My beloved Atman! In human life there is so much sorrow, so much pain, so much tension that it almost seems even the animals may be more in delight than we are, more at peace than we are. Perhaps the oceans and the earth are more rejoicing than we are. Even the most barren soil blossoms with flowers. Even the filthiest sea rolls with waves—waves of happiness, of joy. But in human life no flowers bloom, no waves of joy arise. What has happened to human life? Why is man in such a state of restlessness and misery? Could it be that man does not become that for which he is born to become, does not attain that for which he is born to attain—and hence is so unhappy? If a seed cannot become a tree, it will be miserable. If a river cannot meet the ocean, it will be miserable. Is it not possible that man cannot become the tree he is meant to become, and cannot meet that ocean with which his soul longs to unite—and therefore man is in sorrow? Dharma is the name of the art that turns a man into that tree. Dharma is the name of the art that unites man with the ocean—the ocean that gives fulfillment, peace, bliss. But in the name of dharma a net has been raised that takes man nowhere—it only leads him astray. How many “religions” are there in the world in the name of dharma? Three hundred! And how can dharma be three hundred? If dharma is, it can only be one. How can truth be many? If truth is, it can only be one. But in the name of one truth, when three hundred sects are erected, even searching for truth becomes difficult. There are Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Jains—and nowhere a religious man. Because there is no religious man, there is such anxiety, such unrest, such sorrow. There are two reasons why the religious man is missing. Let me explain with a small story. The first reason is this: man wastes his life trying to save things that, in the end, have no value at all. Man pours his whole life into a race in which, even after running, there is no possibility of ever arriving anywhere. Swami Ram once visited Japan. On a major road in Tokyo there was a crowd of thousands. Ram, too, stood among them. A mansion had caught fire. A costly house was burning. A great palace—flames had seized it from all sides. Hundreds of people were carrying valuables out from within. The owner of the palace stood there—lost, almost unconscious. People were holding him up. He could not make sense of what was happening. All that he had earned in a lifetime was on fire. Then people came out carrying strongboxes, precious goods, books, valuable documents—and they said, “One more time we can go inside; after that the flames will take the house completely and going in will be impossible. Whatever we felt was important, we have saved. If anything special still remains, tell us—we will bring it out.” The owner said, “I can neither see nor think. Go inside once more; save whatever seems fit to save.” They went inside. Every other time they had returned happily, having saved so many things. But this last time they came back beating their chests and weeping. The entire crowd began asking, “Why are you crying? What has happened?” They said through tears, “A great mistake has been made. The owner had a single son. He was sleeping inside. We forgot to save him. We saved all the belongings, but the true owner of the belongings has died. We have brought out his corpse.” Swami Ram wrote in his diary that day: “What I saw today happens in the lives of the majority of men. People waste their lives saving the unnecessary and the real owner—life itself—dies; they never manage to save him.” Most people ruin their lives because they do not know what is worth saving and what is to be let go. We all busy ourselves saving objects and things while we lose our own individuality, our own Atman. This is one reason man cannot become religious. And whoever cannot become religious can never become blissful. To be religious and to be blissful—these are two ways of saying the same thing. To be irreligious and to be miserable—these are two ways of saying the same thing. So do not ever imagine that someone can be blissful while being irreligious. It is impossible. Just as there are diseases of the body—and how can a man whose body is sick be blissful? The body must be healthy—there are also diseases of the soul. Adharma is the name of the soul’s disease. How can one who suffers from the soul’s disease be blissful? Even if the body is in pain, a man may still be inwardly blissful. But if the soul within is sick, then there is no hope at all of bliss. And yet for that very soul we do nothing; for the body we do everything. For the unnecessary we do very much. Like small children who collect stones on the seashore and think they have accomplished something great. Like children who sit by the sea and make sandcastles and then fight and quarrel—“You broke my castle! You kicked my house!”—without knowing that any moment their mother’s call will come from home and they will have to leave all those castles on the shore; no house belongs to anyone, nothing is truly destroyed when it falls, nothing truly created when it rises. This is exactly how the houses we build in life—of mud, of the external, of possessions—are. One day a call comes from above, and everything has to be left on the shore of sand. There can be no accounting of them then. You cannot take them along. At the moment of departure, when bidding farewell to the earth, the hands are empty. Yet we waste our lives filling ourselves with things—none of which accompanies us. Remember: true wealth is that which remains with us even at the moment of death. What is lost at death is not wealth at all. When Alexander died, and his funeral procession passed through the capital, hundreds of thousands came to see it. But everyone began to ask the same question. Alexander’s hands were hanging outside the bier. This had never been seen before. No one’s hands are seen hanging outside a bier. People asked, “Has some mistake been made?” If it were a beggar’s bier, perhaps a mistake would be possible—but this was Alexander’s. Great emperors were shouldering it. Why were his hands left hanging outside? Slowly it became known—Alexander himself had asked that his hands be left outside. His friends had asked, “What madness is this? No one’s hands are left outside. Why do you want yours so?” Alexander had replied, “I want people to see that I, too, am going empty-handed; my hands are not full.” All life long we run to fill our hands, and finally we find our hands are empty. All through life they were empty. The entire race proves futile. We get nothing—only the appearance of getting. Almost like the place on the horizon where the earth seems to touch the sky. We move ahead thinking, “A little farther and we shall come to the spot where the earth meets the sky.” But the farther we go, the farther that circle recedes. We may walk around the whole earth and that place will not come where the earth touches the sky—it only appears to do so; it never touches. Exactly so, a man thinks all his life: “Let me get this, let me get that—one day all will be mine.” It seems just ahead; somewhere ahead everything will be gained. He runs and runs and runs. In the end he falls; the time of attaining never arrives, and his hands remain empty. So, first, a man does not become religious because he squanders all his energy, all his time, all his life collecting the outer. And there is a second matter even more dangerous. The man who runs after the outer may one day awaken and ask, “What am I doing? What dreams am I weaving? In what futile hopes am I wasting my life? What sandcastles am I building that will collapse tomorrow? What paper boats am I launching that will soon sink?” One day the man who runs after the outer stops, reflects, thinks. But there is another danger. Those who tire of the outer and even come to understand that the race outside is futile—then they set out in search of the inner. And within there are two directions. The search outside is adharma. In the inner search there are two directions: one is the direction of dharma, and one is the direction of false dharma. If one moves along the direction of false dharma, one again becomes wasted, again reaches nowhere. To awaken from the outer is easy; to awaken from the inner—when it is a false inner—is very difficult. When a man tires of the outer and understands that nothing is worth attaining there—and who does not understand! Anyone with a little intelligence sees that the outer has no ultimate purpose; whatever you gain, death will take all. Then a man turns within. But within there is a false way and a true way. If he takes the false, he gets lost—and bliss remains unattainable. What is this false direction? In the name of dharma, many things have been made into “dharma” that are not dharma at all. For example, a man gets up each morning and goes to the temple, and thinks that by going to the temple he has become religious. Such a man is deluded. Dharma has never happened by going to a temple. And no man-made temple can be the temple of God. How can man build a temple of God? If man could build God’s temple, man