Master of the New Monastery

Reality cannot be known through thinking, it can be known through action. Thinking is just a dreamlike phenomenon, but the moment you act you have become part of the reality. Reality is activity, action; thinking is fragmentary. When you act you are total; whatever the action your whole being is involved in it. Thinking goes on in only a part of the mind, your whole being is not involved; without you thinking can continue as an automatic process.

This has to be understood deeply. This is one of the most basic things for those who are in search of truth and not in search of anything else. Religion and philosophy are distinct in this sense: religion is action, philosophy is thinking.

This story has many implications. The master wanted one, one disciple, to become the chief of the new monastery that was going to be opened. Who should be sent? Who should be made the guide there -- a man who has much philosophy in his mind, a man who can talk, discuss, argue, a man who is bookish, knowledgeable, or a man who can act spontaneously? He may not know much; he may be simple, not intellectual, but he will be total.

The chief disciple must have started dreaming, thinking he was going to be chosen. The mind is always ambitious. He must have planned how to behave, what to do, so that he would be chosen as the chief of the new monastery. He must not have slept for many days, his mind must have been revolving around and around.

The ego plans and whatsoever it plans will miss reality. Reality can only be encountered spontaneously; if you think about it beforehand you may be ready but you will miss. A ready person will miss; this is the contradiction. A person who is not ready, who has not planned anything, who acts spontaneously, reaches the very heart of reality.

The chief disciple must have theorized, many alternatives must have come to his mind: The master is going to choose; there is going to be some sort of test. He must have consulted the scriptures. In the old days too, masters had been choosing disciples to be sent to new monasteries. How have they chosen? What sort of examination has to be passed? How could he succeed?

There are many stories from the ancient days but this has been, almost always, one of the basic tests Zen masters have put before their disciples -- they ask them to express something without using language. They say, "Say something about this thing but don't use any name. The name is not the thing."

The chair is here and I am sitting on it. A Zen master will say, "Say something about this chair but don't use the name. The word chair is not the chair. Don't use any verbal expression, don't use language and say something."

The mind feels puzzled because the mind knows only language, nothing else. If language is barred, the mind is barred. What else is the mind except verbal accumulation -- names, words, language?

A master says, "Don't use the name." He is saying, "Don't use the mind. Do something so that which the chair is, is expressed."

The word god is not God, the word man is not man, the word rose is not a rose. The rose exists when language is not there; when there is no language, the tree exists- it is not dependent on language.

This chief monk must have brooded over and over again. He must have chosen, beforehand, an alternative. He was dead, that very moment he failed.

Inside, if you decide what you are going to do and you act out of that decision, you will miss reality. Reality is an ever-flowing movement. Nobody knows what is going to happen, nobody can predict it; it is unpredictable.

There is a Zen story: Two monasteries existed side by side and both the masters had small boys to run errands. Both the boys used to go to the market to fetch things for the masters -- sometimes vegetables, sometimes other things.

These monasteries were antagonistic towards each other, but boys will be boys. They would forget the doctrines and meet on the way and talk, enjoy. It was really prohibited to talk -- the other monastery was the enemy.

One day, the boy from the first monastery came and said, "I am puzzled. As I was going to the market, I saw the boy from the other monastery and asked him, `Where are you going?' He replied, `Wherever the wind blows.' I was at a loss as to what to say; he puzzled me.

The master said, "This is not good. Nobody from our monastery has ever been defeated by the other monastery, not even a servant, so you must fix that boy. Tomorrow, ask again where he is going. He will say, `Wherever the wind blows,' so you say, `If there is no wind, then?' "

The boy couldn't sleep the whole night. He tried and tried to conceive of what would happen the next day; he rehearsed many times. He would ask and the other boy would respond and then he would give his answer.

The next day he waited on the road. The other boy came and he asked, "Where are you going?" The boy said, "Wherever my feet lead me."

He was at a loss as to what to do. His answer was fixed; reality is unpredictable. He came back very sad and said to the master, "That boy is not trustworthy. He changed and I was at a loss as to what to do."

