Different Breezes
The first question:
Question 1:
I AM ALWAYS IN A HURRY AND ALWAYS WORRYING WHETHER I WILL BE ABLE TO REACH OR NOT.
There is nowhere to reach and there is no one to reach. The whole idea of the goal is illusory. Then you start living in the future, and the time is now, and the place is here. Then you start living there - somewhere far away. Then and there become more important than now and here. That is the whole art of becoming miserable, that is the whole basis of anguish, anxiety. It divides you; it divides you from your present reality. The goal becomes more important and the moment becomes less important; and the moment is real and the goal is just a dream. When you live for a dream you will suffer, because the dream cannot be fulfilled. The dream can never become reality; the dream will remain a dream. And you will be wasting precious life.
I am against all goals. God is not a goal, truth is not a goal. Truth is already here. If you are also here, there will be a meeting. But you are not here. God is waiting here for you and he never finds you here; you are somewhere else - on some other planet, in some other time, in some other place.
It is not a question of you going to God, the question is of you coming to God. It is not a question of going, it is a question of coming back home. God is waiting for you here.
And once you have this idea.... Everybody has it, because down the ages only one thing has been taught to man: that he has to become something, that he has to improve upon himself, that he has to progress. This idea has gone into your bones, into your very marrow. And it goes on driving you mad! It never leaves you at ease, it does not allow you rest. It is not possible to relax with this mind.
But you have always been taught: push, rush, hurry, time is short and time is money. Push, hurry, do something before time is lost. What do you want to do? Be! And being is possible only herenow.
Becoming is a poisoning idea. If you are in the trap of becoming you will remain neurotic.
There is nothing really that you need. All is already given to you. That which you want to become, you have been all along. Never for a single moment have you missed it. Even though you are in misery, never for a single moment have you missed your reality, your truth. How can you miss your reality and your truth?
I am not giving you a goal here, because all goal-orientation will make you more and more unhappy.
I am making an effort to take all goals, all ideals, away from you, and to leave you herenow, in a totally different kind of space, a different presence. This moment is beautiful, this moment is perfect.
You ask me: I AM ALWAYS IN A HURRY, AND ALWAYS WORRYING WHETHER I WILL BE ABLE TO REACH OR NOT. Where do you want to go? What do you want to reach? The seeker is the sought. To know the one who is hidden inside you is all that is needed, and for that you need not go anywhere. For that you need not even open your eyes. For that you need not even take a single step. That's why Lao Tzu says, 'If you seek, you will miss. Don't seek, and you will find.'
Seeking is desiring. And once you start seeking you will go on going astray - from one goal to another goal. Sometimes it is money that is the goal, sometimes it is power; then sometimes it is meditation and sometimes it is enlightenment and God and nirvana. The name changes but the goal remains. And you remain tense because time is slipping by. How can you avoid tension? Time is slipping by and the goal has not come yet, and life is becoming less and less. Energy is being lost and the goal has not come yet. How can you be happy? You become more and more hectic, more and more hungry for the goal. Death is coming and the goal seems to be nowhere.
Naturally, as you grow in age you become more miserable. It is not death that makes you miserable and it is not old age that makes you miserable - it is the impossibility of the goal. When you are young you can hope. Enough time is there, enough energy is there, the body is healthy, and you have not tasted frustration yet, and dreams look beautiful. By and by, as you grow in age, you will grow in frustration. All dreams will break somewhere. And you will go on creating new illusions because you cannot live without an illusion. Death comes close and the goal does not come - that is what misery is. That is what frightens.
But if you don't have any goal, you will not be frightened by death. If you don't have any goal, you will not be frightened by anything - nothing can be taken away from you. You cannot miss in the very nature of things! It is impossible to miss.
The modern mind is even more addicted to goals because the modern mind is educated, civilised.
The more you are educated, the more ambitious you become - because all that education does is to create a subtle mechanism in you for ambition. Education corrupts you, corrupts your sources of joy, gives you great ambition, ego trips. The more the world has become educated, the more panicky people are - and nobody is certain whether he is going to make it or not.
In Lewis Carroll's Alice's ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND, there is this beautiful piece:
'Cheshire Puss,' said Alice, 'would you tell me please which way I ought to go from here?'
'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to, said the cat.
'I don't much care where,' said Alice.
'Then it does not matter which way you go,' said the cat.
'So long as I get somewhere,' Alice added as an explanation.
'Ah, you are sure to do that,' said the cat, 'if you only walk long enough.'
Where are you going? What is the goal? Once you have a goal in your mind you start seeking for means, ways, to reach the goal. Once you have an end in mind, you start looking for paths, methods, techniques. Goal-orientation creates the path, the method, the technique. Once the goal is dissolved, there is no need for any technique or for any method. Then suddenly you are here.
And you are not missing anything. The idea of missing is created by the idea of a goal. Once you have a goal then you feel you are missing.
For example, if you have a goal that you need to have one million dollars, then you are missing - because you don't have even one dollar in your pocket. And you need to have one million dollars.
So you are missing one million dollars. The man sitting by your side who has not got that idea of one million dollars, who is not that mad, is not missing. Both are in the same situation, both may have the same kind of money, hut one is missing and one is not missing. It depends.
You are missing God because God has become your goal. You are missing enlightenment because enlightenment has become your goal. Nobody else is missing. Make a goal and that becomes the problem. If you listen to me rightly, drop the goal. Drop all goals. And you will not be able to miss.
There is no way to miss then! How can you miss without having a goal in your mind? And when you are not missing, that is the state of being a God, or being in God. When you are not missing, that is what is called enlightenment. Enlightenment is not a goal. It is the understanding that there is nothing to miss because there is nothing to achieve.
Let me repeat it: enlightenment is not a goal. It is the understanding that there is nothing to achieve, nothing to miss. Then you are enlightened.
You can become enlightened this very moment. Nobody is barring the-path, nothing is hindering you. But the problem is with you - that you want to become enlightened in the future. Even if I go on insisting that you can become enlightened right now, the question arises, 'Right now? How can it be possible? Give us a little time, we will have to prepare. We will have to get ready. We will have to do yoga ASANAS and Dynamic Meditation and Kundalini and things like that. Just give us a little time. How can we become enlightened just as we are?'
