Laugh Your Way to God

Laughter is the very essence of religion. Seriousness is never religious, cannot be religious. Seriousness is of the ego, part of the very disease. Laughter is egolessness.

Yes, there is a difference between when you laugh and when a religious man laughs. The difference is that you laugh always about others -- the religious man laughs at himself, or at the whole ridiculousness of man's being.

Religion cannot be anything other than a celebration of life. And the serious person becomes handicapped: he creates barriers. He cannot dance, he cannot sing, he cannot celebrate. The very dimension of celebration disappears from his life. He becomes desert- like. And if you are a desert, you can go on thinking and pretending that you are religious but you are not.

You may be a sectarian, but not religious. You can be a Christian, a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Jain, a Mohammedan, but you cannot be religious. You believe in something, but you don't know anything. You believe in theories. A man too much burdened by theories becomes serious. A man who is unburdened, has no burden of theories over his being, starts laughing.

The whole play of existence is so beautiful that laughter can be the only response to it.

Only laughter can be the real prayer, gratitude.

This Hotei is tremendously significant. Rarely has a man like Hotei walked on the earth.

It is unfortunate -- more people should be like Hotei; more temples should be full of laughter, dancing, singing. If seriousness is lost, nothing is lost -- in fact, one becomes more healthy and whole. But if laughter is lost, everything is lost. Suddenly you lose the festivity of your being; you become colorless, monotonous, in a way dead. Then you energy is not streaming any more.

Laughter is a flowering. If Buddha was the seed, then Hotei is the flower on the same tree. If Buddha is the roots, then Hotei is the flower on the same tree. And if you want to understand Buddha, try to understand Hotei. And it is right that people used to call him the Laughing Buddha. Buddha has come of age in Hotei. Buddha has laughed in Hotei.

Enlightenment has come to its very crescendo.

But it is difficult to understand Hotei. To understand him you will have to be in that festive dimension. If you are too much burdened with theories, concepts, notions, ideologies, theologies, philosophies, you will not be able to see what this Hotei is, what his significance is -- because he will laugh looking at you. He will laugh because he will not be able to believe that a man can be so foolish and so ridiculous.

It is as if a man is just trying to live on a cookery book and has forgotten to cook food; just goes on studying books about food and how to prepare it and how not to prepare it, and argues this way and that -- and is all the time hungry, all the time dying, and has forgotten completely that one cannot live on books. That's what has happened: people are living on Bibles, Korans, Dhammapadas, Gitas -- they have completely forgotten that

religion has to be lived. It is something that has to be digested. It is something that has to circulate in your blood, become your bones, your very marrow. You cannot just think about it. Thinking is the most superficial part of your being. You have to absorb it!

This story has to be understood very deeply.

IN THE T'ANG DYNASTY THERE WAS A STOUT FELLOW WHO WAS CALLED THE HAPPY CHINAMAN, OR THE LAUGHING BUDDHA.

WHEN for the first time you hear the phrase 'laughing Buddha' it looks a little contradictory, a contradiction in terms. A Buddha and laughing? Not a single statue exists, not a single painting, not a single description, of Buddha as laughing. But that is not because Buddha never laughed -- that is because Indians are much too serious about religion.

Maybe that is one of the basic reasons why Buddhism disappeared from India. India was too serious, too intellectual, too full of theorizing. Buddha was very simple. His approach was not of the mind; his approach was of the existential being. And this country is the country of the pundits, the scholars, the learned men, the knowledgeable. If Buddha disappeared from this country, it seems natural.

He was bringing a totally different dimension -- something very original; something very natural yet very original because man has forgotten it. He was doing a tremendous service to humanity. He was not a pundit, not a philosopher, not a metaphysician. He was a very simple being -- silent, happy, fully alive, living moment-to-moment.

If you want to understand Buddha, go via Hotei. Hotei is his true disciple. It is very difficult, because whenever a man like Buddha happens immediately pundits and scholars gather around. because they get new material for their theorizing. Intellectuals immediately gather around. They have something new to philosophize about, to write about, to make scriptures of.

