When Grapes Are Sour

The first question:

This must have been said by a very unhappy man, and yet a very egoistic one. He cannot recognise the fact that unhappiness is created by being unintelligent. He is trying to save his ego. He is saying that the grapes are sour.

To be unhappy no intelligence is needed. Everybody is capable of being unhappy but happiness is very, very rare. Great talent is needed. Not only intellect, intelligence is needed. Only rarely does a Buddha, a Krishna, become happy. It is almost impossible to be happy.

So let us try to understand what unhappiness is. Unhappiness is the incapacity to understand life, the incapacity to understand oneself, the incapacity to create a harmony between you and the existence. Unhappiness is a discord between you and reality; something is in conflict between you and existence. Happiness is when nothing is in conflict -- when you are together, and you are together with existence also. When there is a harmony, when everything is flowing without any conflict, smooth, relaxed, then you are happy. Happiness is possible only with great understanding, an understanding like the peaks of the Himalayas. Less than that won't do Anybody is capable of being unhappy any moment, that's how the whole world is so unhappy. To be happy you will have to create such a great understanding about you and about the existence in which you exist, that everything falls in line, in deep accord, in rhythm. And between your energy and the energy that surrounds you a dance happens and you start moving in step with life.

Happiness is when you disappear. Unhappiness is when you are too much. You are the discord, your absence will be the accord. Sometimes you have glimpses of happiness -- when by some accident you are not there. Looking at nature, or looking at the stars, or holding the hand of your beloved, or making love...in some moments you are not there. If you are there, even there there will be no happiness. If you are making love to your beloved and it is really as you express it, a 'making', then there will be no happiness.

Love cannot be made. You can be in it or not in it, but there ii no way to make it. The English expression is ugly. To 'make love' is absurd. How can you make it? If the maker is there, the doer is there, the technician goes on existing. And if you are following some techniques from Masters and Johnson or Vatasyayana or some other source, and you are not lost in it, happiness will not happen. When you are lost you don't know where you are going, you don't know what you are doing, you are possessed by the whole, the part does not exist separate from the whole... then there is an orgasmic experience. That is what happiness is.

For happiness you will need tremendous intelligence. And I say INTELLIGENCE, not intellect, knowingly. Intellect you can get from the market, intellect you can get from the books, intellect you can get from the university. Intellect is transferable, intellect is mechanical, intellect is of the bio-computer you call mind. Intelligence is not of the mind, intelligence is of the no-mind -- what Zen people call no-mind. Intelligence has nothing to do with information, knowledge; it has only one element and that element is of awareness.

If you are intelligent then your life will be of happiness. Why is intelligence needed?

Because life in itself is meaningless. Meaning is not something sitting there and you have just to reach and possess it. Meaning has to be created. People come to me and they ask,'What is the meaning of life?' As if life has any meaning. Life has no meaning -- that is the beauty of life. That's why it is freedom. You are free to create your own meaning and I am free to create my meaning. If life has a meaning then we will all be just slaves and that meaning will not be worth anything. Life is freedom. It does not impose any meaning on you; it simply gives you an opportunity to create your own meaning. The meaning has to be created. It is not like a thing that you can uncover, you will have to become your meaning, you will have to give a rebirth to yourself. That's why I say much intelligence is needed. Only when you feel meaning in life will you be happy, not before it.

Life has no meaning in itself, you have to bring meaning into it. Life is just raw material, you have to create your meaning out of it. You have to create your God. God is not there waiting for you. You have to create it within your heart, within your innermost core of being. Only then will you be happy.

To create meaning you will have to be a creator. Painters paint, create paintings; poets write, create poetry; dancers create dance... but these are all just fragments. A religious person creates himself; the religious person is the greatest artist there is. All other artists are just finding substitutes and one day or other they will become frustrated. You have written many poems, then one day you realise,'What is the point? Why go on writing?'

You have painted, then one day suddenly you realise,'What is the point? For whom? For what?' One day you will die and all will be left and will disappear. So what is the point?

Unless you feel a point of immortality in whatsoever you are doing you cannot be happy, and that point of immortality is felt only when you create immortality within yourself.

Gurdjieff used to say, and very rightly, that man is not born with a soul. All other religions say that man is born with a soul, but Gurdjieff's saying is tremendously significant -- man is not born with a soul. And unless you create it you will not have any soul, you will exist empty and you will die empty. You will have to create it, that's why I say great intelligence is needed.

This statement must have been made by someone who was very unhappy and yet so egoistic that he could not or would not recognise the fact that it is he who is creating his unhappiness. So he says, 'HAPPINESS IS NOT BEING SMART ENOUGH TO KNOW WHAT TO WORRY ABOUT.' He is saying that to be happy one has to be ignorant, to be happy one has to be stupid. Then a Buddha is stupid, then a Jesus is stupid, then people who are in madhouses are the only intelligent people in the world.

But this man is trying to save his ego. To be intelligent is arduous, it will need tremendous effort on your part. You will have to destroy much that is rubbish within you, you will have to create almost a fire of consciousness so that what is useless is burned and only that which is pure gold is saved. Very few people are ready to go through that hardship, through that discipline which creates intelligence. People want short-cuts.

A man went to see his psychiatrist and said that every night he was visited by a ten-foot monster with two heads. And he was suffering tremendously, sleep was not possible, he was becoming more and more miserable and any day he could collapse. He had even thought about committing suicide.

