Meditation requires courage

The most fundamental message of Gautama the Buddha is not God, is not soul... it is freedom: freedom absolute, total, unconditional. He does not want to give you an ideology, because every ideology creates its own slavery. He does not want to give you a religion, because religion binds you. That's exactly the meaning of the English word 'religion' - that which binds you together. Religion is a bondage, very subtle, so subtle that unless you are very aware you will not be able to see it. He does not want to give you a philosophy of life, because any philosophy given by somebody else is going to fetter you. You have to live according to your own light, not according to somebody else's light.

The whole world is full of slaves for the simple reason that everybody is living according to somebody else. Somebody is living according to Jesus, somebody is living according to Mahavira, somebody is living according to Krishna, somebody is living even according to Buddha.

Buddha says: Be a light unto yourself. Unless you create a light within your own being you will remain a slave, you will be dominated. And there are crafty priests, cunning, very clever, very worldly; and they know, they are very experienced in creating new bondages for you. If you escape from one prison, they immediately create another. They are very clever with words. They go on interpreting words in such subtle ways that you will never be able to understand how these words of the buddhas are being manipulated, distorted. Words that were meant to give you freedom have been made into chains.

But man is very unaware; hence he goes on remaining a victim - a victim of all kinds of psychological exploitation.

Buddha teaches you freedom as the ultimate goal, the SUMMUM BONUM, the highest good. There is nothing higher than freedom. Every other value is a by-product of freedom; they follow freedom as a consequence.

Jesus says: First seek ye the kingdom of God, then all else shall be added unto you.

Buddha will not say that. He will say: First seek ye total and absolute freedom, and then all else shall be added unto you. If you seek God you are again seeking a new prison, maybe better than the old, maybe made of gold, very precious - but a prison is a prison all the same. Whether your chains are made of iron or gold, it makes no difference at all.

In fact, if the chains are made of gold it will be more difficult to come out of them because you will become attached. You will think those chains are not chains but ornaments. You will protect them, you will guard them - somebody may steal them away from you!

Freedom is the fragrance of Buddha's whole message. No other enlightened person has emphasized freedom so much. Why did Buddha emphasize freedom so much? - for the simple reason that he had seen all other ideals being changed into imprisonments. He had seen all beautiful philosophies poisoned by the priests. Beware of the priests!

Buddha is not a priest, neither is Jesus, nor is Mahavira. No enlightened person is a priest. The priest lives on the words of the enlightened people and goes on exploiting the unenlightened. He certainly is clever but not wise, knowledgeable but not enlightened. He succeeds in manipulating you because you are unconscious.

Hence, the second thing Buddha emphasizes is meditation, awareness. Freedom can come only through being more and more aware. By freedom he does not mean any social phenomenon or any political change. There are people... I have come across books written by communists, Marxists, socialists, who try to prove that Buddha's freedom means communism, socialism, that his freedom means a social revolution, a political revolution. That is utter nonsense! Buddha has nothing to do with the outside world; his concern is your interiority. He wants to change your unconsciousness into consciousness, he wants to change your darkness into light, he wants to change your death into deathlessness.

He is really doing the work of the seers of the Upanishads who have been praying to God, "ASATO MA SADGAMAYA. O God, O Lord, take us away from the false, from the untrue, to the truth. TAMASO MA JYOTIRGAMAYA. O God, O Lord, take us away from darkness into light. MRITYOR MA AMRITAMGAMAYA. O God, O Lord, take us away from death to eternal life." But they were praying to God.

Buddha says: No prayer is going to help. Unless YOU do something, your prayer is impotent. There is no need to pray, but there is great need to meditate. His religion is not a religion of prayer. His religion is very scientific in the sense that he does not presuppose any belief. You need not believe in God, you need not believe in afterlife.

He says when you can experience, then why believe? All beliefs ultimately reduce you to slaves.

Buddha is against all kinds of beliefs AND disbeliefs. He is an agnostic. He says remain open; if you believe you become closed. The Hindu is closed, the Mohammedan is closed, the Christian is closed: they have already concluded. They have already accepted a certain belief as true without experiencing it. This is dishonesty! And these people are thought to be religious people. They are not even authentic, they are not even honest - what to say about their religiousness? From the very beginning they are dishonest; belief makes you dishonest.

The very process of belief is believing in something that you have not experienced on your own. How can you believe if you are sincere? If your search for truth is authentic you cannot believe; you cannot disbelieve either. You cannot say God is, you cannot say God is not. You can only say, "I don't know and I am searching and I am seeking and I am experimenting and I am trying to experience."