It is said -- a very old story -- that once it happened:

A man became Enlightened. The disciples of the Devil immediately went to the Devil, their master, and they said, "What are you doing sitting here? Run fast! Rush fast! One man has become Enlightened -- and we have to destroy his truth before it reaches to people, otherwise Hell will become empty, nobody will be coming to Hell. Everybody will go to Heaven, to Paradise, or to Moksha!"

It is said that the Devil sitting there smiled silently. He said, "Don't be worried -- there is no hurry and no worry. Scholars have already reached there. They will destroy the truth.

They do our work so perfectly that we need not be worried."

Whenever a truth is born, a ray of light, suddenly scholars gather together -- intellectuals, professors, philosophers. theoreticians -- and they jump upon the truth, they crush it; they mould it into dead theories and scriptures. That which was alive becomes just a paper thing. The real rose disappears.

Once I was staying in a Christian friend's house. I started looking into his Bible: there was a rose. He must have kept it in the Bible. Many years old -- dry, dead, crushed between the pages of the Bible. I started laughing. He came rushing from his bathroom.

He said, "What! For what are you laughing? What has happened?"

I said, "The same has happened to truth as has happened to this rose. Between the pages of your Bible, the rose has died. Now it is just a memory of something which was alive one day. Just a remembrance. All fragrance gone, all aliveness gone. It is as dead as a plastic flower or a paper flower. It has a history but it has no future. It has a past but it has no possibility. And the same has happened to truth. In the pages of the scriptures it has died."

The Devil said, "Don't be worried. Take it easy -- If people have already reached there: the scholars, the professors; they will immediately crush it."

When truth happens it is non-verbal, it is silent. It is so profound it cannot be expressed through words. Then sooner or later people will come who will put it into words, who will systematize it. And in their very systematization it is killed.

Hotei lived a totally different life from an ordinary religious man. His whole life was nothing but a continuous laughter. It is said about Hotei that even sometimes in sleep he would start laughing. He had a big belly, and the belly would shake. Sardar Gurdayal Singh would have enjoyed meeting him, and Hotei would have enjoyed Sardar Gurdayal Singh. People would ask him, "Why are you laughing? and even in sleep!" Laughter was so natural to him that any and everything would help him to laugh. Then the w hole life, awake or asleep, is a comedy.

You have turned life into a tragedy. You have made a tragic mess of your life. Even when you laugh, you don't laugh. Even when you pretend to laugh, the laughter is just forced, manipulated, managed. It is not coming from the heart, not at all from the belly. It is not something coming from your center; it is just something painted on the periphery. You laugh for reasons -- which have nothing to do with laughter.

I have heard: In a small office, the boss was telling some old stale anecdote, which he had told many times. And everybody was laughing -- one has to laugh! They were all bored by it, but the boss is the boss, and when the boss tells a joke you have to laugh -- it is part of duty. Just one woman typist was not laughing, was sitting straight, serious. The boss said, "What is the matter with you? Why are you not laughing?"

She said, "I am leaving this month" -- then there is no point! It happened:

Mulla Nasrudin listened very attentively while a stranger told a long story in the coffee- house. But the man spoke so indistinctly and muffed his punchline so badly that the story was not funny at all, and except for the Mulla no one laughed. But the Mulla laughed heartily.

"Why did you laugh, Nasrudin?" I asked him afterwards when the stranger had left.

"I always do," replied Nasrudin. "If you don't laugh, there is always the danger of their telling it over again."

People have their own reasons. Even laughter is businesslike; even laughter is economic, political. Even laughter is not just laughter. All purity is lost. You cannot even laugh in a pure way, in a simple way, childlike. And if you cannot laugh in a pure way, you are losing something tremendously valuable. You are losing your virginity, your purity, your innocence.

Watch a small child; watch his laughter -- so profound, comes from the very center.