'Well, I think I might be able to cure you,' said the psychiatrist,'but I am afraid it will be a lengthy process and it will cost you about three hundred dollars.'

'Three hundred dollars?' said the man.'Forget it! I will just go home and make friends with it.'

That's how to be intelligent is so difficult and it costs so much. You have to put at stake whatsoever you have. It is a cross. In fact, you have to die to be intelligent because only when you are reborn will you be intelligent, not before it. And the cross has to be carried on one's own shoulders, nobody else can carry your cross. You will have to carry your cross to your own Golgotha, there is no other way. Many times you will stumble on the road, many times you will be so tired and exhausted that you will have to rest. Many times you will think that people who have never desired intelligence, awareness, are blessed.'What have I chosen?' Many times doubt and suspicion will arise in your mind.'Is there any goal or am I simply carrying a cross and wasting my life?' Many times you would like to go back to the world, many will be the temptations. But if you can stick it, if you can remain on the path against all odds, one day intelligence flowers.

It is almost like a seed: the seed cannot know what is going to happen, the seed has never known the flower. And the seed cannot even believe that he has the potentiality to become a beautiful flower. Long is the journey, and it is always safer not to go on that journey because unknown is the path, nothing is guaranteed. Nothing can be guaranteed.

Thousand and one are the hazards of the journey, many are the pitfalls -- and the seed is secure, hidden inside a hard core. But the seed tries, it makes an effort, it drops the hard shell which is its security, it starts moving. Immediately the fight starts: the struggle with the soil, with the stones, with the rocks. And the seed was very hard and the sprout will be very, very soft and dangers will be many.- There was no danger for the seed, the seed could have survived for millennia, but for the sprout many are the dangers. But the sprout starts: towards the unknown, towards the sun, towards the source of light, not knowing where, not knowing why. Great is the cross to be carried but a dream possesses the seed and the seed moves. One day.... And there is much competition: other trees are there, other plants are there, and he has to cross all of them because only then will the sun and the sky be available. And then, no one knows.

But one day it flowers, it happens.

The same is the path for man. It is arduous. Much courage will be needed.

It is said about Dr. Albert Schweitzer that he was playing host to several European visitors at the hospital in Lambarene in French Equatorial Africa.

'This heat is unbearable,' one of the visitors moaned.'What is the temperature?'

'I don't know,' said Schweitzer.'I don't have a thermometer here.'

'No thermometer?'

'No,' replied the doctor. 'If I knew how hot it was I don't think I'd be able to endure it either.'

People remain unintelligent because if you know, if you start understanding, it will be almost impossible to endure the life that you are living. You are living in hell.

I have heard about a man, a very intellectual man, a philosopher, who died. He came naked before God and God opened the book of the life of the man. God went on to recount all the sins of the man written therein. The man had been guilty of practically all sins including cruelty, lack of charity, thievery, ingratitude, disloyalty, lust and lack of love. To all these charges the man answered, 'Even so did I.'

Thereupon God closed the book of the life of the man and said, 'Surely, I will send you to hell.'

The man said he could not do so because hell was where he had always lived.

So then God, feeling a little disturbed that he could not send this man to hell, feeling almost impotent, not knowing what to do.... Because he was right -- how can you send a man to hell who has always lived in hell? So then God said he would send him to heaven -- -just to save his ego.

And the man cried out,'Thou canst not!'

And God said, 'Wherefore can I not send thee to heaven?'

And the man answered and said, 'Because never, in no place, have I been able to imagine it.'

And there was silence in the House of Judgement.

How can you send a man to heaven who cannot even imagine it, who has never tasted it?

How can you send a man to heaven who has not created it in his own soul? Impossible.

He defeated God. Hell is not possible because he has lived there and there is no other hell. Heaven is not possible unless you create it. Unless you carry it within yourself you cannot find it anywhere.

It is said in all the religious books of the world that saints go to heaven, but it is a half- statement. They go to heaven because they live in heaven; they go to heaven because they have created their heaven. In fact, to be in heaven, you will have to have heaven within you -- there is no other way.

To be intelligent is to create your own heaven, is to create your own happiness, otherwise there is none. If you create it, you have it. It is just like breathing: if you breathe you are alive, if you don't breathe you are not alive. If you create happiness, you are happy; if you don't create, you are unhappy. Unhappiness needs no creativity on your part.

Unhappiness is a negative state, it need not be created. Happiness is not negative, it is a positive state, it has to be created. Absence can be there but the presence has to be created.

Remember it and don't become victims of such quotes. In the West there are many foolish statements in circulation. These statements may appear to be very penetrating -- they are not.

The second question:

Question 1:

No one except you. You can destroy it, nobody else. It is totally your creation. You can destroy it or you can nourish it. Remember it, because it is very difficult to move on heights. We are not attuned for heights, we are attuned for crawling on the earth. That's why whenever you attain to a high you cannot remain on that altitude for long. Sooner or later you descend back into the dark valley of your life. Then it becomes just a memory.

Not only that, it becomes a frustration because now you know that height is possible. And you have lost your path, you are back in the valley. In fact, you were better before, in a way -- you had not known the height, you had not known the light, so you were thinking that the valley is the only life. Now that you have tasted something you will never be at rest in the valley.