YOU ARE enlightened, that's why I say you can become enlightened right now. You have never been unenlightened ever! You have always have been enlightened all along. You just don t recognise the fact.
You ask: HOW TO BECOME...? And in that very how, you miss, you miss the whole point. There is no how to it. Once you start trying, then you are getting into difficulty.
Just the other night I was telling a story....
A Zen Master dropped his handkerchief and said to one of his disciples who was just sitting here, 'Try to pick up the handkerchief. Try to pick it up.'
Immediately the disciple picked up the handkerchief and gave it to the Master. But the Master was not happy. He dropped it again.
And he said, 'Listen to me, to what I am saying. Try to pick it up.' And the disciple again picked it up. It happened six times, and the Master dropped the handkerchief again and again. When he dropped it the seventh time it dawned upon the disciple what he meant. He was saying something absurd. He was giving a koan.
'Try to pick it up!' How can you 'try to pick it up'? Either you pick it up or you don't pick it up. How can you try?
Then he got the point that trying is not possible. Either you pick it up or you don't pick it up - trying is not possible. Then he laughed.
And he said, 'I understand.' He bowed down, thanked the Master.
And the Master said, 'Remember, never try. Either do or don't do. There is no way to try.'
Either you are enlightened or you are not enlightened. There is no way to make efforts for it, there is no way to try. Trying brings tension. And you have been trying, you have been trying in many ways.
When you miss from one way you think that way is wrong. No, sir, that way is not wrong - trying is wrong. When you miss with one Master you think that this Master is wrong. No, not necessarily.
The Master may not be wrong at all. Just because you were trying you missed.
You miss in the church so you go to the temple. You miss in the temple so you go to the mosque.
You miss in the mosque so you go to the GURUDWARA. But you don't drop your addiction to trying.
Neither the temple, nor the mosque, nor the church, nor the gurudwara is going to give it to you - because you already have it.
The only thing that is needed is an understanding of the absurdity of trying. This is a speed mania - first trying, and then, naturally, the second idea comes automatically: to get there soon and fast.
Who knows, tomorrow life may not be there. So first one starts trying, reaching, grabbing for the goal, and then one becomes interested in how to attain speed.
In day-to-day life, or in the so-called spiritual life, the problem is the same.
Just the other day I was reading: 'The average American spends fifteen hundred hours annually driving some seven thousand-odd miles and earning the capital needed to keep his vehicle in tow, shelter it, park it, and pay highway taxes. For each hour of his life invested, he covers only five miles in his car.
'In nations where highways are few, citizens cover such distances on foot. The difference between Americans and these backward, non-industrialised folk is that Americans spend twenty-five per cent of their time each day concerned with getting to and fro, and the walking citizens of other lands spend only five per cent.'
Now this great effort to reach there fast, with speed. has created only problems. It is ridiculous that the backward country people only give five per cent of their time to going to their work and coming back home, and the Americans give twenty-five per cent - with all the modern techniques, speedy vehicles. This is ridiculous! What is the point of it all?
And this whole thing has happened because of speed - you have to reach fast.
First, there is nowhere to reach. Second, there is no need to be so fast. Be on a pleasure trip. Let this life be a joyous journey to nowhere - from nowhere to nowhere. You come from nowhere, you go to nowhere. In the middle you exist. You come out of nothing, you disappear into nothing. In the middle is the flash of being. Enjoy it while it is there. Celebrate it. Don't destroy it in reaching somewhere; there is nowhere to reach. And, more important, there is nobody inside to reach. The traveller exists not, the traveller is a myth.
The pilgrimage is true but the pilgrim is false.
Look into your deep moments of joy and you will understand what I mean. When you are really joyous, there is nobody who is joyous in you; there is only joy. When you are celebrating, there is nobody who is celebrating; there is only celebration. When you are dancing, look within. There is nobody who is dancing, there is only dance. That's what Sufis call FANA - there is nobody inside. it is all emptiness, it is all pure emptiness.
You create the goal, the goal creates the ego. Then the ego needs higher and greater and bigger goals. And bigger and higher goals create bigger and higher egos, naturally. A worldly man has money as the goal; his ego is not very big. But the spiritual man - his ego is enormous, because he has a bigger goal. Money is below him, he needs God. Less than that is not going to satisfy him. Power and prestige are below him; he wants nirvana, enlightenment. So you will see more ego, more burning ego, in the spiritual man than in the ordinary, the worldly man. The worldly man is not so egoistic. His goals are very day-to-day things, trivia. With trivial goals you create a trivial ego; with great goals you create a great ego. With no goal, ego disappears - fana, anatta - no-self.
So try to understand how you go on creating misery by creating goals, how you go on creating ego by creating goals. It is a vicious circle. And then speed comes into the mind - then you want to do it as fast as possible. First, there is no goal; second, there is nobody to achieve it; and third, you are creating another misery for yourself - how to reach there fast. The goal exists not, the seeker exists not, and now there is this idea of speed. That creates more and more anguish. You cannot sleep, you cannot rest, you cannot love. How can you when there is so much left to be done, when the whole life seems to be a wasteland because the goal has not happened yet?
Understanding is conversion, understanding is what Sufis call TOBA - a return, a hundred-and- eighty-degree turn. You simply see the point, and you laugh, and you can have a cup of tea.
That's what enlightenment is - laughter, and a cup of tea.
The second question:
Question 2:
YOU BELIEVE THAT MAN SHOULD LIVE MORE MEDITATIVELY. HOW CAN THIS SOLVE LIFE PROBLEMS OR PREVENT WARS?
First, I don't believe a thing. I am not a believer at all. Never join the word 'belief with me.
It is not my belief 'that man should live more meditatively', it is my understanding that man can live only in meditation - otherwise there is no life. Meditation is life. Not to be in meditation is not to live.
Then you only pretend that you are living; then your life is just a mask. It has no authenticity in it, it has no depth; it is just the surface, the facade.
So first, I don't believe that man should live more meditatively. Second, I have no 'shoulds' and 'should nots'. Never bring those words in where I am concerned. I don't give you any 'should', because all 'shoulds' bring guilt. If I say that you should do this, I am creating guilt in you. If you cannot do it, there will be guilt. You will feel that you have missed something; you will become more miserable. And the 'should' means future. I am not concerned with the future at all. Look at the lilies in the field. They think not of the morrow, hence they are beautiful. Listen to the birds in the trees.