When a child is born, the first social activity that the child learns -- or maybe it is not

right to say 'learns', because he brings it with himself -- is smiling. The first social activity. By smiling he becomes part of society. It seems very natural, spontaneous. Other things will come later on -- that is his first spark of being in the world, when he smiles.

When a mother sees her child smiling, she becomes tremendously happy -- because that smile shows health, that smile shows intelligence, that smile shows that the child is not stupid, not retarded. That smile shows that the child is going to live, love, be happy. The mother is simply thrilled.

Smiling is the first social activity, and should remain the basic social activity. One should go on laughing the whole of one's life. If you can laugh in all sorts of situations, you will become so capable of encountering them -- and that encounter will bring maturity to you.

I am not saying don't weep. In fact, if you cannot laugh, you cannot weep. They go together; they are part of one phenomenon: of being true and authentic.

There are millions of people whose tears have dried; their eyes have lost luster, depth; their eyes have lost water -- because they cannot weep, they cannot cry; tears cannot flow naturally. If laughter is crippled, tears are also crippled. Only a person who laughs well can weep well. And if you can weep and laugh well, you are alive. The dead man cannot laugh and cannot weep. The dead man can be serious. Watch: go and look at a corpse -- the dead man can be serious in a more skillful way than you can be. Only an alive man can laugh and weep and cry.

These are moods of your inner being, these are climates -- enriching. But, by and by, everybody forgets. That which was natural in the beginning becomes unnatural. You need somebody to poke you into laughter, tickle you into laughter -- only then do you laugh.

That's why so many jokes exist in the world.

You may not have observed, but Jews have the best jokes in the world. And the reason is because they have lived in deeper misery than any other race. They had to create jokes, otherwise they would have been dead long before. They have passed through so much misery, they have been tortured down the centuries so much, they have been crushed, murdered -- they had to create a sense of the ridiculous. That has been a saving device.

Hence, they have the most beautiful jokes. the funniest, the profoundest.

What I am trying to show you is this: that we laugh only when there is some reason which is forcing us to laugh. A joke is told, and you laugh -- because a joke creates a certain excitement in you. The whole mechanism of a joke is: the story goes in one direction, and suddenly it takes a turn; the turn is so sudden, so drastic, that you could not have imagined it. Excitement grows and you are waiting for the punchline. And then suddenly, whatsoever you were expecting is never there -- something absolutely different, something very absurd and ridiculous, never fulfilling your expectation.

A joke is never logical. If a joke is logical it will lose all its sense of laughter, the quality of laughter, because then you will be able to predict. Then by the time the joke is being said, you will have reached the punchline because it will be a syllogism, it will be simple arithmetic. But then it will not have any laughter. A joke takes a sudden turn, so sudden that it was almost impossible for you to imagine it, to infer it. It takes a jump, a leap, a quantum leap -- and that's why it releases so much laughter. It is a subtle psychological way to tickle you.

I have to tell jokes because I am afraid -- you are all religious people. You tend to be serious. I have to tickle you so sometimes you forget your religiousness, you forget all your philosophies, theories, systems, and you fall down to earth. I have to bring you back

to the earth again and again, otherwise you will tend to become serious, more and more serious. And seriousness is a canceric growth.

Much you can learn from Hotei.

IN THE T'ANG DYNASTY THERE WAS A STOUT FELLOW WHO WAS CALLED THE HAPPY CHINAMAN...

HE MUST have been stout, he laughed so much. Laughter brings strength. Now, even medical science says that laughter is one of the most deep-going medicines nature has provided man with. If you can laugh when you are ill you will get your health back sooner. If you cannot laugh, even if you are healthy, sooner or later you will lose your health and you will become ill.

Laughter brings some energy from your inner source to your surface. Energy starts flowing, follows laughter like a shadow. Have you watched it? When you really laugh, for those few moments you are in a deep meditative state. Thinking stops. It is impossible to laugh and think together. They are diametrically opposite: either you can laugh or you can think. If you really laugh, thinking stops. If you are still thinking, laughter will be just so-so, it will be just so-so, lagging behind. It will be a crippled laughter.