So if you are feeling high, if you are touching some altitude within your consciousness, if some sky is opening, then be very careful because very fragile is the flower of consciousness -- very, very fragile. It can be destroyed in a single moment of unawareness. It needs lives together to create it and a single moment of unalertness to destroy it. It is very fragile.

But nobody else can take it from you, that thing is certain, nobody can rob you of it. It is something within you. So you can be killed but it cannot be killed. It is absolutely yours.

Even if I want to take it back from you, I cannot take it because, in fact, I have not given it to you. You have given it to yourself.

My presence may have helped as a catalytic agent but that's all. Even I cannot take it back from you.

But don't be satisfied with this -- that nobody can take it -- you can destroy it. The danger will come from you, the trouble will come from you. So don't look around for the enemy, look within. It is a great gift that you have given to yourself, now watch for the inner enemy: the anger, the hatred, the jealousy, the envy. They are watching. They are watching you flying so high, they are getting ready to pull you down, to pull you back to the valley where they think you belong. Watch there -- the enemy is within just as the friend is within.

Mahavir has said that you are your enemy if you are not alert, you are your friend if you are alert.

A great treasure is happening to you. You cannot remain unconscious as you were before because before you had no treasure, there was nothing to be guarded. Now the more you grow inside, the more you will have to guard, to protect.

The third question:

Question 2:

True. A great insight has happened to you. Man is astray. The sin is not to be committed, it has already been committed. That is the meaning of the Christian parable that Adam committed the sin -- the first man. Man is born astray, that is the meaning of it, we are already in sin.

The word 'sin' is very, very beautiful. The original root from which it comes means 'missing the target'. Sin does not mean sin, it simply means missing the target.

We have gone astray, from the very beginning man is astray, so there;s nothing for you to do to go astray. Wherever you are you are missing your goal, your target. You don't know who you are, you don't know why you are, you don't know where you are headed -- and for what. You just go on like driftwood, wherever the winds carry you.

Remember, this is the first realisation,'I am astray,' which will make you come back to the path. The moment Adam realised,'I have committed the sin,' he was returning back home. The moment you realise that whatsoever you are and wherever you are you are wrong.... It is very difficult to realise it because the mind tries to protect, to rationalise.

The mind belongs to the world. It goes on protecting you -- not exactly you but your 'astrayness'. You will have to drop all protections, all rationalisations. Once you understand that you are astray, you suddenly realise that you have nothing to save in this world -- the wealth, the power, the prestige, nothing is of worth. It is all rubbish. And you are losing something tremendously valuable for rubbish; you are selling yourself and purchasing toys; you are destroying the possibility of creating a soul for nothing.

This is a basic realisation, the first breakthrough. Feel happy about it if you have recognised the fact that you are astray, if you have recognised the fact that you are wrong -- not wrong in any particular way, but in a general sense. Not wrong because you are angry, not wrong because you are full of hatred, not wrong because you have done this or that -- not in any particular way but in a general sense one feels one is astray. Then only the door opens for growth, then suddenly you start looking in another dimension. Then you don't look out, you start looking in because whatsoever you do outside will lead you more and more away. The more you chase shadows outside, the more you will be losing yourself in the world.

One starts closing one's eyes, one starts feeling and touching one's being. The first thing to know is 'who am I?' -- everything else is secondary. And if this basic thing is solved, if this basic problem is solved, if this basic mystery is penetrated, then all else is solved automatically. And if you don't solve this, and you don't answer the basic quest of man -- 'Who am I?' -- 'then whatsoever you do is irrelevant.

What are you doing? You are not trying to realise yourself, you are trying to compete with others. Nobody is trying to be oneself, everybody is trying to defeat the other. The whole world lives like a competitive madhouse: somebody purchases a car, now you have to purchase a car, and a bigger one. You may not need it but now your ego is hurt.

Somebody makes a big house, now you have to make one, and a bigger one. This is how life goes on being wasted. Why should you be worried what others are doing? That is their thing to do; if they feel good, let them do it. You should look at your own need.

But there are two types of people ordinarily: one who is competing with others and another type who goes on condemning others that they are doing wrong. Both are wrong.

Who are you to decide? If somebody is making a big house, who are you to decide if he is doing right or wrong? It is none of your concern. It is for him to think about. You should only think about whether what you are doing is for you to do.

People go to absurd lengths in competition, and people go on dying every day. One day death possesses you, then you remember that your whole life was wasted with fighting others. And it was pointless. You should have put your whole energy into realising yourself.

I have heard a very beautiful anecdote.

A Catholic church and a synagogue happened to be on opposite sides of the same street.

And a rivalry sprang up between the parish priest and the rabbi. When the church was repainted, the synagogue had to be stuccoed. When the priest organised a parish procession of one thousand witnesses through the town, the rabbi organised a procession of two thousand of the faithful.

The priest bought a new car, so the rabbi bought a bigger one. Then the priest had a solemn ceremony outside his church of blessing his new car and the rabbi came out with a large pair of pliers, went up to his car and cut three inches off the exhaust pipe.

Circumcision! People go on to absurd lengths. One has to defeat the other anyhow. One has to take over the other.

