... AND SAGES AND THOSE WHO SERVE, THEY ALL SING HIS PRAISE. MANY THERE ARE WHO CAN EXPRESS IT, AND MANY DIE BEFORE COMPLETING THE TASK. HE WILL BRING EVEN MORE TO THIS EXISTENCE. NO ONE CAN PREDICT HIS ACTIONS. WHATEVER HE FEELS - SO IT HAPPENS. WHOEVER KNOWS THIS, HE HIMSELF IS TRUTH. IF SOMEONE BOASTS OF KNOWING HIM, THEN HE IS THE FOOL OF FOOLS. Nanak speaks in praise of God not as a pundit, but as...

...." Man is ninety percent water and ten percent matter. It is said that the total value of the substance of a human body is not more than five rupees. That is all the minerals within the body are worth. Therefore the human body is burnt on death, for it has no more value. Science will measure everything and then say that there is no such thing as a soul. How can they find the soul when it is...

... was his name, had many flags flying. He touched his head to Nanak's feet, then with folded hands he said to him, "I wish to be of service. By His grace God has given me enough. Whatever you wish I will fulfill." Nanak took out a sewing needle from his cloak, and giving it to Dunichand he said, "Keep this very carefully, and return it to me after your death." Dunichand was so...

... engrossed in the pride of his wealth that he did not realize what Nanak was saying. "As you wish," he said and left. Arrogance makes a person so blind at times that he does not realize some things are impossible. finally, on the way home Dunichand thought about what he had been asked and realized he could not return the needle after his death. So he went back to Nanak and said, "You have...

... entrusted me with a difficult task. I thought nothing of it at the time, but now I feel that you might have been joking with me. What need is there to take care of a needle? Since I presume that the ways of a saint are mysterious, there must be a reason for it. Forgive me, but take back the needle for I shall not be able to clear the debt later. How could I take the needle with me beyond death?"...

...; Nanak said, "You can give back the needle since it has served its purpose. That is the very question I was going to ask of you. If you cannot take such a small thing as this needle when you die, what will you take of the millions and millions of rupees you have amassed? If you cannot carry a puny little needle, what else do you have that you think you can take? You are really a poor man...

..., Dunichand, for only he is rich who can take something with him after death." Anything that can be measured cannot be taken beyond death; only the immeasurable can be taken. There are two types of people in this world. One type is always anxious to measure, always searching for things to count and weigh. The other type is always looking for what is immeasurable. The first type are not religious but...

... worldly; they belong to samsara, the world of illusion. The second type are the religious people, the sannyasins. The search for the immeasurable is religion. He who has found the immeasurable conquers death; he has attained the nectar, the elixir. What can be measured is bound to disintegrate; whatever has a boundary is bound to rot. Whatever can be defined is here today and gone tomorrow. Mountains...

... ALL SING HIS PRAISE. MANY THERE ARE WHO CAN EXPRESS IT, AND MANY DIE BEFORE COMPLETING THE TASK. HE WILL BRING EVEN MORE TO THIS EXISTENCE. NO ONE CAN PREDICT HIS ACTIONS. WHATEVER HE FEELS - SO IT HAPPENS. These words are worth pondering over. He cannot be expressed fully, for God is not an event that is completed;if it is still in the process of completion you cannot give a full account of it. A...

... man's biography, to be fully written, must wait till he dies. Until then his story is incomplete, some chapters still remain. How can we write God's life story? He will never die nor grow old. He will never reach the point where you can say this is the end. God keeps on happening. He is a constant occurrence, an eternal manifestation. He is a flower that is eternally blooming, but the petals of the...

.... Rather, it works in collaboration with its counter-forces. Ordinarily it appears that if your enemy dies you will be a happier man, but you do not know that with the death of your enemy something within you, which existed entirely on account of the enemy, also dies. Therefore it happens many times that you lose much more by the death of an enemy than by the death of a friend. The opposition of the...

... invisible, the word is born out of silence, life exists because of death. But the other side is forever invisible. Again, to explain his point further, Lao Tzu gives another example. He says: "A pot is formed out of clay, but its use lies in its emptiness. " We form a pot out of clay, but actually speaking, where is the pot - in the clay or in the emptiness of the pot? When you buy a pot, do you...

... mystery of life alone and knows nothing of the mystery of death does not understand the full mystery. There is nothing in existence to equal death. Death is the absence, the non-existence. Lao Tzu says that positive existence has its uses, but negative existence is in class by itself - it is the supreme usefulness. It has a different meaning altogether. But we see meaning only in life. We see no meaning...

