From zero learning to learning zero The Guest #15

I HAD not chosen your questions deliberately. I know you can understand my silence; words would only be a disturbance. You can understand my heart. There is no need for any language to exist between me and you.

I was thinking continuously that you must be worried about why I am not answering your questions. And all your questions were significant, worth answering, but still I had not answered them. I was waiting for your response; that has come today. You understood my silence, you understood my not answering you. I am tremendously happy.

Each of my sannyasins slowly, slowly has to learn just to understand the language of my presence, just to understand love, just to understand being with me -- that's enough. Anything said makes a distance, creates a distance. Nothing said, and all distance disappears.

Two hearts can become one if they are able to drop language, because dropping language means dropping the mind itself. Mind is language and nothing else. The moment there is no language, there is no thought. When there is no thought there is no mind. And that utter silence that pervades in those moments, that primal silence that descends and permeates you in those moments, is what God is all about. To feel that primal silence is to know God.

God is not a person, God is not a principle, God is not a theory. God is the experience of primal silence, wordless, mindless consciousness.

I have given you the name Prem Atta. Prem means love, atta means self -- one whose very self is love, not love as a relationship but love as a state of being. Love cannot be expressed. It can be understood but it cannot be said; it can be shown but it cannot be said. And I have been showing you the answer, and I am happy, tremendously happy, that you have heard it. You are blessed.

Get more and more in tune with my presence, not with my person, because I am not a person at all. I only appear as a person; otherwise I am just an absence. As far as the person is concerned I am utterly absent, but in that absence there is a light, there is a presence. That presence has nothing to do with me. That presence has no center to it, that presence has no self in it. That presence is as much yours as mine. That presence is divine. If you are silent your heart will start pulsating with it, your heart will start singing with it, your heart will have a dance with it. Your heart will start moving, soaring upwards.

Every man, every woman, is born with a bird in the heart. The heart has wings, but the heart can open its wings only in the sky of silence. Words are weighty, words gravitate towards the earth. Forget all about words and let the celebration be.

The second question:

LEARNING, in the first place, is not knowledge. Let us start from negating, from eliminating; let us first say what learning is not.

Learning is not knowledge. Learning has become too much identified with knowledge. It is just the opposite of knowledge. The more knowledgeable a person is, the less he is capable of learning. Hence children are more capable of learning than grown-ups. And if the grown-ups also want to remain learners, they have to go on forgetting whatsoever they have learned. Whatsoever has become knowledge in them, they have to go on dying to it. If you collect your knowledge your inner space becomes too heavy with the past. You accumulate too much garbage.

Learning happens only when there is spaciousness. The child has that spaciousness, innocence. The beauty of the child is that he functions from the state of not-knowing, and that is the fundamental secret of learning: functioning from the state of not-knowing.

Watch, see, observe, but never form a conclusion. If you have already arrived at a conclusion, learning stops. If you already know, what is there to learn? Never function from the ready-made answer that you have arrived at from the scriptures, universities, teachers, parents, or maybe your own experience.

All that you have known has to be discarded in favor of learning. Then you will go on growing, then there is no end to growth. Then a person goes on remaining childlike, innocent, full of wonder and awe to the very end. Even when he is dying he continues learning. He learns life, he learns death. And the person who has learned life and learned death goes beyond both; he moves to the transcendental.

Learning is receptivity, learning is vulnerability. Learning is openness, open-endedness.

Learning can be divided into many categories. I would like to divide it into eight levels, eight planes.

The first level of learning is called by Gregory Bateson 'zero learning'. I love that denomination -- zero learning. It is only CALLED learning, it is not really learning. Zero learning means learning something mechanically, computerlike, parrot-like. You don't really learn anything at all; you only repeat, just like the parrot repeats. You can teach the parrot a prayer and he will repeat it, not knowing at all what he is doing. There is no meaning in it. You may think that there is meaning because those words carry meaning to

If you are a Hindu and you have taught the parrot'Hare Krishna, Hare Rama', he will repeat it, and listening to the parrot you will think there is meaning. That meaning is within you, not in the parrot. The parrot is simply repeating, not knowing what it is. It is purely a mechanical gesture.

It is very unfortunate that much of our so-called learning comes into this first category, zero learning. Our whole educational system is rooted in zero learning: we teach children just to repeat. The better they are in repeating certain things, the more intelligent they are thought to be. We don't teach them to discover, we don't teach them to be original, we don't teach them to invent. We simply teach them to repeat, and if they can repeat well they go on passing examinations.

This creates a very mechanical humanity. Robot-like, people live. They are just machines, because almost ninety percent of what they know belongs to this category: zero Learning. They have learned much and vet they have not learned a thing.

Beware of this first level of learning, avoid it. And if you are parents, help your children not to be repetitive but to be original. Sometimes it is better to be wrong and original than to be right and repetitive, because the original will bring intelligence to you. The repetitive, howsoever right, is not going to make you intelligent. And what kind of learning is learning if it doesn't create intelligence?