They don't think of the morrow, hence they are fantastic, gorgeous. Each moment is so joyful.
I don't give you any 'should'. 'Should' means the future, 'should' means you have to do something tomorrow, or the next moment. 'Should' cannot be related to the present, 'should' brings the future in. My whole concern is with the present - this moment. I don't give you any dreams. 'Shoulds' are all utopian. They say, 'If you do this, then this will happen.' They are conditions. And I say to you that God is unconditionally given to you. It is a gift. There is no way to earn God, there is no way to become worthy of having God - God is not a possession. God is a gift, and an unconditional gift. it is available to each and every one, there is no 'should' to be fulfilled.
So even meditation is not a 'should'.
And thirdly, how can you DO meditation? It is not a question of doing. You can be in meditation but you cannot DO it. It is like love. You can be in love, but you cannot do it. Have you ever tried doing love? Then you go on doing something else, and there is no flow, there is no glow, there is no joy.
It becomes a duty. You go into empty gestures, impotent movements, but there is no soul in it. You cannot do love. Love is a state, not an act. So is meditation.
Meditation is a state of silence; meditation is a state of no desire; meditation is a state of no past, no future; meditation is a state when you are not doing anything, just cherishing your being. You are just happy that you are, happy that you are breathing, simply happy for no reason at all. In those moments there is meditation.
I cannot say to you that meditation is a 'should', that you should do it. I can only explain to you what meditation is. If you understand me, you will be in meditation. There is no 'should' to it. It you don't understand me, you will not be in meditation. But then too you need not feel guilty. Guilt comes when you do something and you fail. Now meditation can become the sure way to create guilt. If you DO it, you will fail! That's how people are guilty.
They try to make love and it doesn't happen - they feel guilty. They start thinking, 'I am unloving, I'm trying my hardest and it is not happening.' Naturally they think that something is wrong with them.
Nothing is wrong. The only thing wrong is that you are trying to do something which cannot be tried.
You are trying to do something which can only be spontaneous - it comes when it comes. At the most the only thing you can do is not resist it - when it comes, don't resist it. When it comes, keep your doors open, that's all. But that is not much of a doing, it is more of a non-doing. You can allow meditation to happen or you can resist meditation and not allow it to happen. 'Should' cannot be made out of it.
I don't give you any commandment; I am not a commander. All commanders are dangerous people; they have destroyed humanity. All commandments have corrupted man because they have created guilt. A 'should' is a goal.
I am simply sharing my understanding with you. I am in no way concerned with improving upon you.
I am not trying to fix you. If you want to be fixed you should go to a psychiatrist, a psychoanalyst, a therapist. They are the people who fix you.
But the very idea of fixing a person is insulting. It means you have been taken as a thing. Yes, a car can be fixed in the garage, and when your bathroom is leaking a plumber can fix it - but man is not a thing. You cannot fix man.
First the priest used to do it, now the psychotherapist is doing it. The priest has failed. The psychoanalyst is failing, not because something is wrong with the priest or something is wrong with the psychoanalyst, no. The whole effort is wrong. You cannot fix anybody. Man is freedom. The idea of fixing him reduces him to a thing, kills his spirit. I don't give you any 'should' and I don't want to fix you. In fact, I am not interested in your spiritual growth at all.
What I am interested in is sharing that which has happened to me. It is not that I have done it, it has happened to me. And because it has happened to me, how can I give a 'should' to you? It happens.
I can only make you alert about how it happens. It has nothing to do with you or with your doing. You have to be receptive. Understanding makes you receptive, understanding makes you more relaxed, understanding brings you to a kind of let-go. And in that space, meditation simply IS.
Meditation is a state when you are not trying for anything, not even for meditation. Meditation is a state of non-striving, utter relaxation. There is no goal, nowhere to go, nothing to be done. The sheer joy of being is what meditation is. How can you do it? By doing it you will destroy it.
So I cannot give you a 'should'.
You ask: YOU BELIEVE THAT MAN SHOULD LIVE MORE MEDITATIVELY. No. All that I want to say to you is that meditation is your birthright. It is there waiting for you to relax a little bit - so that it can sing a song, so that it can become a dance. The flower is there but you are so worried about other things that you can't see it. It has already happened. It happened the moment you were born, it happened the moment you became alive. The moment you entered into existence, meditation bloomed in you.
And sometimes there are moments when you become aware of it. Just hidden beneath the surface of your day-to-day activ-ities, have you not become aware of a substratum deep down where nothing ever happens and all is silent? In the Upanishads they say that life is like two birds sitting on a tree.
One bird is sitting high on the top of the tree. unmoving, silent, as if not. Another bird is jumping from one branch to another, from this fruit to that fruit, is fighting, is struggling, is trying to reach, is very tense, tired, frustrated. The Upanishads say that these two birds are you. On the lower branch the one bird goes on jumping, rushing, in a hurry, doing this and that. On a higher branch the other bird goes on sitting, just watching the lower bird and the foolish efforts that he is making. And both are you.
Deep in you, meditation is already the case. So whenever it happens that your day-to-day turmoil is a little bit less.... Maybe you are watching a sunset, and watching the sunset your constant chattering mind has become quiet, the beauty of the sunset has made it quiet. You are in a kind of awe - the wonder, the mystery, the beautiful sun setting, the night descending, the birds moving back to their nests, the whole earth getting ready to rest, the whole climate of rest. The day is gone, the turmoil of the day is gone, and your mind feels quiet. The bird on the lower branch sits for a moment unmoving. Suddenly there are not two birds any more, there is only one bird. And suddenly you feel great joy arising in you.
You think that the joy is because of the beautiful sunset. That's where you are wrong. The beautiful sunset may have functioned as a situation but it is not because of that. The joy is coming from within.
The sun may have helped, but it is not the source. It may have been helpful in creating the situation, but it is not the cause. The joy is coming from you. It is arising in you. It was there; the surface mind had only to settle in a quiet space. And the joy started arising.
Or looking at the moon; or sometimes listening to music - Beethoven or Mozart; or sometimes playing a flute; or sometimes doing nothing, just sitting on the grass, basking in the sun; or sometimes walking in the rain and the water goes on splashing on you and everything is cool and wet and the smell of the earth and the music of the falling rain - suddenly the joy is there, the benediction is there. It does not come from the outside, it comes from your innermost core. That's what I call meditation.
