Piv Piv Lagi Pyas #6

Zen masters use the stick, but not to frighten you. Seeing a stick in the master’s hand, you may feel fear. That is your interpretation; that is your mistake.

You become afraid because in the stick you have always only seen fear—never the master’s love, never his compassion. Toward that you are blind; toward that your heart has no sensitivity.

The master lifts the stick out of compassion—not to frighten you, but to awaken you. He even strikes—not to destroy you, but to create you. He hits so that he can bring you to life. But to you it will feel like fear. You are afraid of everything, because fear is within you. Until the fear within dissolves, you will not be able to understand the master’s compassion; even his compassion will seem frightening.

Often people ask me: Zen masters have wielded the stick, but in India—Jain, Buddhist, Hindu masters—did not. Why? The only reason is that the compassion of the Zen master is greater than that of your masters. Indian gurus hold an idea of remaining neutral. Their approach is to cultivate a certain detachment toward you: if you can take the benefit, take it; if you cannot, that’s your choice. But in the Indian tradition the guru will not go beyond his limits to benefit you; he remains indifferent.

There is a lack of compassion there, for compassion cannot be gloomy, nor can it be indifferent. Compassion will step onto your path; it will pull you. If you are asleep, it will shake you.

Of course, in your sleep it may seem, “He broke my dream. It was so sweet!” In sleep it may seem, “This man is wicked, violent. He ruined my pleasant sleep; he startled me. In the dream there was light; on waking the night seems dark. Whatever little light there was in the dream, this man snuffed it out and left me in this pitch-dark night.”

This is your perspective because you still have no taste for awakening. You do not yet know what awakening is. You do not even know that the darkness of waking is a million times more valuable than the light of a dream—because it is true. Value belongs to truth. Zen masters have raised the stick not to frighten you, but to awaken you.

And it is true that I too have struck you many times—not so grossly as to break your head, but subtle enough to break your ego; not so grossly as to hurt your body, but subtle enough to pierce within and reach your heart like an arrow. Certainly I have wielded those sticks.

But had they really landed, this question would not arise. They did not land. On my side the effort continued; on your side the resistance continued. It can happen that someone shakes you and tries to rouse you, yet you do not wake up. You insist and sink into deeper sleep. Even if you wake, you keep your eyes closed—stubbornly determined to keep them shut, as if sworn not to awaken. Then even shaking cannot wake you. A person who is merely asleep can be awakened, but one who is determined to remain asleep—he is in a way already awake, only pretending to sleep out of ego—such a one is very hard to raise.

It is true: I have struck you, but the blows did not reach you. The day they do, they will no longer be sticks. That day you will find the stick has vanished; a shower of compassion will descend upon you. What till yesterday pricked like a thorn will suddenly become a flower. That day the master’s stick will feel like a shower of blossoms upon you. Then this question would not arise.

You too must be ready—expose yourself a little—so the stick can land on your vital spot. I strike you every day, and every day you return after applying ointments and bandages. There you are again. I startle you a little; you turn over and go back to sleep.

Much time has been spent like this, and no one has much time in hand. No one knows whether there will be a tomorrow. So do not trust tomorrow too much. Use today. If you are to awaken, awaken today; do not postpone it.

Yet for petty matters man postpones the vast. The shop, the marketplace—he postpones God, postpones liberation. He has to buy salt, oil, firewood—and drops nirvana for that.

In a small school it happened: the teacher asked the children, “Those who want to go to heaven, raise your hands.” All raised their hands except one. The teacher was puzzled. He asked, “Those who want to go to hell, raise your hands.” No one raised a hand, not even the one who had kept his hand down for heaven. The teacher asked him, “What do you want? You don’t want heaven, you don’t want hell—where do you want to go?” He said, “My difficulty is that my mother told me when I left home: as soon as school is over, come straight home.”

You are ready to leave even heaven because some small worldly thing is pending that you must finish—“As soon as school is over, go straight home!”

And if you were utterly asleep, even that would be okay; those utterly asleep have not come here at all. In your sleep a slight glimmer has begun. Your sleep is no longer deep. Just a little courage, a little daring and cooperation—and you will awaken.

By sleeping, no one has ever gained anything—only lost. In awakening, everything is found; nothing remains yet to be gained.

This is a very cheap bargain: you lose nothing and gain all. Still you do not gather the courage. The arithmetic is simple.

When my stick falls on your head, do not defend yourself; let it fall. And when an arrow strikes your heart, do not obstruct it; let it pierce through. Stop your ointments and bandages. Be ready to die, for that is rebirth. That is the secret of resurrection.

Two things. First: if the poet is of inborn genius, then no other practice is needed. But if he is merely a rhymester—who, by effort and arrangement and rule-books, somehow composes verse; who may be a poet by craft but not by life and soul—then meditation will be needed.

By “genius” I mean a native quickening. It means that across countless lifetimes the longing for beauty, the experience of beauty, the ways of drinking beauty in infinite forms have ripened to a point where the bowl is full. Now the bowl is so full it overflows; that overflow is poetry in a born genius.

Rabindranath or Khalil Gibran are poets of that order. Even had they not written, they would still have been poets. Buddha wrote no poetry, yet Buddha is a poet. There is poetry in his rising and in his sitting; each of his gestures is a poem; the flutter of his eyelid is an epic. Before the flutter of his eyelid even Kalidasa would look pale. In the sweetness of his movements the greatest poets would be defeated. His very life is poetry.

A born poet need not write at all. In his very being, in every pore, poetry is soaked. When he speaks, he speaks poetry. When he is silent, his silence is poetry.