Look at the world, look at the whole situation of humanity: it is so unintelligent that it appears there is no learning happening at all. From the K.cT. to the university, the whole thing seems to be repetitive. The whole thing seems to be rooted in memory, not in consciousness. It does not help you to become more conscious, more alert. It does not help you to find new answers.

And life goes on changing, life is never the same. You have to respond freshly again and again, and your knowledge does not allow you to act freshly. You go on repeating old cliches, old routines. You go on repeating old answers, and life is asking new questions. Life never asks the same question again. Life is so original: each moment it is new, the situation is new, the challenge is new -- and you are old. That's the misery. You are always lagging behind, you are always missing the train! You reach the station only when the train has left, hence a great feeling of missing. You can look into anybody's eyes and you can sec it: everybody feels he is missing something.

What are you missing? You are missing life itself, because there is a gap between you and life. Life requires you to be original, and your educational system, your society, your culture, requires you to be repetitive. Your culture is more interested in efficiency than in intelligence, so you are efficient. You have ready-made answers for everything. Your mind is nothing but a filing system; your mind functions like a computer. You have not yet learned how to function like a man.

The second level of learning is learning one: it is purposive. The first learning has no purpose in it, because you function mechanically and machines cannot have purposes. The second learning has purpose: learning one. It has a sense of direction, although the sense of direction is unconscious. You are not clear about it, you are not conscious about it. You function like a plant, like a tree. I he tree has a certain sense of direction, it knows where the sun is, it moves, but the movement is instinctive.

In African jungles trees go very high. They have to go, because if they remain low they will die. They will never be able to absorb sunrays; they will miss Vitamin D. They have to struggle to go higher and higher and higher. You bring the same trees to India and they don't go that high. Give them good soil, good manure, water, everything, but they don't go. There is no need -- the sun is available so easily, why should they bother?

The second layer is like trees, the first is like machines; the second is far better. From the second you start becoming alive. Our bodies function in the second way, instinctively. The body has an instinctive wisdom, but there is no need to remain confined to it; it is a very low stage of Learning. Just to be a tree is not of much significance, it is not life; rather it is vegetating.

The second level of learning I call 'learning one', because learning starts from the second level.

And the third level of learning I call 'learning two'. With it you become a little bit conscious. You start functioning like animals, not like trees. You can move, the trees are rooted. They have a little freedom of going up, changing their direction, growing in certain directions, not growing in certain directions, but they are rooted. They don't have a will, they can't move.

The third level of learning -- that is learning two -- is a little bit conscious. Some intelligence has arisen. Animals start behaving in a more intelligent way: it is vaguely conscious of purpose. It is a twilight phenomenon. It is between consciousness and unconsciousness; you can call it 'subconscious'. It is the beginning of real intelligence, just the beginning.

Many people have remained with zero learning, very few move to learning one, an even lesser number move to learning two.

The fourth level of learning I call 'learning three 'conscious direction, meaningful existence. You don't simply go on drifting like wood. You are no more at the mercy of the winds and the waves. You have a goal, you know where you are going, you know why you are going -- a clearcut sense of direction. Life starts becoming more a discipline.

The word 'discipline' really means learning, hence the word 'disciple' -- one who is capable of Learning. REAL learning starts with learning three. Very rarely, very few people come to this point. Only very few fortunate people exist with a clearcut direction, move not accidentally. Ordinarily people are just moving accidentally.

Just a few days ago I was reading the autobiography of a Jewish poet. He begins his autobiography by saying, "My birth was an accident. My father was travelling in a train; the train was late. He arrived at the station, his destination, in the middle of the night. No taxis were available, all taxis had already left. Snow was falling." It was so cold and so dark and he was feeling so lonely. He looked around for somebody to talk to, to find a way to reach the hotel, or to see whether he could manage to stay the night at the station.

The woman who ran the cafe there was just closing it. He asked her for a cup of coffee, the woman gave him a cup of coffee. She was also alone. And then he said he was in a fix -- no taxis available. He would like to reach to some hotel to sleep, he was tired. The woman said, "Why don't you come with me in my car? I can take you to the hotel."

And he went in the car with the woman, and this is how their friendship started. When they reached the hotel, the hotel was closed, so the woman said, "You come and stay with me." So he stayed with the woman. fell in love with the woman. After a few days they got married, and this poet was born.

Now he says, "My birth was just an accident. If the train had not been late I would not have been born at all. If the train had been a little more late, just a few minutes, and if the woman had left, I would not have been born at all. If the hotel had still been open, I would Not be in the world at all."

This is how ordinary life goes on: just accidental, no definite goal, no definite direction, no star there far away calling you forth so that you can manage not to go zig-zag but straight.

The fifth level of learning I call 'learning four'. It is not only conscious of a direction, it is conscious of consciousness itself. It is learning four that becomes meditation. That's what we are doing here: it is learning four -- making you conscious of your consciousness.

To be conscious of a goal is one thing: you are objective. You are not conscious of your consciousness, you are simply conscious of the goal. That is the function of the ordinary school, college, university: to make you conscious of a goal-oriented life.

