Koplen Phir Phoot Aayeen #8

The very meaning of a satguru is this: in whose presence, in whose satsang, a disciple slowly melts and disappears. The satguru is the disciple’s death. Therefore only one who has the courage to dissolve deserves to be a disciple.

And even after dissolving, something remains. In truth, only what remains after you dissolve is worth preserving. What vanishes ought to vanish. There is much rubbish inside a person, and people mistake that rubbish for their being. The diamonds are lost and life passes in the mud. What you call your personality is not you; and what you truly are, you have no acquaintance with. Until the old identity is broken, there is no way for a new knowing to arise.

In this world a satguru is the most dangerous person. If by chance you meet one, run as fast as you can; don’t even look back. Yes—if you have courage, thirst, a quest, an obstinate passion to know who you are and why you are, then hold the feet of the satguru and don’t let go.

This small question—“May I ask a question?”—is not improper, but the master’s reply hides the answer. As long as the questioner is there, where will you find the listener? And as long as crowds of questions fill you, where will you find that silence, that peace, which becomes the answer?

There are gurus in this world—more than enough. Whether you ask or not, they are after you to give you answers. Knowledge is stuffed into every child by force. There is no greater injustice. It is like pouring water down your throat when you are not thirsty, cramming food into you when you are not hungry.

Every child is born like a clear sky. But parents are in a hurry, religious teachers are in a hurry, neighbors are in a hurry, lest that clear sky remain empty. Fill it up with scriptures and scriptural sayings of which you have no experience. What your fathers and grandfathers imposed on you, you impose on your children. Thus, generation after generation, diseases and false knowledge keep sliding along. By “false” I mean: whatever is not your own experience is false. You may have read a thousand books on love and heard a thousand love songs, but if love has never surged in your heart and intoxicated your eyes, then whatever you say may sound true, yet it is lifeless, dead. Better to be ignorant than to be falsely knowledgeable.

It is difficult to find a satguru. Gurus come cheap: look for one, a thousand appear; don’t even look, they come chasing you. But a satguru means a thirst has arisen in you—such a thirst that you are ready to give even your life to quench it.

So when the disciple asked, “May I ask a question?” the master said: Why go needlessly looking for wounds? Each of my words will pierce you like an arrow. Your asking is the beginning of your dying. If you have courage, then ask. I will not give you prefabricated answers. I will only show you the path where all the rubbish falls away, where borrowed knowledge drops, where egos and titles and reputations turn to dust—where one day nothing remains of you but a pure emptiness.

But that is only half the story. From one side you become a zero; from the other, something whole begins to blossom within you. Here wounds are made; there flowers begin to bloom. But wounds come first, flowers later. And the satguru did not speak of flowers, because we are so greedy we would even accept wounds in the hope of flowers. If, out of greed, you accept the wounds, the flowers will not bloom. Therefore he said only: why go looking for wounds in vain?

With a satguru, questioning and questioning leads only to your dissolving. And when not a single question remains in you, when all drop away, then in that silence the lotuses that bloom carry an eternal fragrance. That is the fragrance of your life; that is the meaning of your being. If you miss it, you merely get pushed around and live futilely. You think you have lived—you have not. I have heard: many people realize only at the time of dying, “Ah! We were alive too!”—but by then it is too late.

Look closely at your life. What is in it? No joy, no music, no stars, no flowers, no wings with which you could fly the sky. Bumping along in sleep, collecting useless junk—because others are doing the same. People never ask why they are doing what they do. If you ask yourself, you will get only one answer: because everyone else is doing it.

I once enrolled in a university and needed a scholarship. Instead of taking the long route, I went straight to the vice-chancellor’s office. He said, “This is not proper. Submit your application where it should be submitted and in due course you will get a reply.”

I said, “In the end, you decide—why waste time? So I have come straight to you. Here is the application. I am not asking you to accept it; do as you wish. I am eligible; it is all written here. And if tomorrow someone more deserving appears, just inform me; I will return the scholarship. What is the problem?”

He felt the boy was a bit strange. Before he could say anything, I sat comfortably on a chair. He said, “This is not right.”

I said, “You are at fault, not I. I was standing all this while and you were seated. You should have asked me to sit. You say nothing, the chair says nothing, and there is no one else in sight. Compelled, I had to decide for myself—I sat.”

He said, “You seem a strange man. May I ask why you have grown a beard?”