So the master said, "Next day when he answers, `Wherever my feet lead,' you tell him, `If you are crippled and your legs are cut off, then?' "

Again he couldn't sleep. He went early to wait on the road. When the boy came he asked, "Where are you going?" And the boy said "To fetch vegetables from the market." He became very disturbed and said to the master, "This boy is impossible: he goes on changing."

Life is that boy. Reality is not a fixed phenomenon. You have to be present, spontaneously in it -- only then will the response be real. If your answer is fixed beforehand you are already dead, you have already missed. Then tomorrow will come but you will not be there; you will be fixed in the yesterday, that which has passed. All the minds which are too verbal are fixed like this. Go to a pundit, a scholar, and ask, "What is God?" Before you have asked he will start answering. Your question is not answered because even before you had the question this man had the answer. The answer is dead; it is there already, it has just to be brought from the memory.

This is the difference between a man of wisdom and a man of knowledge. A man of knowledge has ready-made answers: you ask and the answer is already there. You are irrelevant, your question is irrelevant. Before the question, the answer exists; your question simply triggers the memory.

If you go to a man of wisdom he has no answers for you; he has nothing ready-made. He is open, he is silent. He'll respond but first your question will resound in his being, not in his memory. Through his being the response comes; nobody can predict that response. If you go the next day and ask the same question, the response will not be the same. Once it happened that a man tried to judge the Buddha. Every year he would go and ask the same question. He thought, "If he really knows then the answer will be always the same. How can you change the answer? If I come and ask, `Is there God?'- if he knows he will say yes or he will say no, and next year, I will come again and ask."

So for many years the man came and he became more and more puzzled. Sometimes Buddha would say yes, sometimes no, sometimes he would remain silent, and sometimes he would simply smile and not answer anything.

The man became puzzled and said, "What is this? If you know, then you must be certain, your answer fixed. But you go on changing. Once you said yes then you said no. Have you forgotten that I asked this question before? Once you even remained silent and now you are smiling. That is why I have been coming with the gap of a year -- just to see if you know or not."

Buddha said, "When you came for the first time and asked, `Is there God,' I answered. But my answer was not to the question, it was to you. You have changed, now the same answer cannot be given. Not only have you changed, I also have changed. The Ganges has flowed much; the same answer cannot be given. I am not a scripture to be opened and the same answer found there."

A buddha is a living river, and a river is ever-flowing. In the morning it is different -- it reflects the gold of the rising sun. The mood is different. In the evening it is different, and when the night comes and the stars are reflected in it, it is different. In the summer it shrinks; it floods during the rains. A river is not a painting, it is a live force.

A painting remains the same whether it is raining or it is summer. A painted river will not be flooded in the rains; it is dead; otherwise there would be change. There is only one thing that goes on continuously and that is revolution. Everything else is impermanent except revolution. It goes on and on.

This chief disciple must have decided; the conclusion was already there. He was waiting only for the master to ask. Then the master put a jug before them, a pot filled with water, and said, "Say something and don't use language."

You are creating an impossible situation. How can something be said without using language? But if you cannot say something about an ordinary jug filled with water without using language, how will you be able to say anything about God, who is filled with the whole universe? If you cannot indicate this jug without language, how will you be able to indicate the great jug, the universe, God, the truth?

If you cannot indicate this, how will you be made chief of a monastery? People will be coming to you, not to know words but to know reality. People won't be coming to you to be trained in philosophy; that can be done by the universities - they teach words. So what is the purpose of a monastery? A monastery has to teach reality not words; religion not philosophy; existence not theories. And if you can't say anything about an ordinary pot, what will you do when someone asks: What is God? What will you do when someone asks: Who am I?

The chief disciple answered, and whenever the mind faces such a situation the only way is to define negatively. If someone says to say something about God -- without naming, what will you do? You can only state it negatively. You can say: God is not this world,God is not matter.

Look at the dictionaries. Go to the Encyclopaedia Britannica and see how it defines things. You will be surprised: if you turn to the page where mind is defined you will find it defined as that which is not matter. Then turn to the page where matter is defined; you will find it defined as that which is not mind. What type of definition is this? When you ask about mind they say no-matter; when you ask about matter they say no-mind.