Once you have started to understand this, you will be falling more and more into that meditative state. It is not something to do, it is something to understand.
And you ask: HOW CAN THIS SOLVE LIFE PROBLEMS OR PREVENT WARS? I am not worried about life problems and I am not worried about wars. In fact, I am not concerned with society at all.
My whole concern is the individual. My whole concern is you. My whole concern is the personal, not the social.
Yes, if more and more people start falling into a meditative state, the society will change, automatically. But that is none of my business, I am not worried about that. If it happens, it happens.
If more and more people start living in this meditative state, enjoying this meditative state of non- striving, non-ambition, non-desiring; if many, many people live in this kind of rest, they will create a vibe around themselves. And the society will naturally cool down.
The society goes to war because people are tense, because people are continuously warring within themselves, because people are angry, because people are in a rage, because people are very, very complaining - they are not happy, they want to destroy. When you are happy you want to create; when you are unhappy you want to destroy. When you are in a kind of rage you become murderers or you become suicidal; when you are in a kind of gratitude you write a song or you paint a picture - you do something creative. Creativity comes out of happiness; destruction comes OUt of unhappiness.
People are miserable. Millions and millions of people are miserable - their misery collects like clouds. Have you sometimes seen smoke arising from every roof in an Indian village? That smoke goes on gathering, becomes a cloud, hangs over the village. Everybody has contributed to it. That's what a war is. Rage, violence, ambition, aggression is rising from everybody's roof, from everybody's head, like smoke. Then it collects together, it becomes a great cloud - that's what war is. Then one day you are all surrounded in darkness, in murder, in killing each other, in rape.
After every ten years a great war is needed, because in ten years we accumulate so much anger that only war can release it. We accumulate so much pus that after each ten years the world has to become mad, neurotic, so we can release our pus and poison.
But I am not directly concerned because that is not the direct thing. Nothing can be done about it directly. That's what politicians go on doing: talking about peace, releasing peace doves. All nonsense! And they go on creating bombs. They talk about peace and they prepare for war. They even say that ridiculous thing: that they are preparing for war so that there can be peace in the world.
I am not concerned directly with the society. I am concerned with the individual because only the transformation of the individual can ultimately bring another kind of society into the world. It cannot be brought directly. Those who try to bring it directly are the politicians. I am not a politician at all.
The new society can come one day, if the new consciousness has come. But it will be a by-product of a new consciousness, not vice versa.
Marx says, 'First the society has to change, then the new consciousness will be born.' I say, 'First the new consciousness has to come, then the society will change.' Consciousness is more valuable.
A meditative consciousness has to be released into the world. And you cannot do anything other than become meditative. If you yourself move into that space more and more, you will be creating a kind of energy around you which will help others to become more meditative. When you sit by the side of a meditative person, something in you starts changing immediately.
When you sit by the side of a person who is really angry, something in you starts getting disturbed.
His anger hits you, provokes your anger. When you sit around a closed person you become closed.
His closedness tends to create closedness in you. We are affected by each other because we live in one ocean. It is natural to be affected by each other. When you see somebody laughing, suddenly a smile comes to your face. You may have been in misery, but for a moment you forget. The laughter was so beautiful, so catching, so infectious that you forgot your misery for a moment; you got in tune with the person. The laughter of that person turned you on. You smiled. You will fall back into the trap - that's another thing - but ripples around you affect you.
So my approach is not towards society. To me society does not exist, because society has no soul.
Only the individual exists. The individual has the soul. My approach is towards the individual, my appeal is to the individual. I provoke the individual, I call forth the individual. And if many, many individuals are in the kind of space I call meditation, then by and by there will be no more wars. It is not that we will have to arrange peace protests and we will have to arrange peace marches - all that is nonsense. Have you ever watched people protesting against war? They look so angry. They are ready to fight with anybody. Every protest of that kind ends in a fight with the police. They start throwing stones, they start burning buses. Every peace march ends in war. And you see the people shouting - how angry they are!
This is another way to throw off your anger, that's all. They are against war. The angry person needs to be against something - anything will do - but he wants to be against something so that he can show his anger and not feel guilty.
I am not in favour of all these things. They are still political. They are part of the same rut; they don't change a thing. They only create an illusion that change is going to come, and it has not come.
For five thousand years man has been trying to change society, and society does not change. All that can be done can be done with the individual. Only the individual has the capacity to change because only the individual has the capacity to turn back upon himself.
If many more individuals change, it will be a different kind of society. There will be no war.
And you ask: HOW CAN THIS SOLVE LIFE PROBLEMS? I am not saying it will solve life problems, I am simply saying that if you are in a meditative state, problems will disappear - they will not be solved; There is no need to solve a problem. The problem is created by a tense mind in the first place.
For example, a man came to me. He was suffering from insomnia. He was a politician, a minister, in some state in India, and he wanted me to give him some meditation so that he could relax and go to sleep. I told him, 'Insomnia is not your problem, ambition is your problem. What do you go on thinking about in the night?'
He said, 'Politics, of course. Politics, you know, is a continuous fight, so I go on thinking about it and that keeps me so hot that I cannot fall asleep.'
So I said, 'It is not a question of meditation to help you. The question is how to drop your ambition, how to understand your ambition.'
But he was not interested in that. He said, 'That is too much, I cannot drop out of politics. I have come just for your blessings so that I can sleep.'
Now he wants to do a miracle. He will create insomnia and I have to bless him so that he can sleep well. And he said, 'I went to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and he gave me Transcendental Meditation, and he said "Everything will be okay. Your problem will be solved."'
I told him, 'This is foolish. You will be creating the problem continuously. It is not a question of solving it. You go on pouring water onto the roots of a tree and you go on pruning the tree. Stop watering it, otherwise pruning is not going to help. In fact, pruning may make its foliage more thick.
I cannot give you any meditation but I can show you, make you understand, how you are creating your insomnia. Your ambition is the cause. If ambition disappears, insomnia will disappear.'
Life problems are not to be solved. Why they are there in the first place has to be understood.
