... America to attend a world religious conference Ramakrishna gave Vivekananda a certain technique to meditate with. Ramakrishna wanted him not just to be an intellectual - that is not really representative of him or of India. An intellectual knows much, but it is all bookish. So he told Vivekananda, "You start meditating, just a little bit. Even that will be enough, because in that conference there...

... said, "This is not right. I have not told you to meditate in order to do such things. So now you need not meditate anymore. I will keep your key. You have to do other things. And whenever the time is ripe - in this life or in a life to come - the key will be given back to you." Vivekananda never became a meditator. He died when he was only thirty-three, and the key was never returned. So...

... making the trouble. If you have infinity on both ends - past and future - there is no need to be in a hurry, no need to compete even. Life is so much and so full, you cannot exhaust it. But very few people will meditate, and very few people will know the eternal self; then naturally they will remain cruel and violent. It is nothing intrinsic, it is nothing given by nature to you. It is a by-product, a...

... are asleep or something, or just go to the bathroom and stand there. Your hurry and your unmannerly behavior, your violent push to me, simply shows something is missing in you." People who are doing wrong things are always psychologically missing something, and if they can be helped just to meditate a little, it won't be such a problem; at least human society can get rid of all violence. And if...

... her, saying, "You have been helping me immensely; otherwise, where would I have gone? The urge needed some expression, and just watching you was enough." The temple of Khajuraho has beautiful statues in all sexual postures. It was a tantra school that made the temple and those statues. And the first thing the student had to do was to meditate on each statue - and they are arranged in such...

..., slowly you will see, pain has disappeared. The pain is the intensity of joy, it is too much joy, and you have to make space for it. Hence my insistence that if you continue to meditate - and meditation and love happen together to you - there will be no pain at all. Meditation makes your consciousness wider, expands it, makes it as big as the sky. It can contain infinite love, infinite joy. Your...

...; Jesus was really shocked. He was thinking he was doing a service to people, and things have turned out to be just the opposite. He did not go into the town; he felt so miserable. He went out of the town to meditate and to pray to God, "Give me clarity - what should I do?" As he was going out of the town he saw one man was trying to commit suicide by hanging himself from a tree. Somehow he...

... is a breeze that comes, and you can enjoy it and you can dance with it, but you cannot hold it in your fist. Hence, the fear that as soon as it has come it may go. But if you meditate on the whole problem... if it has come - the breeze, the love, the joy - existence is not exhausted; it will be coming again and again. And the more mature you become, the more is the possibility of love coming to you...

... DELUSION. THOSE WHO TURN FROM DELUSION BACK TO REALITY, WHO MEDITATE ON WALLS, THE ABSENCE OF SELF AND OTHER, THE ONENESS OF MORTAL AND SAGE, AND WHO REMAIN UNMOVED, EVEN BY SCRIPTURES, ARE IN COMPLETE AND UNSPOKEN AGREEMENT WITH REASON. WITHOUT MOVING, WITHOUT EFFORT, THEY ENTER, WE SAY, BY REASON. TO ENTER BY PRACTICE REFERS TO FOUR ALL-INCLUSIVE PRACTICES: SUFFERING INJUSTICE, ADAPTING TO CONDITIONS...

...; it never brings light to you but only prejudices, opinions, ideologies. But they are not the experience and Bodhidharma is fundamentally interested only in experience. ...WHICH IS NOT APPARENT BECAUSE IT IS SHROUDED BY SENSATION AND DELUSION. These are ordinary statements, far below the outlandish caliber of Bodhidharma. THOSE WHO TURN FROM DELUSION BACK TO REALITY, WHO MEDITATE ON WALLS... perhaps...

... this small fragment... THOSE WHO TURN FROM DELUSION BACK TO REALITY, WHO MEDITATE ON WALLS, THE ABSENCE OF SELF AND OTHER, THE ONENESS OF MORTAL AND SAGE, AND WHO REMAIN UNMOVED, EVEN BY SCRIPTURES, ARE IN COMPLETE AND UNSPOKEN AGREEMENT WITH REASON. Just the last part of the statement has to be changed. Instead of "with reason" it should be "with existence." This piece I can say...

... with absolute guarantee, comes from Bodhidharma. Try to understand it. THOSE WHO MEDITATE ON WALLS means those who start dropping thoughts, dropping mind, whose screen of the mind becomes just like a wall -- no movement, pure stillness. They come to understand the absence of self, that there is no ego within you, that there is nobody who can say, "I am." "Existence is, I am not."...

... me: you simply act." The mind cannot do that. Before the mind acts it asks for the result; it acts because of the result. If there will be a result, only then will it act. People come to me and ask, "If we meditate, what will happen? What will be the result?" Remember, meditation can never be result-oriented; you simply meditate, that's all. Everything happens but it will not be a...