The function of a mystery school -- a mystery school just like this -- is higher than the function of a university. Its function is to make you conscious of your consciousness. To be conscious of one's consciousness is meditation; it is the first step to being really human.

Learning three is the beginning of being human. Learning four is attaining humanity, is attaining manhood; it is attaining maturity. But this is not the end.

The sixth level of learning, learning five, gives you glimpses of the divine, SATORI. That is the purpose of meditation, of DHYANA: to bring you to the glimpses of the beyond... because man is not the end. Man himself is only a means, a passage, a bridge -- don't make your house on the bridge. The bridge is not for the house to be made on; it has to be passed. Man has to be surpassed.

Friedrich Nietzsche is reported to have said: The greatest day in humanity's life will be when man becomes absolutely aware of surpassing himself. And the worst day, the greatest calamity, will be the day when man forgets how to surpass himself.

Man is an arrow on the bow. It should not remain there on the bow; it has to leave the bow, it has to move. Man is a pilgrimage.

First become conscious of your consciousness. And in that very becoming, in that very silence -- when you are only conscious of your consciousness and not of any other content -- no thought, no desire, no dream -- -you are just conscious of your being conscious, the mirror is reflecting itself and nothing else... in that moment, something IMMENSELY miraculous happens. You become aware of the divine, you become aware of the essential core of your being.

That is learning five, the sixth level of learning. It gives you glimpses of no-self. It gives you glimpses of the beyond. It makes you aware that man is not the end, that man is only a step. You become aware of the temple. You become aware of the mystery of existence, of the eternity of life, of deathlessness, of timelessness. This is the point where one starts feeling that God is.

The seventh level of learning,'learning six', Patanjali calls SAVIKALPA SAMADHI. YOU have attained to the glimpse of the ultimate; not only is it a glimpse, now it is settling, crystallizing, becoming substantial, not only a shadow -- but there is still a possibility of losing it. He calls it SAVIKALPA SAMADHI. SAVIKALPA means still there is some lingering thought; not ordinary thoughts, but a new kind of thought, that "I have arrived," that "I have attained," that I am fulfilled" -- a very purified ego, a very pious ego, very subtle. Like the fragrance of a flower, you cannot catch hold of it.

One has to be very, very careful. Otherwise the seeker stops at learning six, and one thinks one has come home... because one feels God's presence, one is tremendously happy, as one has never been. One knows there is no death, all fear disappears -- but one is still there!

A disciple of a Zen Master was meditating for twenty years. Again and again he would bring his experiences, and the Master would throw him out saying, "This is all rubbish! Go again and meditate! Unless you can come with the experience of nothing, don't come to me."

And one day it happened; the experience of nothing happened. He felt no-being, a deep nothingness, nobody inside. He was tremendously happy. He went running to the Master, fell at his feet, and said, "It has happened -- I have seen nothingness!"

The Master said, "Get out! Get out immediately! because if you have seen nothingness, you are still there. This is not true nothingness -- something of you still has roots. Only come to me when there is nobody even to say that 'I have known nothingness'."

And then years passed, and the disciple didn't turn up. Then one day the Master had to go to the disciple. The disciple was sitting underneath a tree, playing on his flute. The Master went close. The disciple continued playing on the flute as if nobody had come. The Master blessed him and said, "NOW it has happened! Now you are utterly unconcerned. Now you don't claim. Now it has become so natural that there is no idea of 'I'."

At the seventh level of learning, learning six, you feel nothingness, but you feel it. That is the last barrier: the 'I'.

The eighth level of learning I call 'learning zero'. The first I called 'zero learning' the last I call 'learning zero'. Patanjali calls it NIRVIKALPA SAMADHI, NIRBEEJ SAMADHI, seedless SAMADHI. Now even the seed is burnt, nothing is left. You are gone forever. You are no more, only God is. Not that you know God is; you are not separate to know. There is no duality, there is no l-thou, there is only God. This is the moment of primal silence.

These are the eight levels of learning. Move from zero learning to learning zero, and the circle is complete. People are encaged in the first, zero learning, and they have to be freed from there. And the ultimate is learning zero. Hence Buddha called the ultimate SHUNYA, zero.

Vedant, you ask me, " WHAT IS LEARNING?"

Learning is the movement from zero learning to learning zero.

The third question:

THE moment one becomes enlightened, one does not think that one is enlightened; one simply knows. Thinking is guessing, it is not knowing. And when one becomes enlightened one never asks 'whether I have become enlightened', because it is self-evident; no certificate is needed.

And Nisarga, when you become enlightened I will come to you to bless you. You will not need to come to me and ask.

An old Welsh lady, seventy-five years old, is in the doctor's surgery.

"Well, I know it is hard to believe, Mrs. Jones, but the tests are conclusive: you are pregnant!" the doctor tells her. "But I am seventy-five years old, doctor, and my husband is eighty-five years old. Are you certain? This will be such a shock for him."