That is the way of meditation.

Prayer requires belief as a presupposition; without belief there is no possibility of prayer. To whom will you pray? To whom will you address your prayers? - to some God which you have accepted because it has been told to you from your very childhood, you have been hypnotized.

Every belief is nothing but hypnosis. One is hypnotized as being a Hindu, another is hypnotized as being a Mohammedan; both are living in a kind of deep sleep. Hypnosis means sleep; the very word means sleep. You have been given so much poison, slowly slowly, through belief that you have fallen asleep. You are no longer aware what you are doing, why you are doing. Why are you going to the temple? Why are you bowing down to a stone statue? Why are you reciting something meaningless? Why are you going to Kaaba or Kashi or Girnar? For what? There IS something a priori. You already believe that is what religion is, without experiencing, without inquiring.

This is the way of the coward, this is the way of the zombie.

Meditation requires courage. It requires the basic integrity, sincerity, respect towards your own being. At least don't deceive yourself.

Buddha says: Let your own experience decide. If this is understood you are bound to move towards meditation instead of prayer. Then meditation will bring a prayer of its own - a prayerfulness, rather. You will not be praying but you will be in prayer, because more and more you will become silent, more and more you will become still.

More and more you will experience the presence, the mysterious presence that overwhelms everything, penetrates everything. You may like to call it God, you may not like to call it God; it doesn't matter what you call it. You may not like to call it anything; you may be silent about it, because that is the most appropriate thing to do. It cannot be put into any words; no words are adequate enough to express it.

But Buddha has not been listened to. Humanity has remained in its old, zombielike, sleepy way. It has remained hypnotized, unconscious.

Howard Rabinowitz, a huge, granite-fisted, supertough young fellow, was drinking a whisky in a bar when he heard the announcement of the Six-Day War on the radio.

Filled with excitement and Jewish fervor, he rushed to the airport and took the first available flight to Israel where he was immediately inducted into the army.

But his reception at the military base was rather cool. He was not exactly avoided by the Israeli soldiers, but neither did they go out of their way to welcome him.

"Listen, what's with you guys?" he complained to his sergeant. "Here I come halfway around the world to help you out and I'm practically ignored. What must an American do to get accepted in this army?"

The sergeant eyed the muscular young giant, glanced around somewhat furtively so that he might not be overheard, and then, in a voice that was almost a whisper, he said, "Confidentially and off the record, if you really want to be one of us, there are three things you must do."

"Name them," said Rabinowitz.

"First," explained the sergeant, "You must drink down a whole quart of our strongest Mount Carmel wine without stopping for a breath. Second, you must kill an Arab army officer. Third, you must make love to an Israeli beauty."

So Howard Rabinowitz chug-a-lugged a whole quart of Mount Carmel wine without stopping.

"Now," he demanded, "where can I find an Arab officer?"

"Right across the Suez Canal," said the sergeant. "I'm afraid you'll have to swim both ways - that is, if you're still alive."

"I'll be alive," promised the American as he lurched off. "Hell, I was the roughest, toughest, biggest guy on the East Side. What's a little adventure like this?"

A few hours later he returned, soaking wet from his return swim, his clothes torn and his face scratched and bloody.

"Okay, I took care of that Arab officer," he roared. "Now, where's that Israeli beauty you want killed?"

That's exactly the situation of humanity. You don't know who you are, you don't know what you are doing, you don't know WHY you are doing it in the first place. You don't know, even if you succeed, what is the point of it all. But still you go on doing something. It keeps you engaged and keeps you unaware of your unawareness.

All your occupations are basically nothing but an effort to remain unaware of your unawareness - because it hurts. It hurts to know that "I am a zombie," it hurts to know that "I am a slave." So you go on bragging about your slavery as if it is something very precious and valuable. You go on bragging about your being Indian or Pakistani or Israeli or German or American. You go on bragging about your being Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian, Jaina - and you don't know you are bragging about your prisons!

It is as if two prisoners are talking: "My prison is better than your prison. Look at the flag! My prison has the best flag in the world, the highest pole. And never say a word against my prison; otherwise you will suffer for it, you will have to pay for it."

MY nation, MY country, MY church, MY religion is higher than your religion, is higher than your church, is greater than your nation - and we are bragging about our prisons.

This is utterly stupid. But why do we go on doing it? - because that is the only way to save our faces.