Many such born poets never wrote. Jesus, Buddha, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu—no verses written; yet whatever they said is poetry, and what they did not say is poetry too. Nothing else can come from them. As a rosebush can only bring forth roses, so from them whatever issues is poetry. Some among them did sing: the seers of the Upanishads sang, the seers of the Vedas sang. They sang incomparable metres. That is secondary—whether they sang or not.

So if there is the endowment of genius, no other practice is needed. Then poetry itself is sufficient sadhana. Beauty itself becomes your truth. Beauty itself is your God; none other. Searching beauty, you reach truth. Training the song, you find the singer refined as well.

Understand this a little—it’s subtle. When the singer trains the song, not only the song is refined; the singer is refined too. When the painter paints, not only the painting is created; the painter is created alongside. Their births happen together.

Think of a woman who gives birth: from one angle you say a child is born. From another angle, the mother is born too, for she was not a mother before. Two are born that day. From one side you speak of the child; from the other, the mother is also born. Until then she was an ordinary woman. Between a woman and a mother there is a great difference. Motherhood is an experience the ordinary woman did not yet have. To be a mother is like fruit appearing on a tree; to be not a mother is like a tree that bears no fruit—barren, without flower or fruit, with a certain ache. Motherhood is a blossoming. The day the child is born, two are born—here the child, there the mother.

But the world sees only one birth, because the mother’s birth is very subtle. For it, no hospital admission seems required, no physician, no midwife. It is a subtle inner state; it happens quietly within. The woman dissolves; the mother appears. Where until yesterday there was an ordinary woman, now there is a mother—full and ripened.

When a poet trains the poem, it is not only the poem that is trained! The world will see the poem. A deeper eye will see that alongside the poem the poet is being born, the poet is being refined. The painter is being born with the painting; the sculptor with the sculpture. Whatever you do is shaping your life. Whenever you become a creator, the Divine draws near within you. The Divine’s very form is creativeness. Whenever you create, you come close to God. If you become a creator, you become divine.

To call God “the Creator” is a very sweet expression—not because it solves some philosophical riddle; it solves nothing, it only increases puzzles. For me the meaning is altogether different: the emphasis is not on God but on creativeness. It means: whoever becomes a creator becomes divine. Creativeness is not a mere attribute of God; it is God’s very nature.

Whenever you are able to bring something into being, a thrill, a joy, an ah! fills you. Unfortunate are those who never create anything in their lives, who have never made anything and never tasted the joy of making; for whom nothing of creation ever happened—no two lines of a song, no sculpture, no painting. Such people are unfortunate.

So if the doorway to beauty has opened with your very birth, then no other practice is needed. Art itself will become your meditation. By drowning in art you will find the Supreme Artist. Art will be your path.

There are three paths to the Divine. One is for the seeker of truth—meditation is his process. The second is for the seeker of beauty—art; becoming so absorbed in art that the artist disappears—that is his process. And the third is Shivam—the Auspicious. Satyam, Sundaram, Shivam.

Shivam means the Good, the Auspicious: the process of refining and sanctifying life. Call it yoga, call it tantra—its process is to refine life toward the auspicious. Slowly you make yourself pure and virginal. You drop all impurity. You become as if freshly bathed, ever bathed.

If ethics reaches its utmost height, that is the path of Shivam. You purify conduct, refine it, polish it. Polishing and polishing, one day you find you are gone; only the aura of conduct remains—only light remains, no smoke.

Or you seek beauty and are absorbed in beauty—so absorbed that you do not remain, not even your outline. Or you seek truth, and then you are absorbed in meditation.

In essence, on all three paths one principle works: absorption, total immersion, plunging in. These three paths are not really three. There are three kinds of people; the path is one. But when three kinds of people walk it, they walk in their own ways.

Buddha walks the same path that Rabindranath walks. But Buddha makes truth his focus; Rabindranath, beauty. If you ask Buddha, he will say beauty is beautiful only when it is true. If you ask Rabindranath, he will say truth is true only when it is beautiful. That much difference. Rabindranath will weigh everything on the scale of beauty; Buddha will weigh everything on the scale of truth.

Mahavira’s path is Shivam. He keeps refining pure conduct. If you ask him, he will say what is auspicious is what is true. That is why on Mahavira’s path ahimsa—nonviolence—became central, supremely central; for violence is inauspicious, nonviolence is auspicious. On Buddha’s path meditation became supremely important. The Jains gradually even forgot how to meditate, because its link to conduct was lost.

Rabindranath or Khalil Gibran—beauty, rasa, its savor!

These are the three kinds of people in the world. It is a triple confluence. But they all meet at the pilgrimage where the Divine is. There the confluence happens.

So a born, gifted poet needs no other practice. But if one is a rhymester—now understand this a little. If one is technically a poet—and it can happen that he is a big poet and deceives the whole world—he will not be able to deceive himself. And if, because he deceives the world, he comes to believe, “I am a poet,” he will fall into great delusion.

For either poetry flows from the heart’s stream of rasa, or the mind constructs it. From the heart there is creation; from the mind there is construction. The difference between construction and creation is immense.

Creation means bringing existence out of the void—where there was nothing, suddenly something descends from emptiness. You too are not there; from the void something comes down—that is poetry, true poetry. The other kind is where the mind works: you arrange, search, seat beautiful words, fit grammar and metre, set all the counts and music so that whoever looks cannot find a single mistake. But such a poem is like a corpse examined by a doctor who finds no illness. Granted there is no disease, the corpse is perfectly healthy—but a corpse.