Nothing is defined; it is a vicious circle. If I ask about A you say it is not B; if I ask about B you say it is not A. You define one thing by another indefinable thing. How can this be done? This is a tricky thing. Dictionaries are the trickiest things in the world; they don't say anything and they appear to be saying so much. Everything is defined and everything is indefinable. Nothing can be defined.

So the chief disciple said something negatively. When the mind is at a loss as to what to do it starts saying things negatively. So maybe atheism is just an escape. God is there but how to define it? When the mind feels at a loss the easiest escape is to say there is no God, then the problem is finished.

Somebody said, "It is not a pond because it can be carried by hand." How can you define a water-filled jug by just saying it is not a pond? What is a pond? Say something without naming it.

Then the cook of the monastery came. He must have been a more real man than these pundits -- a cook, who has never been much interested in the scriptures; a cook, who has been working with reality, encountering it, not thinking about it. This cook kicked the pot and went out.

What did he say? He said something in a more realistic way. Kicking is not thinking, it is action. He kicked the pot and said to the master, "This is nonsense, you are talking absurdities. You say to us to say something without words. Something can be done without words, but nothing can be said." He caught the point. Something can be done without words but nothing can be said. So he did something - he kicked the pot.

The master said, "This cook has been chosen. He goes to the new monastery and there becomes the master. He knows how to act without the mind; he knows how to answer without using the mind. He has said that the problem is absurd."

Remember one thing: if the problem is absurd you cannot answer it in a rational way. If you try you will be foolish; it shows foolishness. If the problem is absurd you cannot answer in a rational way; for an absurd question there can be no rational answer. If you try, you simply prove that you are foolish. That chief disciple must have been a foolish man; the other scholar, who said, "This is not a pond,"must have been a foolish man.

Scholars are foolish, otherwise they wouldn't be scholars. They are wasting their lives in words, scriptures. Nobody can waste his life in words unless he is absolutely stupid.

This cook was wiser - he kicked. He was not kicking the pot, he was kicking the whole problem; he was not kicking the pot, he was kicking the whole situation. He saw that it was absurd. He was not saying anything, not using a word. Just imagine that cook kicking the pot with his whole being. He was involved in it completely, mind, body, soul. The kick was alive, spontaneous; he didn't know it was going to be there. He may not even have thought that he was answering, he was just seeing what was going on - suddenly, the kick happened.

In this state of being, when the cook was just action, there was no mind in him, just an emptiness. Out of that emptiness, out of that no-mind, the action arose. When the action comes from the actor it is dead; when the action comes from the ego it is premeditated. When the action comes without the ego, without the mind, without you being there, when it bubbles up out of your nothingness, it is from the divine, it is total.

The cook didn't kick; rather, it was as if the whole existence kicked. He kicked all scholarship, all scriptures, the whole intellect and its vicious circles, and he walked out. He didn't wait. If he had waited to see what the master said he would have missed, because that would have meant that the mind was looking for the conclusion, for the result.

The mind is always result-oriented: What is going to happen? If I do this, then what will happen? If the cause is there, what will be the effect? The mind is always for the result; the mind is result-oriented.

This cook simply walked out. He didn't wait for what was going to happen; he didn't think that he would be chosen. How can you think that just by kicking a pot you will be chosen the master of a monastery? No, he didn't bother.

This is what Krishna says to Arjuna in the Gita, "Do! Act! But don't ask for the result. Kick and walk out."

Arjuna said, "If I fight, if I go through with this war, what will happen? What will be the result? Will it be good or bad? Will I gain or lose? Will killing so many people be worth the effort?"

Krishna says, "Don't think of the result. Leave the result to me: you simply act." The mind cannot do that. Before the mind acts it asks for the result; it acts because of the result. If there will be a result, only then will it act.

People come to me and ask, "If we meditate, what will happen? What will be the result?" Remember, meditation can never be result-oriented; you simply meditate, that's all.