When you really laugh, suddenly mind disappears. And the whole Zen methodology is how to get into no-mind -- laughter is one of the beautiful doors to get to it.

As far as I know, dancing and laughter are the best, natural, easily approachable doors. If you really dance, thinking stops. You go on and on, you whirl and whirl, and you become a whirlpool -- all boundaries, all divisions are lost. You don't even know where your body ends and where the existence begins. You melt into existence and the existence melts into you; there is an overlapping of boundaries. And if you are really dancing -- not managing it but allowing it to manage you, allowing it to possess you -- if you are possessed by dance, thinking stops.

The same happens with laughter. If you are possessed by laughter, thinking stops. And if you know a few moments of no-mind, those glimpses will promise you many more rewards that are going to come. You just have to become more and more of the sort, of the quality, of no-mind. More and more, thinking has to be dropped.

Laughter can be a beautiful introduction to a non-thinking state. And the beauty is....

There are methods -- for example, you can concentrate on a flame or on a black dot, or you can concentrate on a mantra, but the greater possibility is that by the time the mind is disappearing you will start feeling sleepy, you will fall asleep. Because before the mind disappears there open two alternatives: sleep -- sushupti -- and samadhi: sleep and satori.

When thinking disappears, these are the two alternatives left: either you move into satori -- a fully alert, no-thought state; or a fully asleep, no-thought state -- sleep. And sleep is more natural, because you have practised it long. If you live sixty years, twenty years you have been asleep. It is the greatest activity that you have been doing; one third of your life is spent in sleep. In no other exercise do you spend so much time and so much energy.

So if you are doing TM-type meditations, repeating a mantra, by the time the mantra helps you to become non-thinking, immediately sleep will possess you. Hence, I call TM a sort of tranquillizer. And that is the appeal in America for Maharishi and his method, because America is the only country which is suffering from sleeplessness so tremendously. Insomnia has become almost common.

If after forty you have not started suffering from insomnia, that simply means that you are a failure, that you could not succeed -- in business, in politics. In power you couldn't succeed; you are a failure. All successful people suffer from insomnia, have to suffer.

They suffer from ulcers, have to suffer. So remember: insomnia, ulcers and things like that are nothing but certificates of success -- that you have succeeded.

TM has an appeal for the American mind, because repeating a mantra -- monotonous, the same again and again -- the mind loses interest in it, starts falling asleep. That's the beauty of laughter: you cannot fall asleep. Laughing, how can you fall asleep? It brings a state of no-mind and no-thought, and does not allow you to fall asleep.

In a few Zen monasteries, every monk has to start his morning with laughter, and has to end his night with laughter -- the first thing and the last thing! You try it. It is very beautiful. It will look a little crazy -- mm? -- because so many serious people are all around. They will not understand. If you are happy, they always ask why. The question is foolish! If you are sad, they never ask why. They take it for granted -- if you are sad, it's okay. Everybody is sad. What is new in it? Even if you want to tell them, they are not interested because they know all about it, they themselves are sad. So what is the point of telling a long story? -- cut it short!

But if you are laughing for no reason, then they become alert -- something has gone wrong. This man seems to be a little crazy because only crazy people enjoy laughter; only in madhouses will you find crazy people laughing. This is unfortunate, but this is so.

It will be difficult, if you are a husband or a wife it will be difficult for you to suddenly laugh early in the morning. But try it -- it pays tremendously. It is one of the most beautiful moods to get up with, to get out of the bed with. For no reason! because there is no reason. Simply, you are again there, still alive -- it is a miracle! It seems ridiculous! Why are you alive? And again the world is there. Your wife is still snoring, and the same room, and the same house. In this constantly changing world -- what Hindus call the 'maya' -- at least for one night nothing has changed? Everything is there: you can hear the milkman and the traffic has started, and the same noises -- it is worth laughing for! One day you will not get into the morning. One day the milkman will knock at the door, the wife will be snoring, but you will not be there. One day, death will come. Before it knocks you down, have a good laugh -- while there is time, have a good laugh.

