep falling. And the priests keep shouting, “You hit the wall—sin!” Again you hit it—again sin! The more frightened you become, the more you stumble; your legs begin to shake.
Nagarjuna said rightly: “I give you a lamp. If you choose to go through the wall, that’s your freedom—only keep the lamp from going out.”
The thief returned after fifteen days: “I’m defeated; you have won. You are very clever; you tricked me! All my life I’ve tricked others; you outwitted me. For fifteen days I tried to steal with awareness—I could not. When awareness comes, the urge to steal disappears; when the urge to steal comes, awareness is not there.”
You try it too. Try telling a lie with awareness: awareness comes and truth comes to the lips. Awareness gone—you can lie. Enter sexual passion with awareness: as awareness dawns, the passion cools as if frost fell; awareness gone—you heat up. Heat belongs to unconsciousness; fever. Awareness is cool. No one has ever entered lust with awareness, nor can. Hence I do not say drop lust; I say, bring awareness. Then whatever falls away, let it fall; whatever remains is right. That which remains in a life of awareness is virtue; that which you are compelled to drop because of awareness is vice. I do not give you lists of sins and virtues; I give you only a lamp.
But your priests, politicians, moralists—they make lists, rules, laws: so many that a man is crushed beneath them. In Buddhist scriptures there are thirty-three thousand moral rules. You cannot even memorize them. And if you did, how could you live? The condition would be like a centipede I once heard about.
A centipede has a hundred legs. He was walking; a mouse saw him and said, “Excuse me—one hundred legs! Which foot first, which next—how do you keep the count? If I had a hundred legs I would topple right there—the legs would get entangled. How do you manage: first, second, third… all the way to a hundred? Isn’t the arithmetic impossible?”
The centipede had never thought about it. He was born with a hundred legs and had simply walked. He said, “Brother, you’ve raised a question! I’ve never looked down, never thought which foot first. But now you’ve asked; I must consider.”
He began to think—and promptly stumbled and fell, utterly confused: which first, which later?
Life has a spontaneity. Your rules, your laws, destroy all spontaneity. Thirty-three thousand rules! Which first, which later? Just keeping track will kill you; mountains will sit on your heart. I give you only one rule—awareness. Drop unconsciousness, hold awareness. And even thirty-three thousand rules cannot stop the cunning; they will find loopholes. There is an English proverb: “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” I modify it: “Where there’s a law, there’s a way.” Make as many laws as you like; man will find a way around.
A monk came to Buddha. Buddha had a rule: whatever falls into the alms bowl must be accepted—so that monks would not start asking for tasty foods. Whatever falls into the bowl—dry bread or delicacies—accept in silence; no gestures, no statements. Just present the bowl.
One day a hawk dropped a piece of meat from above into a monk’s bowl. He was in a quandary. The rule said: whatever falls into the bowl must be accepted. But if he accepted, it would be eating meat; if he threw it, the rule would break. He came to Buddha and said before the sangha: “Master, there is a conflict of two rules. If I accept, it is violence; if I reject, your rule breaks. What to do?” Buddha pondered. If he said “accept,” there was danger of approving meat-eating. If he said “reject,” a larger danger: hawks don’t drop meat every day—this is an accident. If he allowed “reject what seems improper,” from the next day monks would reject whatever didn’t suit them and start demanding. Householders’ food would be wasted.
He thought, and said, “Don’t worry—whatever falls into the bowl, accept it. A hawk won’t be dropping meat every day; it is an accident.”
Buddha did not know that accident would become a rule! Today in China, Japan—Buddhist lands—meat-eating is common because of that incident. They argue: “If meat were sinful, the Blessed One would have forbidden it. The point is: you must not kill yourself; but if a hawk drops it, no harm.” Hence you will find hotels in China and Japan with signs: “Only meat of animals that have died naturally is sold here.” But not enough animals die naturally to feed the whole country; everywhere there are slaughterhouses. Then why do slaughterhouses run? The hotelier is not bothered; he puts up a sign and the customer’s scruples are soothed. Both know the truth. But that one small incident—the hawk created a revolution. Much of Asia eats meat on that pretext.