Everything happens but it will not be a result. If you are seeking the result nothing will happen; meditation will be useless.

When you seek a result, it is the mind; when you don't seek a result, it is meditation. Kick the pot and walk out, meditate and walk out; don't ask for the result. Don't say, "What will happen?" If you think about what will happen you cannot meditate. The mind goes on thinking about the result; it cannot be here and now, it is always in the future. You are meditating and thinking, "When will the happiness come? It has not come yet."

If you forget the result completely, if there is not even a flicker in the mind for the result, not a single vibration moving into the future - when you have become a silent pool, here and now everything happens. In meditation cause and effect are not two -.cause is the effect; the act and the result are not two - the act is the result - they are not divided. In meditation the seed and the tree are not two -, the seed is the tree.

For the mind everything is divided: the seed and the tree are two, the act and the result are two. The result is always in the future and the act is here, you act because of the future. For the mind the present is always sacrificed for the future, and the future does not exist. There is always the present, the eternal now, and you are sacrificing this now for something which is nowhere and cannot be anywhere.

In meditation the whole process is reversed. The future is sacrificed for the present; that which is not is sacrificed for that which is. There is no result, no conclusion. Kick the pot and walk out.

That was the beauty of it. The cook simply walked out saying, "The whole thing is absurd -. your question and these people's answers. This is a nonsense game. I don't belong here." He must have gone to his kitchen and started working - that is how a meditative mind will act. And the master said, "This man is chosen, he becomes the chief of the new monastery. He knows how to be total, to act spontaneously; he knows how to act without motivation; he knows how to act without the mind. This man can lead others into meditation, this man can become a guide. This man has achieved.

The story is beautiful and very rare; penetrate into it. You can penetrate it but only if you start acting the way the cook acted. There is a pitfall - you can premeditate it. If I put a pot before you and you kick, you will miss; you know the answer already. You will think, "Okay now, this is the opportunity. I'll kick the pot and walk out." That won't do. You cannot deceive because whenever your mind is there your total being gives a different vibration. You cannot deceive a master.

And remember, this incident has been repeated many times. Zen masters are really unique. They go on repeating the same problem again and again, and those who read the scriptures behave in the old way. They think they already know the answer: kick the pot, walk out, and become the chief.

But you cannot deceive a Zen master. He is not concerned with what you are doing, he is concerned with what you are in that moment of doing. That is a totally different thing. You have a perfume, a different perfume, when you act out of emptiness. And when I say a different perfume I mean it literally, I'm not using a metaphor. When you act out of emptiness there is a freshness all around you, as if suddenly a morning has come in the middle of the day. If you kick the pot ego will be there; the ego will do the kicking and you will be aggressive. When this cook kicked the pot it was not aggressive, it was simply a statement of fact; there was no violence.

I have heard that one man, a poor beggar - and I say "poor beggar" because there are wealthy beggars also - came to ask for food. The lady of the house felt much compassion for him and said, "I'll give you food, and if you want some work there is wood to chop. I'll pay you for it."

So the man worked, chopped the wood, and in the evening when he was about to go, the lady of the house said, "There is a hole in your robe. Give it to me and within minutes I will repair it.

The man said, "No, a hole in my robe makes all the difference. When you have a repaired dress it is premeditated poverty; when you have a hole in your robe it may have happened just now, through some accident. But when you have patched it, it looks ancient - it has not happened accidentally, just now; it's happened long before and now it's been patched and repaired. It becomes premeditated poverty. Let my poverty be spontaneous."

Your whole mind is premeditated poverty; you have all the answers and not a single response. You have already decided what to do, and in that decision you have murdered yourself, committed suicide. The mind is suicide.

Start acting spontaneously. It will be difficult in the beginning, you will feel much discomfort. With a premeditated answer there is less discomfort, you are more certain. Why are we not spontaneous? It is because of fear, the fear that the answer may be wrong. It's better to decide beforehand then you can be certain; but certainty always belongs to death.