And look at the whole ridiculousness: again the same day starts; you have done the same things again and again for your whole life. Again you will get into your slippers, rush to the bathroom -- for what? Brushing your teeth, taking a shower -- for what? Where are you going? Getting ready and nowhere to go! Dressing, rushing to the office -- for what? Just to do the same thing again tomorrow?

Look at the whole ridiculousness of it -- and have a good laugh. Don't open your eyes.

The moment you feel that sleep is gone, first start laughing, then open the eyes -- and that will set a trend for the whole day. If you can laugh early in the morning you will laugh the whole day. You have created a chain effect; one thing leads to another. Laughter leads to more laughter.

And almost always I have seen people doing just the wrong thing. From the very early morning they get out of bed complaining, gloomy, sad, depressed, miserable. Then one thing leads to another -- and for nothing. And they get angry... it is very bad because it will change your climate for the whole day, it will set a pattern for the whole day.

Zen people are more sane. In their insanity they are saner than you. They start with laughter... and then the whole day you will feel laughter bubbling, welling up. There are so many ridiculous things happening all over! God must be dying of His laughter -- down the centuries, for eternity, seeing this ridiculousness of the world. The people that He has created, and all the absurdities -- it is really a comedy. He must be laughing.

If you become silent after your laughter, one day you will hear God also laughing, you will hear the whole existence laughing -- trees and stones and stars with you.

And the Zen monk goes to sleep in the night again with laughter. The day is over, the drama is closed again -- with laughter he says "Goodbye, and if I survive again, tomorrow morning I will greet you again with laughter."

Try it! Start and finish your day with laughter, and you will see, by and by, in between these two more and more laughter starts happening. And the more laughing you become, the more religious.

THERE WAS A STOUT FELLOW WHO WAS CALLED THE HAPPY CHINAMAN, OR THE LAUGHING BUDDHA.

THIS HOTEI HAD NO DESIRE TO CALL HIMSELF A ZEN MASTER, OR TO GATHER DISCIPLES AROUND HIM.

EVERY master has his own unique way. Every master has his unique method to express whatsoever he has attained -- it was laughter for Hotei. He went from one town to another, travelling continuously all his life -- laughing.

It is said that he would come to a town, stand in the middle of the village, and start laughing. And then people would start laughing at him, that a madman has come; then the crowd would gather and by and by the laughter would spread. It would become infectious and the whole crowd would surge with laughter. He would create waves of laughter: and in that laughter satsang was happening -- what in India we call 'satsang' -- the presence of the master.

Then, by and by, those who had eyes would start looking at him: 'He is not a madman -- in the garb of a madman a Buddha is standing there.' Then those who had ears to hear, they would start hearing that it was not just the laughter of a madman -- something of tremendous significance was transpiring between them and Hotei.

This was his way of expressing his being. This was his way of preaching -- a beautiful way.

A clergyman was recently telling me a marvellous story when his little girl said, "Now, pa, is that really true, or is it just preaching?"

Even children understand that preaching is just preaching. The old man was telling me a beautiful story and then his little girl interfered and said, "Now, pa, is that really true, or is it just preaching?" She knows! -- her father is a preacher.

Preaching is not true -- unless your whole life becomes your preaching. Unless your whole activity becomes a message, unless you become your message, preaching remains false. Hotei became his own message.

Now, sometimes these children were really children, and sometimes these children were young people, and sometimes these children were old people -- so don't be misguided by the word 'children'. Aged people, more aged than Hotei himself, they were also children for him. In fact, to make a contact with Hotei, you had to be a child, innocent. And he would distribute a few things: toys, candy, sweets. He is saying something symbolically: A religious man brings you this message -- don't pay much attention to life, it is nothing but a toy. Don't pay much attention to life, it is nothing but a sweet. Taste it, but don't get obsessed by it. It has no nourishment in it. It has no truth in it. You cannot live upon it.