I said, “Now we can talk. Now you are in my loop; the scholarship will get decided.”

He was an old man, a former professor of history at Oxford who, after retiring, had become vice-chancellor of that Indian university. I asked him, “This is the limit! If I were to ask you why you shave, that would be meaningful. You ask me why I grow a beard? I don’t grow it—the beard grows. I return the question to you: why do you cut it? What happened to your beard and mustache?”

He said, “That is difficult—but you are right. The beard grows by itself; I cut it—twice a day. But why I cut it, I have never thought. Everyone cuts it, so I do too.”

I said, “That is hardly a thoughtful answer. There is a crowd of fools in the world, and you are following that crowd. And because I have not followed them, you question me. Now, don’t touch your beard again. I will come every day to check. And think a little: if women started growing beards and mustaches, or bought false mustaches at the Ram Leela fair and stuck on beards, would they look beautiful? And you, without effort, morning and evening shave your beard and mustache—doing just what a woman would do by growing them.”

The old man said, “Forgive me. The scholarship is granted to you, but don’t come every day. And in this old age don’t make me grow a beard. Because right now only you will ask; if I grow a beard and mustache, the entire university will ask what has happened, why I am growing them. Don’t land me in trouble.”

But he had been struck. He never again shaved. The whole university kept asking, and he would say, “Ask that boy—the whole secret he knows.”

All around there are thousands of people, and you are following them. Your personality is constructed out of that following—and that personality you take to be your soul.

The satguru’s first work is to strip off that sheet. To make you naked. To bring you to where there is no stain upon you—to make you as you were born: empty, innocent, a zero.

Only the Sufis have a book that may be called a scripture; no one else. But nothing is written in it. The book is empty; the pages are blank. And the Sufis preserve it with great care.

Do not imagine that by questioning a satguru you will become a Mount Gaurishankar—a towering mountain—of answers. By questioning a satguru you will slowly become a blank book. And the day you become a blank book, know that your first meeting with existence has happened. Know that the curtain has fallen from your eyes, the darkness has scattered, light has appeared, dawn has come.

But it is painful. Because the one we take to be our soul—when that breaks, when its limbs are cut off, it hurts. The shattering of the ego—there is no wound greater. So the satguru rightly says: why are you needlessly arranging to be wounded? Don’t blame me later. Once I take up the work, I will complete it.

If there were only one question, it would be fine. In everyone there is a whole queue of questions. One drops, another appears; then a third. And until all questions are finished, the lamp of knowing does not light within you.

Therefore people have been very pleased with gurus; because gurus maintain and groom your personality, decorate it, embellish it. But they have been very angry with satgurus. Whether it is Socrates, Jesus, or Al-Hillaj Mansoor—crowds have never been pleased with such people. Yes, the few who gathered courage—divine light spread through their lives. But very few possess such courage. Most ask questions so you will strengthen their ready-made answers—say what they already believe, pat their backs. Thus a Jain goes to a Jain guru; he does not go to a Sufi fakir, because there his back will not be patted; there the answers he is used to will not be given. A Hindu goes to a Hindu guru; a Muslim to a Muslim teacher. Why? You want to hear something that consoles you, that makes the mind feel, “We are fine; where and as we are is enough; there is nowhere else to go, nothing else to become; we have arrived.”

I had a friend who was a “doctor.” He had opened a very large clinic. There was no need for such a large clinic. His office was at the back, and a patient had to pass through his entire clinic and laboratory to reach him. His laboratory was worth seeing. He had arranged everything exquisitely. If he had to take your pulse, he would not do it the old way. You would have to lie on a table moved by electric buttons. Above you hung bottles of colored water that meant nothing. A band was strapped to your wrist, a wire pressed on your pulse under the band, and that wire would make the colored liquids in the bottles jiggle. You lay below watching, thinking—this is a doctor! Your chest was not examined with a stethoscope; there was another arrangement. He had made grand arrangements.

I asked him, “What madness is all this?”

He said, “Not madness. By the time patients reach my office, they are half cured. Trust arises that the treatment is not by a small doctor; the doctor is big, scientific.”

And the truth was he didn’t even have a medical certificate. He had never set foot in a medical school. But these antics! Everything ran on electricity. Patients were slid electrically from one place to another; doors opened and closed electrically; chairs slid electrically. And his fee was at least ten times any other doctor’s. What cost twenty-five rupees elsewhere cost two hundred and fifty with him.