In the world, ninety-nine out of a hundred so-called poets are rhymesters. Some of them even become very famous because their technical skill is formidable. Sometimes a real poet looks pale beside them, because the real poet does not manage to follow all the rules of grammar and metre; he cannot remain fully disciplined. Within him a current flows that breaks dams, spills beyond bounds. He is a river in flood; she does not obey rules. The current comes with such force that the poet himself is swept away—who will hold onto rules then!

But the fake poet binds himself to rules. He arranges everything to the last count. In his verse you will not find mistakes—and you will not find poetry. All the rules are kept, but there is no life. A decorated corpse is laid out—deceivingly lifelike. Plastic flowers that never wither.

Such people often deceive many, for what recognition of poetry does the ordinary person have? What relation does he have with poetry? But however important such men may become, their importance does not last long; it fades. Like shooting stars they flash one night and vanish. They cannot be the pole star. If your poetry is of that order—rhyming, contrived, constructed by you—then you will need meditation. Such poetry will not suffice. In truth it is not poetry at all; it is a contrivance, not a happening.

When the English poet Coleridge died, forty thousand unfinished poems were found in his house. In his lifetime he completed only seven. Friends told him hundreds of times: “On the strength of seven poems you have become a great poet; if you complete all these, no one in any language will rival you.”

But Coleridge would say, “Completion is not in my hands. Even these seven I did not complete—otherwise I would have completed all forty thousand. They descended. As much as descends, that much I write. I am only a medium. Sometimes three lines descend; I write three. The fourth does not descend—what can I do? I wait; sometimes after two or four years the fourth link suddenly comes; then I write it. I do not add from my side. I could add a fourth—three are ready, I could tack on a fourth and complete the stanza—but then it would be mine, and it would look like a patch. It would not have come from the Divine.”

It so happened that when Rabindranath translated Gitanjali into English, he was doubtful. Poetry is born only in one’s mother tongue; in another’s language one has to arrange—it cannot be fully spontaneous. So he showed his translation to C. F. Andrews. Andrews said, “All is fine, except for four places where there are grammatical mistakes.” Andrews was a scholar, a master of language. Rabindranath gratefully accepted the corrections and fixed those four places.

Later in London, the great English poet W. B. Yeats had invited a small circle of friends—a gathering of poets to hear Rabindranath. Rabindranath read his poems. At those very four places Yeats said, “Everywhere else the river flows well, but at four places it feels as if something obstructs it—a rock in the way.”

Rabindranath was startled, for no one but he knew that at four places C. F. Andrews’s hand had intervened. Still he asked, “Which four places?” Yeats pointed out exactly those four. He said, “Here there is no poetry. The language is there—the mathematics tally, the grammar is correct—but the current of poetry breaks.” So Rabindranath showed the original words he had used. Yeats said, “These are right. There is a fault of language, but the poetry flows simply. Let it be! Poetry does not care for language; language follows poetry.”

So if you are merely skilled at the mathematics of verse, it will not be enough, because you will not be able to dissolve in it. It will not become the full flowering of your life-breath. Your whole being will not be able to dance in it. You will remain standing apart; your poem will pass without touching you. No bathing will happen—so how will meditation happen? Then you will have to meditate separately.

Therefore a true poet should look within and ask: is my poetry my own contrivance? Often it is so. In youth everyone writes verse. Who cannot rhyme? Some are freed of the fuss, some get entangled.

In my village when I was small, there were many “poets.” A wind of poetry had arisen; in every house poetry was happening. Every seven or eight days there was a kavi-sammelan in the village. Whoever could string a few rhymes also began to write—when all were becoming poets, who would be left behind! And there was great applause, for villagers gathered to listen. They knew not the ABC of poetry; the fun was in rhyming, and rhyme was in high gear.

Slowly they all disappeared as poets. When I went back recently I inquired: those fifteen or twenty village poets—where are they now? All are busy with salt, oil, and firewood—the daily grind. Not one poet remained. Where did they go? There wasn’t a poet among them. It was a surge of youth.

Poetry too is a surge of youth. When sprouts of love first appear in your heart, you feel you too can write poetry; you feel you cannot live without it; you too want to sing.

But that humming is bathroom humming—don’t bring it outside. Not all are poets, nor meant to be. Hum in your house; if some woman of yours is willing to listen, recite to her—but don’t bring it out. It is rhyming. And public praise can sometimes trap you.

I have heard of a poet who, at the end of his life, told someone, “I got into great entanglement through these poems. My life was ruined in them. When I began I thought I was a poet; it took ten years to understand that I was not.” His friend asked, “If you understood you were not, why didn’t you stop?” He said, “By then I had become quite famous; to stop became difficult. My ego was at stake. My whole life got wasted.”

Often it happens that by the time you see the mistake, you have gained so much prestige because of the very mistake that how can you turn back? People started considering you a poet, a great poet, a painter. Someone called you a sadhu, someone a sannyasin—these people put you in a bind. Now you cannot return.

If poetry is only rhyming—no harm in playing with words; play as you wish! But then meditation is additionally needed. Poetry alone will not do, and you will not be able to enter the Lord’s temple as a guest.

They appear incompatible; they are not. There is a very deep harmony between them. It needs a little understanding.

On the surface they seem opposed; underneath they are joined, there is an inner bridge. Understand this: in fact, if the thirst is very deep, patience will also be very deep. Because a very deep thirst itself means a very deep trust. When you are filled with an intense longing for the divine, such longing can exist only if you trust that the divine is. Otherwise how could the thirst be deep?