You have heard Jesus' saying: A man cannot live by bread alone. Can a man live by sweets alone? Bread at least has some nourishment in it; a sweet has nothing. Tastes good, but can be harmful in the long run.

Both children and the old, he would always treat everybody as children: he would give them toys -- very indicative. A better way you cannot find to say that the world is just a toy thing. And the life that you think is life is nothing true -- it is just a falsity, a dream, momentary. Don't cling to it.

WHENEVER HE MET A ZEN DEVOTEE HE WOULD EXTEND HIS HAND AND SAY: "GIVE ME ONE PENNY."

And whenever somebody was there whom he knew, who was a devotee of Zen, Dhyan, and was meditative -- mm? -- just watch: to others he would give; to a person who has some leanings towards meditation he would say, "Give me one penny." He is saying, "Meditation is nothing but sharing -- you give me one penny." If you are a meditative person, you give, you share -- you don't hoard, you are not miserly. You don't possess.

How can you possess in this world? You were not here and the world was here; you will not be here one day and the world is going to be here. How can you possess you? How can you claim that 'I am the owner'? How can you own anything? And if you are meditative, your whole life will become a sharing. You will give whatsoever you can give -- your love, your understanding, your compassion -- whatsoever you can you will give -- your energy, body, mind, soul -- whatsoever. And you will enjoy it.

There is no greater enjoyment than that of sharing something. Have you given something to somebody? That's why people enjoy giving gifts so much. It is a sheer delight. When you give something to somebody -- maybe valueless, may not be of much value -- but just the way, just the gesture that you give, satisfies tremendously. Just think of a person whose whole life is a gift! whose every moment is a sharing -- he lives in heaven. There is no other heaven than that.

WHENEVER HE MET A ZEN DEVOTEE HE WOULD EXTEND HIS HAND AND SAY: "GIVE ME ONE PENNY. "

One of the greatest Indian poets, Rabindranath Tagore, has written a small poem: WHAT HAVE YOU GOT FOR ME? The poem consists of a small story:

Once while I was begging from door to door, I suddenly saw a gleaming chariot pull up to me and stop. When I beheld its lordly driver step down and smile at me with searching eyes, I immediately envisioned the unsolicited charity that would surely be mine.

A beggar is relating this story. A beggar has come out of his house, and suddenly he sees a golden chariot stop and the King of kings gets out of the chariot. The beggar must have been thrilled by the very possibility that he could get something today.

But to my everlasting chagrin, this King of kings suddenly thrust out his hand and asked, "What have you got for me?" Oh, Lord, torn with perplexity and indecision, I offered you a mere grain of wheat and on my carpet that very night I found a grain of gold. How sorry I was that I had not given you everything I had!

The beggar is, of course, accustomed to receiving, not accustomed to giving. He has never given anything. He has always been begging and begging. So suddenly the King of kings spreads his hands and says, "What have you got for me?" He was perplexed, bewildered, confused. He must have hesitated. He must have searched his bag. He could have given more, but he could not gather courage. He gave only one grain of wheat -- just because he could not say no. How to say no to the King of the kings? And by the time he must have become conscious the chariot was gone, and there were only dust clouds on the road. And still, the whole day he must have worried about that one grain of wheat less in his bag today. He must have thought again and again; it must have been like a wound.

And in the night when he comes back home and drops on the floor all that he has begged in the whole day, he finds a grain of gold. Then he understands. Then he cries and weep, but now it is too late -- where can you find the King of kings again? Where? Now he wants to give everything that he has, now he has found the illogical logic of it: that which you give becomes golden, and that which you go on hoarding becomes dirt. If you hoard gold it becomes dust; if you give dust, dust becomes gold -- that is the message of this beautiful anecdote. And I absolutely agree with it.