"Yes, I am certain. You must tell him very carefully because of his age. I suggest you telephone him from my office now."

Mrs. Jones dials the number, then speaks: "Hello Hughie, darling, I have some news for you. Please sit down before I tell you. Are you sitting? Good. I am pregnant. The doctor is certain and the tests are all positive."

There was a short pause and Hughie's quavering voice was heard to say, "Who is that speaking, please?"

Nisarga, that's what I would like to ask: who is that speaking, please?

If it has happened, you are no more. If it has happened, there will be nobody to ask the question. If it has happened, your fragrance will tell people; you will become luminous.

Mulla Nasruddin had a male child after producing fourteen girls in a row from his four wives.

When he heard the good news he went on a week-long celebration that broke several records.

On the seventh day somebody asked him, "Who does it look like, you or your wife?"

"I don't know yet," the proud father happily chortled. "We have not looked at his face yet."

When after fourteen girls you give birth to a male child, who has time to look at his face?

After millions and millions of lives, when you become enlightened, who bothers to ask? It is so absolute, and the sheer joy of it is such... yes, one can dance, but one cannot ask; one can sing, but one cannot ask. One will go almost mad: that's what Kabir says. Again and again he says that those who know God go mad, mad in ecstasy.

Nisarga, you are perfectly in your senses; you have not gone mad. I have been watching you -- there is no ecstasy. It may be just a desire, a wish-fulfillment. You would like to become enlightened, you would like somebody to tell you that you have become enlightened. You would like to be certified, but these things cannot be certified. These are not things of the outer world; when they happen there is a totally new phenomenon.

When a Buddha is there, or a Krishna, or a Kabir, or a Jesus, or a Mohammed, something of God penetrates into the very dense earth, something of the sky starts walking here on the earth. Those who have eyes can see it, those who have ears can hear it, those who have hearts can feel it, and those who are intelligent enough will learn the secret of it.

But you need not ask such questions; these questions are meaningless. I understand your desire, but on the way of enlightenment even the desire to become enlightened is a barrier -- the greatest barrier.

Forget all about enlightenment! Dance to abandon! Whatsoever you are doing here, do it totally. Forget all about enlightenment -- it will take care of itself, it will come of its own accord. You cannot bring it; it is not something that you can manage to do. If you can be simply lost in the ordinary activities of life, totally lost, utterly lost... one day, when the ego is missing... You may be just cleaning the floor, or chopping wood, or carrying water from the well; when the ego is completely absent, as if there is nobody who is chopping wood -- wood is chopped but there is nobody chopping wood -- suddenly it is there. It comes as a surprise. And when it comes it brings its own absolute certainty.

The fourth question:

WHAT do you mean by "dirty things of life"? Life is all beautiful! Even dirt is not dirty, even dirt has its own splendor. Because life is divine -- how can it be dirty? You have not asked this question out of intelligence, awareness, meditativeness; you have asked this question out of prejudice, tradition. This is not your question, your society has implanted it in you. You must be a typical Indian, hence the question.

India has great expertise in condemning. India has lived for at least twenty-five centuries in a very life-negative way. It was not so always. India is an ancient land: the civilization has existed for at least ten thousand years. It is only in these last twenty-five centuries that it became more and more life-negative. Otherwise the Indian mystic was the greatest life-affirmative mystic the world has known. The Indian mystic loved life, rejoiced in life and all that life implied.

But whenever something reaches to a peak, the valley is bound to follow. It is a constant rhythm of life; mountains cannot be without valleys. When a great wave comes, following it, in the wake, is a hollow wave, a negative wave. Day is followed by night, night is followed by day. Life is followed by death, death is followed by life. Existence -consists of polar opposites.

India reached to a very great peak of life-affirmation in the Upanishads. The Upanishads are the expression of life-affirmation. Then the decline came; it was bound to come. The life-negative aspect started asserting itself, then everything became condemned. Sex became condemned -- in a country which has made Khajuraho, Konarak, Puri. Sex became condemned in the country which had written the first book of sexology in the world. Sex became condemned in the country of Vatsayana, who the country had loved and respected as a Buddha. He is the first man in the world who wrote a great sexual treatise, one of the most profound.

Sigmund Freud, Havelock Ellis, Masters and Johnson are just children compared to Vatsayana's insight into sex. Sex became condemned in a country which had raised it to the highest pedestal of Tantra, which had said that the sexual experience is the closest to the experience of God. And not only sex, when life becomes condemned everything becomes condemned -- food, clothes, relationships, everything that life implies becomes condemned. For twenty-five centuries India has lived in a terrible mess.

But now, the turning-point is coming again. Now the days of the valley are over. Now again life-affirmation will assert.

My sannyas is just to herald a new phase, a new dawn.

What do you mean, Chandrakand, by saying "dirty THINGS OF LIFE"?

And you cannot protect children. Those protected children will not have any spine. They will be dull, insipid, dead. They will not have sharpness of intelligence, because you will be avoiding all challenges in their lives, you will be protecting them too much. Your protection will become an imprisonment.