would become greater than God. God creates man; man cannot create God. But false religion has taught a trick—that man can create God. A man carves a stone image and declares, “Here is God,” and then begins to worship it. The limit of insanity! How can images made by our own hands be God’s? God has no image—and God has no temple. Or, if you prefer, all images are God’s, and everything is God’s temple. This entire earth, this whole sky, these moons and stars are God’s image. The ocean, the winds, these people, these eyes, these beating hearts, this sand—everything is God’s image. Either this is true—or else it is true that God has no image at all. He is imageless, arupa. Between these two we have invented a third trick—that we have built temples and carved stone idols; there are temples, mosques, churches—and countless forms of man-made sanctuaries, man-made gods. In these gods and temples we get lost. Man can make neither temple nor God. Man can enter the temple; man can enter God—but he cannot create them. Nothing man-made can be dharma. Dharma is that which is before us and will remain after us. Dharma is that from which we are born and into which we are absorbed. We cannot construct dharma. But we have erected “religions”—Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Jain, Buddhist. These are our inventions. Whatever we invent will be counterfeit; it can never be true dharma. Understand this well: whatever man makes as “religion” will be fake, false. It cannot be real. Real dharma is that which sustains us. Real dharma is not what we manufacture. Therefore there is no such thing in the world as a “scripture of dharma.” There are scriptures, yes, but no scripture of dharma. How could there be! A book written by man cannot be a book of dharma. Yes, there is one book—open on all sides. The sun is among its pages, the sky is among its pages, the winds are among its pages; the whole of nature and the whole of life are chapters of that book. But no one goes to open that book. People open the Ramayana, the Quran, the Bible, and imagine they are reading the scripture of dharma. There is only one scripture—the entirety of life. Whatever has been created by the divine is scripture. Books made by man can be beautiful, poetic, even wondrous—but they cannot be the scripture of dharma. Rabindranath has narrated an event from his life. He writes: “It was a full-moon night, and I was boating on a lake. In the little cabin of the barge I had lit a small lamp and was reading a book on aesthetics—reading about what beauty is. “Outside, the full moon—moonlight showering from all sides. Every ripple of the lake turned to silver. But I was shut in my little hut on the barge, sitting in the dirty smoke of a tiny lamp, reading a book on aesthetics. Past midnight my eyes grew tired; I closed the book, blew out the lamp, and lay down—when I was startled, stunned; I leapt up dancing! As soon as the lamp was blown out, moonlight poured in through the doors, through the windows, through every crevice of the barge. Moonlight began to dance everywhere.” Rabindranath said, “Ah, fool that I am! I sat under a flickering, sooty lamp to read a treatise on beauty, while Beauty itself stood waiting at the threshold—‘Blow out your lamp and I shall enter!’ Beauty stood at the door while I tangled myself in a book about beauty.” He closed the book and stepped out onto the barge. The moon was in the sky, the silent lake all around. In the falling moonlight he began to dance, saying, “Here is beauty! Here is beauty! How mad I was—seeking beauty by opening a book! There, there were black letters, there was paper, words made by men. Where was beauty there?” But we all search in books for that which is present all around. We search in books for that which abides everywhere, every moment. And when we fail to find it in books we say, “Then there must be no God. I have read all the books; I have not found Him yet.” We are fools. Where we are searching—in man-made books—how could God be there? If you want to see God, search where nothing man-made exists. Search where what was before man still is—where that from which man arose is—where that into which man will dissolve is. God means: that from which all arises, in which all happens, into which all dissolves—and yet which always is. God means simply this: that from which everything arises, in which everything abides, without which nothing can be, and into which everything eventually is absorbed—but which neither perishes nor is produced, neither is lost nor comes nor goes—what is. That which simply is—forever—that is God. And we? We build a temple. That temple will be built and will fall—for whatever is built will perish. We make an idol. Whatever has been made will fall apart tomorrow. We compose a book. Whatever is composed is destined to end. Whatever is made—perishes. That is not God. But man has set up his hollow and false religions. Why? Because sooner or later every man tires of the outer and turns within. And when he turns within there are two paths: the false and the true. If he moves on the true path of dharma, he cannot be exploited. If you divert him to the false, there are priests, pundits, clerics, who can exploit him. Those who mislead man are not the atheists so much as the pundits, the priests, the sadhus, the sannyasins—those who exploit dharma, who live in the name of dharma, who have made dharma their livelihood, their trade; those who even sell God and live by selling Him. They have set up a substitute religion, a placebo religion. Before a person can truly turn within, they put him on their false path. On that path millions upon millions walk—under the names Hindu, Muslim, Christian—and reach nowhere. Outside a man reaches nowhere; inside, clutching the wrong path, he also reaches nowhere. A few rare ones slip away from the crowd and take up the path that is dharma. Remember: the crowd never walks on the path of dharma. On the path of dharma one walks alone. There is no highway there where millions can march together. The path of dharma is like a foot-trail on which a single person walks. Even two cannot walk side by side. And remember: the path of dharma is not something ready-made, prepared in advance. It is like the sky where birds fly—no paths are laid out. The bird flies and the path appears as it flies; and it is not that one bird flies and leaves a path, and another can follow behind. No—once the bird passes, the path vanishes. No marks are left in the sky. Exactly so in the sky of dharma—each goes alone. It is a pathless path. There are no fixed tracks. There is no chart, no map, no compass to tell where the way lies. Only those who have the courage to step alone onto the unknown arrive at the divine. But a boy born into a Hindu home joins the Hindu crowd. If he is told, “Go to Kashi,” he goes to Kashi. “Go to Dwarka,” he goes to Dwarka. “This is God; worship this,” he worships that. Born into the Muslim crowd, he goes to Mecca. Born into the Christian crowd, he goes to Jerusalem. He walks behind the crowd. The man who walks behind the crowd will walk the road of false religion. The man who gathers courage to walk alone can walk the path of dharma. Therefore two things must be kept in mind. Outer life is meaningless; it has no ultimate significance. It is like lines drawn on sand—the winds will come and erase them. How many have lived on this earth before us! In the soil where we sit, who knows how many graves have been made. The sand upon which we sit is mixed with the ashes of innumerable lives. How many have lived and been lost! What sign of them remains today? What trace? What thoughts must they not have thought, what deeds must they not have done! How many… I hear Dwarka was built and destroyed seven times—perhaps seventy million times it has been built and destroyed. Who knows! The expanse is so endless—every day everything is built and undone. What dreams those people must have dreamed! What desires, “We will build this, and build that.” All became ash and sand. All was lost. We too will be gone tomorrow. We too have great dreams. We too want to do so many things. But on the sands of time all is wiped away; the winds come and everything is carried off. Outer life has no ultimate meaning. Outer life is no more than play. Yes, play it well—that is enough. To play well supports the inner journey. But outer life is not of great value. Some get lost outside; then some turn inward and there a false road has been laid—a marketplace in the name of dharma. There sit the priests of Hindus, Muslims, Christians—selling under the name of dharma man-made gods, man-made deities, man-written books. They mislead. Somehow a man escapes the well only to fall into the abyss—the wrong inner path. Some profit from this. For thousands of years some have exploited this weakness, this ignorance, this helplessness in man—that when he turns from the outer to the inner, he is unknowing; he does not know where to go. There, “gurus” stand waiting. They say, “Come, we will show you the way. Follow us. We know.” Remember: the one who says, “I know—come follow me,” is a dishonest man. For in the realm of dharma, the very ‘I’ dissolves; one