If you have even a small doubt about the existence of the divine, the thirst will not be there—or it will be pasted on from the outside. It will not be real; your life-breath will not be in it. It will be intellectual, not total. One part will say, All right, search—perhaps it is! But the rest will keep saying, You are getting into unnecessary trouble.

Then you will not be able to wait even for a moment. If you are told to sit even for an hour, that opposing part which says, I don’t trust, will say, Why are you wasting time? This hour has gone to waste. In this time how many notes could have been earned, how much could have been added to the bank balance, what all could you have accomplished! Why sit idly spoiling time?

If the thirst is deep, it simply means that trust is ultimate. Without supreme trust the thirst cannot be deep. “God is”—this is a very profound conviction. And such conviction is no longer mere belief; it has become the very breathing of your being. As the breath goes out and comes in, the sense of the divine keeps vibrating within.

Then you will be able to wait as long as it takes. Then you will say, Even if I have to sit for lifetimes, I will never complain that it has been too long. “Too long” contains a complaint. And in “too long” there is the feeling: I have been waiting so long. Are you even worthy enough that I should wait so long for you? An hour was fine, two hours fine; days have passed, months have passed, lifetimes have passed—are you so worthy that I should wait for you so long?

If trust in the divine arises, then there is such a sense of his worthiness that even if I wait for eternity and you finally come, it still feels as if I received it for nothing, without doing anything. What did I do? I just sat empty. I turned a rosary in my hand; I wrapped myself in the blanket of God’s name—what did I do? Sitting, I received. Then you will say, Union with the divine happened as grace, as prasad. There was no personal merit, yet it happened. It happened out of his great compassion, not out of my worthiness.

Therefore remember: there is no incompatibility between the most intense thirst and boundless patience; there is a very deep harmony. And only one whose thirst is intense can truly wait. This is the strange thing. But in your mind it happens the other way round.

There is another question which says: “My patience is boundless, but my thirst is not deep.”

If the thirst is not deep, what you are calling patience is not patience. You are in fact not asking at all—then where does the question of waiting arise? You have not asked, you have not desired, no longing has been kindled—so how can patience be? The person who has not asked can say, All right, I have plenty of patience, I can wait. In truth he has no yearning; he is neutral, indifferent. He says, It will happen when it happens. He is not concerned. He values it at two pennies whether it happens or not.

Do not mistake this indifference for patience. Patience is not apathy. Patience is not a negative state; it is very positive, very creative.

Another question says: “The thirst is very intense, but there is no patience at all.”

Then too, that “thirst” is not thirst, it is lust. You are mistaken again. Then it is your greed. Just as you want to acquire other things of the world, you also want to acquire God. As you have seized other things and clenched your fist around them, you want to show the world: Look, not only is a big car in my fist, God is too. Not only a big house, not only wealth—God also has been tied to my post; he too is enlisted in my service. Then what you are calling thirst is not thirst; it is greed, it is lust.

What is the difference between thirst and greed? In thirst, you burn and the ego melts. A moment comes when in the fire of thirst you become utterly empty. The ego melts away completely. In lust, the ego grows, becomes stronger. The more lust is gratified, the stronger the ego becomes. Thirst is the death of the ego; lust is the food of the ego. Watch this closely.

Do you perhaps want God only as a decoration for your ego? So that you can strut down the street, chest out: See, I haven’t left even God out!

People are strange. Someone loves a woman—someone has a thirst for her. But it may be that another has no thirst at all; he only wants to walk down the street with a beautiful woman on his arm so everyone can see the most beautiful woman is with him. He takes even the woman as nothing but an ornament for his ego.

There are many who bring jewelry for women—the women think the jewels are brought for them. They are mistaken. He decks the woman with ornaments; he is decking his ego. His woman is studded with diamonds. When he goes to the club, the whole world can see that his woman wears diamonds. I put them on her! Man is quite a wonder. He does not wear the jewels himself; he puts them on the woman. The woman is a peg on which he hangs his things. A beautiful woman, covered with jewels—this is all makeup for the ego. And the women merrily walk along with them—unaware. They think the necklace has been brought for them, the diamonds and pearls have been gathered for them.

Not in the least have they been gathered for them. They are for society’s eyes; through the woman the man is erecting his ego.

Do you want the divine in the same way—that he should become an ornament to your ego? If you want him like that, what you call thirst is not thirst. And then patience is impossible. Where is patience in lust? Lust is very impatient, extremely impatient. Lust says: Now, this very moment. Thirst is grave, profound. Thirst says: Whenever you come, that is soon enough. Lust says: Whenever you come, already it is too late.

Therefore it is necessary to sift all this within you. If you understand me, then when there is true thirst, true patience will also be there. With thirst, patience is inevitable. Take this as a touchstone. If only one of the two is there, something is wrong. Only when both are together should you understand that the strings are properly tuned; now the veena can sing, now from this veena music can arise in God’s hands; now the instrument is set. Just as the strings of a veena are tied to pegs at both ends, so when the strings of your veena are tied to two pegs—deep thirst and deep waiting—then know: now the veena is ready. Now music can be born.

There is not the slightest incompatibility. It looks like incompatibility to you because you find it easy to cultivate just one of the two. Either you can cultivate “thirst”—for if lust masquerades as thirst, there is no difficulty. Or you can cultivate “waiting”—if there is indifference, you do not care. Whether it happens or not, you are “patiently” waiting.

This is a very deep music, a profound rhythm arising between two opposites. On the one hand you are filled with deep thirst—such thirst that not a single moment should be lost; and at the same time you are filled with waiting, that even if I have to wait for eternity, I am willing.