Remember, this foolishness is very ingrained in humanity, and unless you drop this foolishness you will not be able to know yourself, you will not be able to come back home. You will go on moving more and more further away, becoming more and more astray. And one day suddenly you will realise that the whole edifice has collapsed. It was foundationless, you were making a house of cards. A small breeze came and everything disappeared. Or, you were trying to sail in a paper boat.

Man as he is, is simply living in a dream -- the dream of the ego, ambition, power, prestige. The religious man is one who has come to understand that all this is going astray.

One day it happened that I was at Mulla Nasruddin's house. Mulla Nasruddin's teenager son had dented a fender of the family car.

'What did your father say when you told him?' I asked him.

'Should I leave out the cuss words?' he said.

'Yes, of course.'

'In that case,' said the boy,'he did not say a word.'

One day when you look back on your life you will not see a single act that was intelligent -- all were stupidities, foolishnesses. You will feel simply ashamed. The sooner you realise it, the better.

This is what SANNYAS is all about: a recognition that the way you have lived up to now was absurd; a gesture that you would like to discontinue with your past. By changing the name and by changing the dress nothing is changed, it is a simple gesture that now you feel ashamed with the old identity. It was so foolish that it is better to forget all about it.

A new nucleus, a new name, so you can start afresh.

And it is easier to drop the past than to renovate it. It is easier to be completely cut off from the past rather than to modify it. You can paint a foolish thing, you can modify it, but you cannot make it wise -- it will remain foolish. It is better to drop it.

So if this recognition has come to you that we are astray, feel blessed, and don't forget it.

Remember it continuously. Unless you have come back to the path, go on remembering it. Just recognising it once won't do, you will have to live it, remember it for a long time continuously, again and again, so the hammering continues -- whatsoever you have done in the past, it is finished.

At least if you remember that it was all wrong... and I say ALL wrong. Don't try to decide that a few things were good. I insist: either ALL things are wrong or ALL things are right. There is no other way. It is not possible that a foolish man can do a few things that are right. And the vice versa is also not possible that a wise man can do a few things that are wrong. A wise man does ALL right and a fool goes on doing ALL wrong. But the fool would like to choose at least a few things right, the fool would say,'Yes, I have done many things wrong, but not all.' Then those things that he saves and says were right will become the centre for his ego again. So be totally frustrated with your past.

Fritz Perls used to say that all therapy is nothing but skillful frustration. The great therapist is one who goes on frustrating you skillfully -- that's what I am doing here. I have to show you that whatsoever you have been doing was wrong, because only that understanding can save you. Once you recognise that the whole past was wrong, you simply drop it, you don't bother to choose. There is nothing to choose. It all came out of your unawareness and it was all wrong. Your hatred was wrong, your love also; your anger was wrong, your compassion also. If you seek deep down you will always find wrong reasons for your compassion and wrong reasons for your love. A foolish man is foolish and whatsoever he does is foolish.

So it will have to be remembered continuously, it should become a constant remembrance -- what Buddha used to call mindfulness. One should remain mindful so it is not repeated again. Because only mindfulness will protect and you will not be able to repeat your past again -- otherwise the mind tends to repeat it.

The fourth question:

Question 3:

Let me tell you one anecdote first.

When Rabbi Nor, Rabbi Moudekai's son, assumed the succession after his father's death, his disciples noted that there were a number of ways in which he conducted himself differently to his father, and asked him about this.

'I do just as my father did,' he replied.'He did not imitate and I do not imitate.'

Meditate over this anecdote. He said,'I do just as my father did. He did not imitate and I do not imitate.' If you really understand Joshu, Bodhidharma or me, you will not imitate -- because I have not imitated, because Bodhidharma never imitated anybody.

Joshu used to say to his disciples,'If you utter Buddha's name, go and rinse your mouth immediately.' Joshu also used to say,'If you meet the Buddha on the way, kill him immediately.' And he used to worship Buddha every day.

Ordinarily Zen looks puzzling, but it is clear-cut. It is following Buddha. When Joshu says,'If you meet the Buddha on the way kill him,' he is a right disciple because that was Buddha's essential message. When Buddha was dying, his last utterance in this world was,'APPO DEEPO BHAVA' -- 'Be a light unto yourself.' Don't follow anybody. Anand was crying, weeping because Buddha was leaving the body and he said to Buddha,'You are leaving and I have not yet become enlightened. What about me? What will happen to me? The world will be absolutely dark for me -- you were the light. And now you are going. Have compassion on us.' Buddha opened his eyes and said,'APPO DEEPO BHAVA. Be a light unto yourself, Anand, nobody can be a light for you.'

When Joshu says,'Kill the Buddha if you meet him on the way,' he is a true follower of Buddha. In Zen, following is very, very delicate. Great intelligence will be needed if you want to be a follower of Zen. It is very easy to be a Christian or a Hindu; it is very mathematical. To follow Zen it is very, very delicate and poetic -- because the very following means not following; because that is the message of the Zen Masters, don't follow.

It is reported that it happened in China that a Zen Master had organised a great celebration. People asked him about it because that type of celebration was only arranged at one's Master's birthday. Nobody had ever known this man to follow anybody. He had been to a certain Master but it was known that the Master had refused to accept him as a disciple. So for whom was he celebrating?

He said,'Because that Master refused to accept me as his disciple, he is my Master.'

They said,'We don't follow. What do you mean? When he refused, he refused. He never accepted you as his disciple.'