It is not just a parable: it is a true secret of life -- give and you will get millionfold; share and in the very sharing you will become richer. Go on hoarding and you will become poorer and poorer. You cannot find a poorer man than a miser. He may have much, but he has nothing -- because you can have only that which you have given. It is a paradox only in appearance.

Let me repeat it: You possess only that which you have given; you never possess that which you have hoarded -- you become a master of something which you share. Share! unconditionally -- because everything is going to be taken from you anyway; death is going to take everything from you.

And death will not beg -- it simply snatches away, it robs. It doesn't ask your permission; it doesn't knock on your door and say, "Can I come in, sir." No. It simply comes. By the time you are aware, you are gone. By the time you can do something, everything has been taken away. Death is going to take everything.

Before death knocks on your door, share -- whatsoever you have. You can sing a beautiful song? -- sing it, share it. You can paint a picture? -- paint, share it. You can dance? -- go and dance, share it. Whatsoever you have -- and I have never come across a man who has not much to share. If you want to share, you have too much to share. If you don't want to share, you may have enough, more than enough, but you are poor, you don't have anything.

It happened:

Mulla Nasrudin was fishing off a pier when he lost his balance and fell in.

"Help! Help!" Mrs Nasrudin started shouting. "My husband is drowning. Help! Help!" Luckily, her cries were heard by two husky young men in the vicinity, and they dove into the water and pulled poor Nasrudin out.

As he lay on the pier drying out, Mrs Nasrudin leaned over him and whispered, "They saved you from drowning, man. Shouldn't we give them a rupee?"

Mulla opened one eye and whispered back, "I was only half-drowned. Half a rupee will do."

The miser's mind continues to the very end. Beware of it.

That was his whole preaching: Share! Give! What else can be said, what else can be taught?

ZEN BELIEVES that truth cannot be expressed by words, but it can be expressed by gestures, action. Something can be done about it. You cannot say it, but you can show it.

When they ask a question, Zen masters don't expect an answer verbally -- they expect some gesture of spontaneous understanding. And remember: verbal answers you can get from scriptures, they can be borrowed, they can be second-hand -- and a second-hand answer is never true. A second-hand God is never true. A second-hand truth is never true.

Beware of second-hand things.

Zen masters say: "Show your understanding, don't say! Show in some gesture!" And you cannot deceive a Zen master, you cannot deceive an Enlightened man. Yes, you can learn gestures also. For example: now you know this story of Hotei -- mm? -- you can have a sack on your back and you can move, and I come across and I ask: "What is the significance of Zen?" And you plop down the sack... I will hit your head! because it is not a question of repeating the story. You will have to show your understanding. It was Hotei's understanding -- you cannot copy it. When the question is there, you will have to respond -- out of your own heart, out of your own being, out of that moment of understanding and awareness, you will have to do something.

HOTEI PLOPPED HIS SACK DOWN ON THE GROUND IN SILENT ANSWER -- what was he saying? The question was: "What is the significance of Zen?" He dropped his bag of doughnuts, toys, sweets. He is saying: "Zen is renunciation -- like this!" Dropping the whole bag, all that you possess. That was all that he possessed at that moment, nothing else, just his bag.

That bag was the non-essential part; he had nothing else. Then only the essential is left.

The bag was the only non-essential thing with him. He plopped it on the ground. He is saying in silent answer that Zen is a deep renunciation of the world. It is dropping all that is non-essential -- like this bag! But it was not said: it was shown.

"THEN," ASKED THE OTHER, "WHAT IS THE ACTUALIZATION OF ZEN? This may be the significance, but what is the actualization of Zen?" AT ONCE THE HAPPY CHINAMAN SWUNG THE SACK OVER HIS SHOULDER AND CONTINUED ON HIS WAY.