If we try to see the point, that all these are prisons, how can we avoid knowing that we are a prisoner - not of one prison but of many prisons, prisons within prisons? And that will destroy our ego. It helps our egos very much that "We are a great nation," that "Our history is full of bravery," that "We have created the greatest warriors"... or greatest saints, or whatsoever it is. "We have created the most religious society in the world," or the most democratic society or the most communist society. This helps us to protect our egos. We find in every way methods and means, devices and strategies so that our ego remains intact.

And the ego is the most false phenomenon in existence; there is nothing more false than the ego. It has no substance. It is a balloon full of hot air - or maybe there is no balloon, only hot air! But we are living according to the dictates of this false god, the ego. And there are priests who go on helping us, who go on giving us new strategies, new interpretations. As times change, priests are ready to give us new interpretations.

A small boy in the Sunday school was very much puzzled when the priest said that God made everything. The boy looked puzzled, almost a question mark in his eyes.

The priest asked him, "What is the matter, Johnny? You look very puzzled."

Johnny said, "Yes. You say everything - do you really mean EVERYTHING? Then where is the reference that God made railway trains? I have never come across it."

And the priest said, "Yes, you must have overlooked it. There is a reference. It is said in the Bible that God made all creeping things; it includes the railway train!"

And it is not only that they are deceiving small children; they do the same to you.

"Rabbi," said the worried father, "I wish you would speak to my son. Here he is, bar mitzvah age, and all he ever thinks about is baseball."

The rabbi sighed to himself. "With so many delinquent children getting into trouble," he thought, "this is indeed a minor problem."

"I am sorry to disappoint you," he said, suppressing a desire to show his annoyance, "but I cannot scold your son for something we Jews have been practicing for thousands of years. In fact, there are several references to baseball in the Bible."

"Are you serious?" demanded the father incredulously. "What are they?"

"Well, for example, you will recall that Eve stole first and Adam stole second; Gideon rattled the pitchers; Goliath was put out by David; and the prodigal son made a home run!"

Priests are the most cunning people in the world.

In Baltimore, at the turn of the century, an itinerant MAGGID, or preacher, looking for all the world like a prophet of old, with his majestic white beard and flowing, snow- white robe, was invited to speak at the Sanhedrin Temple. The synagogue's regular rabbi was somewhat apprehensive about the old man's ultra-orthodox views, but he had come highly recommended. The rabbi's fears, as it turned out, were justified. The maggid harangued the congregation with a scorching sermon that would have done credit to a Bible-thumping, fundamentalist Baptist preacher. As the venerable patriarch brought his sermon to a close he shouted, "And I say unto you, the Day of Judgment is at hand, and unless you have lived in strict accordance with the law as handed down to us by Moses himself, there will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth!"

An old lady in the front row, frightened half out of her wits, cried out, "But, Rebbe, I have no teeth!"

"My good woman," thundered the righteous maggid, "teeth will be provided!"

Buddha is not a priest, he is not a prophet either; he is a totally different kind of person.

He is an awakened being, he has come to know himself. He is not an incarnation of God - he has no claims like that. He is not a special messenger of God; he has no ego like that. He does not claim that "I am the only begotten Son." All this looks absurd if you think of Buddha. He is very simple and yet his message is the most practical, most scientific, most penetrating.

He says, "I was as unconscious as you are; now I have become conscious and all my fears and sorrows have disappeared. One day I was like you, one day you can be like me; there is no qualitative difference between us. I am awakened, you are asleep; that is the only difference. I am not extraordinary, I am just as ordinary as you are. The only thing that has happened to me is that I have opened my eyes and you are still keeping them closed. Open them and see for yourself!"

The sutras:

IT IS NOT IRON THAT IMPRISONS YOU... your prison is not that gross, it is very subtle. It is not so visible, it is very invisible. It is transparent. It is not that you remain in the prison; on the contrary, the prison surrounds you, wherever you go it moves with you. It is something in your mind, not something around your body. It is something in your very approach towards life.

He says: IT IS NOT IRON THAT IMPRISONS YOU NOR ROPE NOR WOOD, BUT THE PLEASURE YOU TAKE IN GOLD AND JEWELS....

Now one thing very significant has to be remembered: this sutra has been misinterpreted for centuries. Twenty-five centuries of misinterpretation are there. For the first time I am telling you that it does not mean what Buddhists have been saying that it means. They think it means that gold and jewels have to be renounced; it does not mean that - it is so clear - BUT THE PLEASURE YOU TAKE IN GOLD AND JEWELS.... It is not the gold that binds you but the PLEASURE that you take in it. If you don't take pleasure in it you can live in a palace and you are as free as anybody who lives in a cave in the Himalayas. If you take pleasure in your cave in the Himalayas you are as unfree as anybody who lives in a palace. The question is psychological.

