...: 107 mins DON'T SEEK SORROW FOR SPURIOUS COMFORTS. ALL ABSORPTIONS ARE EFFECTED IN ONE. ONE METHOD WILL CORRECT ALL WRONG. AT THE BEGINNING AND AT THE END THERE ARE TWO THINGS TO DO. BE PATIENT, WHICHEVER OF THE TWO OCCURS. OBSERVE TWO PRECEPTS EVEN AT THE RISK OF LIFE. LEARN THE THREE DIFFICULTIES. TAKE UP THE THREE PARTS OF THE PRINCIPAL CAUSE. MEDITATE ON THE THREE THINGS NOT TO BE DESTROYED. MAKE...

.... When you meditate and when you go deeper into them you will be surprised: these sutras are just like oceans contained in dewdrops. Mohammed says, "I am like a rider who shelters under a tree, then goes on his way." Yes, this life is an overnight's stay, a caravanserai. Don't settle in it. Use the opportunity to reach higher and higher and higher, because there is no end to heights, to...

... achieved one and found that it gives nothing, no nourishment, immediately they start seeking something else. Their life becomes a constant occupation so they need not look at the inner sorrow that is gathering like a cloud, a dark cloud. So the second meaning of the sutra is: rather than seeking spurious comforts, the best way is to go into your sorrow. Meditate, go deep into it. Don't escape from your...

... remember it is a new day, a new beginning. Have a decision deep in your heart that "Today I am not going to waste this opportunity. Enough is enough! Today I am going to be aware, today I am going to be alert, today I am going to devote as much energy as possible to the single cause, the cause of meditation. I will meditate in all my acts. I will do all the activities, the usual day-to-day...

... an opportunity to attain to awareness and compassion. If you don't attain awareness and compassion, what is the point of going on living? It is meaningless. Just meditate over it. If one is so much ready, so intent, so deeply committed to be aware and compassionate that he is ready to sacrifice his life, will he remain unaware long? Impossible! This very moment, if this intensity is there...

... is needed, but oneness has been achieved -- where the master and the disciple become one, when the disciple is just a shadow, when there is no separation. These are the three stages of growth: student, disciple, devotee. MEDITATE ON THE THREE THINGS NOT TO BE DESTROYED. The buddha, the sangha, the dhamma, meditate over these three things not to be destroyed. The world will be very much against all...

... world wants to destroy a buddha, and why Atisha is saying: MEDITATE ON THE THREE THINGS NOT TO BE DESTROYED. Had Jesus' disciples known something like this they would have tried in every way to protect Jesus, but they were not aware at all. Jesus could live only three years as a buddha. He could have lived to a very old age, he could have helped millions of people on the path, but the disciples were...

... survives. Yes, a few followers are there, but they are not communes. No commune of Saraha, Tilopa, Atisha, survives. They all had created communes. But the society is really big, huge, powerful; when the master is alive maybe the commune can survive, but once the master is gone the society starts destroying the commune from all possible directions. Atisha says: MEDITATE ON THE THREE THINGS NOT TO BE...

... be on your path. So do not be a victim of all this nonsense. Only certain inner feelings are relevant. For example, if you are progressing, then certain things will begin to happen spontaneously. One, you will feel more and more contentment. Really, when meditation is completely fulfilled, one becomes so contented that he forgets to meditate - because meditation is an effort, a discontent. If one...

... day you forget to meditate and you do not feel any addiction, you do not feel any gap, you are as filled as ever, then know it is a good sign. There are many who will do meditation, and then if they are not doing it a strange phenomenon happens to them. If they do it, they do not feel anything. If they do not do it, then they feel the gap. If they do it, nothing happens to them. If they do not do it...

... insensitivity there is a certain security. If you do not feel much, you suffer less. The person who feels much suffers much. Because of this, we have tried to make ourselves insensitive. So when something happens so intensely that it is impossible to avoid it, then only do we become aware. Other vise we go dead, asleep. We move on. That insensitivity will create problems. Then when you meditate, you will not...