A meditative mind has insight. He can see how he himself creates his problems. And then, naturally, one stops creating them. It is not that one solves them - they are no longer created.
And there are three kinds of problems. The first are those that you create - they are almost ninety per cent of the problems of your life. You go on creating them and you go on saying that you don't want them - but you go on creating them. You have to see the absurdity of it, the foolishness of it.
Ninety per cent of the problems simply disappear when you are in a meditative state - because you can see. And by seeing, you stop creating them.
Then there are the second kind of problems - nine per cent - those you don't create. They are created by living with people. Through meditation, a few of them will be solved, but a few of them will not be solved because you will not be the source of them. For example, you are jealous of your wife. That will be solved. But if your wife is jealous of you that will not be solved by your meditation.
In fact, that is not your problem at all. How can it be solved by your meditation? Your problem will be solved - you will no longer be jealous. If your wife is jealous, that is her business, she will suffer. But you don't take any responsibility for it any more, and you don't suffer for it. Seeing that it has nothing to do with you, that it does not arise in you, you have transcended it. It is something the wife has to do: she has to become meditative.
So there are problems which arise in other people and are reflected in you, and sometimes because you are not meditative you identify yourself with those problems. They will not be solved by you, they cannot be solved by you, but they have nothing to do with you. You can live in spite of them, beautifully, happily. Once you understand that they have nothing to do with you, you are finished with them.
Ninety per cent will be solved; nine per cent will not be solved by your meditation but will be dissolved because they will not concern you at all. One per cent remains. It has nothing to do with you or with others - that one per cent is part of existence itself.
Then, if it is part of existence itself... for example, death. It is not a problem - nobody is creating it, neither you nor others. It is not a problem at all. When ninety-nine per cent of the problems have disappeared, that one per cent will be seen not as a problem but as a mystery. The whole outlook changes; it is a mystery.
There are those kinds of things around us which are mysterious. We convert them into problems because we are problematic. We convert everything into a problem. Even if solutions are given to us, we convert those solutions into problems.
For example, I go on talking about enlightenment to help you understand. You make a problem out of it. You say, 'How to attain it?' You have made a problem. You say, 'What methods to use? What paths to follow?' You have made it a problem.
I was trying to share my understanding, I was trying to share my love, I was trying to share my being, and you have made a problem out of it. Now you are worried, now you will not be able to sleep well. Now you will constantly think, 'When and how am I going to become enlightened? I have not become enlightened yet.' It will create misery.
And you will do many things and all the things will fail. I say ALL. Not a single thing can succeed because enlightenment is not something in which you can succeed. Enlightenment is something which arises in you when you have utterly failed, when you have done all that you can do and there is no more to do - in that very state the let go happens. It happens because you cannot do anything any more, you have done all - so you relax. There is no more to do. You get off your trip. In that failure... enlightenment. That utter failure is the door.
I share my understanding with you - you make a problem out of it. I tell you about meditation and the beauty and the benediction of it, and you immediately make it a desire. Then the problem arises.
One per cent will remain, but that will not be seen as a problem at all. In fact, it will become something immensely valuable. It is a mystery. Birth is a mystery, love is a mystery, death is a mystery, existence is a mystery. There is no way to explain it. It cannot be explained. Its very stuff is made of mystery. You can go on knowing it. The more you know, the more you will feel you don't know. When you become really wise - when you have known all - suddenly you will become ignorant. You will say, 'I don't know anything at all.' Ultimate wisdom is innocent of knowledge.
So these are the three kinds of problems: ninety per cent will become simply meaningless because you will not create them. Nine per cent will remain there, will not affect you at all because you have nothing to do with them. And one per cent will remain, but they will no longer be problems, they will be mysteries - beautiful mysteries to be lived, to be gone through.
In that state, when there is no problem hovering around you, there is joy.
The third question:
THE FAMILY HAS BEEN THE BASIC SOCIAL UNIT FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS, YET YOU DOUBT ITS VALIDITY IN YOUR NEW world. WHAT DO YOU SUGGEST CAN REPLACE IT?
Man has outgrown the family. The utility of the family is finished; it has lived too long. It is one of the most ancient institutions so only very perceptive people can see that it is dead already. It will take time for others to recognise the fact that the family is dead.
It has done its work. It is no longer relevant in the new context of things; it is no longer relevant for the new humanity that is just being born.
The family has been good and bad. It has been a help - man has survived through it - and it has been very harmful because it has corrupted human mind. But there was no alternative in the past, there was no way to choose anything else. It was a necessary evil. That need not be so in the future. The future can have alternative styles.
My idea is that the future is not going to be one fixed pattern; it will have many, many alternative styles. If a few people still choose to have a family, they should have the freedom to have it. It will be a very small percentage. There are families on the earth - very rare, not more than one per cent - which are really beautiful, which are really beneficial, in which growth happens; in which there is no authority, no power trip, no possessiveness; in which children are not destroyed; in which the wife is not trying to destroy the husband and the husband is not trying to destroy the wife; where love is and freedom is; where people have gathered together just out of joy - not for other motives; where there is no politics. Yes, these kinds of families have existed on earth; they are still there. For these people there is no need to change. In the future they can continue to live in families.
But for the greater majority, the family is an ugly thing. You can ask the psychoanalysts and they will say, 'All kinds of mental diseases arise out of the family. All kinds of psychoses, neuroses, arise out of the family. The family creates a very, very ill human being. '
There is no need; alternative styles should be possible. For me, one alternative style is the commune - it is the best.
A commune means people living in a liquid family. Children belong to the commune, they belong to all. There is no personal property, no personal ego. A man lives with a woman because they feel like living together, because they cherish it, they enjoy it. The moment they feel that love is no longer happening, they don't go on clinging to each other. They say good-bye with all gratitude, with all friendship. They start moving with other people. The only problem in the past was what to do with the children. In a commune, children can belong to the commune, and that will be far better. They will have more opportunities to grow with many more kinds of people. Otherwise a child grows up with the mother. For years the mother and the father are the only two images of human beings for him. Naturally he starts imitating them. Children turn out to be imitators of their fathers, and they perpetuate the same kind of illness in the world as their parents did. They become ditto copies. It is very destructive. And there is no way for the children to do something else; they don't have any other source of information.