How can these two go together? Thirst is yours—because of you; waiting is because of him. Waiting is because he is so vast that a demand for haste would be childish. He is so great that to say “Come now” would be ignorance, foolishness. One has to get ready, to empty one’s vessel.

Waiting because of his nature; thirst because of your own nature. Thirst because of your experience—that you have drunk from all the ghats of life and the thirst has not been quenched. You scoured all the ghats, still the thirst did not end. You emptied all the lakes, and the thirst did not end. You left no life-experience where there was even a glimmer of hope that the thirst might be quenched—wherever a dream shimmered, you went there, and returned empty-handed. The whole life proved to be a mirage—hence the thirst: Now only through you can it be quenched.

But not impatience. Because impatience means: Whether I am ready or not, you must meet me now. Patience means: As my receptivity ripens, then you will surely be there. If there is delay, it is not because of you; if there is delay, it is because of my readiness. I will kindle the thirst, nurture the receptivity, and wait. The day readiness happens, there is not a moment’s delay.

There is a saying in India: “There may be delay, but there is no darkness.” It is very precious. The delay is because of you; and there can be no darkness, because he is. Because he is, there cannot be darkness. Delay can be because of you. If there were darkness, it would have to be because of him. But existence is always willing. The day you are willing, that very day the strings meet.

Fill yourself with thirst, and fill yourself with waiting too. Master thirst and waiting together, in one rhythm. The day all sits in place, that very day you find the world has bid farewell. On all sides only the divine stands.

Certainly all ailments of the mind are born of a lack of love. But this truth has to be understood. There are three events in life that are priceless: birth, death, and love. One who understands these three has understood everything. Birth is the beginning, death is the end, love is the middle. The wave that sways between birth and death is love.

That is why love is also dangerous. One of its hands touches birth, the other touches death. Hence love has a great allure and a great fear. Its allure is the allure of life, for there is no higher experience of life. So Jesus called God love—in fact, he called love God. Its wave rises the highest; there is no wave higher. No peak rises above the peak of love. Therefore love has a wild, irresistible magnetism—because love is life. But it also carries great fear—because love is also death.

So people both want to love and want to avoid it. This is the human dilemma. With one hand you reach toward love; with the other you pull back. Where you see life, there, nearby, you glimpse death’s surge as well.

Only those who drop the opposition between life and death become capable of love—those who understand that life and death are not enemies. Death is not the end of life; it is life’s completion, its consummation. Death is not life’s foe; it is its essence, its distillation. Death does not erase life; it gives rest to a weary life. As after the day’s labor comes the night’s rest, so after life’s long labor comes death’s rest.

If there is hostility toward death in your mind, you will never be able to love—because death is threaded into love. Love is the balance of life and death, of birth and death.

So you will be drawn, and you will be afraid. You will advance, and you will not advance. You will want to, and yet not enough to jump in. You will always remain stuck, hesitant, standing on the bank—never entering love’s river.

And when you are deprived of love, a thousand diseases arise in your life. The one who misses love finds his life filling with hatred. The same energy that would have become love stagnates and becomes hatred. The one who misses love begins to flow with a constant stream of irritability and anger. The very energy that, had it flowed, would have reached the ocean, gets blocked. It becomes a puddle and rots—the current is gone.

Life means flow—an unbroken continuity, a ceaseless movement. Do not stop until the ocean itself arrives at your door. The one who is afraid of love stops. He contracts; his expansion ceases.

A person who has not known love will not know life either. For love is the middle of life. He will only drag himself along; he will not live. His life will be crippled and limping, as if paralysis has struck his very being. He moves on crutches. If you look carefully, you will find ninety-nine out of a hundred people walking on crutches—subtle crutches.

One uses the crutch of wealth. He missed love, now he loves money—because living love is risky, while loving money is not. If you love a person, there is danger—you are entering risk, beware! A person is a living phenomenon. You will change; you will not remain who you were before love. No lover remains the same after love. Love transforms from the roots; it demolishes the ego of both, it breaks both egos.

This is the quarrel among all lovers! Each wants to save his own ego. Before the other breaks my ego, I would like to break his. And he would like to break mine. Lovers are continuously trying to dominate one another. Nowhere does politics run as deep as it does between lovers: moment to moment, twenty-four hours a day—who is the master?

The beloved says, “I am the servant at your feet.” But this is not what her eyes convey. Perhaps being “the servant at your feet” is her way of being the mistress. She says, “I am at your feet,” so that you will say, “No, no—you are the queen of my heart!” If you don’t say it, she will never forgive you. The meaning was something else. If you accept literally, “Yes, indeed—you are only a servant at my feet,” she will never forgive you.

Mulla Nasruddin told his beloved, “I’ll come tomorrow evening. It’s a full moon night. Even if fire rains, even if mountains block my path, even if the whole world opposes me, I will still come. I cannot live without seeing you.” As he began to descend the stairs he added, “I will certainly come—unless it rains!”

Don’t take lovers’ words literally. Their intentions are different. Do not take their words at face value; the inner longing is something else. Perhaps Mulla wanted to hear his beloved reply, “Even if mountains stop me or fire rains, I too cannot live without seeing you tomorrow.” But she said nothing. She simply accepted it: “Right—you can’t possibly stay away without seeing me. You will have to come.” With that, the whole charm evaporated. Now if it rains, he won’t be able to come—because there are holes in his umbrella and he hasn’t had it mended yet.

Life is not what your words reveal.

Mulla Nasruddin’s wife asked him, “Will you love me forever, when I have grown old? When the body is worn, beauty has fled, spring has become a memory and only autumn remains—will you still love me?” Mulla said, “I will love you forever. Love is not something that changes! I only want to ask one thing—You won’t start looking like your mother, will you?”