Remember, life is always uncertain. Everything dead is certain, life is always uncertain. Everything dead is solid, fixed - its nature cannot be changed; everything alive is moving, changing - a flow, a liquid thing, flexible, able to move in any direction. The more you become certain, the more you will miss life. And those who know, know life is God. If you miss life, you miss God.

Act spontaneously. If there is discomfort in the beginning allow it to be there; don't hide it and don't suppress it - and don't imitate. Be childlike but don't be childish. If you are childlike, you will become a great saint; if you are childish, you will become a great, knowledgeable person.

A man returned to his house one day. He saw his children and the neighbor's children sitting on the steps, so he asked, "What are you doing?"

They said, " We are playing church."

He was puzzled; they were just sitting there doing nothing. He inquired, "What type of church is this?"

They said, "We have sung, preached, prayed. Everything has been done, now we are sitting on the steps, smoking."

You can imitate - knowledgeability is imitation. A buddha says something: you interpret it, you play church, you cram it in your mind, you repeat it. This is childish.

Be childlike not childish. Childlikeness is spontaneity. A child is fresh with no answers, no accumulated experience; he has, really, no memory, he acts; whatever comes through his being, he acts. He is not motivated, not thinking about results, about the future; he is innocent.

This cook was really innocent. Innocence is meditation. Start being meditative in your acts, just with small things: while eating, be spontaneous; while talking, be spontaneous; while walking, be spontaneous. Allow life to be a response not an answer. If somebody asks you something, just watch whether you are repeating something you always do, just a habit, or whether the answer is a response. Just watch whether the mind is repeating an old habit, whether the answer is coming from memory, or whether it is coming from you.

Everybody bores everybody else because everything is dead, borrowed, stale, and stinks of death. It is not fresh. Look at children playing and you feel a freshness. For a moment you may even forget that you have become old. Listen to the birds, look at the trees or flowers and for a moment, forget. Here there is no mind.

Flowers are flowering: just like the cook kicked they are kicking. Birds are singing, they are kicking. Life itself is kicking - but there are no theories. In the beginning it will be uncomfortable. Be patient, go through that discomfort; soon you will have an upsurge of energy. It is dangerous, that's why people avoid it.

To be spontaneous is dangerous because when anger comes, it comes. The mind says, "Think - don't be angry, it may be costly."

So you always think and throw your anger on those weaker than you, not on those who are stronger than you. Love can happen but love is not allowed. You can have a loving attitude only towards your wife, but life does not know who is your wife and who is not. Life is absolutely amoral, it knows no morality. You can fall in love with somebody else's wife, because life knows no relations, no fixed institutions. All institutions are man made; that is the danger. So the mind says, " Think before - she is not your wife. Don't look in such a loving way, don't smile." Whether you feel it or not is not the point, this is duty. That is how we have killed everybody.

Everybody lives in an institution, not in life.

Because of these dangers the mind thinks of what to say beforehand. You are late, and when you come home you are thinking, "What will my wife say? How will I answer?" The wife is waiting and she knows whatever you will say is wrong. She has heard your excuses before, the same old excuses.

I have heard that one man phoned his wife one day and said, "One of my friends has come and I'm bringing him home for dinner."

The wife screamed and said, "You fool, you know very well the cook has left, the baby is cutting his teeth, and I have had a fever for three days."

The man replied, very calmly, "I know it well, that is why I want to bring him home. The fool is thinking of getting married."

The whole of life has become an institution, a madhouse in which duties are to be fulfilled not love; in which you have to behave, not be spontaneous; in which a pattern has to be followed, not the overflow of life and energy. That's why the mind thinks and decides everything, because there is danger.

I call a man a sannyasin who breaks out of these institutions and lives spontaneously. To be a sannyasin is the most courageous act possible. To be a sannyasin means to live without the mind, and the moment you live without mind you live without society. The mind has created society, and society has created the mind; they are interdependent. To be a sannyasin means to renounce all that is false but not to renounce the world, to renounce all that is unauthentic, to renounce all the answers, to be responsive, spontaneously responsive, and not to think about the reasons, but to be real.