If a hundred people live together in a commune there will be many male members, many female members; the child need not get fixed and obsessed with one pattern of life. He can learn from his father, he can learn from his uncles, he can learn from all the men in the community. He will have a bigger soul.
Families crush people and give them very little souls. In the community the child will have a bigger soul he will have more possibilities, he will be far more enriched in his being. He will see many women; he will not have one idea of a woman. It is very destructive to have only one single idea of a woman - because throughout your whole life you will be searching and searching for your mother.
Whenever you fall in love with a woman, watch! There is every possibility that you have found someone that is similar to your mother, and that may be the thing that you should have avoided.
Each child is angry with his mother. The mother has to prohibit many things, the mother has to say no - it cannot be avoided. Even a good mother sometimes has to say no, and restrict and deny. The child feels rage, anger. He hates the mother and loves the mother also because she is his survival, his source of life and energy. So he hates the mother and loves the mother together. And that becomes the pattern. You will love the woman and you will hate the same woman. And you don't have any other kind of choice. You will always go on searching, unconsciously, for your mother. And that happens to women also, they go on searching for their father. Their whole life is a search to find dad as a husband.
Now your dad is not the only person in the world; the world is far more rich. And in fact, if you can find the dad you will not be happy. You can be happy with a beloved, with a lover, not with your daddy. If you can find your mother you will not be happy with her. You know her already, there is nothing else to explore. That is familiar already, and familiarity breeds contempt. You should search for something new, but you don't have any image.
In a commune a child will have a richer soul. He will know many women, he will know many men; he will not be addicted to one or two persons.
The family creates an obsession in you, and the obsession is against humanity. If your father is fighting with somebody and you see he is wrong, that doesn't matter - you have to be with the father and on his side. Just as people say, 'Wrong or right, my country is my country!' so they say, 'My father is my father, wrong or right. My mother is my mother, I have to be with her.' Otherwise it will be a betrayal.
It teaches you to be unjust. You can see your mother is wrong and she is fighting with the neighbour and the neighbour is right - but you have to be with the mother. This is the learning of an unjust life.
In a commune you will not be attached too much to one family - there will be no family to be attached to. You will be more free, less obsessed. You will be more just. And you will have love from many sources. You will feel that life is loving. The family teaches you a kind of conflict with society, with other families. The family demands monopoly. It asks you to be for it and against all. You have to be in the service of the family. You have to go on fighting for the name and the fame of the family. The family teaches you ambition, conflict, aggression. In a commune you will be less aggressive, you will be more at ease with the world because you have known so many people.
That's what I am going to create here - a commune, where all will be friends. Even husbands and wives should not be more than friends. Their marriage should be just an agreement between the two - that they have decided to be together because they are happy together. The moment even one of them decides that unhappiness is settling, then they separate. There is no need for any divorce.
Because there is no marriage, there is no divorce. One lives spontaneously.
When you live miserably, by and by you become habituated to misery. Never for a single moment should one tolerate any misery. It may have been good to live with a man in the past, and joyful, but if it is no longer joyful then you have to get out of it. And there is no need to get angry and destructive, and there is no need to carry a grudge - because nothing can be done about love. Love is like a breeze. You see... it just comes. If it is there it is there. Then it is gone. And when it is gone it is gone. Love is a mystery, you cannot manipulate it. Love should not be manipulated, love should not be legalised, love should not be forced - for no reason at all.
In a commune, people will be living together just out of the sheer joy of being together, for no other reason. And when the joy has disappeared, they part. Maybe it feels sad, but they have to part.
Maybe the nostalgia of the past still lingers in the mind, but they have to part. They owe it to each other that they should not live in misery, otherwise misery becomes a habit. They part with heavy hearts, but with no grudge. They will seek other partners.
In the future there will be no marriage as it has been in the past, and no divorce as it has been in the past. Life will be more liquid, more trusting. There will be more trust in the mysteries of life than in the clarities of the law, more trust in life itself than in anything - the court, the police, the priest, the church. And the children should belong to all - they should not carry the badges of their family.
They will belong to the commune; the commune will take care of them.
This will be the most revolutionary step in human history - for people to start living in communes and to start being truthful, honest, trusting, and to go on dropping the law more and more.
In a family, love disappears sooner or later. In the first place it may not have been there at all from the very beginning. It may have been an arranged marriage - for other motives, for money, power, prestige. There may not have been any love from the very beginning. Then children are born out of a wedlock which is more like a deadlock - children are born out of no love. From the very beginning they become deserts. And this no-love state in the house makes them dull, unloving. They learn their first lesson of life from their parents, and the parents are unloving and there is constant jealousy and fighting and anger. And the children go on seeing the ugly faces of their parents.
Their very hope is destroyed. They can't believe that love is going to happen in their life if it has not happened in their parents' life. And they see other parents also, other families also. Children are very perceptive; they go on looking all around and observing. When they see that there is no possibility of love, they start feeling that love is only in poetry, it exists only for poets, visionaries - it has no actuality in life. And once you have learned the idea that love is just poetry, then it will never happen because you have become closed to it.
To see it happen is the only way to let it happen later on in your own life. If you see your father and mother in deep love, in great love, caring for each other, with compassion for each other, with respect for each other - then you have seen love happening. Hope arises. A seed falls into your heart and starts growing. You know it is going to happen to you too.
If you have not seen it, how can you believe it is going to happen to you too? If it didn't happen to your parents. how can it happen to YOU? In fact, you will do everything to prevent it happening to you - otherwise it will look like a betrayal to your parents. This is my observation of people: women go on saying deep in the unconscious, 'Look, Mom, I am suffering as much as you suffered.' Boys go on saying to themselves later on, 'Dad, don't be worried, my life is as miserable as yours. I have not gone beyond you, I have not betrayed you. I remain the same miserable person as you were.
I carry the chain, the tradition. I am your representative, Dad, I have not betrayed you. Look, I am doing the same thing as you used to do to my mother - I am doing it to the mother of my children.
And what you used to do to me, I am doing to my children. I am bringing them up in the same way you brought me up.'
Now the very idea of bringing up children is nonsense. You can help at the most, you cannot bring them up. The very idea of building up children is nonsense - not only nonsense, very harmful, immensely harmful. You cannot build.... A child is not a thing, not like a building. A child is like a tree. Yes, you can help. You can prepare soil, you can put in fertilizers, you can water, you can watch whether sun reaches the plant or not - that's all. But it is not that you are building up the plant, it is coming up on its own. You can help, but you can not bring it up and you cannot build it up.