People find paths through laws. Where there is law, there are loopholes. I do not give you laws; I give you awareness, so that you live by your own understanding. Whatever seems right in a given moment—thoughtfully, consciously—do that. And know: what is right in this moment may not be right in the next; rules become rigid. So priests and politicians shout that I am making people licentious. I am not. Or we must redefine freedom as I do. By “freedom” I mean: one who has found his own inner rhythm—his own music. I do not mean debauchery. Freedom means attunement to one’s own cadence. Then poetry is born from it, and beauty too.
This cadence is dharma. The universe moves in rhythm; its meter never breaks. We are the ones out of step, flung aside. We must regain our own cadence; find that and the world’s cadence is found. Find the soul and God is found. Hear the inner music and the music pervading the skies is heard; then inside and outside are not two—they become one. Where they are one, life reaches its highest peak.
Their opposition is natural. It will continue, Dharmeshwar—don’t be saddened. It cannot be stopped, nor need it be. Their opposition even furthers my work. Because of it, many become curious about me; they come here drawn by the controversy. Just yesterday a couple from Calcutta came for this very reason. They had no interest in religion or meditation; but they heard so much opposition that they thought, “We must go and see with our own eyes what this is!” Here they were startled. They became interested in meditation—danced, sang, did vipassana—got so immersed they stayed ten days, and now say they will return for good. Even opponents do not really harm truth.
They’ve gone back to wind up their work there. Who can say by what causes someone may come? God’s ways are strange. So don’t be upset. What I am saying is rebellious; opposition is natural.
“Had we worn chains, what would become of your world?
A few rivers gone dry; a single desolate desert.”
If a few people wore chains—Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna, Christ, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu—what would your world be? Dry rivers, a barren waste.
“Had we worn chains, what would become of your world?”
What would become indeed! This world has any luster because of a few rebels—the fire of revolt some have kept burning, not letting it die. Because of them there is a little sparkle, a little grandeur, some glory. Otherwise this is a crowd of the dead—somehow living, shoved about, and somehow dying—nothing of worth in their living or their dying.
“I am one who has lost his heart, O Ravish—
who would become my fellow traveler?”
I have drowned my heart; I have squandered myself. I am a madman, a drunk, a wild one.
“Who would become my fellow traveler?”
Only a few mad ones will come along, a small band of the intoxicated. That is natural. What I say can only be borne by the few who dare; the rest will be angry—their shops are being hit!
“Here bandits and guides were one—
Who was not a barrier on your path?”
On the path to God, robbers hinder, yes; but those you take as guides hinder too.
“Here bandits and guides were one—
Who was not a barrier on your path?”
Everyone obstructs the path to the Divine: robbers do not want you to move beyond their domain; and your guides are hidden robbers—they also do not want you to go that way. Otherwise who will go to temples? Who will go on pilgrimages? Who will perform the foolishness of sacrifices? This vast web of exploitation would collapse. No, none of them want that. Their anger is natural. Do not be frightened by it, and don’t be angry with them either.
“What strange fest is this, O cupbearer,
where blood is ladled into goblets?
Give me a thirst enough
to shatter this tavern!”
Make such a prayer to God now:
“What strange fest is this, O cupbearer,
where blood is ladled into goblets?”
Here, in the foundations of temples and mosques, there is blood. In the name of nectar, poison is being served. In the name of religion, people have been butchered and still are.
“What strange fest is this, O cupbearer,
where blood is ladled into goblets?
Give me a thirst enough
to shatter this tavern!
Nights are weaving darknesses; the sun is forging splendors—
this factory seems to run in partnership
between God and the Devil.”
It seems as if Satan and God have conspired together; their partnership runs this factory. Because here the Devil and the priests are great friends. The Devil is the real god of the priests!
“Tell the turbaned heads: this is the court of history,
where even God’s attributes
are judged by man’s critical gaze.
Tell them: here even prophethood
stands arraigned in line.”
“Let those who remained heaps of ash
rise now as dust upon the road;
the speed of the wind is whispering:
the caravan has already set out.”
This is a small caravan of the mad.
“Let those who remained heaps of ash
rise now as dust upon the road;
the speed of the wind is whispering:
the caravan has already set out.”