No, children have to be made aware of all that life implies -- good and bad, all, day and night, all, summer and winter, all, flowers and thorns, all. The children have to be made available to the wholeness of life, because only then will they be whole.

There was once a king and his young wife. They were very much in love and life was good. Then one day the queen died while giving birth to their first child, a son. The king was beside himself with grief. He determined at least to protect his son from the possibility of such a cruel misfortune. He decreed that the young prince was never to know of the existence of women. So the boy grew up in peace but knowing nothing of the female.

One day when the boy was almost fifteen he was walking in the orchard with his father when a little urchin girl who had come to steal apples ran across their path.

"Ah, look father!" said the boy. "What is that?"

The king hesitated a second or two. "It is a swan," he replied.

Some days later the king called his son. "Well, my son, you are almost fifteen. What would you like as a birthday gift?"

"Ah, father, please may I have a swan?" the boy replied.

It is impossible to keep somebody unaware of life's complexities Many times the experiment has been done and each time it has been a failure.

When Buddha was born all the great astrologers of the country gathered, of course. In his late old age the king had given birth to a child. No one had ever heard of a child so beautiful, and a child with such grace that he did not seem to be part of this world, as if a god v. as born. So all the astrologers gathered to predict about him. They calculated, they looked into their scriptures, and they were at a loss as to what to say. All the astrologers except one raised two fingers.

The king said, "What do you mean by raising two fingers? Don't speak in riddles!"

They said, "But we are in a riddle ourselves. We are raising two fingers because all the scriptures we have Consulted say two things about this child: either he will become a CHAKRAVARTIN, a world emperor, or he will become a sannyasin ut nothing definite can be said, hence we are raising two fingers: one to say either he will be the greatest emperor in the world who will rule the whole world" -- -CHAKRAVARTIN means one who will rule all the six continents -- "or he will be a sannyasin and he will renounce the world and move into the mountains, into the forests, into deep meditation, and he will become a Buddha."

The king looked at the one man, one astrologer, the youngest, who was still silent. He asked him, "What do you say?" He raised only one finger.

The king said, "Now what do you mean by one finger -- emperor or sannyasin?"

The young astrologer said, "He will become a sannyasin, that is absolutely certain."

The king was not happy with the young astrologer. He said, "You are young in age, inexperienced. All your old colleagues are saying either/or."

He simply forgot his advice. He listed to the older ones and he asked them, "What should I do so that he becomes a CHAKRAVARTIN and does not renounce the world?"

They suggested some very common-sense advice. If I had been there I would not have suggested it at all, but I know the king would not have listened to me either, JUst as he had not listened to the young astrologer. People listen to that which they want to listen to. Those old astrologers said, "Do a few things. One: keep him in such pleasure that he never becomes aware of pain, that he never comes to know of suffering. If he never comes to know of suffering he will never renounce, because people renounce the world because of suffering."

That is utter nonsense! People don't renounce the world because of suffering, remember. People renounce the world because they become fed-up with pleasure.

You can see it here: so many Westerners and so few Indians. Why? India is in suffering -- people cannot think of sannyas. They are hankering for more and more possessions. They have not known that possessions can't give anything, they have not known the futility of riches -- how can they renounce? How can they start moving higher than the worldly things? How can they think of meditation? In fact, they are puzzled, looking at all you Westerners coming to me. They are very much puzzled, confused: "Why are you coming here?"

Many of my sannyasins come to me and say, "Whenever we meet Indians they immediately ask how their son can get admission into Harvard, into Cambridge, into Oxford:'How can we have some help from the Ford Foundation or the Rockefeller Foundation? I would like my son to become a great engineer -- or a physicist or a surgeon."'

My sannyasins say to me, "They don't see that we have come from Harvard and Cambridge and Oxford, seeing the whole futility of it."

There are at least two hundred PH.D'S present here today, and at least one thousand post-graduates from all the universities of the world. But the Indian cannot see that these people are coming from there; he asks how he can manage it. His only hope is to make his son 'foreign-returned'; that is a qualification. Even if he fails at Cambridge that doesn't matter, he is 'London-returned'; that is enough of a qualification. A poor country, a suffering country, cannot think of anything more.

Those astrologers suggested, "Give him all kinds of pleasures. Gather all the beautiful women of the country around him. Let him live for twenty-four hours as if he is in paradise -- music, song, dance, beautiful women, wine. Let him be drowned in pleasure and he will never renounce."

And that's what the king did -- and that's why Buddha renounced. He became so fed-up: he had all the beautiful women, all the good things of life. His father had made three palaces for him for different seasons, so he would never suffer the heat of summer, so he would never suffer the cold of winter, so he would never suffer too much rain -- three palaces in different places, in different climates, in different situations. He was continuously on the merry-go-round. The whole day was nothing but celebration, holiday. Every day was a holiday. From the morning till the night, he was surrounded by beautiful women, wine, dance, music, good food. Life was all roses. And he was only twenty-nine when he became so bored with all this that he escaped. He simply ran away.