... the feelings. But then you have to be ready. So meditation is not just a certain thing which you do for one hour and forget. Really, the whole life has to be meditative. Only then will you begin to feel things. And when I say that the whole life is to be meditative, I do not mean to go and close your eyes for twenty-four hours and sit and meditate - no! Wherever you are you can be sensitive and that...

... less an automaton. Can you weep? Can you laugh spontaneously? Can you dance spontaneously? Can you love spontaneously? If you cannot, how can you meditate? Can you play? It is difficult! Everything has become difficult. Man has become insensitive. Bring your sensitivity back again. Reclaim it! Play a little! To be playful is to be religious. Laugh, weep, sing, do something spontaneously with your...

... full heart. Relax your body, relax your breathing, and move as if you are a child again. Then when you meditate, you will not ask, "What is happening to me? Am I progressing or not, or am I moving in a circle?" You will know. I understand your difficulty. You cannot feel it now because you have lost feeling. Regain feeling - less thought, more feeling. Live more by heart, less by head...

... according to you yourself; be aware of yourself first. Really, if you are aware of yourself you need not choose. You will begin to move on the path that is for you. Just be aware of yourself. Feel yourself more and more; meditate and feel yourself more and more. Then do not bother about any choice. Meera has never chosen. It has happened! Nor has Mahavir chosen. It has happened! If you know yourself, if...

... you feel yourself and you meditate, by and by, you will move in the direction which is for you. You will move toward your destiny. If you choose, you will disturb things - because your choice is, after all, your choice. How can you choose your destiny? You can only allow it to happen; you cannot choose it. If you choose, then you fall into a deep fallacy. You are bound to choose wrongly. You are...

.... Rationalizations will not help. Do not try to choose. Rather, allow! Feel your swabhav - your nature - your Tao; feel your intrinsic possibilities. Be sensitive, meditate, and do not try to choose. By and by, you will move in a particular direction. That movement will come to you; it will not be a chosen effort. It will happen to you, it will grow in you, and you will begin to move. Generated by PreciseInfo...

... right thing. I am not saying don't be in love. Be in love, but never make love an alternative to meditation; it is not. Love and meditate - they are two different things. Some day a higher synthesis comes, but that day has not come yet. When love becomes meditation, meditation becomes love. That is very difficult to attain - only when all polarities dissolve. This is a deep polarity - love and...

... meditation, they start moving out of love. This I watch happening every day. When your love becomes a frustration, you come to me for meditation. Meditation is needed - one is feeling very unhappy. And when you start a love relationship, you simply forget all about meditation. You think of love as meditation. Be balanced - both wings are needed. Love, meditate, and don't create a conflict between them...

.... When it is time to meditate, meditate. And there is enough time - twenty-four hours. I am not saying to meditate for twenty-four hours. Give just two hours for meditation; a few hours for love, and a few hours for other things in life. Never make anything monotonous, otherwise sooner or later you will get fed up with it. That guilt has a message - don't try to get rid of it. Try and listen to the...

... can meditate on any object, whether material or sacred. The object may be money, or the object may be moksha, the final attainment. The object may be a stone or the object may be the kohinoor diamond; it makes no difference. If the object is there, mind is there; with object, mind continues. Mind has a continuity through the object. Through the other, the mind is fed continuously. And when the other...

... moment comes the object becomes so subtle, almost as if it is not. For example if you contemplate on emptiness; the object is almost not, if you meditate on nothingness. There are Buddhist schools which emphasize only one meditation, and that is on nothingness. One has to think, one has to meditate, one has to imbibe the idea that nothing exists. Continuously meditating on nothingness, a moment comes...

... temporal in the shape of a flower. Look at the face of your husband, your wife, your friend, your beloved, with alertness; meditate on it, and suddenly you see not only the body, but that which is beyond the body, which is coming out of the body. There is an aura around the body, of the spiritual. The face of the beloved is no more the face of your beloved; the face of the beloved has become the face of...