cannot even muster the audacity to say, “I know.” In truth, there, no knower remains; there is nothing to be known. There, the knower is gone and the known is gone. There is neither subject nor object. Therefore, one who has known does not say, “I know, I will take you.” And one who has known knows also that no one has ever taken anyone else. Each must go himself. In the realm of dharma there are no gurus. But in the religion of hypocrisy, there are empires of gurus. Remember well: whoever walks behind a guru will never reach the divine. They take you behind themselves and entangle you in man-made nets. Millions travel like ants—one behind another. This entire pilgrimage is futile. There is no sacred pilgrimage of dharma, no temple of dharma, no book of dharma, no religious guru. And so long as we remain caught in these, we cannot know dharma. You will ask, “Then what are we to do? If we do not follow a guru, where shall we go?” Go behind no one! Stop! Go behind no one—and you will arrive where you need to arrive. There are things that are reached by going; and there are things that are reached by stopping. Dharma is of the latter kind—it is not reached by walking. Perhaps you have never thought of this. I came to Dwarka; I had to travel, because there was distance between you and me. If I were to get up now and come to you, I would have to walk, because there is a distance to be crossed. But between man and the divine there is no distance. Therefore there is no question of walking. Whoever walks there will be lost. Whoever stops arrives. So understand the first thing clearly: you do not reach there by walking. Therefore there is no need for any guru, no need of any vehicle, no need of any journey. Those reach there who, in every way, come to a standstill, who become utterly still. Buddha was passing near a village, by a mountain. Some friends said, “Do not go that way! A man has gone mad there. He cuts off people’s heads, takes their fingers, and strings them into garlands. He has vowed to kill a thousand men. Who knows how many he has killed. That road is closed; no one goes there. Please do not go.” Buddha said, “That poor fellow must be waiting. If none goes, he will be disappointed. Let me go. And moreover, I have no fear of death now, for I have reached that place where there is no death. I shall go.” They could not dissuade him. He took that path. That man—named Angulimala—was sharpening his axe by the mountain. He saw Buddha approaching. He was astonished! For months no one had come that way. Perhaps this monk knows nothing—innocent, guileless, walking quietly! Compassion arose in him, seeing this simple man. He lifted his axe and shouted, “Stop there! Do not come further, or I will cut off your head. Turn back! Take one more step and your life is in danger!” But Buddha kept walking. The man shouted again, “Do you not hear? Are you deaf? Have you no sense? Turn back! If you come further your head will be cut off!” Buddha said, “Madman, I am not moving at all—I stopped long ago. Where am I moving? You are moving.” It became very strange. The man stood with his axe—he was not moving. And Buddha was walking toward him, saying, “I am not moving; you are moving.” The man said, “This fellow seems mad. You are mad! First, you have come here—that itself is madness. Second, you walk and say, ‘I am still,’ and you call me who stands still the one who is moving!” Buddha said, “Truly, I tell you this: as long as the mind moves, I move. Now the mind is still; I do not move. And your mind is moving—thus you move. And I will tell you a strange thing: since I came to a stop, I have gained all that there is to gain. And as long as I moved, I lost all that was mine and grasped all that was not mine. And what is not ours can never become ours—however hard we try. And what is ours, we can forget, but never truly lose. I stopped—and I found.” The man understood nothing. He said, “What are you talking about? What stopping? What attaining? What is it that you say you have attained?” Buddha said, “So long as you look outside, you will not even know there is something within worth attaining. The way to attain it is to stop—to come to a standstill.” But we? We think that even on the path of dharma there is somewhere to go. And thus the guru exploits. The guru says, “We can take you, we will deliver you.” There is nowhere to go there. There is only to stop. Turn from the outer to the inner—and within, go nowhere. Be still. And you will arrive where the divine is. Understand this sutra well: turn from the outside to the inside. And inside, go nowhere—come to rest; do not move within at all. Then you will arrive at that which is called Paramatman. He is present within. Once we stop and look, He becomes recognized—because we are That. But the guru says, “We will make you move. Become our follower. Do what we say. Walk in the direction we indicate.” Then the wrong religion begins; then we wander and wander. And from the outer it is easy to be saved; from this wrong inner path it is very difficult to be saved. For outer life itself goads us, wakes us, to turn within. But if within we take hold of a dream-path, there is no awakening from there; sleep deepens and man is lost. The cause of so much adharma in the world is not the atheists, not the irreligious, not the God-deniers. The cause is those who, in the name of dharma, beat the drum of a false religion and mislead people upon that line. For millions of years millions have been misled by religious leaders. And they still mislead. They set Hindu against Muslim, Jain against Hindu, Christian against Buddhist. Everywhere in the world the religious leaders have become dens of quarrel. What relation can dharma have with quarrel? If temple and mosque had anything to do with dharma, there could be no conflict. But till now man has been destroyed in such quarrels. Futile things are thrust upon individuals: one is told to turn a rosary; another is told to sit and stand in calisthenics—call it namaz. Another is told to put fingers in ears and eyes—call it samayik. One is told one thing, another is told another. In all these false and hypocritical teachings man is led astray. One is told to chant “Rama, Rama,” another to chant “Krishna, Krishna,” another to shout “Allah, Allah.” But shout whatever you will—you will not reach there. Those reach who come to such stillness that even their speech stops, their words stop, their thoughts stop. There is no need to shout “Rama, Rama,” no need to cry “Krishna, Krishna.” No one arrives by shouting. There, silence is needed—becoming utterly quiet. Only those reach who become silent in every way—totally silent, completely still. Silence takes you there. But silence cannot be exploited. Words can be used for exploitation. With words, sects can be organized. With words, people can be set to fight. What a spectacle—that those who worship Rama fight with those who worship Krishna! The limit of madness. Both need treatment. The limit of making man insane! Even those who revere Rama and Krishna fight. That those who follow Mohammed and Mahavira might fight is somewhat understandable—they lived far apart in time and place. But even those who revere Rama and Krishna fight. And the fun is, even among the followers of Krishna there can be two ways of following—and they can fight. Have we discovered the techniques of fighting, or have we discovered the path to the divine? I want to say to you: He has no name. Neither “Rama” is His name, nor “Krishna,” nor “Mahavira,” nor “Buddha.” He is nameless. So long as clinging to names remains, He will not be found. When all names are dropped—the Nameless, the Anam is—when the mind abandons all names, all words, all scriptures, all thoughts, abandons all—and stands silently—then one arrives where our longing has always been to arrive. But we are all fettered, bound. We have all hammered pegs and tied ourselves to them. Let me explain with a small story. One night in a village a few friends gathered in a tavern. They drank late into the night. Coming out, one of them said, “The full moon is up—let’s go to the river and take a boat ride.” They went to the river. They sat in a boat and took up the oars. The fishermen had already gone home after tying up their boats. They began rowing. All night they rowed. At dawn, as the air grew cooler and the sun was about to rise, they sobered a little. One said, “We must have gone very far—let’s turn back now. But first step out and see where we are—east or west? How far have we come? Where are we?” One man stepped out—and began to laugh. His friends asked, “Why do you laugh?” He said, “Get out yourselves. We have gone nowhere. We are exactly where the boat stood at night.” They asked, “But what happened?” He replied, “Nothing has happened; we forgot to untie the chain of the boat. It was tied to the mooring all along—and we rowed all night.” Row all night if you like—no one reaches anywhere that way. The chain must be untied. The boat must be freed from the bank. As long as man’s mind is tied to anything, the voyage on the ocean of the divine cannot begin. As long as the mind is tied anywhere—whether to wealth or to