... in death. Death, to us, is an end - where life finishes for us. We do not see in it a beginning, a new opening. It is not an entry into new vistas, but a sudden closing of old doors. We have no knowledge of death. This is because we are tied to the positive. The positive troubles us, and we have no knowledge of the negative. If we understand this negative aspect, we shall understand non-existence...

... lifeless. In some, the words seem to die as soon as they cross the lips; whereas in others, each word becomes a drop of nectar as soon as it reaches the lips because they have truly set out on the journey to the vast void. Theirs are words that have total silence behind them. Words that are conceived and nourished within the womb of silence are filled with the energy of life. If we understand it this way...

... your brother to die so that you can have me!" This is the holy woman, making such an absurd excuse to force him to go! Now, feeling abused, he went to look for Rama. But he made a line in front of the cottage and told Sita, "Don't go outside this line whatever happens." And Ravana came - that was a whole planned conspiracy - and he came as a beggar. He made it a point that, "If...

... anything to do with the vagina! What does it mean in the Jaina religion? It means the cycle of birth and death. Okay. How do you manage birth and death without the vagina, and without the male genital organs? Finally, I have caught him red-handed. Yoni means the cycle of birth and death. How do you manage it? Without a woman and man there is no birth and no death. So in brackets he writes yoni - and that...

... is the only meaning. All these others are just bogus, efforts to create much cloud and mist in people's minds. If yoni means the cycle of birth and death, it means the vagina of woman and the penis of man. The meeting of the two brings the circle of birth and death. That's what I have been telling you, and they are getting mad at me. Now go to Suriswarji and ask him, "How do birth and death...

... answer. He is saying, "You have not understood. I have said everything. Now what is left is just to be a gentleman in the city, with little children outside the walls. Forget all about religion and religious exercises. Forget all about ancient buddhas. Just get into the city, find a woman, have children, and move in the cycle of birth and death - yoni." ON ANOTHER OCCASION, A MONK ASKED...

... third - and they were waiting: "Now what can happen?" The third fly was released and the third swordsman waved his sword, and people started laughing because the fly went away, nothing was cut. The swordsman said, "Shut up! You don't know anything about swordsmanship. This fly will not have any children anymore!" He was the winner. He cut the very cycle of birth and death. He...

... not reach to their consciousness. Nothing happened to that man. Ordinarily in Zen anecdotes, when the master hits, the person becomes enlightened. Here, the person goes to the city it seems, becomes a gentleman: "Have a wife and children, and turn over the cycle of birth and death" - called in Jainism, yoni. Basho wrote: WHEN A THING IS SAID, THE LIPS BECOME VERY COLD LIKE THE AUTUMN WIND...

... disciples to die. This is the ancientmost trade secret of all priests: they teach you suicide. Reverend Jones did it in the American way, fast and quick, that's all. Other priests do it slowly slowly slowly - it takes seventy, eighty years. But the process is the same; they all teach you that life is wrong. When life is wrong, then death is right. They all teach you that to live is a sin. Then not to live...

... suicide. They don't call it suicide, they have beautiful words for it - they call it santhara: santhara means one who leaves the body by fasting. Now, this man was fasting for many days. And santhara is a fast unto death, no food, no water - if the man is really healthy it will take at least three months to die. Now this seems to be a more ugly death, more torturing, more prolonged misery. In that way...

..., arithmetic; he loses track of poetry. Once in a while the window opens and he can see the sun and the moon and the stars - but only once in a while. The mystic is twenty-four hours a poet. Remember it: if you really want to know what God is, you will have to be utterly passionate. It is not a scientific search, it is a love affair. It is a question of life and death - and not only a question really, it is...

.... He is not interested philosophically, scientifically. He wants water: it is a question of life and death. And you are talking about H2O! How can it satisfy him? When the search is passionate, no scripture can satisfy you. And people are satisfied by scriptures because their search is untrue, pseudo. They are reading their Gitas every morning, reciting their Koran - their search is pseudo. IF their...

... participation, beauty is known. Beauty is an organic unity. So is your consciousness an organic unity. Nothing has to be discarded. If you discard something, you will be half - and the half will not be accepted. In Afghanistan there is a folk tale, a folk story, a beautiful story. The Afghans believe that you have to die complete - they don't like to be operated upon. If the doctor says, "Remove a kidney...