... result. If you are seeking the result nothing will happen; meditation will be useless. When you seek a result, it is the mind; when you don't seek a result, it is meditation. Kick the pot and walk out, meditate and walk out; don't ask for the result. Don't say, "What will happen?" If you think about what will happen you cannot meditate. The mind goes on thinking about the result; it cannot be...

... inwards. When people come to me and they ask, "How to meditate?" I tell them, "There is no need to ask how to meditate, just ask how to remain unoccupied. Meditation happens spontaneously. Just ask how to remain unoccupied, that's all. That's the whole trick of meditation - how to remain unoccupied. Then you cannot do anything. The meditation will flower." When you are not doing...

... - the courage to be meditative. But people who are engaged outside with worldly things or nonworldly things, but occupied all the same, they think - and they have created a rumor around it, they have their own philosophers - they say that if you are an introvert you are somehow morbid, something is wrong with you. And they are in the majority. If you meditate, if you sit silently, they will joke about...

..., tomorrow I am going to meditate." But it is afraid. Meditation is like death. And it is. You will have to die as you are; only then the new can be born. This is a small story by Sheikh Saadi, one of the great Sufi mystic poets. A very simple anecdote, but carrying much meaning. And all those who have known, they talk in the simplest words possible... because the truth itself is so complex. Why make...

... only if you try to change the negativity towards positivity. Meditate more, and meditate without expectations. Love more, and love without expectations. If you expect anything out of love, or meditation, you will get only frustration, and negative emptiness will happen. If you love for the sheer joy of it, if you meditate for the sheer delight of it and you don't have any result in mind - you are not...

... - what is the point? No, I am simply saying: you will have to meditate, you will have to pray, you will have to do many things to prepare yourself. When the cup is ready, God pours himself in you. You cannot force Him to pour himself, that's perfectly true, but you have to prepare the cup. You will have to produce the cup from your heart. He is already pouring. It has never been otherwise. He is...

..., spaces where you can relax, where you can meditate. I'm not telling you to meditate sitting in a London street. That is possible when you have known meditation and you have passed on that path many times, then it doesn't matter whether it is London or New York. Anywhere you can slip inside yourself. And your inner being does not belong to the East or to the West; it is transcendental to all dualities...

... the ocean, to the mountains, and just meditate. The West cannot prevent you. If you cannot come here then you have to find something there. But whenever you are here, devote your total time to meditation. All I would like you to do is to become so centered that you know the path very well. Become so acquainted with it, that even in the crowd of any Western city you can manage to go inwards. Nobody...

... foolishnesses that are going around in the name of New Age. And while you are here, meditate, so that you can get in contact with yourself. That is the only religion there is. All else is simply exploitation of people who have lost grip of themselves, of life, who have forgotten how to approach their own being. And they have become vulnerable to exploitation by any kind of conmanship. And there are so many...

... understand - then meditation follows; or you don't understand - then you have to meditate and understanding follows. They are interdependent. Don't ask which is first - the egg or the hen. Neither is first; they are interdependent. The hen cannot be there if the egg has not been before, and the egg cannot be there if the hen has not been before. But one has to start from somewhere. Don't get confused. Go...

... meditate? But if understanding really happens, then all problems disappear immediately. If problems still linger on, then you must have deceived. If anger continues to be there, if hatred continues to be there, if jealousy continues to be there, if fear continues to be there, then you have deceived yourself. Then please, start meditating. Then much cleansing has to be done. Meditation is nothing but...

... to remain.... The eastern attitude says that once you realize a dream is a dream - finished! A full-point has come. If you understand what I am saying, that very understanding is enough. If you don't understand, then you have to meditate. Then don't deceive. Intellectual understanding won't help. Of course, whatsoever I am saying you can understand intellectually. Intellectual understanding is not...

... your very being - arises. Then there is no need of meditation. But before that, please don't deceive yourself. Because I know - many of you will be thinking, 'Very good. So now there is no need to meditate." No, meditation cannot be dropped unless you have come to understanding. Continue. I know everything is right now as it should be. Everything is perfect. I can see you as perfect beings...

... metaphysics. Your breathing is physical; meditation is metaphysical. So you cannot make a part of your life meditative. You cannot meditate in the morning and then forget it. You cannot go to a temple or to a church and meditate there and come out of your meditation as you come out of the temple. That is not possible, and if you try it you will be trying a false thing. You can enter a church and you come...

... are just waves in a cosmic ocean. Meditate on it, allow this feeling to go deep down within you. Start feeling your breathing as just the rising of a wave. You breathe in, you breathe out, and the breath that is entering you was someone else's breath just a moment before and the breath that is leaving you will become someone else's breath the next moment. Breathing is just waving in the ocean of...

... something which is beyond the wave, which transcends the wave, which is in the wave also and out of the wave also, which forms the wave and still goes beyond, which is the ocean. "AS WAVES COME WITH WATER AND FLAMES WITH FIRE, SO THE UNIVERSAL WAVES WITH US." The universal waves with us. You are not, the universal is - and he is waving through you. Feel it, contemplate over it, meditate on it...