Later, when they were old, one day the wife said, “You took an oath before the maulvi that in happiness or sorrow, in every condition, you would love me; but now your love is not the same.” Mulla replied, “Certainly I swore to love in happiness and sorrow—but old age was never mentioned!”

Don’t go by words. Lovers say something, not knowing why they say it. Perhaps the matter is sunk in their unconscious; even their conscious has not been informed. They themselves don’t quite understand what is happening. Yet a deep politics is in play—the urge to possess one another. In that possession lie quarrel and conflict.

So people, frightened, stop loving persons. They love things. They love money, houses, cars. They love animals—keep dogs and cats. In the West many keep dogs and cats. Loving a human being has become difficult; the dog is always fine. He plays no political tricks. Beat him—he still wags his tail. Scold him—he still wags his tail. The dog is a diplomat.

And perhaps dogs think, “How foolish humans are! Just the tail—and you can win them over. Wag the tail and their anger vanishes. No matter how many mistakes you make, all is forgiven. What fools humans are!”

But dogs have understood. They have grasped Machiavelli and Kautilya—the gist is flattery. Flatter, and become the master. They run their politics. For humans it seems convenient—no hassles. The dog always wags his tail, always stands ready to welcome.

Mulla Nasruddin said to me, “Times have changed. A bad era has come. Earlier, when I came home, my wife would appear with my slippers and the dog would bark. Now the situation is reversed—my wife barks and the dog brings the slippers.” I told him, “You are worrying for nothing. The service is the same—you’re still getting slippers, and you’re still getting barking. No need to be so upset.”

People shrink back from loving persons; then they love objects, they love animals. That is why money becomes so valuable—money is love, and safe love. In life everything is insecure; money is security. Nothing seems as stable as the strongbox. The safe seems eternal, everlasting.

The wife is here today, gone tomorrow; the husband, the same; the son is here now, and tomorrow his breath may stop. No—this is all a deception; any of these can betray you any time. A “sensible” person avoids such hassles. He loves something that will always remain. He doesn’t look at a real rose—blooms in the morning, withers by evening; not wise to love it—it will betray you by dusk; then you will weep. Better to buy plastic flowers. They will always stay with you. They will never perish. You will die, and they will still be there.

When love is lost in life, or the courage for love is lost, wrong loves are born—crutches on which you hobble. Anger, hatred, false loves surround your life; that is hell. And until you come out of it, prayer cannot arise in your life; because prayer is the cream of love. Only one who has known love…

Understand this a little. One who has not known love falls below human love—into love of animals, or of objects; lower still is love of objects. One who has known love rises—above human beings to love of the divine. And if he knows love even more deeply, he rises beyond even God—into nirvana, moksha, where no “other” remains at all.

The decline of love—and you will love dogs and cats. Decline further—and you will love possessions: cars, houses, things. The ascent of love—and you will love God. Ascend further—and even “God” dissolves; only nirvana, moksha, aloneness remains.

Prayer is the cream of love. Therefore I say: where there is no love in life, a thousand diseases arise. And more than the diseases, the very possibility of health is lost. One can endure disease if the possibility of health remains; but then only disease remains—with no provision for health.

And your religions teach you the opposite about love. They make you enemies of love. Their idea is that if you love, you will wander in the world. I tell you: if you do not love, you will wander in the world forever. If you love, you will go beyond the world.

Why? Because there is a great alchemy in love: it is both birth and death. When you enter love, you will find that life reaches its ultimate height—and death, too—simultaneously. In love you are as blossomed as never before; and in love your ego dies as never before. You dissolve as never before.

This unique happening—life’s greatest mystery—occurs in love. From one side you become vast; from the other you turn to ash. The ego is utterly annihilated. Beyond the ego, your pure, eternal, timeless nature arises in its full radiance.

One who has known love has known birth and death as well. One who has lived in love and died in love has understood life’s whole secret. Then there remains no fear of death, for he has died and seen—there is no such thing as dying. He has died and seen that he remains—and remains more condensed. He has died and seen that he is immortal.

One who has seen this in love awaits death. Because when in the small death of love he tasted such incomparable nectar, then when total death arrives—what to say!

Kabir says:
Kab mitihoon, kab bhetihoon, pooran parmanand.
When shall I be effaced, when shall I meet the complete bliss?

Having tasted a little of the flavor—just a drop—he longs for the ocean. The drop has revealed the ocean’s secret. Love has revealed God—but it is only a speck, a taste.

Kab mitihoon, kab bhetihoon, pooran parmanand.

Therefore I say: do not avoid love; transcend it. Do not push love down to the lowest rung; lift it higher. Do not run away from love—for whoever runs from love runs from God. Know love; enter into love. For when you enter love—at the threshold it appears to be love; once you are inside you will find it was the door to the divine.

Therefore Jesus is right: Love is God.

Lovelessness is hell; love is heaven.

Because the gate of life is the gate of death.

Drop the delusion that life and death are two; drop the delusion that they are separate; drop the delusion that they are opposites. Life and death are together, like the two wings of a bird; like your right and left legs. With both legs you walk. Life moves with both birth and death; they are its two legs.

So let go of the very idea that Nachiketa sat at the gate of death—he sat at the gate of life. The gate of life is the very gate of death. If you look closely, death happens every moment. It is not that death suddenly arrives one day after seventy years! In that case you have not understood life.

From the day you were born, you have been dying. Moment to moment you live, moment to moment you die. Death is like breath.