... by, the subtle object was lost and people started talking: "What is there to meditate? Only a tree is there, but where is Buddha?" Because to feel a Buddha in his absence needs very, very deep clarity and attentiveness. Then, feeling that now people cannot meditate on the subtle absence, statues were created. This you can do with any of your senses because people have different capacities...

... paintings which can be spiritual, sexual; sounds, smells, which can be sexual, spiritual. Each sense has two possibilities: if the energy falls through it, downwards, then it is sexual; if the energy rises upwards, then it is spiritual. You can do it with incense. Burn incense, meditate on it, feel it, smell it, be filled with it, and then move backwards, away from it. And go on, go on meditating on it...

... everything that can be known. And everybody I knew has died; they have gone back to rest, and I cannot rest. I have tried all efforts to commit suicide, but everything fails. I cannot die because I have drunk from this condemned cave. It is better that nobody knows about it. Before you drink, you meditate on my condition - and then you can drink." It is said Alexander for the first time thought about...

... ultimate. Many things are implied, of course. One: if there is no name, or if Tat, that, is the only name, prayer becomes impossible. You can meditate on that but you cannot pray. The Upanishads really do not believe in prayer; they believe in meditation. Prayer is something addressed to a person. Meditation is simply sinking, drowning, within yourself. The person is somewhere outside you but that, the...

.... BRAHMAN IS WELL KNOWN BY THE NAME TATVANAM - THAT - SO IT IS TO BE MEDITATED UPON AS TATVANAM - THAT. ALL BEINGS LOVE HIM WHO KNOW BRAHMAN AS SUCH. Brahman is well known by the name that - Tat - so it is to be meditated upon as Tat - as that. Do not meditate upon him as a person. Then your imagination will have entered. There is no person there. Do not meditate upon him as SAGUN - with attributes. That...

... meditate on that is absurd. You cannot meditate upon that: there is nothing to meditate upon; there is no object. That is not an object. But if you try hard, in the very effort... because you cannot meditate upon it.... Not that you will succeed in meditating upon that - in the very effort, in the very failure that you cannot think about it, thinking will stop.... Because thinking has no goal it cannot...

... because that is the very nature of words. Words cannot carry the meaning. If I say something to you, only that word reaches you, but the meaning that I wanted to give to you remains with me. Unless you meditate deeply, understanding will not arise. Nobody else can give it to you; you have to earn it. Through arduous effort, struggle, sacrifice, you have to earn it, only then problems will disappear. The...

... on changing clothes, people go on changing bodies, changing minds. But something is absolutely eternal in you - that has to be searched for. That's what meditations are about, so meditate more. Reading is not going to help. Meditation is going to help... Aikido (which the visitor had said he was studying) is going to help. It is very meditative; you can go on working through it. [A sannyasin said...

... judge. You have to look into these and to think of pros and cons. You have to meditate on it. If you don't surrender, what is going to happen? If you surrender, what is going to happen? Just think about it, meditate on it. If you feel that it is good to be on your own, then be on your own; don't be worried. But you have been on your own and where have you reached? If you have been on your own and you...

..., you simply meditate. In India, millions of people simply existed meditating; they became a burden on the society, and the burden was too much. Some way or other, the society had to stop it. Even now, today, almost ten million sannyasins exist in India. Now they are not respected. Only a few... not even ten in those ten million are respected. They have become just beggars. Because of this attitude...

... is needed. I have seen one man, very much respected in India, who has been standing for ten years -- he even sleeps standing. His legs have become so thick and swollen that now he cannot bend his legs. People respect him very much, but when I went to see him he wanted to see me alone, and then he asked: 'Tell me how to meditate. My mind is very much disturbed.' Ten years standing like a statue...

...! -- he has not sat, he has not slept, but the problem remains the same: how to meditate, how to become silent inside. Unmoving outside, many movements inside. There may be even more than there are with you, because your energy is divided; much energy is needed for body movements. But a man who stands without moving -- his whole energy moves inwards in the mind, he becomes inside MAD. But people respect...