I said, “This is a bit much. You are spreading an unnecessary show, a conjuring trick. A pulse can be read more conveniently by hand. A stethoscope can easily hear the heartbeat. There is no need for such vast arrangements. Nor for this electrical web, and opening and closing doors, and sliding chairs. And then a fee of two hundred and fifty rupees!”

He said, “You don’t understand. The higher the fee, the sooner the patients get well. A large fee convinces them they have reached the right place; the greatest doctor is treating them.”

And he cured hundreds of patients—so you cannot even say he was wrong. He cured those who had defeated other doctors. Patients who were fond of being ill—who could not live without being patients—were also cured by his tricks.

But in the end he was caught, because he had no certificate. The day he was caught, I was returning from the university. The police had surrounded his clinic. I wanted to go inside; they said, “You cannot go in today. This man is a swindler. These degrees are fake.”

I said, “You look at degrees, you look at fraud—you do not look at the fact that patients whom other doctors could not cure, this poor man cured. If there is no certificate, so what? Are certificates valuable to you? Are the lives of the hundreds he saved not valuable at all?”

But the law is the law. That doctor served a sentence in jail. His entire setup lies useless.

Man has a great weakness: he wants someone to tell him, “You are perfectly fine. You need do nothing more.” And such people are found. They hand you small, easy practices: sit at home and repeat a rosary for ten minutes daily and heaven is yours; go to church every Sunday, and on Judgment Day when Jesus identifies the church-goers before God, they will be taken to heaven and the rest hurled into the dark abyss of hell forever. Cheap recipes. Going to church for an hour in the morning is not bad; a little gossip happens too. No one listens to what the priest says; nor does the priest care whether anyone listens. He has never attentively understood what he says; he has no experience of it.

I have heard: in a church the richest man in the village naturally sat in the front. He was old and brought his grandson, who sat beside him. Morning hour, serene church surroundings, cool breeze—there is no better chance to nap. And the priest’s same old babble—sleep comes even quicker. They say those with insomnia should go to hear the Ramayana, the Gita, the Bible: the boredom itself brings sleep. The same Rama, the same Sita, the same Hanuman, the same hocus-pocus—you already know what is going to happen.

The old man would doze happily. Dozing would be fine, but he also snored—snoring is a nuisance. Two or three times the priest told him, “Sir, please sleep comfortably—no harm. But your snores wake others. People complain—it is too much: we cannot sleep at home, and cannot sleep in church either; and this old man is always here.” But if snores come, what can one do? As soon as sleep comes, the snoring starts. Finally the priest devised a trick with the boy who came with him: “Look, four annas are yours for sure. Don’t let your grandfather sleep. As soon as you see him nodding off, jab him. Keep him awake.”

The boy said, “Fine. Four annas cash, in advance. These days one never knows—why work an hour and then get nothing?”

Taking the advance, he kept the old man awake that day. The old man said several times, “What has happened to you? You never did this before. For years you have come with me. Suddenly you have become religious or what? Sit quietly!” But as soon as the old man began to doze, he would poke him. On the way home the old man asked, “Tell me truly—what is the matter? Why are you poking me?”

He said, “Why hide it? It’s business. The priest agreed to give four annas. I took the advance.”

The old man said, “Fool! Good-for-nothing! My grandson—and such a rotten trade? I will give you eight annas. But don’t interfere with my sleep.”

He said, “Cash, in advance.”

The priest was very pleased that day because the old man did not snore. The people were peaceful. They too slept pleasantly. The sermon went well; everything was harmonious. But the next Sunday the priest signaled to the boy many times; the boy didn’t prod, and the old man snored. “This boy seems dishonest—he even took the four annas in advance,” thought the priest. After the service he took the boy aside and said, “Hey, have you forgotten?”

He said, “I haven’t forgotten. Grandfather has promised eight annas—cash. I have already taken it. Business is business. From now on, the rate is one rupee—if you have the courage.”

The priest said, “You are a great troublemaker. In this way we will be ruined. Your grandfather is rich; we are poor priests; you will eat up our entire salary just keeping the old man awake.”

The boy said, “As you wish. But remember: until now only the old man snored; next time I will snore too. I am no longer naive or a minor; now I also understand. You will have to give the rupee. Because the old man snores in sleep; I will snore wide awake—and so loudly that not a single person in the whole church will be able to sleep.”