Understand it rightly: when a child is born, the first act is to take a breath in. He cannot first exhale, because there is nothing inside to exhale. So the first act is to draw the breath in. In-breath is birth. Before that the child is not alive.

Therefore doctors and the family hurry to get the child to cry, to wail, to take a breath. If there is any delay and the child has not started crying and breathing—for it is by crying that the child breathes. The lungs are filled with mucus; the gateway of breath is still closed. There is a rattling in the chest. We take that rattling for crying. In that panic and rattling the child breathes and becomes alive. If for five to seven minutes he does not breathe, he is gone.

So life—birth—begins with the inhalation. Then a man dies—this same child will die when old. What is the last act of dying? To let the breath out! It cannot be to take it in as the last act, for if you take it in, you will not die.

Birth begins with inhalation; death comes with exhalation. If this is understood, then every moment you are being born and every moment you are dying, because the breath goes in and out. When you take the breath in, you are alive; when you let it out, you die.

But it happens so swiftly that you do not notice. Hence the wise say that every moment there is birth and every moment there is death. Half the moment is birth; half the moment is death. You do not die suddenly on a single day—you are dying every day. Dying day after day, one day the scale of death becomes heavier. At the time of birth the scale of birth was heavier; at the time of death the scale of death becomes heavier.

Heavier means only this: at birth the mechanism for inhalation was strong; by death the mechanism has become slack, tired. It wants to go into rest. The five elements want to return to their sources—tired! Seventy years of running about—a great weariness. Now they want to return; then, coming again, they will be fresh.

Birth and death are not two; they are two sides of one coin, together. Wherever you are, you are seated at the gate of death. And if you understand rightly, wherever you sit, there you are Nachiketa. And from there your dialogue with Yama can begin.

A dialogue with Yama is a symbol. It means: converse with death. Relate with death. Speak a little with death. Do not be afraid; do not run away. Meet death. That is all Yama means. And however many temptations death may offer, do not agree. Say, we will not settle for anything less than the immortal. Say to death: Give us the key to immortality.

It is a delightful point that Nachiketa asks death for the key to immortality—because death has the key. There is nothing surprising: it is in death that the immortal is revealed.

Why is it so? In school the teacher writes on a blackboard with white chalk. He does not write on a white wall; if he did, nothing would be visible. A black board is needed, and white, pure chalk—then the writing shows. When you write on white paper, you use black ink. Write with white ink and your writing goes to waste. Things stand out vividly against their opposites. When the blackboard of death, a dark slate, surrounds you from all sides, only then the nectar within you stands apart and becomes visible; before that it does not appear. It cannot appear.

You are surrounded by life—trees, birds, sky, people; everywhere life is luxuriant. You are life; all around is life. How will you see your own life amid all this life? White letters on a white wall. In the moment of death a darkness gathers around you. Yama encircles you. Have you seen the picture of Yama? Black! Riding a buffalo—a black buffalo!

Here is something amusing. If white people had devised this symbol, it would be understandable. But Black people too imagine death as black. They ought to imagine it absolutely bright, white-skinned! Yet they too imagine death as black. If they understand, they will change it.

I have heard of a movement to depict God as black—because for Black people, God should be black. It is the handiwork of the white-skinned to make God fair, and the handiwork of the white-skinned to make the devil black—some politics at play. And it would not be surprising if Black people decide: from now on we will picture death as white—mounted on a white horse, white.

But it would not feel right—because this has nothing to do with Black people or white skins. It is a very deep symbol: life is a white wave, a pure wave, a ripple of light.

Have you ever noticed? A lamp is lit; a lamp goes out. Darkness is always. Darkness is neither to be lit nor to be extinguished. The lamp comes and goes; darkness is eternal. Birth comes and goes; death is eternal. The moment you are tired, the lap of death is ready. It has always been ready. If you wish right now, you can return. The darkness of death is ever-present.

And the symbol of darkness is precious, because darkness is rest. Rest is difficult in light—that is why daytime sleep is hard. If the sun is in the sky, sleep is difficult. Even at night, if a bulb is on, sleep is uneasy. In darkness rest is easy; in darkness there is repose; darkness is very quiet, full of pause.

Therefore death is darkness, because it is relaxation. All bustle is gone; all waves have subsided; nothing is seen; great darkness has surrounded you. In that very moment of great darkness you suddenly startle awake: I have not died at all! I am! And I am with an intensity I have never known. In this darkness your white line shines forth.

The darker the clouds, the more dazzling the lightning appears. The darker the night, the whiter the stars seem. The stars are in the sky even in the day. Do not think they have gone somewhere. Where would they go? They are there but not visible; there is light all around. If you go down into a deep well, three hundred feet below, from there you will see stars even in daytime—because in between a layer of three hundred feet of darkness has come.

It is in the very moment of death that the immortal is seen. That is why the Upanishadic story is so sweet. Nachiketa was sent to death so that he might know the immortal. He was sent to death; his father said, I send you to the Master. For other than death there can be no guru. Death is the guru.

And the reverse is also true: every guru is death. He will erase you, cut you, break you. He will allow to remain only that which cannot be erased—so that amid the ruins—the ruins of ego, the ruins of dreams—you may recognize that which is true; which, if someone tries to break, cannot be broken; if someone tries to pierce, cannot be pierced.

Krishna says in the Gita: nainam chhindanti shastrani—no weapon can cleave it. nainam dahati pavakah—no fire can burn it.

But you will know only in fire whether it burns or not! Only when weapons pierce will you know whether they pierce or not! In death, fire will burn, weapons will pierce, darkness will surround from all sides; if in that moment there is awareness, you will see that you are immortal. Therefore the real question is to cultivate awareness in life. Otherwise all die—without ever knowing the immortal—because there is no awareness. Death comes again and again to teach, and you miss again and again.