And one thing more: why do you take pleasure in the palace, in gold, in jewels, in diamonds? They all decorate your ego. Your ego is empty in itself, it is nonexistential.

You have to continuously go on pouring things into it so it goes on giving you the sense that it is something substantial. It is constantly demanding, "Give me this, give me that."

It goes on demanding. It exists in the demand, it exists in the desire.

It is just like when you are on a bicycle: you have to peddle it continuously. If you stop peddling, maybe for a few feet the bicycle may move out of the past momentum, but then it is bound to fall. Ego is just like a bicycle: you have to continuously peddle. If you stop peddling it falls then and there, flat on the ground.

So if you have a palace it will demand a bigger palace and it will take great pleasure in the palace. It will brag about it, it will feel very puffed up. If you are a president of a country, it feels very puffed up. If you become famous, respectable, it becomes very puffed up. And the ways of the ego are very subtle. It moves in your unconsciousness, in the darkest layers of your being. It can take pleasure in gold, it can take pleasure in RENOUNCING gold, but it is the same thing.

I know many so-called saints who go on bragging still after thirty or forty years. Forty years before they had renounced the world and they still go on saying that "We renounced so much money, so much gold." Still they go on talking about it! Forty years have passed, but they are still taking the pleasure.

You see the point? You can take pleasure when you HAVE gold, you can take pleasure when you RENOUNCE gold. In fact, when you have gold you can't take so much pleasure as when you renounce it. Why? - because millions of other people have gold, it is nothing very special. But when you renounce you are a rare person: your ego becomes more extraordinary, holier-than-thou, superior.

I know one person who was a homeopathic doctor. Now, you know about homeopathic doctors - they somehow manage to live. Very rarely I had seen any patients visiting him. Yes, a few people used to come - they used to come to read the newspapers! In fact, that's how I started going to his dispensary - to read the newspapers and to have a little chitchat, and then we became friends. He was always talking about his troubles and he was very much worried.

And then one day I heard that he had renounced the world; he became a saint. After three years I met him in Calcutta. He was worshipped, and people were telling me that he had MILLIONS of rupees that he renounced. I said, "Don't be stupid - I know this man! He had only three hundred and sixty rupees in the bank!" Now they have become millions!

When you renounce you can go on increasing your amount; nobody can prevent you and nobody can check on it - no auditing is possible. You can go on spreading the rumor how much you have renounced.

When I saw him, I asked him, "Doctor...."

He said, "I am no longer a doctor."

I said, "You are still the same. I know perfectly well that you had three hundred and sixty rupees in the post office! What millions are you talking about? You should say simply that you have renounced three hundred and sixty rupees!"

He looked at me and he said, "Don't talk so loudly. You will destroy my whole reputation!"

The reputation depends on how much he has left, so when he moves from one town to another, the amount that he has renounced increases. It has been going on that way.

This is not something new; this has happened before, too.

Even in Buddha's life story, Buddhists have written that he renounced so many golden chariots and so many elephants and so many horses and so many palaces. That is all nonsense, because he was not the son of a very great emperor or anything. The kingdom that he belonged to, Kapilvatu, was such a small place that it has almost disappeared from the earth, not even a trace.... All those palaces have not left any ruins.

There were no palaces, and it was such a small village that to keep so many golden chariots there and so many elephants and horses would have been impossible. But the people who were writing the story had to go on making it look bigger and bigger.

There was great competition between the Jainas and the Buddhists because Mahavira and Buddha were contemporaries. So you can look in the scriptures.... Jainas write, "So many horses, so many elephants, so many chariots," and the next Buddhist scripture makes a bigger claim. Then comes another Jaina scripture which makes a bigger claim than the Buddhist scripture - and this went on for hundreds of years, until now it appears as if Mahavira and Buddha were great emperors, as if they dominated the whole of India.

The truth is that in Buddha's time in India there were two thousand kingdoms. Two thousand kingdoms? - that means each kingdom could not have been more than a district, at the most, and the father of Buddha was not more than a deputy collector or maybe a collector... or, if you insist, a commissioner, but nothing more than that.

People take pleasure in gold, so much so that when they renounce it, still the pleasure lingers; one goes on thinking of it. Ego can fulfill itself either by having more money or by renouncing more money, but it always needs money and it always needs more.