This is difficult: there is much investment in falsity, in the masks, in the faces, in the games you go on playing. To be initiated as a sannyasin means now you will try to be authentic; whatsoever the consequences, you will accept them and live in the present.

You will sacrifice the future for the present; you will never sacrifice the present for the future. This moment will be the totality of your being, you will never move beforehand. This is what sannyas is - to kick the pot and walk out, and not to wait for the results.

Results will take care of themselves, they will follow you.

This story doesn't say it but I know, the master must have run out to catch hold of the cook and said, "Wait, you have been chosen. You go to the new monastery to guide people in life and meditation."

Anything more?

Question 1

It happens because we are always afraid, afraid something may go wrong. Don't be afraid before me; nothing can go wrong. If something goes wrong spontaneously then that is the right thing. Spontaneity is right.

The mind manipulates because of fear. You may ask something and others may start laughing; they may think you are foolish. So something has to be asked which nobody can laugh about; then everyone thinks you have asked a serious question, a meaningful question. That's why the mind is afraid and fear manipulates.

Near me there is no need for any fear. You can ask absurdities, foolish questions, because to me the mind is absurd. It cannot ask anything else so there is no problem. For the mind it can only appear as if something is serious because it cannot ask anything which is not foolish. All questions are foolish. The whole mind has to be dropped, only then will you not be a fool.

The fear is why we rehearse; the ego wants to feel important. Near me there is no need of fear; I'm not asking you to ask anything wise. Nothing wise can be asked; nobody has ever asked a wise question, that is impossible. When you become wise questions drop; when you are wise there are no questions.

You can imitate wisdom also by not asking; that will not help. Those who are not asking should not think that they are wise and that the questioner is a fool. He is just your representative so he is bound to feel more foolish than you. With so much foolishness represented in him, all together, he is bound to feel afraid; it is natural.

By and by, drop the manipulations, because when you drop manipulations you become natural near me and this will give you the first glimpse. To be natural will give you the first glimpse, and then you can gather courage to be natural in life. For if you cannot be spontaneous near me how will it be possible to be spontaneous in life?

If you go to other so-called masters they will create fear. You cannot laugh before them; that would be taken as an offense. You have to have a serious, sad face; you have to appear very serious. Look at the churches and mosques, at the so-called masters with long faces. Christians say Jesus never laughed. How can a Jesus laugh? If he laughs he becomes ordinary, he becomes profane.

I say to you such seriousness is a shield; it will protect all that is nonsensical in you. Allow it to come up; don't force it within, don't repress it in any way. Near me be natural, and in this being natural you will learn that which cannot be learned in any other way.

Just being near me, being spontaneous, you will drop the mind and be meditative.

I answer you not because I am concerned with your questions; they are irrelevant. I'm not satisfying your questions in any way, they cannot be satisfied. Then what am I doing? I am just being here with you; the answer is just an excuse, the question is just an excuse to be near and closer.

Why can't we sit silently? I can, but it will be difficult for you. We can sit silently - I, not talking, you, not asking - but inside you will go on talking, chattering. Tremendous chattering will go on, more than ordinarily, because when you say to the mind, " Sit silently," the mind rebels, it goes mad. It creates more words, more questions, a monologue. You cannot sit silently; that's why I ask you to ask, that's why I answer you. If I am talking, your mind will not talk. And my talking is not destructive, your talking is destructive. When I talk, you get absorbed in it, you may even have a few glimpses of silence.

This is how life is paradoxical - you have glimpses of silence while I am talking; you get so absorbed, engaged, occupied, your mind gets so tense listening, so alert, that nothing is missed. In that alertness the inner talk stops, you become silent. That gap is my answer. My answers are not the real thing so they go on changing. People feel that I am inconsistent. I go on saying things - today something, tomorrow something else - they are irrelevant. I am not concerned with consistency; my answering is like music being played on a guitar. You never ask inconsistently; you play the same thing again and again. The musician goes on changing, and if you get absorbed into the music you will have some gaps of silence. In those gaps, you will become aware for the first time, and that awareness, by and by, will become crystallized.

So don't bother about what you are asking. Whatever you ask is okay; don't rehearse it, let it be more spontaneous. It will be difficult for you - spontaneity is difficult.