He said,'That's why I am celebrating. If he had accepted me I would have been lost. He threw me to me, to myself. He said, "Be a light unto yourself." When he rejected, he accepted me. He said, "I will not allow you to imitate me. I will not allow you to become a disciple of mine. I will not allow you to become an imitator, a carbon copy." His compassion was great, he loved me tremendously, that's why he rejected me.'

Zen is a little difficult to understand; its ways are very poetic, zig-zag. Christianity is like a super-highway; Zen is more like a zig-zag labyrinth in a forest. It turns, moves, sometimes in this direction, sometimes in that, sometimes in almost the opposite direction -- you were going to the east and suddenly you turn and start moving to the west. But that's how it is and that's how it should be, because life is not mathematics and life is not like a super-highway. Life is wild. In fact, no path exists -- you walk and you create your own path.

The questioner has said, I HAVE FALLEN IN LOVE WITH CHUANG TZU.... Good, but falling in love with Chuang Tzu means falling in love with oneself. If you want to follow Chuang Tzu you will have to follow yourself, there is no other way. People like Chuang Tzu don't give you ordinary commandments, they don't give you ten commandments -- do this, don't do that. They don't give you a morality. In fact, they don't give you any discipline, they simply impart their awareness, because they know that any commandment, any fixed commandment, is going to become a slavery to you, it will not liberate you. And life changes so much that something that is right this moment may not be right the next moment, and you will be caught in your discipline. Discipline is rigid, discipline is dead, discipline never changes, discipline is not a process. Once fixed, it is fixed forever. Look at the Judaic ten commandments. Moses fixed them, he brought these commandments written on a stone, slabs of stone, dead. Now Jews and Christians have followed them and you may not improve upon them, you may not change them. Life goes on changing. They have become a dead weight and nobody follows them, but still people go on paying lip service to them.

Zen Masters have not given any rigid discipline to anybody. They simply impart their awareness. They say,'You be aware and you will find your discipline moment to moment.'

I have heard, it happened.

The sales manager believed in super-efficiency.'Jones,' he said to the new traveller,'you will take the nine forty-five to Leeds. Your task there will take you two hours and fifty minutes and you will have time for a sandwich and a cup of tea in the station buffet before catching the three forty-five to Manchester. At Manchester go straight to Mennin and Company and get the details of that order. That will take you thirty-five minutes which will enable you to catch the five-thirty back here. Is that all clear?'

'Yes, sir,' said the helpless representative. And off he went.

But at one the sales manager was enraged to receive a telegram from the new salesman which read: 'Leeds buffet out of sandwiches. Stop. What shall I do?'

This is going to happen. If details are so important, this is going to happen.

Zen Masters have not given any details. They simply impart their awareness and say,'You be aware. Awareness will show you the way in each moment. What is needed, you will know. Respond knowingly, alert, that's all.' How can it be decided beforehand what you should do? Who knows? Each circumstance is so unique that it is difficult to decide. And people who decide always encage humanity, imprison humanity.

Zen is a path of liberation. It liberates. It is freedom from the first step to the last. You are not required to follow any rules; you are required to find out your own rules and your own life in the light of awareness.

So keep your light of awareness there, keep your lamp burning -- that's all. Then you know what to do, where to move, where not to move. Once a rigid discipline is given it makes you a prisoner.

So if you love Bodhidharma you are falling in a very dangerous love. If you love me you have fallen in a very dangerous love. I am not going to give you any rigid discipline.

People ordinarily expect everything ready-made. They want somebody else to fix their lives -- because that's how they have been brought up. Everybody says to them from the very childhood,'Do this, don't do that.' They have lived on do's and don't's. From the mothers milk they have received commandments and they don't know, if they are left to themselves, what to do. Even if sometimes they want to be left by themselves -- because there is a deep urge to be free -- they don't know what to do. Again they will start finding somebody to lead them. People have been forced to become followers. You are not being trusted to become your own leader and your own follower.

Zen is a way which makes you the follower and the master. The Master is there just to indicate: subtle indications, very indirect. And if you are looking for rigid rules you are looking in a wrong direction.

And remember, you say that you have fallen in love with them, how can you not follow them? Love does not force anybody to follow: love wants to make you free, love wants to give you freedom. In fact, the person who is forcing you to follow him may be on an ego trip himself, may be trying to dominate you, may be trying to destroy you, may be trying to cripple you. No, people who have known don't destroy you. They help you to be yourself, they don't force you to follow them. They only want you to understand them.

That's enough. Understanding is more than enough. Nothing else is needed.

Imitation is a substitute for understanding, and a very poor substitute. If understanding is there, there is no question of imitating or of following: you will follow understanding.

Keep this very clear: if you follow your understanding, you will be following me. By and by you will see that your path and my path are running parallel. By and by you will see that you are following me if you follow your understanding. If you follow me and forget your understanding sooner or later you will see that I am gone and you are left in darkness. The real way to follow me is not to follow me but to follow your understanding -- then even when I am gone you will be following me. It looks paradoxical but Zen is paradoxical.

HOW CAN I NOT FOLLOW THEM? I FEEL THAT ALREADY THEY HAVE TRANSFORMED ME THROUGH YOU. HOW CAN I NOT BE THANKFUL? Be thankful, be grateful, but there is no need to follow them or imitate them.