religion, whether to wife or to a self-fabricated God, whether to moksha or to heaven, whether to householding or to sannyas—as long as there is any clinging, any grip, man cannot enter the ocean of dharma. What is needed is a mind unbound, tied nowhere, without any fetter. One who is neither Hindu nor Muslim nor Christian, who is neither a Krishna-devotee nor a Rama-devotee. One who is not a believer, not an unbeliever. One who does not assert this or that. One who does not worship this book or that. One who is utterly empty, without any clutching. He arrives instantly at the ocean of the Lord. In a small village in Japan, early one morning three friends went for a walk. They saw a monk standing by a hillside in the shining light of dawn. The sun’s rays were upon him; his eyes were closed; he stood there. The three began to think: “What might this monk be doing standing on that hill?” One said—as is people’s habit, though we know nothing about something, we do not fail to give our opinion—if man would only decide never to speak about what he does not know, more than half of the world’s ignorance would disappear at once. But everyone, even without knowing, musters up the courage to speak. In fact, the less one knows, the more courage one has to speak; the knower hesitates a little, the ignorant never hesitate. Where the wise fear to tread, the foolish enter headlong. The first said, “I know. Sometimes his cow strays. He must be looking out from the hill to see where the cow is.” The other two said, “Bravo, sir! His eyes are closed. Have you ever seen anyone look for a cow with eyes closed?” The second friend said, “No—he is not looking for any cow. Sometimes his friends come to visit. They may have been left behind; he must be standing and waiting for them.” The third said, “Leave it! One who waits for someone does look backward at least once. He has not looked back even once. I think he is remembering God.” The debate grew. People’s quarrels grow over useless matters. Those three had nothing to do with the poor monk—yet they began to argue. Finally they said, “There is only one way—let us go and ask him what he is doing.” They climbed the hill. For useless tasks, people will climb hills too. They reached, exhausted. The first went forward and said, “Revered monk, I think your cow is lost. Are you searching for her?” The monk opened his eyes and said, “What cow! I possess nothing—how can anything of mine be lost? I have nothing; how can anything of mine be lost? I am alone; nothing is mine. I brought nothing with me; I can take nothing with me. Therefore I do not fall into the illusion that anything is mine. How can what I did not bring be mine? How can what I will not take be mine? So I do not get entangled in this illusion that something is mine. Things are around me; nothing is mine.” The first man withdrew, defeated. The second said, “Then surely a friend of yours has been left behind—you are waiting for him.” The monk said, “I have no enemy, and I have no friend. When I have no enemy, what question of a friend? And I have left no one behind, because no one is with me at all. I am utterly alone. Everyone is utterly alone—but they create the illusion that someone is with them; then it seems someone is left behind, someone has gone ahead. No one is with me; I am completely alone. I wait for no one. Why should I wait? However long you wait, does anyone ever come? However long you look down the road, does anyone arrive? Man is alone—lives alone, disappears alone. No, no—I do not wait for anyone.” The second man withdrew as well. The third said, “Then surely I am right—my victory is certain.” He came forward and said to the monk, “Surely you are remembering God.” He replied, “Which God? What God? I do not know any God—how can I remember Him? We remember that which we know. And if we have known—then what need is there to remember? If we do not know, we cannot remember; if we have known, remembrance is unnecessary. And if God is other than I, perhaps I might remember; if I am That, why should I remember myself? And should God have some name, we could remember—but He has no name; how to remember? I am not remembering any God.” The three were flustered and asked, “Then what are you doing here? What are you doing standing here?” The monk said, “If you insist on asking, I will say: I am doing nothing. I am only being. I am only being; I am not doing anything.” Do you understand what this means? If for even a single moment a man does nothing—does not think, does not do, does not remember, does not imagine, does not dream, does not read scriptures, does not chant, does not sing, does not pray, does not worship—if for a single moment a man does nothing, and simply is—then in that very moment he meets God. In that very moment the doors of dharma open. In that very moment what was hidden becomes manifest. In that very moment what was in darkness becomes illumined. In that very moment what seemed lost is seen never to have been lost. In that very moment life’s thirst, its race, all come to an end. In that very moment all the sorrow of life dissolves. In that very moment the flowers blossom—of peace, of bliss, of dance. In that very moment fragrances begin to arise from the being—what some call love, some call ahimsa, some call compassion. In that very moment the fragrances appear that some call brahmacharya, some tapas, some tyaga. But all these begin to happen of themselves. People say, “By brahmacharya one attains God.” People say, “By renunciation one attains God.” People say, “By ahimsa one attains God.” People say, “By austerity one attains God.” I want to say the reverse: when God is realized, all these come to you; by gaining these, God is not gained. Without meeting God, none of these can be. When God dawns, everything else is given. These are the blossoms that open when God is realized. This is the fragrance that comes into life from the realization of God. It is like saying, “If the darkness goes, the lamp lights.” We will say, “No. If the lamp lights, the darkness goes.” When God is revealed, all is revealed. Jesus spoke a most wondrous saying: “First ye seek the Kingdom of God; then all else shall be added unto you.” First seek the Kingdom of God; then everything else will come. First open His door; then all will be yours. But we? We do not know how to open that door. And those who claim to show us the way point us to the doors of man-made temples and mosques: “Open these and come inside.” There is nothing within them; they are buildings made by men. But there is also a temple within us—not made by man, not made by us—found within. That temple can be opened. But it opens in that very moment of peace and silence when we are doing nothing at all. Therefore there is no such thing as a “religious act.” There cannot be. To be religious means to be in non-doing. All the acts performed in the name of dharma are hypocrisy, mere ritual, deception. There is no religious act. Whoever abides in akriya—actionlessness—gains dharma. Whoever moves in this direction finds the meaning of life, the blessedness of life. He comes to know what life is, how many secrets, how much bliss lie hidden in life—how vast is the treasure of life. For him death vanishes, sorrow vanishes, darkness vanishes. One last small story—and I will conclude. In a great capital lived a beggar monk. For thirty years he begged. Then death came; he died. Sitting in the same spot for thirty years he had begged, hand outstretched before whoever passed. When he died, the neighbors set fire to his rags, threw away his dirty bowls, cremated his body. Then someone sensible thought, “Sitting thirty years on one spot, he must have soiled the ground—let us remove a patch of earth and replace it.” They dug—and a miracle! Astonished, the whole capital gathered; even the emperor came to see. Just a little digging under the spot where the monk had sat—and there was such a treasure that had it come into the monk’s hands, he would have become the richest man on earth. The villagers said, “What a madman! He begged for nothing—if only he had dug his own ground! He would have become such a master—such a treasure would have been found.” Everyone said so. I too went to that village, stood in that crowd, and I too laughed. People asked me, “Why do you laugh?” I said, “Not at the monk—at you! It seems to me that under the ground you stand upon lies a treasure even greater than this. But you will never look there. You will search in other temples for that which is within you. You will stretch out your hands for wealth before others, though the wealth is within you. You will cling to the feet of gurus for knowledge, though the knowledge is within you. You will search in dead scriptures for that which, as a living scripture, is breathing within you.” But we all search outside—because we have all become beggars. And if we search within, we can all become emperors. Dharma wants to make emperors of those who have become beggars. Dharma is the art of becoming an emperor. You have listened to these words with such peace and love—For that I am deeply obliged. I bow down to the Paramatman dwelling in all. Please accept my pranam.