... reaching anywhere through it, so you drop it. A sudden relaxation... and the door opens. Now you can meditate without being a meditator. Now you can meditate without even meditating. Now you can meditate without your ego being there. Now you become the meditation -- there is no meditator. The actor becomes the action, the meditator becomes meditation; the archer becomes the bow, the arrow -- and the...

..., because in the source is the end, in the beginning is the end, in the seed is the tree, in the alpha is the omega. So the basic thing is not to be worried about the result; the essential thing is to think, to meditate, about the source. Whether my gesture is a perfect love gesture or not is not the point. Whether love is flowing or not, that is the point. If love is there it will find its own technique...

... source and one must first look for the source -- and then the technique can come. It is good that you learn technique, it is good! People come to me and I see they are always concerned with technique. They ask how to meditate. They don't ask, 'What is meditation?' 'How?' -- they ask HOW to attain peace. They never ask, 'What is peace?' As if they already know. Mulla Nasruddin killed his wife and then...

.... They realized the significance of the man, the dangerousness of the man. Either he lives or their tradition lives. Both cannot live together. Try to meditate on the crucifixion of Jesus and you will not be so much puzzled, confused. And you will not recoil so much from it. Question 2: ALTHOUGH YOU HAVE MADE ME ALIVE TOWARDS CHRIST, BUDDHA, MAHAVIR, KRISHNA, LAO TZU AND ALL THOSE KNOWN AS ENLIGHTENED...

... - meditate on it, because that must be some quality within you. It is very easy for the mind to project and forget that it is a projection. There are people who believe that I am really a devil and there are people who believe that I am really divine. Both are taking their projections as real. I am just'I am'. I am just a mirror; I show your face to you. That's the function of a master: to show your face...

... to you. So whatsoever you see, meditate upon it. If you see the devil then try to find out the devil within yourself and try to drop it. Don't get the idea that the devil is within me because then you wi]l never be able to get rid of your devil. If it is within me, then what can you do? Then you are helpless. But if it is within you, something can be done. You can drop it. Question 6: WHY ARE THE...

... love; only when your energy is flowing will you be able to know; only when your energy is flowing will you someday be able to transcend death - otherwise not. But very few in the ashram work as a worship. Many go on avoiding. Not that they want to meditate, because if they want to meditate then the thing will be totally different: they can meditate with their work. But they would like to d3 all the...

... meditations just to avoid the work. A few are absolutely lazy and they think that they can rationalize it. For example, let me tell you about one day in one sannyasin's life. From six to seven in the morning he will meditate, Then comes breakfast. Then eight to nine-thirty or ten is the lecture. Then of course by ten o'clock he has already done too much: meditated, listened to such a long lecture.... So a...

..., transcribe, proofread, thirty pages. Twenty persons - that means one and a half pages per sannyasin. Still the work goes on piling up. And they are always carrying long faces, as if they are doing too much work. It looks ridiculous: one person speaks; twenty persons edit. It simply looks ridiculous. And then, too, the work is never done. It goes on piling up. They are told not to meditate too much because...

.... But mind, thinking, divides it and puts it as a polar opposite. Then you can go on thinking about. Whatsoever you think will be false, because in the beginning you have committed a sin - the sin of division. When you meditate, divisions disappear. When you meditate, there cannot be divisions, because how can you divide in silence? We are here. Everyone is thinking in his own mind something or other...

... meditation in a scientific way. You can observe someone who is meditating, but then this has become objective for you. You meditate and I observe. I can bring all the scientific instruments to observe what is happening to you, what is happening there in you, but the study remains objective. I am outside. I am not meditating. You are meditating; you are an object to me. Then I can try to understand what is...