If the king had asked me, I would have suggested, "This is stupid! If you do this he is BOUND to become a sannyasin. If you want him to become a CHAKRAVARTIN then let him suffer, let him go through pain, let him go through starvation. Let him see how life is a misery so that he longs for pleasure, strives for pleasure." But that was not to happen.

And it is good that I was not there, otherwise you would have missed the Buddha. It is good that the king didn't listen to the young astrologer. His name was Kodana; he must have been a rare man, of great insight. But all those old fools, they convinced the king. And it is good that it happened the way it happened; to have missed Buddha would have been a great calamity.

The world has never been the same since Buddha: some fragrance has been released into the world. Man has changed his plane of consciousness to a higher plane.

India has lived for many centuries in poverty, and when you live in poverty, and when you live in starvation, and when you are ill, the only way to console your ego is to condemn life. Try to understand it; it is a rationalization -- life-condemnation is a rationalization.

It is the same story that you know, the famous fable of Aesop.

A fox was trying to reach the grapes, but the grapes were too high and he could not reach them. He looked around -- there was nobody -- because he was afraid if somebody looked and saw that he had failed, it would be against his prestige. Seeing that there was nobody, he walked away. But a hare was hiding behind a bush and looking, and the hare said, "Uncle, where are you going? What happened? Could you not reach? Were the grapes too high?"

And the fox said, "No."

And you know, the fox represents the politician. Down the ages, in all the cultures, the fox represents the diplomat, the politician. The fox is the most cunning animal.

The fox said, "No. They were perfectly within reach, but they are sour and not yet worth reaching."

This has been the logic here in this country for two thousand years. Life became unreachable. The only way to save face was to condemn it: it is sour, it is not of worth.

Chandrakand, drop all that nonsense! Life is beautiful, life is tremendously graceful. All is good. Even that which does not appear to be good on the surface has a goodness in it. It can't be otherwise.

In fact, the thorns are not against the flowers; they are guards, bodyguards for the flower. And pain is not against pleasure, it is the background. Without it there would be no pleasure.

In the night you see the sky full of stars; where do those stars go in the day? The background disappears. They need the background of darkness; only then can you see them. In the day the background is not there, it is fully light. The stars are still there in the sky, they don't go anywhere. It is not that they suddenly run away in the day and by the evening they come back. They are there, just the background of darkness is needed for them to shine forth.

Life depends on the polar opposites: good and bad, love and hate, body/mind, matter/God. Nothing is bad, nothing is good. Between good and bad, you have to grow; between good and bad, you have to mature -- and BOTH are opportunities, GREAT opportunities. Don't condemn them.

Respect life, and life will respect you. Love life, and love will shower blessings on you.

The fifth question:

Paul,

MEDITATION is simple. PRECISELY because it is simple, it looks difficult. Your mind is accustomed to dealing with difficult problems, and it has completely forgotten how to respond to the simple things of life. The more simple a thing is, the more difficult it looks to the mind, because the mind is very efficient in solving difficult things. It has been trained to solve difficult things, it does not know how to tackle the simple. Meditation is simple, your mind is complex. It is not a problem that meditation is creating. The problem is coming from your mind, not from meditation.

Vipassana is the MOST simple meditation in the world. It is through vipassana that Buddha became enlightened, and it is through vipassana that many more people have become enlightened than through' any other method. Vipassana is THE method. Yes, there are other methods also, but they have helped only very few people. Vipassana has helped thousands, and it is really very simple; is not like yoga.

Yoga is difficult, arduous, complex. You have to torture yourself in many ways: distort your body, contort your body, sit this way and that, torture, stand on your head -- exercises and exercises... but yoga seems to be very appealing to people.

Vipassana is SO simple that you don't take any note of it. In fact, coming across vipassana for the first time, one doubts whether it can be called a meditation at all. What is it? -- no physical exercise, no breathing exercise; a very simple phenomenon: just watching your breath coming in, going out... finished, this is the method; sitting silently, watching your breath coming in, going out; not losing track, that's all. Not that you have to change your breathing -- it is not PRANAYAM; it is not a breathing exercise where you have to take deep breaths, exhale, inhale, no. Let the breathing be simple, as it is. You just have to bring one new quality to it: awareness.

The breath goes out, watch; the breath comes in, watch. You will become aware: the breath touching your nostrils at one point, you will become aware. You can concentrate there: the breath comes in, you feel the touch of the breath on the nostrils; then it goes out, you feel the touch again. Remain there at the tip of the nose. It is not that you have to concentrate at the tip of the nose; you have just to be alert, aware, watchful. It is not concentration. Don't miss, just go on remembering. In the beginning you will miss again and again; then bring yourself back If it is difficult for you -- for a few people it is difficult to watch it there -- then they can watch the breath in the belly. When the breath goes in, the belly goes up; when the breath goes out, the belly goes in. You go on watching your belly. If you have a really good belly, it will help.

