Everybody’s Birthright, Nobody’s Copyright Meditation

It is saying that blissfulness is always young. The body may become old, the body may die, but bliss-fulness never dies. It never becomes old -- how can it die? It is impossible. Death never happens to blissfulness. In fact blissfulness is not part of time at all. Anything that is part of time is bound to become old sooner or later, because time always becomes past. It is always on the way towards the past. But bliss is part of eternity. So is now part of eternity. What I call meditation is nothing but being utterly herenow, putting the past aside, dropping all dreams of the future, abiding in the moment... and suddenly, the spring bursts forth, suddenly there are flowers and flowers in your being. Suddenly life has taken a quantum leap, from time to eternity, from the physical to the metaphysical, from the outer to the inner.

Meditation is the only way to be acquainted with it. Meditation is nothing but the process of turning in. We are looking outside, we have become focussed. We have to learn to look in. We have to relax. Our muscles have become tense, have become rigid; they have to be made flexible. Our necks are paralysed because for lives we have been looking outside; hence we have lost he capacity to turn in. Otherwise it is a simple process. Meditation is not anything difficult, it is very simple. Even a child can do it. A child can do it more easily than a grown-up person because the grown-up person becomes more fixated on the outside, he becomes more obsessed with the outside. By becoming a sannyasin you are taking a decisive step in your life.

He would not like to know the truth through others, he would like to experience it himself -- because unless you drink the water your thirst is not going to be quenched. Buddha may have drunk the whole Ganges -- that is not going to make any difference to you. Just a glass of water will do for you but you have to drink it. But people are so foolish that they go on worshipping Buddha and Krishna and Christ, and hoping that their thirst will be quenched they go on worshipping scriptures -- Dhammapada, Koran, Bible. It is like a thirsty man worshipping a book of chemistry which explain that water is H2O. You can go on worshipping the book; you will remain thirsty. You are simply proving yourself silly and nothing else. Or you can go on repeating the mantra "H2O, H2O, H2O...

So my sannyas can be reduced to a simple definition: non-identification with any role you are playing, whatsoever it is. One can be a doctor or a businessman, one can be an engineer or a painter -- whatsoever role you are playing, remember it is a play. Don't get serious about it. Success and failure are the same when it is a play. Whether you succeed or fail does not matter; what matters is that you remained alert all the time. Success comes, you watch it; failure comes, you watch it. Life is there, you watch it; death comes, you watch it. Your whole work is to remain a witness to all that happens around you, within and without. This is the foundation for my sannyas. And the second thing to remember is: this witnessing is possible only if you slowly move into meditation.

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been copy-typed. It is for reference purposes only.] Sannyas is a decision to wake up, whatsoever the risk. And whatsoever the cost. Once you have become absolutely decisive. It is not difficult. But it all depends on you. I can help. I can show the way. But you have to follow it. The Buddhas can only show the way. Sannyas is a deep, profound art of acting in the world. The world is a great drama, it is a vast stage, and you are only playing a role. There is no need to be serious about it. The role may be that of a beggar or that of an emperor; a role is a role -- it makes no difference what role you are playing.