People go to churches, temples, mosques; they bathe in the Ganges. If they cannot go to the Ganges, they pour a mug of water over themselves at home—“Har-har Gange!” Amazing people! Whom they are deceiving, they do not know. Not even the hair on their head gets properly wet, and they chant “Har-har Gange!”

These so-called widespread religions—their gurus, their pundits, their priests—do not let you change; they merely add some little trick to what you already are, something that costs nothing. And the rewards are huge—endless enjoyment in heaven.

A satguru is one who snatches away all your consolations. Let this be your touchstone: the one who takes away all your consolations; who tells you that bathing in the Ganges does not make you pure—only the Ganges is polluted; that you may chant rosaries, recite mantras, perform rituals, hire people to perform them—because the well-to-do build temples in their houses; the priest comes, rings the bell, hastily performs the worship—because he has many more places to do the same; there is not only one temple, not only one god; by performing ten or twenty-five rituals he somehow keeps his boat afloat. And you never even think that if you pay someone to worship on your behalf, any supposed merit from that worship cannot be yours. Nor can it be his, for he has already taken his fee—he has received his reward.

This is the definition of a satguru: he takes away your consolations. He creates a commotion in your chest. However deep your sleep, he shakes you. And he tells you that as you are, you are wrong—although within you is hidden what is true, what is eternal.

But this upper sheet—this “Ram-name sheet.” What entertainments! People are draped in sheets printed all over with “Ram Ram.” Kabir forgot! On his sheet the name of Ram was not printed—he made a mistake. He must be wandering even now. All his life he sang, “With great care I wore the sheet; just as it was, I returned it. Finely, finely woven, the sheet.” But where is the name of Ram? These people are cleverer than Kabir; they wear sheets printed in the press with the name of Ram. They roam about in bliss, carefree—no fear at all. Armor donned—Ram will protect.

If a religion is offering you cheap methods, beware of such a religion. It is protecting your sicknesses; it cannot give you samadhi. A satguru is one who gives you samadhi. And samadhi means a state of consciousness where there is neither question nor answer—only silence, stillness; a fragrance which, once it touches your awareness, keeps stirring within; a current of sweetness—rasa, raso vai sah—whose taste is felt in every pore.

Only a little courage is needed. How much courage does it take to drop garbage? And if by dropping garbage diamonds begin to rain, how much courage is needed? Only the first step requires courage, because the first step is the hardest, most difficult. The diamonds are not yet in sight, and the garbage you have been cherishing as diamonds is slipping from your hands. In that interval—when the nonessential is leaving and the essential has not yet arrived—in that very interval the satguru’s feet are of use: they are support, trust, assurance. In those moments, just a little courage—and if you have loved a satguru, there will be no lack of courage. His love itself will become the boat. And that small interval—when the futile drops away and the meaningful arrives—will pass as though it had never been.

The body will perish anyway. If it perishes on the path of love, there is no greater good fortune. The body will grow old and decrepit, but if it can kindle even a ray of joy in a few lives, blessed be. It makes no difference whether people will change after listening to me or not. With the experience of truth, compassion arrives like its shadow, saying: whether anyone changes or not, at least let your call be heard. Let there be no blame upon you that you did not call out. Let no one be able to say that you remained silent.

I have no need of the body now. My journey is complete—completed long ago. What had to be known is known; what had to be attained is attained. There is nothing beyond it. In these few intervening days—until the body drops of its own accord—if, in these few days, lamps can be lit in some lives and smiles can appear on some faces… And lamps are being lit in some lives, and smiles are appearing. On some feet there are ankle-bells, and on some lips a flute. Those who want to erase me are troubling themselves in vain; I will disappear anyway. Who remains here forever?

But the efforts of those who want to efface me are perhaps also a law of nature and destiny: the harder they try to erase me, the more forcefully some people’s innermost being will awaken. If I create ten enemies, one friend will also be born. I count the friends; why worry about the enemies! And I have created enough friends—perhaps as never before. Buddha’s reach was confined to Bihar; Jesus’ to Judea. Socrates never even stepped outside Athens. I have given my call to the whole world. Thousands have heard that call. Millions of enemies have arisen. But I keep no account of enemies. I keep the account of my friends. And as the enemies have increased, in the same measure the strength of the friends has grown—their courage has grown, their resolve to be transformed has become stronger. And seeing that so many are ready to wipe me out, many are also ready to be wiped out for me. So there is no need for any worry.