Have you watched? If you sec Indian statues of Buddha, those statues don't have real bellies -- in fact, no belly at all. Buddha looks a perfect athlete: chest coming out, belly in. But if you see a Japanese statue of Buddha you will be surprised: it does not look buddhalike at all -- a big belly, so big that you cannot sec the chest at all, almost as if Buddha is pregnant, all belly. The reason why this change happened is that in India, while Buddha was alive, he himself was watching the breath at the nose, hence tr he he belly was not important at all. But as Vipassana moved from India to Tibet to China to Korea to Burma to Japan, slowly, slowly people became aware that it is easier to watch in the belly than at the nose. Then Buddha-statues started becoming different, with bigger bellies.

You can watch either at the belly or at the nose, whichever feels right for you or whichever feels easier for you. That it be easier is the point. And just watching the breath, miracles happen.

Paul, meditation is not difficult. It is simple. Precisely because it is simple you are feeling the difficulty. You would like to do many things, and there is nothing to do; that is the problem. It is a GREAT problem, because we have been taught to do things. We ask what should be done, and meditation means a state of non-doing: you have not to do anything, you have to STOP doing. You have to be in a state of utter inaction. Even thinking is a kind of doing -- drop that too. Feeling is a kind of doing -- drop that too. Doing, thinking, feeling -- all gone, you simply are. That is being. And being is meditation. It is very simple.

In your mother's womb you were in the same space. In vipassana you will be entering again into the same space. And you will remember, you will have a DEJA-VU. When you enter into deep vipassana, you will be surprised that you KNOW it, you have known it before. You will recognize it immediately because for nine months in your mother's womb you were in the same space, doing nothing, just being.

You ask me, "I THOUGHT THAT MEDITATION WAS A SIMPLE THING, BUT SEEING PEOPLE DOING VIPASSANA I AM LOSING ALL HOPE OF EVER BECOMING A SUCCESSFUL MEDITATOR."

Never think about meditation in terms of success, because that is bringing your achieving mind into it, the egoistic mind into it. Then meditation becomes your egotrip. Don't think in terms of success or failure. Those terms are not applicable in the world of meditation. Forget all about that. Those are mind terms; they are comparative. And that's the problem: you must be watching others succeeding, reaching, ecstatic, and you will be feeling very low. You will be feeling silly, sitting and looking at your breath, watching your breath. You must be looking very silly and nothing is happening. Nothing is happening because you are expecting something to happen too much.

And in the beginning, every new process looks difficult. One has to learn the taste of it.

A lady's husband was a souse, yet she had never in her life tasted alcohol.

"Here, you souse, give me that bottle. I want to taste whatever it is that has made you the bum you are."

Taking the bottle of cheap whiskey, she took a good gulp of it. "Aargh... glompf... breecch... fuy... brrrit... ptui!" she gasped. "That is the most vile-tasting liquid I have ever had the misfortune to let pass my lips. It tastes terrible!"

"Y'see?" said the old man. "An' all these years you thought I was having a good time."

Just wait a little, Paul. Just a little patience. In the beginning everything looks difficult, even the simplest thing. And don't be in a hurry.

That is one of the problems with the Western mind -- hurry. People want everything immediately. They think in terms of instant coffee, instant meditation, instant enlightenment.

A city slicker had just inherited a farm full of cows and, being a shrewd operator, decided to increase his herd right away. Accordingly, he imported three of the finest bulls in the area and locked them in the barn overnight with the cows. The next morning he called the owner of the bulls to complain.

The stud-man laughed. "What did you expect?" he asked. Did you think you'd find calves the next day?"

"Maybe not," retorted the city slicker. "But I sure did expect to see a few smiling faces on those cows!"

No, not even that is going to happen soon. Just sitting for one day in vipassana, you will not come out of it smiling. You will come out utterly tired -- tired because you were told not to do anything, tired because you have never been in such a silly thing ever before. Not doing anything? You are a doer! If you had chopped wood the whole day you would not have been so tired. But sitting silently, doing nothing, just watching your silly breath going in, coming out... many times the idea arises, "What am I doing here?" And the time will look very, very long, because time is relative. The time will become very long. One day's meditation will look as if years and years have passed -- "And what has happened? Is not the sun going to set today? When is it going to finish?"

If you are in a hurry, if you are in haste, you will never know the taste of meditation. The taste of meditation needs great patience, INFINITE patience. Meditation is simple, but you have become so complex that to relax it will take time. It is not the meditation that is taking time -- let me remind you again -- it is your complex mind. It has to be brought down to a rest, to a relaxed state. THAT takes time.

And don't think in terms of success and failure. Enjoy! Don't be too goal-oriented. Enjoy the sheer silence of watching your breath coming in, going out, and soon you will have a beauty, a new experience of beauty and beatitude. Soon you will see that one need not go anywhere to be blissful. One can sit silently, be alone, and be blissful. Nothing else is needed, just the pulsation of life is enough. If you can pulsate with it, it becomes a deep inner dance.

Meditation is a dance of your energy, and breath is the key.