..." an Afghan is never ready, because he says, "I have to go total to God. He will ask me, 'Where is your kidney?'" There is a story: In Peshawar, in the days of the British Raj, an Afghan was hospitalized. One of his hands was to be removed. His whole life was in danger, if the hand was not removed he would die. It was very difficult to persuade the Afghan, but the doctor said, "...

...;Don't be worried, we will keep your hand intact. We will preserve it in chemicals, and when you die we will put the hand with you." This looked logical. "So you can present God with the hand. You can say, 'Here it is?'" Afghans are simple people, very simple. He said, "This is right. But remember that my hand should not get lost, and you have to preserve it." The doctor...

... your priests have been telling you just the opposite. They say, "Turn your back towards life." They say, "Be life-negative." They say, "Renounce life." Sanai says, "Rejoice in life." Your priests are just poisoners. The greatest enemies humanity has known are its priests: they teach you death. Reverend Jim Jones is not the first priest who has helped his...

... simply a logical conclusion of their teachings. That's what they have been teaching: they have been teaching that life is ugly, that to live it is to be a sinner. Then it is a logical conclusion to die, to commit suicide; then suicide seems to be the most spiritual act. Jainism even permits it - not only permits but appreciates it. Just the other day, I was reading about a Jain monk who committed...

... trembling. There is nothing to fear because there is nothing to lose. There is nothing to fear even with death, because there is nobody to die. No harm can be done to you. Once you understand this, the sheep disappears. The sheep can be a follower but not a disciple. And a follower is not necessarily a disciple. A follower is just finding ways and means to protect himself, to be secure. A follower is...

... Title: N.A. Audio Available: N.A. Video Available: N.A. Length: N.A. The first question is from Anand Nirgrantha. Question 1: YOU SAY THAT BUDDHA WOULD NOT SPEAK OF GOD BECAUSE IT CANNOT BE PROVEN. YET IN THE NEXT BREATH HE SPEAKS OF OTHER LIVES, AND REINCARNATION. HOW DOES THIS FIT INTO SCIENTIFIC FACT? A BUDDHA SAYS THERE IS NO SOUL. WHAT IS IT THAT REMAINS AFTER DEATH? WHAT IS REINCARNATION? I...

... substance - continuity like a flame, continuity like a river, continuity like the body. The problem arises... we can concede to it that okay, it may be so: if a person dies at death and everything disappears, then perfectly true - maybe it is just a flame. But Buddha says a person is reborn - then the problem arises. Then who is reborn? Then again, a few analogies. Have you seen a big house on fire, or a...

... would have forgotten; he would not have talked about this fact at all - he would have chosen. The choice is simple: either you say there is no reincarnation because there is no self.... That's what people who don't believe in the soul have always been saying. The atheists, charvakas, they have always been saying that there is no self - when you die you simply die, nothing survives, and there is no...

... rebirth. That's simple, logical. Or there are eternalists, theists, people who believe in the self. They say that you die but only the body dies; your self, your center survives. Your soul, your atma survives; it is eternal. That too is logical. Buddha is very illogical and he is illogical because his insistence not to go against reality is absolute. His emphasis is this: that whatsoever reality reveals...

... clear - that the thinker was just a by-product of moving thoughts. It was a bundle of thoughts and nothing else. It had no separate existence. Then you walk, but the walker is no more there; then you eat, but the eater is no more there; then you sleep, but the sleeper is no more there; then you live, but there is nobody who is living; then you die, and there is nobody who is dying. You are just a pure...

... space and many things happening, you become detached. Then you become fearless, because there is nothing to lose, there is nobody to lose anything. Then you are no more full of lust for life, because you don't conceive of any self. Then you are not afraid of death and you are not in a lust for life. Then you don't think of the past and then you don't project the future. Then you simply are - as pure...

..., wave B creates wave C - it is a continuity; a continuum is the right word. That too comes from modern physics: continuum. Buddha calls it santati. Just as a child is born to you: he is you in a certain way, and yet not you, not totally you. He will have his own personality, but you created the wave. It is father's and mother's energy creating a new wave. This wave will go - the father may die, the...

... mother may die - this wave will continue, and this wave will create other waves in its own way, in its own time. Santati, continuum. You are not born, only your desires are born again; because you are not, so you cannot be born. Hence, Buddha says, if you drop desiring you will be never born again. Hence, if you understand the whole futility of desire and you stop desiring, you drop desiring, then...