I have heard about one preacher. He was going into the pulpit for the first time so for the whole night he rehearsed what to say. He had chosen a very beautiful passage about Jesus, and this was to be a great crisis in his life - whether he would succeed or fail. The first success or failure means much, so the whole night, standing in his room, he rehearsed and rehearsed lecturing to the audience. But by the morning he was so tired, so sleepy, that when he stood at the pulpit his mind went blank.

He had chosen a beautiful passage: Behold I come! He said, "Behold I come!" and his mind went blank. He couldn't find anything so he thought, "If I repeat it again, maybe the flow will come."

Again he leaned forward and said, "Behold I come!" but nothing came.

To appear nonchalant, he leaned forward more, as if it was not by accident that he was repeating, and again he said, "Behold I come!"

Under his pressure the pulpit collapsed and he fell into the lap of an old woman. He said, feeling very embarrassed, "Sorry, I never meant it to happen."

The woman said, "No need to say anything. You warned me three times when you said, `Behold I come!' It's not your fault."

There is no need to rehearse, to premeditate; let things happen. But the way things go in the world questions and answers have to be thought over. Both are dead, and when the dead things meet there is no spark. I know it is difficult for you but try. By and by it will happen, and once it happens you will have a freedom from the mind; you will become weightless and have wings into the sky.

Anything more?

Question 2

Yesterday is no more; Joshu has died. Only today is - and even that has passed. Only this moment is.

The mind looks at things and finds paradoxes because the mind thinks of the past, the present and the future. Only the present is. The mind finds paradoxes because the mind is always moving from the past to the present and then to the future. Once you were a tiny cell in the womb of your mother, so tiny that you could not be seen by naked eyes. Now you are totally different, you are young, but sooner or later, you will be old, crippled. Now you are alive but the day will come when you are dead.

When the mind thinks all these things together, a child and an old man become a paradox. How can a child be old, a young man old? For the mind birth and death become a paradox because they can both be thought; for existence, when there is birth there is no death, when there is death there is no birth. For existence there is nothing paradoxical, but the mind can look at the past, the present and the future, and these are paradoxes.

Yesterday you heard me; be finished with it. There is no more yesterday but the mind carries it. If you really heard me yesterday you will not carry it, for if you carry it how can you hear me today? The smoke of yesterday will be a disturbance; there will be that smoke and you will only hear me through yesterday and you will miss.

Yesterday should be dropped so you can be here and now. There is no paradox, but if you compare yesterday and today then it comes. If you compare birth and death, the paradox comes. Today and yesterday cannot exist together, they can exist together only in the memory. Existence is non-paradoxical, the mind is paradoxical.

Why think about yesterday? If you are thinking about it how can you be here? That will be difficult. Because of yesterday you will not be able to hear me today.

Did you hear me yesterday? - for there have been other yesterdays. And will you be able to hear me tomorrow? - for this today will have become yesterday. The film of all the yesterdays is there; through that film it is difficult to penetrate into the present. So all that I can say is be here, Joshu is dead. The man who was talking here yesterday is no more; he is dead. There is no question of consistency or inconsistency.

Tomorrow I will not be here, you will not be here; it will be absolutely fresh. And when two freshnesses meet there is a spark, a spark that dances, and a dance that is always consistent.

A carried past creates problems. The problem is not what I said yesterday or what I am saying today; the problem is that you carry yesterdays and miss today. And whatever you think you have heard, I've not said. You may think you have heard it, but through so many yesterdays you will interpret whatever I say. You will think meanings into it which are not there; you will miss things that are there, and it will become something of your own. Then you will create many paradoxes and the mind will become puzzled and confused. Go on dropping the yesterdays.

I am not a philosopher or a systematizer; I am absolutely anarchistic, as anarchistic as life itself. I don't believe in systems.

If you go to a Hegel or a Kant and say that this is contradictory, immediately they will say no; they will immediately show that it is not contradictory. If you can prove that it is contradictory they will drop one part so their system becomes consistent.