He is saying: "We renounce the world, yet we don't escape from the world. That is the actualization. We renounce the world, yet we live in the world." Again the bag is on his shoulder, again he is moving, but he is not a clinger. The bag is dropped! -- deep down he is far away from the bag. He has no attachment to it. Still he will carry it; while he is alive he will carry it.

Zen says escaping is not renunciation -- that's my message also. That's why I love this man Hotei: he really showed a deep, profound awareness. Be unattached, but be here -- because there is nowhere else to be. This is the only world -- there is no other world. So your monks and your munis and sadhus who are sitting in the temples and monasteries, in the Himalayan caves, are just escapists. Renounce! -- but there is no need to escape.

Renounce and still be here. Be in the world, but don't be of the world. Remain in the crowd and remain alone. Do a thousand and one things -- whatsoever is needed, do it -- but never be the doer. Don't gather the ego -- that's all.

"THEN, " ASKED THE OTHER, "WHAT IS THE ACTUALIZATION OF ZEN?"

Essence is renunciation. Actualization, actual practice, is living in the world and not being of it.

AT ONCE THE HAPPY CHINAMAN SWUNG THE SACK OVER HIS SHOULDER AND CONTINUED ON HIS WAY.

This is very difficult to understand, because centuries of escapists, centuries of these cowardly people who have been running away from the world and condemning the world, have corrupted your minds, have poisoned your being. It is difficult to understand, but if you can understand you will be benefited tremendously, great will be your benefit.

A person who escapes is not really a man of understanding. His very escape shows his fear, not understanding. If you say, "How can I be happy sitting in the marketplace? How can I be silent sitting in the marketplace?" and you escape to the Himalayan silence, you are escaping from the very possibility of ever becoming silent -- because it is only in the

marketplace that the contrast exists; it is only in the marketplace that the challenge exists; it is only in the marketplace that distractions exist. And you have to overcome all those distractions.

If you escape to the Himalayas you will start feeling a little still, but at the same time a little stupid also. You will start feeling more silent, but that silence belongs to the Himalayas, not to you. Come back and your silence will be left behind -- you will come alone. And back in the world you will be even more disturbed than before, because you will have become more vulnerable, soft. And you will come with a prejudice, with this idea that you have attained to silence. You will have become more egoistic.

That's why people who have escaped to the monasteries become afraid of coming back to the world. The world is the test. The world is the criterion. And it is easier to be in the world and, by and by, grow into a silence, then the Himalayan silence comes into your being. You don't go to the Himalayas: the Himalayas themselves come to you. Then it is something of your own, then you are the master of it.

I don't teach escape. I also teach renunciation. Many people, orthodox, old people. come to me and they say, "What type of sannyas is this? People have taken sannyas -- they are still living in their families, with their wife, with their children. going to the office, to the factory, to the shop -- what type of sannyas is this?" They have only one conception of sannyas, a one dimensional conception -- of escape. This is multi-dimensional. It is renouncing and yet living here, dropping and yet not dropping, changing and yet remaining ordinary, transforming one's being totally and yet remaining in the ordinary world like everybody else.

The Zen concept of renunciation is my concept of renunciation also. But it is difficult because the world has been condemned so much that it has become almost unconscious; it has become habitual to think in terms of condemnation. If somebody says you are worldly, you feel hurt, insulted. When you want to condemn somebody, you call him worldly -- you have condemned him.

There is nothing wrong in being worldly. Be worldly, and yet remain unworldly -- that is the very art, the art of living between two opposites, balancing oneself between two opposites. It is a very narrow path, like a razor's edge -- but this is the only path. If you miss this balance, you miss truth.

"THEN," ASKED THE OTHER, "WHAT IS THE ACTUALIZATION OF ZEN?" AT ONCE THE HAPPY CHINAMAN SWUNG THE SACK OVER HIS SHOULDER AND CONTINUED ON HIS WAY.

Remain herenow in this world, and continue on your way, and continue with deep laughter in your being. Dance your way to God! Laugh your way to God! Sing your way to God!