... disciple is seeking a master, not a father figure. He wants to learn what life is. Even if life is insecurity, he is ready to learn. Even if life implies death, he is ready to learn. The follower just wants a map. The disciple wants to go on an adventure. He is not worried about the map, he simply wants a challenge. 'Challenge me!' says the disciple. 'Pull me out of my stupor,' says the disciple. 'Send...

... waiting only, preparing for it... it has not happened. Yet he goes on - hankering for more life. As I see many people... I have watched people dying - it is very rarely that a person dies without passion. When a person dies without passion, the death is beautiful. It has tremendous significance, it has intrinsic value. But people die ugly deaths. Even death cannot shake them out of the dreams and...

... has lived his whole life and he has not come to understand a simple fact - that you cannot be in the future and you cannot be in the past. He has lived his whole life and he has been frustrated each moment of it, and yet he goes on expecting. He has lived his whole life, desiring and desiring and desiring, and nothing has come out of it. Death has come and life has not yet arrived. He has been...

... passions and fevers. Even death cannot make them realize what is happening. I have heard a very beautiful anecdote: There is a whorehouse. The doorbell rings and the madam answers it, but she sees no one. Then, looking downstairs, she sees a man with no arms or legs sitting on a platform with wheels. She says to the guy, 'What could you possibly want here?' The guy looks up at her, smiles and says, 'I...

... rang the doorbell didn't I?' Now that's enough. To the very end... dying, people think of sex. There is some interconnection, because sex means birth. So death and sex are really very deeply connected. If you have not been able to sort it out while you were fully alive, it will be very difficult to sort it out while you are dying. Because when death comes, it also brings its polarity, its shadow...

.... Life starts with sex, life ends with death, and when death comes, the sex energy has a last bout. It becomes a flare. That very flare leads you into another life... the wheel starts moving again. Dying with a sexual, passionate mind, you are again creating a new life, a new birth. You have started seeking a womb. Sex means the search for a womb has started. Already you are not dead, but the search...

... has started. Your soul is already preparing to take a jump into another womb. Buddha says if you can die without passion, you have broken the desire. You may never be born again. Or even if you are born it is going to be only once. Maybe a little karma is left, accounts have to be closed, things finished - but basically you are free. When the mind is free of passion, the mind is free. Freedom means...

... prepare more. A man who becomes skillful in preparing is never ready to live. He becomes more ready to prepare, that's all. That's how the whole life is missed. And then in the old age they say, 'Now prepare for the other world. What are you doing? Pray, meditate, go to the church. Now become religious. What are you doing? Death is coming. Prepare for the afterlife.' Now this whole logic is foolish. The...

... the almost deceased asked, 'Is that corn shucked?' The lazy man is worrying about the corn - whether it is shucked or not. He is ready to die, but if he has to shuck the corn, then it is too much effort. A man who is surrounded by laziness looks at everything through his laziness. His laziness becomes his interpretation of things. If you are sleepy, you will look at life with sleepy eyes, naturally...

... to the Himalayas, he wanted to die in the Himalayas. He gathered his disciples, the four foremost disciples, and he asked them, "What is truth?" The first said something which was philosophical, logical, very systematic, but Bodhidharma was not happy. He looked very sad. He said, "You have only my skin." He asked the other; he said something. His answer was a little better than...

... intoxicates you. If somebody has died and you are in pain, what do I say to you? I say: don't ask for explanations. Look at this pain. Death has happened; watch it. It has hurt you deeply; watch it, beware. Be aware, be mindful of how fragile life is, how everything ends. Just see the flux-like phenomenon of life, the momentary dream-like existence. Just see, and don't try to explain, and don't try to...

... escape, and don't try to avoid, and don't try to get occupied somewhere else. Just look: death has happened, you are sad, great sorrow has happened to you; look into it. And by watching and becoming aware of it, much will be revealed to you. The sorrow, the sadness will disappear - and with it will disappear all attachments, because you will be able to see that all attachment brings sorrow. It is not...

... the death of your wife that you are sorry for. It is not because of death. If she had been somebody else's wife, there would have been no problem. She was your wife. It is not the question of death that you are troubled with. Some part of your being is snatched away - you had become too attached - you feel uprooted. You will feel a gap in your heart, an empty space. Watching the sorrow that death...

... brings, you will become aware that behind the sorrow is not death but attachment. And seeing the facticity of attachment, you will relax, you will become a little loose in your attachments. Next time death happens there will not be so much sorrow. And one day comes when death happens and there is no sorrow. You know this is how things are, you have accepted it. You have known the reality of life: that...