Not for a single moment has it occurred to me that I have taken any wrong step. This body will be dropped anyway. Most drop it on the bed. Ninety-nine percent die on the bed. That is why I tell you: do not sleep on beds. There is nothing more dangerous in the world than a bed. Ninety-nine percent die there. At night, quietly slip down and sleep on the floor. Begin on the bed so that no one says anything, but in the night quietly come down—if you want to be saved. Think how many the bed has devoured. On the gallows, hardly anyone dies—the numbers are negligible. Yet you maintain great friendship with the bed and great enmity with the gallows.

The body will go; it is made to go. Whoever has come has come only to go. And this body is not going to come again. And that which is speaking through these breaths will never again speak through any other breaths. Its stop has arrived; its destination reached. This is my last life and my last journey. In these final days, to as many people as I can carry the news of life’s ultimate truth—even if I am in whatever condition. Nothing can be taken from me. If anything is to be taken, death will take it; and if someone else takes it before that, it is taken from death, not from me. I have nothing to do with it.

I am joyous, because to as many people as I have been able to speak the words of my heart, no one before has spoken. And as many as have loved me—no one has been loved so much in his lifetime. And as many as have hated me—no one has been hated so much either. I count that too as a blessing. Because those who hate me today may love me tomorrow. For hatred turning into love is not very difficult. Perhaps hatred is their way of reaching the temple of love.

A small incident comes to mind. Among the Jews there arose the Hasidic mystics. The mystic who gave birth to the Hasidic tradition—the Baal Shem—wrote his first book and sent it as a gift, by the hand of his disciple, to the greatest rabbi of the Jews, their chief priest. He told the disciple: Take this book. Give it into the chief rabbi’s own hands, no one else’s. I am sending you because I want to know his response—what he says, what expression appears on his face. Notice everything. You must return and tell me, detail by detail, without missing a thing. And I am sending you because you are my most alert disciple.

Hasidism is a revolutionary tradition. The Jewish rabbis stand for old, decayed, dead conventions. To be a Hasid one must pass through revolution; to be a Jew it is enough to be born in a Jewish home.

When the disciple arrived, the chief rabbi and his wife were sitting in the garden drinking tea. He placed the Baal Shem’s book in the rabbi’s hands. The rabbi took it and asked, Whose book is this? And the moment the disciple said, This is Baal Shem’s first book, the first collection of his sayings, sparks seemed to leap into the rabbi’s eyes; a demon seemed suddenly to appear in his face. He flung the book out onto the road beyond the garden and said, How dare you enter this house! How dare you put that filthy book into my hands! Now I will have to bathe.

The young man watched it all. Then the wife said, Don’t be so angry. You have such a large library; if that book lay in some corner there, what harm would it do? And if you had to throw it away, you could have waited until this young man had left.

The disciple returned. Baal Shem asked: What happened?

The disciple said: That the chief rabbi’s heart could ever change—there is no possibility. But his wife might change. And he narrated the whole incident.

Baal Shem laughed. He said, You are a fool. You know nothing of the psychology of man. And if you don’t trust my word, go back. The rabbi will have picked up the book and will be reading it. And there is no possibility of the wife’s changing. In her mind there is not even hatred—love is far off. But the rabbi was provoked, swept away by feeling—my work is done. Go back. I tell you, the rabbi will be reading the book.

The young man went back and was astonished to see that the book had disappeared from the road. Peeping in, he saw the rabbi in the garden with the book in his hands, reading. The rabbi’s wife was not there.

Hatred is but love in an inverted posture—love doing a headstand. So those who love me are many; and those who hate me are far more. And I am grateful to both. For those who love me will surely drown in my flavor; and those who hate me—if not today, then tomorrow; if not tomorrow, then the day after—will pick the book up from the road and read. There is no escape for them either. By hating, they have already linked themselves to me. The link may be of displeasure, but a link is a link.

I can understand your state of mind; I can understand your love. But I want to assure you that it is on the strength of your love alone that I am alive; otherwise, for me there is no longer any reason to live. Now, when I see the light shining in your eyes, I think: All right, a little longer—perhaps a few more will enter the tavern. Perhaps a few more will remember to drink this wine. Do not worry about my body. Existence will take care of the body. You concern yourselves only with this: while I am here, make this fraternity of drunkards as large as you can. The larger this company grows, the longer I promise to remain among you.