We have started walking; a few mad ones have joined us. Let go of worry about people. People always say something; they always will. One who bothers about them lands in trouble. They condemn everything; they have nothing but condemnation. They have no eyes to see. And even if they have a little capacity to see, they don’t have the courage, because if they see they will have to change—and change is difficult. They have arranged their whole life in one pattern, and then they would have to alter it.
I used to visit my village to meet an old teacher of mine. The last time I went, his son came and said, “Father keeps looking for you to come; whenever you come, life returns to him. But he is also afraid of you. Now he is old and cannot bear your words. He heard you have come—please don’t come to our house. Though he longs for you, he fears you.”
I told his son, “I will come once more, only once—perhaps never again after this. I went to him and asked, ‘You are so restless! What is the fear?’ He said, ‘The fear is this: I am near death, and what you say seems right. Then my whole life has been wasted! Let me die in peace, believing my rituals and prayers were right. I don’t want to hear now that my rituals were in vain, my prayers wasted, my religion hollow. It is frightening to hear, because I stand at death’s door. There is no time left to change.’
I told him, ‘Life does not change in time; it changes in a moment. You are alive still. And let me say: whether I come or not makes no difference—you already know it within; that is why you are afraid. What is this fear saying? It is saying you know the house you built was a palace of cards. It lacks truth. Whether I speak or not, death will show you. Better you see before death does. There is still time—never is it too late. Revolution can happen in a single instant.’
It takes thousands of lives to go far from God, but to come back takes only a moment. Imagine a man walking with his back to the sun. He goes farther and farther away—thousands of miles. If today we say, ‘Turn to the sun!’ he will say, ‘Impossible—I am old, near death. It took thousands of years to come this far; it will take thousands more to return.’ I will say, ‘No. Just turn around. Where your back is, turn your face—and the sun is there.’
No one can go far from the sun—nor from God. You can only turn your back. Whether for a thousand years or ten thousand—no difference. Turn. Where your back is now, turn your face; be face-to-face. That is the meaning of satsang. And the one who turns you face-to-face—that is the true Master.
The true Master has always been maligned. We have always arranged crosses for him. We have given him poison and bullets. It is our old habit. So, Dharmeshwar, do not be bothered. My words hurt priests and politicians because I speak bluntly—as it is.
“I am mute in this market-world—
a great misfit am I.
It is a childish world:
cry and you get milk—
but how will the capital of the inner
ever earn its interest?
These are the times of orders and authority—
how can I be a battle-cry?
I am only a sigh.
In a golden cage
a pet parrot dozes,
on a patted back
a puppet sways.
Here, life’s religion is ‘Yes, sir’—
how shall I be beloved,
I who speak two-edged truth?”
Speaking bluntly brings difficulty—and I must speak. I can only say what is—without a grain of deviation. I will say what is. You too hear what is, and drop your worry.
Birth and death, happiness and sorrow, come and go; truth abides—truth is eternal. They crucified Jesus, but truth was not crucified. They crucified Jesus—and truth sat upon the throne. So do not be sad, or troubled, or angry. Do not get into useless wrangles with them. Let them do their work; you do yours. Do not waste your energy in quarrels. I tell my sannyasins again and again: do not get into futile disputes. Your energy will get entangled and you will lose. Let people say what they want. You walk your path; sing your song. Some courageous ones who love the song will join you. Some connoisseurs of rasa, lovers of taste, will join you. The company of those few is enough.
Life is burnished by struggle, made bright. Truth must pass through great touchstones—and it can. Falsehood fears the touchstone; truth invites it. So I am saying what I have to say—aloud. You too let the resonance of your life resound. Do not hide; do not conceal. Let there be proclamation.
Jesus said: Climb the rooftops and shout what you have known. I say the same: climb the rooftops and shout what you have known. Some will be connoisseurs, some lovers, some intoxicated ones—your call will draw them; they will join you. The caravan has set out. Do not get entangled with this and that, with side issues. Keep calling out—perhaps some stuck on the banks will come along.
And do not be angry with those who oppose; their opposition too is natural. The worn-out will oppose the new; the dead will oppose life; untruth will oppose truth. Whenever a ray of truth descends, all the forces of darkness gather—because their very life is in danger. So whatever is happening is right. Accept it. And remember: God has very strange ways of working—he even gets his work done through opposition!
Enough for today.