Osho's Commentary
In human life there is so much sorrow, so much pain, so much tension that it almost seems even the animals may be more in delight than we are, more at peace than we are. Perhaps the oceans and the earth are more rejoicing than we are. Even the most barren soil blossoms with flowers. Even the filthiest sea rolls with waves—waves of happiness, of joy. But in human life no flowers bloom, no waves of joy arise.
What has happened to human life? Why is man in such a state of restlessness and misery? Could it be that man does not become that for which he is born to become, does not attain that for which he is born to attain—and hence is so unhappy?
If a seed cannot become a tree, it will be miserable. If a river cannot meet the ocean, it will be miserable. Is it not possible that man cannot become the tree he is meant to become, and cannot meet that ocean with which his soul longs to unite—and therefore man is in sorrow?
Dharma is the name of the art that turns a man into that tree.
Dharma is the name of the art that unites man with the ocean—the ocean that gives fulfillment, peace, bliss.
But in the name of dharma a net has been raised that takes man nowhere—it only leads him astray. How many “religions” are there in the world in the name of dharma? Three hundred! And how can dharma be three hundred? If dharma is, it can only be one. How can truth be many? If truth is, it can only be one. But in the name of one truth, when three hundred sects are erected, even searching for truth becomes difficult. There are Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Jains—and nowhere a religious man. Because there is no religious man, there is such anxiety, such unrest, such sorrow.
There are two reasons why the religious man is missing.
Let me explain with a small story.
The first reason is this: man wastes his life trying to save things that, in the end, have no value at all. Man pours his whole life into a race in which, even after running, there is no possibility of ever arriving anywhere.
Swami Ram once visited Japan. On a major road in Tokyo there was a crowd of thousands. Ram, too, stood among them. A mansion had caught fire. A costly house was burning. A great palace—flames had seized it from all sides. Hundreds of people were carrying valuables out from within. The owner of the palace stood there—lost, almost unconscious. People were holding him up. He could not make sense of what was happening. All that he had earned in a lifetime was on fire.
Then people came out carrying strongboxes, precious goods, books, valuable documents—and they said, “One more time we can go inside; after that the flames will take the house completely and going in will be impossible. Whatever we felt was important, we have saved. If anything special still remains, tell us—we will bring it out.”
The owner said, “I can neither see nor think. Go inside once more; save whatever seems fit to save.”
They went inside. Every other time they had returned happily, having saved so many things. But this last time they came back beating their chests and weeping. The entire crowd began asking, “Why are you crying? What has happened?”
They said through tears, “A great mistake has been made. The owner had a single son. He was sleeping inside. We forgot to save him. We saved all the belongings, but the true owner of the belongings has died. We have brought out his corpse.”
Swami Ram wrote in his diary that day: “What I saw today happens in the lives of the majority of men. People waste their lives saving the unnecessary and the real owner—life itself—dies; they never manage to save him.”
Most people ruin their lives because they do not know what is worth saving and what is to be let go. We all busy ourselves saving objects and things while we lose our own individuality, our own Atman.
This is one reason man cannot become religious. And whoever cannot become religious can never become blissful. To be religious and to be blissful—these are two ways of saying the same thing. To be irreligious and to be miserable—these are two ways of saying the same thing. So do not ever imagine that someone can be blissful while being irreligious. It is impossible.
Just as there are diseases of the body—and how can a man whose body is sick be blissful? The body must be healthy—there are also diseases of the soul. Adharma is the name of the soul’s disease. How can one who suffers from the soul’s disease be blissful? Even if the body is in pain, a man may still be inwardly blissful. But if the soul within is sick, then there is no hope at all of bliss.
And yet for that very soul we do nothing; for the body we do everything. For the unnecessary we do very much. Like small children who collect stones on the seashore and think they have accomplished something great. Like children who sit by the sea and make sandcastles and then fight and quarrel—“You broke my castle! You kicked my house!”—without knowing that any moment their mother’s call will come from home and they will have to leave all those castles on the shore; no house belongs to anyone, nothing is truly destroyed when it falls, nothing truly created when it rises.
This is exactly how the houses we build in life—of mud, of the external, of possessions—are. One day a call comes from above, and everything has to be left on the shore of sand. There can be no accounting of them then. You cannot take them along. At the moment of departure, when bidding farewell to the earth, the hands are empty. Yet we waste our lives filling ourselves with things—none of which accompanies us.
Remember: true wealth is that which remains with us even at the moment of death. What is lost at death is not wealth at all.
When Alexander died, and his funeral procession passed through the capital, hundreds of thousands came to see it. But everyone began to ask the same question. Alexander’s hands were hanging outside the bier. This had never been seen before. No one’s hands are seen hanging outside a bier. People asked, “Has some mistake been made?” If it were a beggar’s bier, perhaps a mistake would be possible—but this was Alexander’s. Great emperors were shouldering it. Why were his hands left hanging outside? Slowly it became known—Alexander himself had asked that his hands be left outside. His friends had asked, “What madness is this? No one’s hands are left outside. Why do you want yours so?” Alexander had replied, “I want people to see that I, too, am going empty-handed; my hands are not full.”
All life long we run to fill our hands, and finally we find our hands are empty. All through life they were empty. The entire race proves futile. We get nothing—only the appearance of getting. Almost like the place on the horizon where the earth seems to touch the sky. We move ahead thinking, “A little farther and we shall come to the spot where the earth meets the sky.” But the farther we go, the farther that circle recedes. We may walk around the whole earth and that place will not come where the earth touches the sky—it only appears to do so; it never touches.
Exactly so, a man thinks all his life: “Let me get this, let me get that—one day all will be mine.” It seems just ahead; somewhere ahead everything will be gained. He runs and runs and runs. In the end he falls; the time of attaining never arrives, and his hands remain empty.
So, first, a man does not become religious because he squanders all his energy, all his time, all his life collecting the outer.
And there is a second matter even more dangerous. The man who runs after the outer may one day awaken and ask, “What am I doing? What dreams am I weaving? In what futile hopes am I wasting my life? What sandcastles am I building that will collapse tomorrow? What paper boats am I launching that will soon sink?” One day the man who runs after the outer stops, reflects, thinks. But there is another danger. Those who tire of the outer and even come to understand that the race outside is futile—then they set out in search of the inner. And within there are two directions.
The search outside is adharma. In the inner search there are two directions: one is the direction of dharma, and one is the direction of false dharma. If one moves along the direction of false dharma, one again becomes wasted, again reaches nowhere.
To awaken from the outer is easy; to awaken from the inner—when it is a false inner—is very difficult. When a man tires of the outer and understands that nothing is worth attaining there—and who does not understand! Anyone with a little intelligence sees that the outer has no ultimate purpose; whatever you gain, death will take all. Then a man turns within. But within there is a false way and a true way. If he takes the false, he gets lost—and bliss remains unattainable.
What is this false direction?
In the name of dharma, many things have been made into “dharma” that are not dharma at all. For example, a man gets up each morning and goes to the temple, and thinks that by going to the temple he has become religious. Such a man is deluded. Dharma has never happened by going to a temple. And no man-made temple can be the temple of God. How can man build a temple of God? If man could build God’s temple, man would become greater than God. God creates man; man cannot create God.
But false religion has taught a trick—that man can create God. A man carves a stone image and declares, “Here is God,” and then begins to worship it. The limit of insanity! How can images made by our own hands be God’s?
God has no image—and God has no temple. Or, if you prefer, all images are God’s, and everything is God’s temple. This entire earth, this whole sky, these moons and stars are God’s image. The ocean, the winds, these people, these eyes, these beating hearts, this sand—everything is God’s image. Either this is true—or else it is true that God has no image at all. He is imageless, arupa.