Remember it.

Buddha says: BUT THE PLEASURE YOU TAKE IN GOLD AND JEWELS... that is the real imprisonment; that creates your bondage - not the gold, not the jewels. What can they do? How can they bind you?

I have lived in poor huts, they can't bind you; I have lived in palaces, they can't bind you. I have lived as a poor man - poverty cannot bind you; I have lived as a rich man - richness cannot bind you. Those things are on the outside. If you start taking pleasure in them, a certain gratification, then the bondage starts. If you take pleasure... IN SONS AND WIVES. That too has been misinterpreted: Renounce your wives and renounce your sons.

There is no need to renounce anything; just understand.

MY interpretation of Buddha is that renunciation is not the point; UNDERSTANDING is the point. And if through understanding, something drops from your life, it is not renounced by you; it has simply fallen like a dead leaf from a tree. You cannot claim any credit for it.

Just look into your relationships with your wife, with your son, with your husband, and see the fragility of it all. It has no substance in it. It is all poetry and fiction, it is not a fact.

Just a few days ago a man came to me and he said, "I would like to become a sannyasin, but my wife says she will kill herself!"

I said, "Let us try, for a change, because I have never seen anybody.... I have one hundred thousand sannyasins all over the world. No wife has yet killed herself, no husband has yet committed suicide, although many have said that."

People take these things very seriously. Your wife or your husband may say, "I cannot live without you" - and she was living without you perfectly well before! Just a few days before she was not even aware of you and she was living perfectly well - in fact, she was better than she is now! But she says she cannot live without you, and you believe it because it nourishes your ego.

Mrs. Goldfarb stood weeping at her husband's grave when a courtly stranger approached her.

"Madam, I regret the unfortunate circumstances under which I say this," he began in a respectful manner, "but I must tell you I have fallen in love with you at first sight."

"Loafer! Bum!" cried Mrs. Goldfarb indignantly, aghast at this monumental impertinence. "Get out of my sight this instant or I will call a policeman! Is this a time to talk about love?"

"I assure you, madam, that I did not intend to reveal my feelings at this sad time," the gentle stranger explained, "but I was simply overwhelmed by your exquisite beauty!"

"Listen," said Mrs. Goldfarb, "you should see me when I haven't been crying!"

In a single moment things change. In this world, all your relationships are just made of the stuff poetry is made of; they are not even prose, they are fictions. People are living in fictions, and they go on painting, repainting their fictions; they go on keeping the fiction alive.

Mrs. Saperstein had just sent the children off to school when the phone rang.

"Is your husband's name Philip Saperstein?" asked a sepulchral voice at the other end of the line.

"What else?" replied the lady.

"This is the coroner's office. I am sorry to tell you this, but we have a traffic death here.

We found your telephone number in his pocket. Would you please come down here to the morgue and identify the body?"

Mrs. Saperstein arrived within half an hour and an attendant escorted her to a figure covered with a white sheet. The attendant then lifted a corner of the sheet and uncovered the victim's face.

"Was this man your husband?" he asked.

Mrs Saperstein eyes widened. "Ai-ai-ai! How did you - yes, that is my husband - ever get your sheets so white?"

Don't believe in fictions. Your wife, your husband, your children, your parents, all are beautiful fictions. And I am not saying to renounce them; I am saying, simply, understand the fictitiousness of them all. Live wherever you are, but don't get identified with these imagined roles. Act, but don't get identified with your acting role.

That's exactly what Buddha means:

They are not very strong fetters, very soft, but CAN YOU SNAP THEM? You cannot snap them if you are not conscious; and if you are conscious you need not snap them - they are no longer there. You simply see the point that in this world we come alone, we live alone and we go alone. Yes, we play many games - games of being a husband or a wife, being a friend or an enemy.

We play many games because we have to fill the time with something, or else we have to "kill time," as they say, by playing cards, by chess.... And these are all the same kinds of things, nothing more serious. You have seen playing cards - kings and queens - and when you are playing cards they become very real. You can fight, people have even killed each other; just in playing cards they became so serious!

We become so much identified because we are not conscious at all. It is consciousness that helps you to become unidentified.

Then you can go on playing all kinds of games - I am not against games. Play them as artfully as you can. Let your life be fun! I don't want you to be serious, I don't want you to have long faces. Enough of that! Religious people have suffered much; there is no need. You can laugh and you can enjoy, but remember one thing: that all is just a game.