The guru called Death surrounds you many times, but you remain deprived of discipleship. You are deprived of learning because you are not aware.

Plato was dying—the greatest thinker of Greece. Plato’s thought and capacity to think were so profound that his name became a symbol of intelligence.

When I was small, my grandfather was an uneducated man. He had never even heard the name Plato, but the Indian name for Plato is Aflatoon. When he was annoyed with me he would say, So, you’ve become the son of a great Aflatoon! I would ask, Who is Aflatoon? He would say, Must be someone! He did not know who Aflatoon was; but Aflatoon is Plato’s name—derived from Plato. Such a profound thinker was Plato that Aflatoon itself became a symbol: You’ve become the son of a great thinker! When he got very annoyed, he used Aflatoon.

This Plato was dying, lying on his deathbed; friends gathered. Someone asked one last question: In essence, tell us what you taught all your life—whatever you said, explained, instructed—tell it in a seed. Your scriptures are large and complex; we may or may not understand, we may forget, we may get lost. Tell us in one maxim, in a few words, so that we can learn it by heart and remember the sutra.

Plato opened his eyes and said: All my life I taught one thing: the art of dying. He closed his eyes and died. These were his last words—the art to die.

All religion is the art of dying; all meditation is the art of dying. The art of dying means: die with awareness. But you will only be able to die with awareness if you live with awareness—because awareness is not something you can suddenly cultivate at the moment of dying.

You must have heard Momin’s famous couplet:
Umar to guzri ishq-e-buta mein, Momin,
Ab marte waqt kya khak Musalman honge.
Life has passed in the love of idols, O Momin;
now, at the moment of death, how on earth will we become Muslim?

That is, a whole life spent worshipping beautiful women—idol-worship, worshipping beauty.

And now at the time of death you say, Leave idols; God has no image. No—now it will not be possible.

If throughout life you have not cultivated awareness, you will not be able to do it at the time of dying. Cultivate it now; now is the time—so that when death comes, it finds you awake. And whoever death finds awake, death is defeated by him. Whoever death finds awake, he does not die. The death of such a one is what we call liberation, moksha. He does not die; he is freed. We do not call the death of such a one death; we call it samadhi—because for him, death brings resolution.

All the concerns up to now—what is life, what is its mystery, its aim, its destination; does life endure or not; is it momentary or eternal—are all resolved by the coming of death for one who is awake. Therefore we call the death of the awakened one samadhi.

When an awakened man dies, we call his tomb a samadhi. We do not call the grave of an ordinary man a samadhi; it is only a grave! These will come again. They are resting a little in the grave; they will return. They have not yet gone—one foot is still here. Soon they will prepare to return. They have just fallen asleep, were a little tired; they will come back.

We call the resting place of the one who will not return a samadhi—because one who has understood the secret of death has no need to return. One who has known death has known birth as well. One who has known birth and death—nothing remains to be known for him.

So there are three important happenings: birth, death, and love. Birth is not in your hands—you are already born. Nothing can be done by going back.

Love is in your hands—something can be done. But perhaps culture, civilization, society will not allow you to love, will create hindrances and obstacles. Society, civilization, culture trust marriage, not love—there are reasons. Marriage appears more secure, convenient.

Love is dangerous. Love is like casting off in a stormy sea in a small boat; like journeying on untrodden forest paths.

Marriage is walking on a royal road—a cemented highway, millions walking alongside, no fear anywhere. Police on both sides, the magistrate along, everything organized. If a problem arises there is the court. Love is trouble; marriage is convenience. For the sake of convenience people have bought plastic flowers. To avoid inconvenience they have avoided real flowers.

Therefore, as to birth—you can do nothing now; it has happened. In love there will be obstacles, but something can be done—big hindrances, yet something is possible.

But with regard to death, you can do everything. There is no hindrance, no obstacle. Therefore, even if you drop concern about birth—fine. If in love you find great entanglement—time has gone; now doing something will only increase the tangle—let it be. Master death. Master awareness. And if at the time of dying you can save only one thing—that you die awake; let death come and not find you unconscious—everything will happen. One who dies awake does not die. He attains the immortal.

But if there is any possibility of love—because it may well be that you love your wife, you love your child—but you are afraid even of that.

I stayed at a friend’s house. I never saw him talk to his children; I never saw him sit near his wife. When he walked, he walked so fast; he did not look toward the servants here or there. He was a very wealthy man. I asked him what the matter was. He said: If I just ask the children how they are, they stretch out their hands for money. Ask the wife how she is, she says: A necklace—I saw a lovely one in the market; bring it on your way back. Look toward the servants—raise the salary at once! So I have learned not to look at anyone, to walk fast. And never sit near anyone; always read the newspaper. If the wife is there, keep the paper in between—because the slightest gesture becomes expensive.

Now this man died. In his life there was no fragrance of love at all. He has rotted—he is a corpse. He will save the money and lose himself.

If there is any possibility of love, let it blossom. Do not be afraid. There is nothing to lose; everything is to be gained. And what you are afraid of losing—let that be lost, because you will not be able to save it anyway. What is to be lost will be lost. Only that which can be saved will be saved. Your contrivances do not help.

I call this feeling-state surrender—be surrendered to life. And you will find yourself filled with blessedness. Blessings will shower on you. Your very life-breath will be thrilled. Now you are not sad, not tired and worn. The stream of your life has joined the ocean. Now pour out as much as you wish; it does not get exhausted—it grows.

That is all for today.