... ordinarily so disturbed. When he starts to meditate, or to seek the religious dimension, he becomes more disturbed, more than ever. The reason is that now he has an even keener desire, more impatience. And with the worldly things, things were so real and objective that he could wait for them. They were always in his reach. Now in the spiritual realm things are so elusive, so far away, they never seem to be...

... in reach. Life seems to be very short, and now the object of desires seems to be infinite - there is more impatience and then more disturbance. And with a disturbed mind, how can you meditate? So this is the puzzle. Try to understand it. If you are really frustrated and you have come to feel that all that is outside is futile - money or sex or power or prestige just futile - if you have come to...

... YOU KINDLY SHED SOME MORE LIGHT ON THIS QUESTION, PARTICULARLY IN VIEW OF WHAT MODERN SCIENCE HAS TO SAY ABOUT IT? DOES IT NOT SAY THAT THE LAST DIVISIBLE COMPONENTS OF MATTER ARE JUST ELECTRIC ENERGY? Again the same division - light and darkness. They are two if you look at them through the mind. They are one if you meditate upon them. Whether you meditate on light or on darkness, it makes no...

... difference. If you meditate, the other is dissolved into it. Then light is nothing but less darkness and darkness is nothing but less light; the difference is of degree. They are not two things opposed to each other; rather, two degrees of one phenomenon. And that one phenomenon is neither light nor darkness. That one of which these two are degrees is neither light nor darkness; or, it is both. You can...

..., the boys seem to think that I am queer." Still getting no reply he finally shouted, "For heaven's sake, John, aren't you listening?" I am talking one language, and people are accustomed to a totally different language. Unless you meditate you will not be able to understand what is happening here, what I am saying and what I am doing. Three men, English, Arabian and American, were...

... nonpossessive quality, a nondominating quality. Otherwise love becomes a power trip. Don't be worried, Krishna Deva, about what platonic love is. Meditate on: what is love? Mrs. Green and her neighbor, Mrs. Kenyon, were having a chat one day. "Mrs. Green," said Mrs. Kenyon, "maybe it is none of my business, but after all we have been friends a long time and I am concerned about your reputation...

... for him and it is tonic for me!" That's what platonic love is: play for one, tonic for the other! More than that I don't know anything about it! The fourth question: Question 4: BELOVED MASTER, I AM A BUSINESSMAN. CAN I ALSO MEDITATE AND BECOME A SANNYASIN? Ram Prasad, one has to do something in life. Somebody is a carpenter and somebody is a king, and somebody is a businessman and somebody is...

... you are. Yes, business should not enter into your being, that is true. If your being also has become businesslike, then it is difficult to meditate and impossible to be a sannyasin... because if your being has become businesslike, then you have become too calculative. And a calculative person is a cowardly person: he thinks too much, he cannot take any jumps. And meditation is a jump: from the head...

...; If you are THAT kind of businessman, Ram Prasad, then it is going to be difficult to meditate and impossible to be a sannyasin. But you have come here, you have been listening to me; even the desire to become a sannyasin has arisen in you. That is a good indication that business has not yet poisoned your soul totally. A part of you is still available for love, a part of you is still available for...

... month?' "It was so logical that he asked somebody for a cat. He got a cat, but then the problems started. The cat certainly saved his clothes, but the cat needed milk because once the rats were finished the cat was starving. And the poor man could not meditate because the cat was always there, crying, weeping, going round and round and round him. "He went to the villagers and they said...

... to meditate, no time to read the scriptures! "He again went to the villagers. He said, 'I am getting deeper and deeper into difficulties. Now the question is, when to meditate - no time is left.' "They said, 'You wait. One woman has just become a widow, and she is young and we are afraid that she will tempt the young people in the town. You please take her with you. And she is healthy...

... from God. He says, "Thy will be done, thy kingdom come. Because what can I ask out of my unawareness? Whatsoever I ask is going to be wrong." He asks only one thing: "Thy will be done." Be meditative, be prayerful. Remember these two sutras: "This too will pass away" - that will help you to meditate - and the second sutra, "Thy will be done"; that will help you...