Between these two we have invented a third trick—that we have built temples and carved stone idols; there are temples, mosques, churches—and countless forms of man-made sanctuaries, man-made gods. In these gods and temples we get lost.
Man can make neither temple nor God. Man can enter the temple; man can enter God—but he cannot create them. Nothing man-made can be dharma. Dharma is that which is before us and will remain after us. Dharma is that from which we are born and into which we are absorbed. We cannot construct dharma.
But we have erected “religions”—Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Jain, Buddhist. These are our inventions. Whatever we invent will be counterfeit; it can never be true dharma. Understand this well: whatever man makes as “religion” will be fake, false. It cannot be real. Real dharma is that which sustains us. Real dharma is not what we manufacture. Therefore there is no such thing in the world as a “scripture of dharma.” There are scriptures, yes, but no scripture of dharma. How could there be! A book written by man cannot be a book of dharma.
Yes, there is one book—open on all sides. The sun is among its pages, the sky is among its pages, the winds are among its pages; the whole of nature and the whole of life are chapters of that book.
But no one goes to open that book. People open the Ramayana, the Quran, the Bible, and imagine they are reading the scripture of dharma.
There is only one scripture—the entirety of life. Whatever has been created by the divine is scripture. Books made by man can be beautiful, poetic, even wondrous—but they cannot be the scripture of dharma.
Rabindranath has narrated an event from his life. He writes: “It was a full-moon night, and I was boating on a lake. In the little cabin of the barge I had lit a small lamp and was reading a book on aesthetics—reading about what beauty is.
“Outside, the full moon—moonlight showering from all sides. Every ripple of the lake turned to silver. But I was shut in my little hut on the barge, sitting in the dirty smoke of a tiny lamp, reading a book on aesthetics. Past midnight my eyes grew tired; I closed the book, blew out the lamp, and lay down—when I was startled, stunned; I leapt up dancing! As soon as the lamp was blown out, moonlight poured in through the doors, through the windows, through every crevice of the barge. Moonlight began to dance everywhere.”
Rabindranath said, “Ah, fool that I am! I sat under a flickering, sooty lamp to read a treatise on beauty, while Beauty itself stood waiting at the threshold—‘Blow out your lamp and I shall enter!’ Beauty stood at the door while I tangled myself in a book about beauty.”
He closed the book and stepped out onto the barge. The moon was in the sky, the silent lake all around. In the falling moonlight he began to dance, saying, “Here is beauty! Here is beauty! How mad I was—seeking beauty by opening a book! There, there were black letters, there was paper, words made by men. Where was beauty there?”
But we all search in books for that which is present all around. We search in books for that which abides everywhere, every moment. And when we fail to find it in books we say, “Then there must be no God. I have read all the books; I have not found Him yet.”
We are fools. Where we are searching—in man-made books—how could God be there? If you want to see God, search where nothing man-made exists. Search where what was before man still is—where that from which man arose is—where that into which man will dissolve is.
God means: that from which all arises, in which all happens, into which all dissolves—and yet which always is. God means simply this: that from which everything arises, in which everything abides, without which nothing can be, and into which everything eventually is absorbed—but which neither perishes nor is produced, neither is lost nor comes nor goes—what is. That which simply is—forever—that is God.
And we? We build a temple. That temple will be built and will fall—for whatever is built will perish. We make an idol. Whatever has been made will fall apart tomorrow. We compose a book. Whatever is composed is destined to end. Whatever is made—perishes. That is not God.
But man has set up his hollow and false religions. Why?
Because sooner or later every man tires of the outer and turns within. And when he turns within there are two paths: the false and the true. If he moves on the true path of dharma, he cannot be exploited. If you divert him to the false, there are priests, pundits, clerics, who can exploit him.
Those who mislead man are not the atheists so much as the pundits, the priests, the sadhus, the sannyasins—those who exploit dharma, who live in the name of dharma, who have made dharma their livelihood, their trade; those who even sell God and live by selling Him. They have set up a substitute religion, a placebo religion. Before a person can truly turn within, they put him on their false path. On that path millions upon millions walk—under the names Hindu, Muslim, Christian—and reach nowhere. Outside a man reaches nowhere; inside, clutching the wrong path, he also reaches nowhere.
A few rare ones slip away from the crowd and take up the path that is dharma. Remember: the crowd never walks on the path of dharma. On the path of dharma one walks alone. There is no highway there where millions can march together. The path of dharma is like a foot-trail on which a single person walks. Even two cannot walk side by side.
And remember: the path of dharma is not something ready-made, prepared in advance. It is like the sky where birds fly—no paths are laid out. The bird flies and the path appears as it flies; and it is not that one bird flies and leaves a path, and another can follow behind. No—once the bird passes, the path vanishes. No marks are left in the sky.
Exactly so in the sky of dharma—each goes alone. It is a pathless path. There are no fixed tracks. There is no chart, no map, no compass to tell where the way lies. Only those who have the courage to step alone onto the unknown arrive at the divine.
But a boy born into a Hindu home joins the Hindu crowd. If he is told, “Go to Kashi,” he goes to Kashi. “Go to Dwarka,” he goes to Dwarka. “This is God; worship this,” he worships that. Born into the Muslim crowd, he goes to Mecca. Born into the Christian crowd, he goes to Jerusalem. He walks behind the crowd. The man who walks behind the crowd will walk the road of false religion. The man who gathers courage to walk alone can walk the path of dharma.
Therefore two things must be kept in mind. Outer life is meaningless; it has no ultimate significance. It is like lines drawn on sand—the winds will come and erase them. How many have lived on this earth before us! In the soil where we sit, who knows how many graves have been made. The sand upon which we sit is mixed with the ashes of innumerable lives. How many have lived and been lost! What sign of them remains today? What trace? What thoughts must they not have thought, what deeds must they not have done! How many…
I hear Dwarka was built and destroyed seven times—perhaps seventy million times it has been built and destroyed. Who knows! The expanse is so endless—every day everything is built and undone. What dreams those people must have dreamed! What desires, “We will build this, and build that.” All became ash and sand. All was lost. We too will be gone tomorrow. We too have great dreams. We too want to do so many things. But on the sands of time all is wiped away; the winds come and everything is carried off.
Outer life has no ultimate meaning. Outer life is no more than play. Yes, play it well—that is enough. To play well supports the inner journey. But outer life is not of great value. Some get lost outside; then some turn inward and there a false road has been laid—a marketplace in the name of dharma. There sit the priests of Hindus, Muslims, Christians—selling under the name of dharma man-made gods, man-made deities, man-written books. They mislead. Somehow a man escapes the well only to fall into the abyss—the wrong inner path.
Some profit from this. For thousands of years some have exploited this weakness, this ignorance, this helplessness in man—that when he turns from the outer to the inner, he is unknowing; he does not know where to go.
There, “gurus” stand waiting. They say, “Come, we will show you the way. Follow us. We know.”
Remember: the one who says, “I know—come follow me,” is a dishonest man. For in the realm of dharma, the very ‘I’ dissolves; one cannot even muster the audacity to say, “I know.” In truth, there, no knower remains; there is nothing to be known. There, the knower is gone and the known is gone. There is neither subject nor object.
Therefore, one who has known does not say, “I know, I will take you.” And one who has known knows also that no one has ever taken anyone else. Each must go himself. In the realm of dharma there are no gurus.