The last question:

PEOPLE are bound to misunderstand. It is expected. It is nothing unexpected, because what I am saying is not according to their tradition. What I am saying is according to Buddha, Krishna, Christ, Kabir, Farid, Bahaudin, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu, but not according to any tradition.

These people are not part of any tradition. These are Himalayan peaks, alone. A Zarathustra is a Zarathustra and a Buddha is a Buddha. They don't belong to any country and they don't belong to any tradition and they don't belong to any race, color, religion. T hey simply belong to God. They simply belong to the whole. And whenever such people are there they are bound to be misunderstood, because the tradition that priests create, that scholars create, that politicians support -- the tradition which is a conspiracy against man's freedom -- is bound to retaliate, react.

It is not an accident that Jesus is crucified, the real accident is why Buddha is NOT crucified. It is understandable why Socrates is poisoned, the more problematic thing is why Lao Tzu is not poisoned. How did they manage to escape? Maybe the only reason was that Lao Tzu was very mild in his expression, hence nobody bothered much about him. Socrates was not mild; his expression was very strong. He was like a sword, sharp. He could not be tolerated.

Buddha could be tolerated, of course with difficulty. Stones were thrown at him, mad elephants were released to kill him, rocks were rolled down from the hill to crush him, but still he was not crucified like Jesus. The reason may be that his expression was very, very silent. His expression was very polite, his expression was very poetic. Jesus spoke in words of fire, Jesus spoke in terms of utter rebellion. Buddha was also a rebellion, but a very sophisticated rebellion; Jesus was raw, Buddha was too cultured. Naturally, it had to be so: Buddha came from the royal family, very cultured, educated, mild, all manners, etiquette. Jesus was the son of a carpenter. He had that same raw quality of wood, and the same smell of raw wood.

But one thing is certain: that whenever a man like Buddha or Jesus or Lao Tzu is there, he is bound to be misunderstood, because the crowd belongs to the tradition, to a certain tradition: Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian, Jew, Jaina, Buddhist, and the tradition cannot tolerate any new revelation. And the people are so full of knowledge, so full of prejudice, that they go on understanding in their own way. And because they understand in their own way, it becomes a misunderstanding. It is a very unconscious process. They don't want to misunderstand; they are not deliberately trying to misunderstand me. They are trying to understand, but they come with conclusions, already arrived at conclusions, a priori conclusions. Hence whatsoever they hear is not what I say: their minds distort it, change it, give it a new color.

The farm had been mortgaged and their life's savings had gone to give daughter a college education. Pa was driving the truck to the station to call for her after graduation. She climbed in beside him, slipped an arm through his and whispered, "I want to confess something, Pa. I ain't as pure a girl any more."

Pa dropped his face in his hands and wept bitter tears. "After all the sacrifice me and Ma made for your education," he sobbed, "you still say 'ain't'?"

This is how a prejudiced mind functions.

Three young women were attending a class in logic, and the professor stated he was going to test their ability at situation reasoning.

"Let us assume," he said, "that you are aboard a small craft alone in the Pacific and you spot a vessel approaching you with several thousand sex-starved sailors on board. What would you do in this situation to avoid any problems?"

"I would attempt to turn my craft in the opposite direction," said the redhead. "I would pass them, trusting to my knife to keep me safe," said the brunette.

"Frankly," murmured the blond, "l understand the situation but I fail to see the problem."

It depends on you!

What I say is very rarely heard. To hear it, you will have to become a disciple. To hear it, you will have to learn the art of learning. To hear it, you will have to be receptive, in deep love and trust. If you can put your mind aside, if you can listen to me in deep silence, in great reverence and love, there is no possibility of misunderstanding. Otherwise you are going to understand everything the way YOU can understand.

That is one of the problems with language: it is very good, very adequate,;n communicating the ordinary things of life; the higher you move, the more inadequate it becomes.

Cohen met Levy for the first time in years. "How are things, Levy?" he asked his old friend. "I hear you got very rich here in America."

"I can't complain," the other replied. "I got a house and garden in the country, an automobile, a wife, ten children, and money in the bank."

Cohen, nettled, tried to soften the hurt of his friend's success. "Well," he said, "after all, in a day what can you do that I can't? We both eat, sleep and drink. What else is there in life?"

"Aaah," said Levy, "you call your life living? In the morning I get up, have a fine breakfast, a good Perfecto cigar. Then I lay on my verandah. After that I play a round of golf and come back with a healthy appetite for lunch. When I finish I have another Perfecto and lay down on my verandah again. I come to supper with an appetite like a wolf. After supper I smoke a good long cigar, lay on my verandah again, and at night go to the theatre, the opera, whatever I like."

"That's wonderful! And you don't do no work?" said Cohen, marvelling.

On his return home, he told his wife of the encounter. "You know who I met today?" he announced. "Levy, who came over on the ship with me. Is that man rich! He's got a house and garden in the country, an automobile, a wife, ten children."

Mrs. Cohen interrupted, "What is his wife's name?"

"I don't know," said her husband, "but I think it is Verandah."