Gratefulness is a totally different thing. Thankfulness is a totally different thing than following a person. Gratitude is needed, it is good to be grateful, it will help you to flower. Gratitude never cripples anybody, but if just because of gratitude you think that you have to follow, then already you have destroyed gratitude, already you have destroyed the freedom, the flowering that gratitude gives to you, already you have started to pay.

If you think by following, you are paying a debt, then you are not grateful, you are bargaining.

One day suddenly you will see that you have paid enough. Or you may even get annoyed that you have paid more than enough. And if you are paying your Master in any way trying to pay the debt -- then you don't love your Master, because these things cannot be returned back, there is no way. You can pay everybody else back but you can never pay your Master back -- because it is not a bargain, it is not a commodity. He gives you out of his fullness, he gives you because he has too much and he does not know what to do with it, he gives you because he has to give -- in fact, he is grateful to you that you accept it, he is grateful to you that you didn't reject his gift. You could have rejected it. It is such a deep exchange that the Master is grateful to the disciple that the disciple accepted his gift, and the disciple is grateful to the Master that he thought him worthy. But there is no returning, you cannot pay it back. That would be almost profane, a sacrilege.

Be grateful, be thankful forever and ever, but don't try to make it a duty -- that because you are grateful you have to follow -- otherwise sooner or later you will get very angry.

If you are grateful towards me because you have to be, then sooner or later you will be angry also.

Duty is not a good word, it is a four-letter dirty word. Love is religious; duty is social.

Love is spiritual; duty is moral. Love is of the transcendental; duty is legal. You serve your mother because you say,'This is my duty.' Better not serve her, leave her and let her die, but don't call it duty, it is ugly. If it is love, from where does this word 'duty' come in? Duty is something forced upon you; reluctantly you have to do it, it is a social obligation, a commitment. It is because she is your mother that you have to do it -- not because of love. If you love her then you serve her, but then service has a fragrance. You are not burdened, deep down you are not thinking about when she is going to die, deep down you are not planning that when she dies you will be finished with this burden. You are flowing, flowing while you are serving her; you are enjoying it, it is a delight that your mother is still alive. When your wife is just your wife and not your beloved, then it is a duty, but when you love your wife, then it is different.

A friend of Mulla Nasruddin was talking to him. He said,'My wife is an angel.'

Mulla said,'But mine is still alive.'

We don't love each other, we have forgotten the language of love.

Feel thankful, feel loving, deep in gratitude, but go on your way. Try to create more awareness and understanding and intelligence. Radiate with intelligence to express your gratitude -- there is no other way.

The fifth question:

Question 4:

Who is this me?

If you think the ego is bugging you, who are you? It is again an ego trip. Now the ego is taking a very subtle form. When the ego is not, you are not. Ego is all that defines you, that makes you say 'i' or 'me'. Ego is your definition, your boundary, ego divides you from others. It is ego, that's why you can say 'i' and 'you'. If the ego disappears, who is 'i'

and who is 'you'?

Now you are taking a very subtle form. You say the ego is bugging you. Who are you then? Just see the point. If you don't see the point you can go on playing the game ad infinitum. You can become humble and the ego will be there. You can even become egoless and the ego will be there. Ego is very subtle and very cunning are its ways.

A psychiatrist once asked his patient, Mulla Nasruddin, if the latter suffered from fantasies of self-importance.

'No,' replied the Mulla.'On the contrary, I think of myself as much less than I really am.'

Now you are going on a very pious trip. The ego can become pious. It can become so humble that nobody can feel it. You may even start feeling,'Now it is not bugging me,'

but if 'me' is there, it is there.

The poison has become very purified but a purified poison is more poisonous. That's why ordinary people have ordinary egos, but the so-called religious people have pious egos -- they are more dangerous.

And you say, I HAVE GOT A FUTURE-EGO. No, the ego is always of the past, it cannot be of the future. Even when you are thinking of the future it is nothing but projected past. Even if you are thinking,'Tomorrow I am going to become the greatest man in the world,' the idea of the greatest man and the idea of the tomorrow both come from your past. The past accumulated is the substance of the ego. In the past many things were happy and many things were unhappy -- in the future you will like to modify. You would like to drop all that was unpleasant and you would like to collect all that was pleasant. That is your future ego, but it is not future, it is simply the past reshuffled, chosen again, selected. In the past there were many things you did not like -- in the future you will drop them. But the ego belongs to the past, ego IS of the past, ego is a ghost following you -- it comes from the past. And it is always dead.

Just think: if you have no past, can you have any ego? Meditate over it. If your mind is suddenly completely washed of the past -- now there are techniques available, mindwashing techniques -- if your mind is completely washed of the past will you have any ego? How will you have an ego? You will again become like a child, again innocent, you will again have to start from ABC. Again you will create an ego because mindwashing cannot help, the roots are deeper. The seeds are hidden very, very deep inside you; they will again sprout, again the tree of the ego will start spreading. But it is of the ego, it is of the past.

You don't know the future so how can you think about it? You can only think about the past redecorated, refined, modified.