But in the religion of hypocrisy, there are empires of gurus. Remember well: whoever walks behind a guru will never reach the divine. They take you behind themselves and entangle you in man-made nets. Millions travel like ants—one behind another.
This entire pilgrimage is futile. There is no sacred pilgrimage of dharma, no temple of dharma, no book of dharma, no religious guru. And so long as we remain caught in these, we cannot know dharma.
You will ask, “Then what are we to do? If we do not follow a guru, where shall we go?”
Go behind no one! Stop! Go behind no one—and you will arrive where you need to arrive. There are things that are reached by going; and there are things that are reached by stopping. Dharma is of the latter kind—it is not reached by walking.
Perhaps you have never thought of this.
I came to Dwarka; I had to travel, because there was distance between you and me. If I were to get up now and come to you, I would have to walk, because there is a distance to be crossed. But between man and the divine there is no distance. Therefore there is no question of walking. Whoever walks there will be lost. Whoever stops arrives.
So understand the first thing clearly: you do not reach there by walking. Therefore there is no need for any guru, no need of any vehicle, no need of any journey. Those reach there who, in every way, come to a standstill, who become utterly still.
Buddha was passing near a village, by a mountain. Some friends said, “Do not go that way! A man has gone mad there. He cuts off people’s heads, takes their fingers, and strings them into garlands. He has vowed to kill a thousand men. Who knows how many he has killed. That road is closed; no one goes there. Please do not go.”
Buddha said, “That poor fellow must be waiting. If none goes, he will be disappointed. Let me go. And moreover, I have no fear of death now, for I have reached that place where there is no death. I shall go.”
They could not dissuade him. He took that path. That man—named Angulimala—was sharpening his axe by the mountain. He saw Buddha approaching. He was astonished! For months no one had come that way. Perhaps this monk knows nothing—innocent, guileless, walking quietly! Compassion arose in him, seeing this simple man. He lifted his axe and shouted, “Stop there! Do not come further, or I will cut off your head. Turn back! Take one more step and your life is in danger!”
But Buddha kept walking. The man shouted again, “Do you not hear? Are you deaf? Have you no sense? Turn back! If you come further your head will be cut off!”
Buddha said, “Madman, I am not moving at all—I stopped long ago. Where am I moving? You are moving.”
It became very strange. The man stood with his axe—he was not moving. And Buddha was walking toward him, saying, “I am not moving; you are moving.” The man said, “This fellow seems mad. You are mad! First, you have come here—that itself is madness. Second, you walk and say, ‘I am still,’ and you call me who stands still the one who is moving!”
Buddha said, “Truly, I tell you this: as long as the mind moves, I move. Now the mind is still; I do not move. And your mind is moving—thus you move. And I will tell you a strange thing: since I came to a stop, I have gained all that there is to gain. And as long as I moved, I lost all that was mine and grasped all that was not mine. And what is not ours can never become ours—however hard we try. And what is ours, we can forget, but never truly lose. I stopped—and I found.”
The man understood nothing. He said, “What are you talking about? What stopping? What attaining? What is it that you say you have attained?”
Buddha said, “So long as you look outside, you will not even know there is something within worth attaining. The way to attain it is to stop—to come to a standstill.”
But we? We think that even on the path of dharma there is somewhere to go. And thus the guru exploits. The guru says, “We can take you, we will deliver you.”
There is nowhere to go there. There is only to stop. Turn from the outer to the inner—and within, go nowhere. Be still. And you will arrive where the divine is.
Understand this sutra well: turn from the outside to the inside. And inside, go nowhere—come to rest; do not move within at all. Then you will arrive at that which is called Paramatman. He is present within. Once we stop and look, He becomes recognized—because we are That.
But the guru says, “We will make you move. Become our follower. Do what we say. Walk in the direction we indicate.” Then the wrong religion begins; then we wander and wander. And from the outer it is easy to be saved; from this wrong inner path it is very difficult to be saved. For outer life itself goads us, wakes us, to turn within. But if within we take hold of a dream-path, there is no awakening from there; sleep deepens and man is lost.
The cause of so much adharma in the world is not the atheists, not the irreligious, not the God-deniers. The cause is those who, in the name of dharma, beat the drum of a false religion and mislead people upon that line.
For millions of years millions have been misled by religious leaders. And they still mislead. They set Hindu against Muslim, Jain against Hindu, Christian against Buddhist. Everywhere in the world the religious leaders have become dens of quarrel.
What relation can dharma have with quarrel? If temple and mosque had anything to do with dharma, there could be no conflict. But till now man has been destroyed in such quarrels. Futile things are thrust upon individuals: one is told to turn a rosary; another is told to sit and stand in calisthenics—call it namaz. Another is told to put fingers in ears and eyes—call it samayik. One is told one thing, another is told another. In all these false and hypocritical teachings man is led astray. One is told to chant “Rama, Rama,” another to chant “Krishna, Krishna,” another to shout “Allah, Allah.”
But shout whatever you will—you will not reach there. Those reach who come to such stillness that even their speech stops, their words stop, their thoughts stop. There is no need to shout “Rama, Rama,” no need to cry “Krishna, Krishna.” No one arrives by shouting. There, silence is needed—becoming utterly quiet. Only those reach who become silent in every way—totally silent, completely still. Silence takes you there.
But silence cannot be exploited. Words can be used for exploitation. With words, sects can be organized. With words, people can be set to fight.
What a spectacle—that those who worship Rama fight with those who worship Krishna! The limit of madness. Both need treatment. The limit of making man insane! Even those who revere Rama and Krishna fight. That those who follow Mohammed and Mahavira might fight is somewhat understandable—they lived far apart in time and place. But even those who revere Rama and Krishna fight. And the fun is, even among the followers of Krishna there can be two ways of following—and they can fight. Have we discovered the techniques of fighting, or have we discovered the path to the divine?
I want to say to you: He has no name. Neither “Rama” is His name, nor “Krishna,” nor “Mahavira,” nor “Buddha.” He is nameless. So long as clinging to names remains, He will not be found. When all names are dropped—the Nameless, the Anam is—when the mind abandons all names, all words, all scriptures, all thoughts, abandons all—and stands silently—then one arrives where our longing has always been to arrive.
But we are all fettered, bound. We have all hammered pegs and tied ourselves to them.
Let me explain with a small story.
One night in a village a few friends gathered in a tavern. They drank late into the night. Coming out, one of them said, “The full moon is up—let’s go to the river and take a boat ride.” They went to the river. They sat in a boat and took up the oars. The fishermen had already gone home after tying up their boats. They began rowing. All night they rowed.
At dawn, as the air grew cooler and the sun was about to rise, they sobered a little. One said, “We must have gone very far—let’s turn back now. But first step out and see where we are—east or west? How far have we come? Where are we?” One man stepped out—and began to laugh. His friends asked, “Why do you laugh?” He said, “Get out yourselves. We have gone nowhere. We are exactly where the boat stood at night.” They asked, “But what happened?” He replied, “Nothing has happened; we forgot to untie the chain of the boat. It was tied to the mooring all along—and we rowed all night.”
Row all night if you like—no one reaches anywhere that way. The chain must be untied. The boat must be freed from the bank. As long as man’s mind is tied to anything, the voyage on the ocean of the divine cannot begin. As long as the mind is tied anywhere—whether to wealth or to religion, whether to wife or to a self-fabricated God, whether to moksha or to heaven, whether to householding or to sannyas—as long as there is any clinging, any grip, man cannot enter the ocean of dharma.