A disciple is not made; one has to become a disciple. When you love someone, do you first ask, do you seek permission? Love happens. Love obeys no command, no permission, no method, no ordinance. What is discipleship? It is the highest, deepest name for love. If you want to love me, how can I stop you? If tears fall in love for me, how can I stop them? And if you wish to plunge into what I call meditation, how can I hinder you? One who is to be a disciple cannot be stopped by anyone. That is why I have dropped the formality of “making” disciples—because now I want only those who are coming toward me from their own being, for no other reason. Now the whole responsibility is yours.

Just as in the first grade we teach children: aa for aam (mango), ga for Ganesh. It used to be Ganesh; now it is ga for gadha—donkey. This is a secular state; the name of Ganesh is not quite proper in the textbook. But ga has nothing to do with Ganesh or with a donkey. To teach the child, though—because the child has more interest in the donkey or in Ganesh; in the letter ga itself he feels no juice. Slowly, slowly, the donkey will be forgotten, Ganesh will be forgotten; only ga will remain—and it is ga that will be of use.

If, even by the time you reach the university, every time you read you must first mutter, “aa for aam, ga for gadha,” then that’s the end of education. You wouldn’t be able to read even a single sentence to the end—and after reading it you wouldn’t be able to understand what it means, because who knows how many donkeys, how many Ganeshes, how many mangoes would be mixed into it!

In little children’s books there are pictures—colorful, big pictures—and tiny letters. As you move to higher classes, the pictures grow smaller and the letters increase. Gradually the pictures disappear; only letters remain. In a university classroom there are no pictures—only letters.

Our word for letter, akshar, is very lovely. It means: that which never perishes. For Ganesh perishes, donkeys perish, but the akshar remains. It is not kshara; it does not decay.

So when I had to begin, I gave sannyas; I “made” disciples. But how long to keep dragging donkeys and Ganeshes—and how long to keep hauling mangoes and tamarinds? Now sannyas has come of age. The formalities are no longer of special importance. If your love is there, then be a disciple—there is nothing even to say about it, no need to inform anyone. If your heart’s feeling is there, then take sannyas. Now the entire responsibility is yours. This is the mark of maturity. How long should I walk holding your hand? Before my hand slips from yours, I have already let it go—so that you may stand and walk on your own feet, with your own hands, in your own responsibility.

No, there is no need for you to hold back from being a disciple. Nor can anyone prevent you from taking sannyas. But now it is solely your decision, your inner thirst, your inner call. I am with you. My blessings are with you.

But I will no longer persuade you to become a sannyasin; nor will I persuade you to meditate. Now I will only explain what meditation is. If from that alone a thirst arises within you, then meditate. I will no longer command you to love. I will only give the meaning of love—and leave everything to you. If, even after hearing the unique, mysterious tale of love, no song arises in the beat of your heart, then even an order will do nothing. And if a song does arise, then it is not a matter of bargaining or give-and-take.

You can be a disciple, you can meditate, you can take sannyas, you can be established in samadhi, you can attain that supreme treasure of life which we have called moksha. But now all this you have to do. The days of someone pushing you from behind are over. Now you are utterly free. Your will, your whim, your rejoicing—these alone are decisive.

The question is important. Yes, I do say: stay where you are; do what you are doing. But I am nowhere, and I have nothing to do. So I go on running here and there. Because if I sit idle you will be annoyed: “What are you doing, Maharaj!”

I have no house, no land, not even an inch of space to stand on. So I keep moving about. For a little while I persuade myself, “This is my home.” In this way, across the whole earth, many homes are mine. In this way, across the whole earth, many countries are mine.

What do you intend—that I should drive the sunlight out altogether?

No, I will soon be off here and there again. After all, others too have their work to do. And you also have your work to do. If I stay here for long it won’t be right; you will drop your work and remain with me. A little while here, a little while there, a little while elsewhere. Wherever I am, there is a crowd; wherever I am, there are lovers.

If I stay in one place, I worry that it may become a hindrance to someone. One who has not an inch of land, not a penny to his name, whose clothes don’t even have a pocket to keep anything—such a person somehow manages by putting his hand into someone else’s pocket. That too is a way of living: the hand is mine, the pocket someone else’s. But not for long—then someone else’s pocket, then someone else’s pocket.

Thank you.