One gambler was saying to another gambler, "Yesterday I met this guy, a wonderful man, a great mathematician and economist. He has discovered a system through which a family can live without money."

The other gambler became interested wanting to know immediately what the system was. He asked, " Does it work?"

The friend replied, "The system is wonderful but there is one loophole - it doesn't work. That's the only loophole; otherwise the system is wonderful."

All systems are wonderful. Those of Hegel, Kant, Marx are all wonderful. The only loophole is this - they are dead.

I have no system. Systems can only be dead, they cannot be alive. I am a nonsystematic, anarchistic flow; not even a person, just a process. I don't know what I said to you yesterday. The person who said it is not here to answer; he is gone, I am here. And I am answerable only for this moment, so don't wait for tomorrow for I will not be here. And who is going to make consistency, who is going to find a thread that is not contradictory? There is nobody. And I would like you to be the same.

Just this moment exists, absolutely consistent, for there can be no comparison. There is no past, no future; only this moment is. How can you compare? If you live in this moment there will come a consistency which is not of a system, which is of life, which is of the energy itself. That will be an inner consistency of your very being, not of the mind. I am interested in the being not in the mind, so don't take my answers very seriously; they are just play, play with words. Enjoy them and forget them; enjoy me but don't try to systematize me. The whole effort is useless, and in that effort you miss much that is beautiful; you miss much that can become a deep ecstasy in you.

Look at me and don't be bothered with what I say; be with me and don't be bothered about theories and words. Act with me, listen to me, and don't try to think about it; and this listening should be an act, not a mental effort. I am not trying to convince you, I am not trying to give you a belief; I am not trying to create any religion or sect - no doctrine is implied. When talking to you, I am there; talking is just an excuse. I may be using one sect today, another tomorrow. If you look at my sect, you will say, " You are inconsistent. Yesterday you had this sect and today, this."

I say :Look at me, words are just dressings. I am consistent, my being is consistent; it cannot be otherwise. How can your being be inconsistent? There is no gap in it, it is a continuum, but the mind starts thinking, comparing, and then problems arise.

Once it happened that a disciple came to a Zen master and asked, "Why are a few people so intelligent and a few so stupid? Why are a few people so beautiful and a few so ugly? Why this inconsistency? If God is everywhere, if he is the creator, then why does he create one ugly and another beautiful? And don't talk to me about karmas. I have heard all those nonsensical answers - that because of karmas, past lives, one is beautiful, another is ugly. I am not concerned with past lives. In the beginning, when there was no yesterday, how did the difference come? Why was one created beautiful and another ugly? And if everyone was created equal, equally beautiful and intelligent, how can they act differently, how can they have different karmas?"

The master said, "Wait! This is such a secret thing that I will tell you when everybody has left." So the man sat, eager, but people kept coming and going and there was no chance. But by the evening everybody had left so the man said, "Now?"

And the master said, "Come out with me." The moon was coming up and the master took him in the garden and said, "Look, that tree there is small, this tree here is so tall. I have been living with these trees for many years and they have never raised the question of why that tree is small and this tree is big.

"When there was mind in me, I used to ask the same question sitting under these trees. Then my mind dropped, and the question dropped. Now I know. This tree is small and that tree is big; there is no problem. So look! There is no problem."

The mind compares. How can you compare when the mind is not? How can you say this tree is small and that tree big? When the mind drops, comparison drops, and when there is no comparison the beauty of existence erupts. It becomes a volcanic eruption, it explodes. Then you see the small is big and the big is small; then all contradictions are lost and the inner consistency is seen.

Drop the mind and listen to me, then you will not ask, "Why yesterday? Why this today and that yesterday?" Then there is no yesterday and no today; then I am here and you are here. There is a meeting, and this here and now, when the mind is not there, becomes a communion.

I am not interested in communicating something to you, I am interested in communion. Communication means my mind talking to your mind. Communion means I am not a mind, you are not a mind - just your heart melting into my heart, no words.

That's what the story is: Say something about this pot without using words. The cook kicked and walked out. Whatsoever I say, kick and go in.