Children are immense mysteries. The moment you start building them up, the moment you start creating patterns and characters around them, you are imprisoning them. They will never be able to forgive you. And this is the only way they will learn. And they will do the same thing to their children, and so on, so forth. Each generation goes on giving its neurosis to the new people that come to the earth. And the society persists with all its madness, misery.
No, a different kind of thing is needed now. Man has come of age and the family is a thing of the past; it really has no future. The commune will be the thing that can replace the family, and it will be far more beneficial.
But in a commune only meditative people can be together. Only when you know how to celebrate life can you be together; only when you know that space I call meditation can you be together, can you be loving. The old nonsense of monopolising love has to be dropped, then only can you live in a commune. If you go on carrying your old ideas of monopoly - that your woman should not hold somebody else's hand and your husband should not laugh with anybody else - if you carry these nonsensical things in your mind then you cannot become part of a commune.
If your husband is laughing with somebody else, it is good. Your husband is laughing - laughter is always good, with whom it happens it doesn't matter. Laughter is good, laughter is a value. If your woman is holding somebody else's hand... good. Warmth is flowing - the flow of warmth is good, it is a value. With whom it is happening is immaterial. And if it is happening to your woman with many people, it will go on happening with you too. If it has stopped happening with anybody else, then it is going to stop with you too. The whole old idea is so stupid!
It is as if the moment your husband goes out, you say to him, 'Don't breathe anywhere else. When you come home you can breathe as much as you want, but only when you are with me can you breathe. Outside hold your breath, become a yogi. I don't want you to breathe anywhere else.' Now this looks stupid. But then why should love not be like breathing. Love is breathing.
Breathing is the life of the body and love is the life of the soul. It is far more important than breathing.
Now when your husband goes out, you make it a point that he should not laugh with anybody else, not at least with any other woman. He should not be loving to anybody else. So for twenty-three hours he is unloving, then for one hour when he is in bed with you, he pretends to love. You have killed his love. It is flowing no more. If for twenty-three hours he has to remain a yogi, holding his love, afraid, do you think he can relax suddenly for one hour? It is impossible You destroy the man, you destroy the woman, and then you are fed-up, bored. Then you start feeling, 'He does not love me!' And it is you who created the whole thing. And then he starts feeling that you don't love him, and you are no longer as happy as you used to be before.
When people meet on a beach, when they meet in a garden, when they are on a date, nothing is settled and everything is liquid; both are very happy Why? Because they are free. The bird on the wing is one thing, and the same bird in a cage is another thing. They are happy because they are free.
Man cannot be happy without freedom, and your old family structure destroyed freedom. And because it destroyed freedom it destroyed happiness, it destroyed love. It has been a kind of survival measure. Yes, it has somehow protected the body, but it has destroyed the soul. Now there is no need for it. We have to protect the soul too. That is far more essential and far more important.
There is no future for the family, not in the sense that it has been understood up to now. There is a future for love and love relationships. 'Husband' and 'wife' are going to become ugly and dirty words.
And whenever you monopolise the woman or the man, naturally you monopolise the children also. I agree totally with Thomas Gordon. He says, 'I think all parents are potential child-abusers, because the basic way of raising children is through power and authority. I think it is destructive when many parents have the idea: "It is my kid, I can do what I want to do with my kid." It is violent, it is destructive, to have the idea: "It is my kid and I can do whatsoever I want with it."' A kid is not a thing, it is not a chair, is not a car. You cannot do whatsoever you want to ,lo with him. He comes through you but he does not belong to you. He belongs to God, to existence. You are at the most a caretaker; don't become possessive.
But the whole family idea is one of possession - possess property, possess the woman, possess the man, possess children - and possessiveness is poison. Hence, I am against the family. But I am not saying that those who are really happy in their families - flowing, alive, loving - have to destroy it. No, there is not need. Their family is already a commune, a small commune.
And of course a bigger commune will be far better, with more possibilities, more people. Different people bring different songs, different people bring different life styles, different people bring different breathings, different breezes, different people bring different rays of light - and children should be showered with as many different life styles as possible, so they can choose, so they can have the freedom to choose.
And they should be enriched by knowing so many women that they are not obsessed by the mother's face or the mother's style. Then they will be able to love many more women, many more men. Life will be more of an adventure.
I have heard....
A mother visiting a department store took her son to the toy department. Spying a gigantic rocking- horse, he climbed upon it and rocked back and forth for almost an hour.
'Come on, son,' the mother pleaded, 'I have to go home to get father's dinner.' The little lad refused to budge and all her efforts were unavailing. The department manager also tried to coax the little fellow, without meeting with any success. Eventually, in desperation, they called for the store psychiatrist.
Gently he walked over and whispered a few words in the boy's ear, and immediately the lad jumped off and ran to his mother's side.
'How did you do it?' the mother asked incredulously. 'What did you say to him?'
The psychiatrist hesitated for a moment, then said, 'All I said was, "If you don't jump off that rocking- horse at once, son, I will knock the stuffing out of you!"'
People learn sooner or later that fear works, that authority works, that power works. And children are so helpless and they are so dependent on the parents that you can make them afraid. It becomes your technique to exploit them and oppress them, and they have nowhere to go.
In a commune they will have many places to go. They will have many uncles and many aunts and many people - they will not be so helpless. They will not be in your hands as much as they are right now. They will have more independence, less helplessness. You will not be able to coerce them so easily.
And all that they see in the home is misery. Sometimes, yes I know, sometimes the husband and wife are loving, but whenever they are loving it is always in private. Children don't know about it.
Children see only the ugly faces, the ugly side. When the mother and the father are loving, they are loving behind closed doors. They keep quiet, they never allow the children to see what love is.
The children see only their conflict - nagging, fighting, hitting each other, in gross and subtle ways, insulting each other, humiliating each other. Children go on seeing what is happening.
A man is sitting in his living room reading the newspaper when his wife comes over and slaps him.
'What was that for?' asked the indignant husband.
'That is for being a lousy lover.'
A little while later the husband goes over to where the wife is sitting watching TV and he gives her a resounding smack.