IT KEEPS TELLING ME WHAT A SUPER PERSON I WILL TURN OUT TO BE IN A FEW YEARS' TIME WHEN I AM FINISHED WITH THIS TRIP. If this is a trip, you will never be finished with it. You may be finished with this but then you will choose another trip. Trips never end, they never come to any end -- one changes one train for another, one town for another, one master for another, one religion for another, but the trip continues. If this is not a trip, only then can it end. If to be with me has nothing to do with the future, if to be with me is of the present, if you are here now with me, then it is not a trip. We are not going anywhere -- at least, I'm not going anywhere. You may be but I'm not going anywhere. So with me there is going to be no trip. If you want to be with me you have to drop all trips.

SANNYAS is not a trip. It is an understanding in which you drop all the trips, in which you say,'Now I have arrived. Finished. Now I am not going anywhere. Now there is no future and no desire to go anywhere. Now I have to come to terms with the present, now I will be living in the herenow.'

If SANNYAS is also a trip for you then it is not going to help much. It will become like other trips, sooner or later you will be fed up with it, frustrated with it. Every trip is going to end in a frustration, no trip can fulfil you, because the fulfillment is in the herenow. A trip is directed somewhere else. A trip is desire, hope. And fulfillment is not a desire, not a hope; fulfillment is just to be herenow and just to accept the way you are, the being you are.

And start enjoying. I am not preparing you for any subtle enjoyment in the future, my whole method is to enjoy it right now. Who knows? There may be no future. Why waste this moment? Enjoy, delight! There is no need to sacrifice this moment for any other moment, because any other moment, if it is ever to come, is going to be just like this moment. So why sacrifice this moment? I am against all sacrifice. I don't tell you to sacrifice the present for the future -- that has been told to you by your parents, your teachers, your educational system, your society. They all say sacrifice the present for the future. I say don't sacrifice anything. Live it, delight in it, so that you can learn how to be blissful. Once you know it, even in the future you will be able to delight.

Those moments are going to be the same, can't you see the fact? In the past it is the same time. In fact, the very idea that time is passing is stupid. We are in time, nothing is passing. It is our desire that gives the delusion of passing time. Once you drop the desire suddenly you start laughing: nothing is passing, everything IS. It is the same, it has always been the same, it will always be the same. It is the same eternity surrounding you like an ocean. Live in it, enjoy it. Through enjoyment you will become capable of more enjoyment -- more brings more. The richer people become richer, poorer people become poorer. Says Jesus -- a very Zen saying -- that if you have, more will be given to you, and if you don't have, even that will be taken away. Very anti-communist, very Zen. If you have, more will be given to you. And if you don't have, even that will be taken away from you. It looks unjust.

But Jesus' saying is tremendous truth. Yes, that is the truth, one of the most fundamental.

If you have, more will be given to you because you will create the capacity by having it.

Nobody is going to give unless you have more capacity.

Have you watched? If you don't use a machine, it lasts. If a watch is guaranteed for ten years and you don't use it too much it will last for twenty years, thirty years.

But just the opposite is the case with life. If you don't use it, it will not last more, it will simply disappear from you. If you don't use your legs, legs will disappear; if you don't use your eyes, eyes will disappear; if you don't use your awareness, awareness will disappear. That's why man is not a machine. Don't use the machine and it lasts longer; don't use man, don't use your potentiality, don't use your body-mind, and you will start disappearing.

It is life's nature -- the more you use it, the more you get.

Enjoy, otherwise your capacity to enjoy will disappear, will be atrophied, paralysed. And tomorrow you will be there paralysed, atrophied -- then who is going to enjoy tomorrow?

Omar Khayam says that he is worried about these religious people. They say that in heaven wine is flowing in streams -- Mohammedans say that -- but they prohibit wine here on the earth. So Omar Khayam says,'I am very much worried about these people. If they don't get accustomed here, how are they going to enjoy heaven? And in heaven there are beautiful women, but these religious people say don't enjoy them here. That is a sin.'

Omar Khayam seems to be absolutely logical. He says,'What will you be doing there?'

When I was reading Omar Khayam I remembered an anecdote. Two old women were talking -- eighty years old. One woman said to the other, 'Are you aware or not that your husband is chasing girls?' She said,'I know it, but let him chase them. He is like a dog who chases a car but when he gets it, he cannot drive it.'

So these religious people, if they enter heaven some day, they will be like dogs chasing cars. Once they get it, they don't know what to do, they cannot drive it!

Enjoy. Heaven is not in the future, it is herenow, already present. It is your surround. The more you enjoy, the more you become capable of enjoying.

Yes, Jesus is right. If you have, more will be given to you; if you don't have, even that will be taken away from you.

And when I say these things, remember, everything is addressed to you personally. The mind is very cunning. If I say something you can always rationalise that I am saying it to somebody else. This is not your question certainly, so I am addressing it to somebody else -- you can laugh and enjoy. The question may be anybody's but my answer is addressed to you personally. Never think of the neighbour; think only of yourself.

I will tell you one anecdote.

Father Loran was delivering his Sunday sermon.'Someday' he said,'every man in this parish will die.'

Suddenly the priest heard MacLean laughing in the third row, but he continued.'As I was saying, every man in this parish will die.' Again MacLean began chortling.

Father Loran looked at him and said,'Why, why do you laugh when I say everyone in this parish will die someday?'

'Ha Ha!' exclaimed MacLean.'I am not from this parish.'

Remember it!

The sixth question:

Question 5:

Never heard of it. A fusion is not possible and in the name of fusion only a dead compromise will happen.