What is needed is a mind unbound, tied nowhere, without any fetter. One who is neither Hindu nor Muslim nor Christian, who is neither a Krishna-devotee nor a Rama-devotee. One who is not a believer, not an unbeliever. One who does not assert this or that. One who does not worship this book or that. One who is utterly empty, without any clutching. He arrives instantly at the ocean of the Lord.
In a small village in Japan, early one morning three friends went for a walk. They saw a monk standing by a hillside in the shining light of dawn. The sun’s rays were upon him; his eyes were closed; he stood there. The three began to think: “What might this monk be doing standing on that hill?”
One said—as is people’s habit, though we know nothing about something, we do not fail to give our opinion—if man would only decide never to speak about what he does not know, more than half of the world’s ignorance would disappear at once. But everyone, even without knowing, musters up the courage to speak. In fact, the less one knows, the more courage one has to speak; the knower hesitates a little, the ignorant never hesitate. Where the wise fear to tread, the foolish enter headlong.
The first said, “I know. Sometimes his cow strays. He must be looking out from the hill to see where the cow is.”
The other two said, “Bravo, sir! His eyes are closed. Have you ever seen anyone look for a cow with eyes closed?”
The second friend said, “No—he is not looking for any cow. Sometimes his friends come to visit. They may have been left behind; he must be standing and waiting for them.”
The third said, “Leave it! One who waits for someone does look backward at least once. He has not looked back even once. I think he is remembering God.”
The debate grew. People’s quarrels grow over useless matters. Those three had nothing to do with the poor monk—yet they began to argue. Finally they said, “There is only one way—let us go and ask him what he is doing.” They climbed the hill. For useless tasks, people will climb hills too. They reached, exhausted. The first went forward and said, “Revered monk, I think your cow is lost. Are you searching for her?”
The monk opened his eyes and said, “What cow! I possess nothing—how can anything of mine be lost? I have nothing; how can anything of mine be lost? I am alone; nothing is mine. I brought nothing with me; I can take nothing with me. Therefore I do not fall into the illusion that anything is mine. How can what I did not bring be mine? How can what I will not take be mine? So I do not get entangled in this illusion that something is mine. Things are around me; nothing is mine.”
The first man withdrew, defeated. The second said, “Then surely a friend of yours has been left behind—you are waiting for him.”
The monk said, “I have no enemy, and I have no friend. When I have no enemy, what question of a friend? And I have left no one behind, because no one is with me at all. I am utterly alone. Everyone is utterly alone—but they create the illusion that someone is with them; then it seems someone is left behind, someone has gone ahead. No one is with me; I am completely alone. I wait for no one. Why should I wait? However long you wait, does anyone ever come? However long you look down the road, does anyone arrive? Man is alone—lives alone, disappears alone. No, no—I do not wait for anyone.”
The second man withdrew as well. The third said, “Then surely I am right—my victory is certain.” He came forward and said to the monk, “Surely you are remembering God.”
He replied, “Which God? What God? I do not know any God—how can I remember Him? We remember that which we know. And if we have known—then what need is there to remember? If we do not know, we cannot remember; if we have known, remembrance is unnecessary. And if God is other than I, perhaps I might remember; if I am That, why should I remember myself? And should God have some name, we could remember—but He has no name; how to remember? I am not remembering any God.”
The three were flustered and asked, “Then what are you doing here? What are you doing standing here?”
The monk said, “If you insist on asking, I will say: I am doing nothing. I am only being. I am only being; I am not doing anything.”
Do you understand what this means?
If for even a single moment a man does nothing—does not think, does not do, does not remember, does not imagine, does not dream, does not read scriptures, does not chant, does not sing, does not pray, does not worship—if for a single moment a man does nothing, and simply is—then in that very moment he meets God. In that very moment the doors of dharma open. In that very moment what was hidden becomes manifest. In that very moment what was in darkness becomes illumined. In that very moment what seemed lost is seen never to have been lost. In that very moment life’s thirst, its race, all come to an end. In that very moment all the sorrow of life dissolves. In that very moment the flowers blossom—of peace, of bliss, of dance. In that very moment fragrances begin to arise from the being—what some call love, some call ahimsa, some call compassion. In that very moment the fragrances appear that some call brahmacharya, some tapas, some tyaga.
But all these begin to happen of themselves. People say, “By brahmacharya one attains God.” People say, “By renunciation one attains God.” People say, “By ahimsa one attains God.” People say, “By austerity one attains God.” I want to say the reverse: when God is realized, all these come to you; by gaining these, God is not gained. Without meeting God, none of these can be. When God dawns, everything else is given.
These are the blossoms that open when God is realized. This is the fragrance that comes into life from the realization of God. It is like saying, “If the darkness goes, the lamp lights.” We will say, “No. If the lamp lights, the darkness goes.” When God is revealed, all is revealed.
Jesus spoke a most wondrous saying: “First ye seek the Kingdom of God; then all else shall be added unto you.” First seek the Kingdom of God; then everything else will come. First open His door; then all will be yours.
But we? We do not know how to open that door. And those who claim to show us the way point us to the doors of man-made temples and mosques: “Open these and come inside.” There is nothing within them; they are buildings made by men. But there is also a temple within us—not made by man, not made by us—found within. That temple can be opened. But it opens in that very moment of peace and silence when we are doing nothing at all.
Therefore there is no such thing as a “religious act.” There cannot be. To be religious means to be in non-doing. All the acts performed in the name of dharma are hypocrisy, mere ritual, deception. There is no religious act. Whoever abides in akriya—actionlessness—gains dharma. Whoever moves in this direction finds the meaning of life, the blessedness of life. He comes to know what life is, how many secrets, how much bliss lie hidden in life—how vast is the treasure of life. For him death vanishes, sorrow vanishes, darkness vanishes.
One last small story—and I will conclude.
In a great capital lived a beggar monk. For thirty years he begged. Then death came; he died. Sitting in the same spot for thirty years he had begged, hand outstretched before whoever passed. When he died, the neighbors set fire to his rags, threw away his dirty bowls, cremated his body. Then someone sensible thought, “Sitting thirty years on one spot, he must have soiled the ground—let us remove a patch of earth and replace it.”
They dug—and a miracle! Astonished, the whole capital gathered; even the emperor came to see. Just a little digging under the spot where the monk had sat—and there was such a treasure that had it come into the monk’s hands, he would have become the richest man on earth. The villagers said, “What a madman! He begged for nothing—if only he had dug his own ground! He would have become such a master—such a treasure would have been found.” Everyone said so.
I too went to that village, stood in that crowd, and I too laughed. People asked me, “Why do you laugh?”
I said, “Not at the monk—at you! It seems to me that under the ground you stand upon lies a treasure even greater than this. But you will never look there. You will search in other temples for that which is within you. You will stretch out your hands for wealth before others, though the wealth is within you. You will cling to the feet of gurus for knowledge, though the knowledge is within you. You will search in dead scriptures for that which, as a living scripture, is breathing within you.”
But we all search outside—because we have all become beggars. And if we search within, we can all become emperors. Dharma wants to make emperors of those who have become beggars. Dharma is the art of becoming an emperor.
You have listened to these words with such peace and love—For that I am deeply obliged. I bow down to the Paramatman dwelling in all. Please accept my pranam.