'What was that for?' she yelled at him.
To which he answered, 'For knowing the difference.'
This goes on and on, and the children go on watching what is happening. Is this life? Is this what life is meant for? Is this all there is? They start losing hope. Before they enter into life they are already failures, they have accepted failure. If their parents who are so wise and powerful cannot succeed, what hope is there for them? It is impossible.
And they have learned the tricks - tricks of being miserable, tricks of being aggressive. Children never see love happening. In a commune there will be more possibilities. Love should come out into the open a little more. People should know that love happens. Small children should know what love is. They should see people caring for each other.
Here in this ashram, people, particularly Indians, come to me and they say, 'Why is this SO?
Sannyasins showing so much love towards each other - in public?' It offends them. This is one of their problems, their great problems.
Just the other day a magazine came - a Marathi magazine - and a man had written an article against me. He said, 'Everything is okay, but I can't understand.... When Osho goes, after his discourse, there is much hugging and kissing - that is very ugly.'
That is not one man's idea - that is a very ancient idea, an old idea. The idea is that you can fight in public but you cannot be loving in public. Fight is okay. You can murder, that is allowed. Tn fact, when two persons are fighting, a crowd will stand there to see what is happening. And everybody will enjoy it. That's why people go on reading and enjoying murder stories, suspense stories, detective stories. Murder is allowed, love is not allowed. If you are loving in public it is thought to be obscene.
Now this is absurd. Love is obscene and murder is not obscene? Lovers are not to be loving in public and generals can go on walking in public showing all their medals - these are the murderers and these medals are for murder! Those medals show how much they have murdered, how many people they have killed. That is not obscene.
That should be the obscene thing. Nobody should be allowed to fight in public. It is obscene; violence is obscene. How can love be obscene? But love is thought to be obscene. You have to hide it in darkness. You have to make love so nobody knows. You have to make it so silently, so stealthily... naturally you can t enjoy it much. And people don't become aware of what love is.
Children, particularly, have no way of knowing what love is.
In a better world, with more understanding, love will be there all over. Children will see what caring is. Children will see what joy it brings when yoU care for somebody. You can see it happening here.
You can see little Siddhartha holding a girl's hand in a great caring, in great love. If they watch, they learn. If they know it happens, their doors open.
Love should be accepted more, violence should be rejected more. Love should be available more.
Two persons making love should not be worried that no one should know. They should laugh, they should sing, they should scream in joy, so that the whole neighbourhood knows that somebody is being loving to somebody - somebody is making love.
Love should be such a gift. Love should be so divine. It is sacred.
You can publish a book about a man being killed, that's okay that is not pornography. To me, that is pornography. You cannot publish a book about a man lovingly holding a woman in deep, naked embrace - that is pornography. This world has existed against love up till now. Your family is against love, your society is against love, your state is against love. It is a miracle that love has still remained a little, it is unbelievable that love Still goes on - not as it should be, it is just a small drop not an ocean - but that it has survived so many enemies is a miracle. It as not been destroyed completely - it is a miracle.
My vision of a commune is of loving people living together with no antagonism towards each other, with no competition with each other, with love that is fluid, more available, with no jealousy and no possession. And the children will belong to all because they belong to God - everybody takes care of them. And they are such beautiful people, these children, who will not take care of them? And they have so many possibilities to see so many people loving, and each person lives in his own way, each woman loves in her own way - let the children see, play, enjoy. While their parents are making love, let them be there, let them be a part of it. Let them watch what happens to their mother when she makes love - how ecstatic her face becomes, what glow comes to her face, how her eyes close and she goes deep into herself; how their father becomes orgasmic, how he screams with joy. Let the children know!
Let the children know many people loving. They will become more rich. And I tell you that if these children exist in the world, none of them will read PLAYBOY; There will be no need. And none of them will read Vatasayana's KAMA SUTRA, there will be no need. Nude and naked pictures will disappear. They simply show starved sex, starved love.
The world will become almost non-sexual, it will be so loving. Your priest and your policeman have created all kinds of obscenity in the world. They are the source of all that is ugly. And your family has played a great part. The family has to disappear. It has to disappear into a bigger vision of a commune, of a life not based on small identities, more floating.
In a commune, somebody will be a Buddhist, somebody will be a Hindu, somebody will be a Jaina, somebody will be a Christian, and somebody will be a Jew. If families disappear, churches will disappear automatically, because families belong to churches. In a commune, there will be all kinds of people, all kinds of religion, all kinds of philosophies floating around, and the child will have the opportunity to learn. One day he goes with one uncle to the church, another day he goes with another uncle to the temple, and he learns all that is there and he can have a choice. He can choose and decide to what religion he would like to belong. Nothing is imposed.
Life can become a paradise here and now. The barriers have to be removed. The family is one of the greatest barriers.
The last question:
Question 3:
THROUGH THE AGES, INCARNATIONS LIKE JESUS AND BUDDHA HAVE ACCEPTED TO COME AND HELP HUMANITY. IF LIFE IS NO MORE THAN A JOKE, WHY DO THEY TAKE THE TROUBLE?
That too is part of this great cosmic joke. Buddha and Christ - they are part of this great game, this play, this LEELA. Don't take them seriously, they are not serious people. They are playing a game.
It is all a joke.
When I say 'It is all a joke' I simply mean don't take it seriously and don't take it sadly. Let it be fun.
Nobody is a saviour - neither Buddha nor Jesus - nobody is a saviour. I am included in it. Nobody is a saviour. Then what is a Buddha? A Buddha is just a salvation. Not a saviour, a salvation. If you understand him, if you look into him, if you partake of him, your life is no longer a misery. It is a bliss.
Not that Buddha saves you, not that Jesus saves you. Nobody can save anybody. Only you can save yourself. But they are salvations. And the secret of salvation is: be joyful, don't be sad. The secret of salvation is: don't go on creating misery. And the serious face, the long face, is the unreligious face. That's why I say, 'This life is a cosmic joke.' It is not to disparage it, it is not disrespectful. It is the greatest respect that I can show to it - that it is a play. That's why Hindus call it LEELA, a play.
Be playful, and in that playfulness is your salvation. And it is you and only you who can save yourself.
I can make my heart available to you. I'm not a saviour, I am a salvation.