... it ends in death. And there is nothing else to do. You have become aware. the fourth question: Question 4: MY GREED FOR MONEY, TO HAVE MONEY AND TO SEE THAT I AM ABLE TO MAKE MONEY, WHAT DOES IT MEAN? It simply means that you are greedy. There is no need to go into great philosophy about it. It does not mean anything else than what it means: you are greedy. And greed says that you must be empty, so...

... they remain greedy; even DEATH does not make them aware. Solomon and Irving were both partners in the dress business. They had the worst season of their careers, and were at a complete loss as to what to make that would sell. There was not a dress to be cut in their cutting-room. They both decided: the only way out to leave their families any money was to agree to a suicide pact. They drew straws and...

.... He said, "I am vast enough to have contradictions in me." I don't know whether the critic could understand it or not but you have to understand it. Life is vast enough, it can exist with all the contradictions in it. In fact it cannot live without contradictions. There will be no life without death, there will be no light without darkness, there will be no love without hate, and there...

... also his elder cousin-brother, started crying. He could not hold back the tears. Buddha said, "Ananda, what are you doing?" Ananda said, "Don't stop me. I am not crying for your death, I am crying for my own life! Even after living with you for forty-two years, I am just the same as when I had come to you. I have heard you but I have not listened to you. I have heard you but I have not...

... have failed even when you were with me. I know something more than you can understand: perhaps I am the cause of your continuing misery. My death may shock you, may shock you to your very roots. My death may come to you as a blessing in disguise. What you have not been able to achieve because I was with you, you may be able to achieve now that you cannot throw the responsibility on me." You will...

... be surprised that within just twenty-four hours of Buddha's death, Ananda became enlightened - because Buddha's death was such a tremendous shock. It shattered all his unconscious desires to depend on somebody else. Now that somebody else was no longer there, now there was no way to depend on anybody else, he could not find another Buddha... now he had to take the whole responsibility on himself...

... has to die, only then is the buddha born. But there is a link: Siddhartha becomes the seed and every seed has to die before it sprouts and becomes a tree. It comes out of the seed, but it comes only when the seed dies into the soil and disappears. To remind you of the connection, we have kept Gautama which is a family name - his father had it, his forefathers had it. It is just to make it clear that...

... whole conditioning of sixteen years was there, that it is better not to eat, to remain hungry - you cannot die in one day. It takes ninety days for a healthy person to die if he does not eat - ninety days he has to fast and wait. So it was only a question of one day. I could manage, but the hunger was too much. The whole day on the mountain and the mountain air - and I was feeling immensely hungry. My...

... stomach was almost hurting, so how could I sleep? I knew that I would not die, but I would not sleep either. And then my friends started cooking food. And the very smells of their food - I had never thought that food could smell so beautiful. That day I knew that to smell food you need to be hungry. I was always overfed, so there was no question... And they were cooking very simple things. Then they all...

... juice of every moment in life; to be a child, innocent, again running after butterflies, collecting seashells on the beach, colored stones... seeing the beauty of existence which surrounds you, allowing yourself to love and be loved. Love is the beginning of religion. And love is also the end of religion. And a religious person is always young. Even when he is dying he is young. Even in his death he...

..., conquest but not by conquering, conquest by being conquered; a victory not through fighting but a victory through utter surrender. And because the victory comes through surrender, it cannot be taken away. Nobody can resist it. Not even death can destroy whatsoever love bestows on your life. Death cannot take it away; hence the second meaning, the second symbolic meaning of lars: immortality. Love brings...

... victory, and victory that cannot even be destroyed by death. Love gives you the first taste of eternity because it takes you beyond time, because it takes you beyond the mind. All death is only of the mind, of the ego; your true being never dies. And love gives you the first glimpse of your true being, uncontaminated by your mind and ego. Experiencing yourself as something beyond the mind is to...

... remains available to us. That too is in spite of us, because we cannot be absolutely disconnected from God, otherwise we will die. So a little bit of connection continues, but if one is consciously rooted in God, grows his roots in God... That's what love means: growing your roots in God. Becoming more and more love-full is becoming more and more God-full. And the more you love, the more you see God...

... everywhere. Soon it becomes an all-comprehending strength. The source remains available to you; you cannot exhaust it, not even death can destroy it. There is only one phenomenon in life which is beyond death, and that is love; because God is beyond death. God means eternity, immortality. And love makes you divine, makes you part of God; it helps you to transcend time and move into eternity. To be in time...