The directions are so totally, diametrically, opposite. If you love, you will have to use imagination, dreams, all the faculties of dreaming, of auto-hypnosis. If you meditate, you will have to drop all the dreaming faculties, auto-hypnosis, imagination, love -- everything you have to drop. But don't be afraid. If meditation happens, in the end you will find that love simply follows. And then that love is totally different from that love that you were trying to fuse with in the beginning. It is totally different. It comes out of your meditation, out of your silence. It has no desire in it, no passion in it. It is cool. It is not a disturbance, it is not an excitement, it has no madness in it.

And if you follow the path of love, one day meditation will come, and the meditation will be totally different to what you can think of right now. That meditation will not be dry like a desert, it will be like an oasis. That meditation will not make you renounce the world, it will make you capable of enjoying and delighting in it more. That meditation will not be against love.

But you have to follow one path. A fusion is not possible because both paths move in different directions, use different techniques.

And if you make a fusion, who will be making it? You will be making the fusion. What is your understanding? How can you synthesise? Synthesis is possible only when you have gone beyond. When you have become greater than love and meditation both, then you can synthesise -- not before it. A Buddha can synthesise, but he never synthesises because he knows that synthesis has happened in him. And if he synthesises it will not be of use to anybody. It will be simply useless, abstract. He insists on the path of meditation -- so much so that he has to deny the path of love; he has to say that it is absolutely wrong. If he says,'Not absolutely wrong,' then you will start thinking,'Then why not move on both?

Why not be safe? Who knows which is right? So be clever.' But your cleverness will help only your ego-confusion to persist and nothing else.

I have heard. George M. Pullman decided to build a model community on the outskirts of Chicago many years ago. It was during the early part of 1880 and the Pullman Company had purchased more than four thousand acres of prairie, twelve miles south of the Chicago business district. On this tract there were going to be constructed shops and a town to house almost ten thousand people.

Mr. Pullman engaged the services of Solon Spencer Berman, a well-known New York architect, who was to be the master designer of the master-town which was to be completed in 1884.

As the town was nearing completion Berman was so proud of his new city with its public buildings, residences, paved streets, paths, playgrounds, freeway system and water- supply that he went to Mr. Pullman one day and suggested that it would be quite appropriate to name the city 'berman' after its architect.

Pullman freely admitted that Berman was a pretty name and that Berman had done a great deal to bring his dream to fruition but in response to Berman's request he said, 'Berman, I will compromise with you. We will use the first syllable of my name and the second syllable of your name. The city will be called Pullman.'

This is how ego goes on trying for its own way. It was going to be called Pullman anyway; now he shows that he has made a compromise -- he has taken in half of the name of the architect.

Don't be clever otherwise you will remain the same, you will not change. Half-techniques on the path of love and half-techniques on the path of meditation will create much confusion in you. They will not help. They may destroy you. You may go berserk.

It is as if you are trying two different'-pathies' together: allopathy and ayurvedic. It can be dangerous. Or allopathy and naturopathy, it can be dangerous. Their whole understanding is different, their gestalt is different. Both work, but they are complete systems. Once you accept one it is better to accept that and don't bother to create any synthesis on your own.

Why does this idea of synthesis arise? Because you are so confused you cannot understand which path is your path. Rather than recognising your confusion you start creating a compromise. Drop all idea of compromise, just recognise that you are confused. These are the three possibilities: one, the person knows well that he is a man of the path of love, or, second, he knows that he is the man of the path of meditation, or, one knows the third possibility -- that he is confused.

If the first two are the case then there is no need; if the third is the case then I am here to help you. But to ask for help is against the ego, so you try to compromise. This compromise will be more dangerous, it will confuse you more, because, made out of confusion, it will create more confusion.

So try to understand why you hanker for compromise. Sooner or later you will be able to understand that compromise is not going to help. And compromise may be a way of not going in either direction, or it may be just a repression of your confusion. It will assert itself. Never repress anything, be clearcut about your situation. And if you are confused, remember that you are confused. This will be the first clear-cut thing about you: that you are confused. You have started on the journey.

I have heard.

A friend of Mulla Nasruddin said to him,'Come and have a drink.'

Mulla Nasruddin came up and took a drink of whisky.

'How is this, Mulla?' asked a bystander.'How can you drink whisky? Sure it was only yesterday ye told me ye was a teetotaller.'

'Well,' said Nasruddin,'you are right. I am a teetotaller, it is true, but I am not a bigotted one.'

People go on finding some way or other. But on the path of growth these deceptions are not good.

Another anecdote.

Flagherty sneaked into the room and started making love to his sleeping wife until she awakened and shouted,'Is that you?'

'It better be,' snorted Flagherty.

'When are you gonna stop this sinning?' she demanded.'Moody quit smoking, Paine stopped gambling, what are you gonna give up? 'All right,' said Flagherty through bloodshot eyes, 'from now on, you sleep in the bedroom and I will sleep in the spare room.'

Three weeks went by with Mrs. Flagherty sleeping alone. Finally, unable to contain herself for one night more, she tip-toed to the spare room and tapped lightly on the door.

'What is it?' shouted Flagherty.

'I just wanted to tell yer,' said his wife,'that Moody has started smoking again.'

You cannot repress anything. Howsoever subtle are your ways you cannot repress anything, you will have to face it. If you are confused, face it.

The last question:

Question 6:

Po!