Death will come and the curtain falls and the game disappears and the play is finished.

Who are those who can snap out of these identities? They are the courageous people, the meditators: the people who try to bring awareness to their life, to their acts, to their thoughts, to their feelings.

Buddha's persistent effort was one: to make you aware in everything that you are doing. If you are walking, walk with awareness. If you are eating, eat with awareness.

Don't simply go on stuffing yourself in a mechanical way. De-automatize yourself.

Don't be a machine, be a man.

And then you will be surprised to know that desires start fleeing away from you and the way opens.

Moe and Ike, aged ninety and ninety-two respectively, had been widowers for many many years. Both were healthy and handsome-looking despite their years. The Florida climate agreed with them, and many lovely widows were still after them despite their age.

One day Moe said to Ike, "Ike, I'm really lonely. It's been years since I lost my Becky and I've never remarried. But I think now is the time and I'm willing to take another chance at marriage - even at my age."

"It sounds like a good idea," said Moe. "In fact, maybe I, too, should take a new wife."

Soon thereafter, Moe and Ike both married lovely ladies - eighty-nine and ninety respectively - and they both went on honeymoons.

A few days later, Moe and Ike met on the boardwalk.

"Well," asked Moe, "how was your honeymoon?"

"To tell you the truth, Moe, I couldn't consummate our marriage."

"Well," said Moe, "to tell you the truth, I didn't even think of it!"

But even at the age of ninety, people want to continue to play the old, childish games.

Children can be forgiven. They need to play, they need to get identified, they need to go astray, they need to commit errors, mistakes, because that is the only way to learn and to mature. But even in old age, people behave as if they have not grown up at all.

Remember, you grow only in the proportion that you become aware. You grow only in the proportion that you become unidentified with all the games that life makes available for you.

Buddha calls people who are just slaves of their desires... they are nothing but driftwood, victims of blind forces. They don't know their destiny, they don't know any meaning. They are just accidental; they don't experience any intrinsic significance in life.

From one game they move to another game. Their whole life is a series of keeping themselves occupied somehow so that they don't become aware of the fact that they have wasted a great opportunity of growing up, of coming home, of becoming a conscious being, of becoming that which they were MEANT to be. They go on missing.

LITTLE SPIDER, Buddha says, STICK TO YOUR WEB.

It is your OWN creation. The world in which you live is your own creation, just like the spider creates its web out of itself and then is caught in the web and cannot leave it. You project your world out of your own mind, you project thousands of desires. That's how you create the web and then you are caught in it. Somebody is caught in the desire for money, somebody is caught in the desire for power, somebody is caught in the desire for renunciation, somebody is caught in the desire for paradise - all desires!

A real man of understanding has no desire. He lives in the moment and whatsoever is available, he enjoys it to its totality. He squeezes each moment, he drinks each moment!

He eats whatsoever is available. He sleeps, but he is total in whatsoever he is doing.

A Zen monk, Rinzai, was asked, "What is your meditation?"

He said, "When I feel hungry I eat and when I feel sleepy I sleep, that's all. I have no other meditation."

He is a real follower of Buddha! But you will miss the point if you are not told that when he says, "When I feel hungry I eat," he eats with total awareness.

In fact, a man who lives in awareness also sleeps in awareness.

Krishna, in the Gita, says: The real seeker is awake even while others are fast asleep.

When it is night for others it is still day for him. Something deep inside him remains constantly alert.

That which is a night for everybody else is not a night for the one who is aware, who is alert, who is meditative, who is balanced, who lives in equilibrium, who lives in silence.

Something deep inside him keeps awake. The body sleeps, the mind sleeps, but the soul is always alert. It is never tired so it need not sleep at all. It is awareness itself; it is made of awareness.

Hilda and Herman were spending a quiet evening at home. That is to say, Herman was quietly engrossed in a book, but Hilda was in a talkative mood.

"Honey," she began, "if I should die before you do, will you promise me something important?"

"Yeah," grunted Herman, without lifting his eyes from the page he was reading.

"Promise me you'll always keep my grave green."

"Aw, don't be so morbid," he replied. "What's the use of talking about dying? You look pretty healthy to me."

He buried his nose in the book, completely absorbed once more, hoping he would not again be distracted.

"Well, yes, I feel healthy, dear," Hilda interrupted again after a minute of blessed silence, "but I want to be sure my final resting place won't be neglected. You might want to remarry or something, and forget all about me."

"Look, Hilda, I'll remember you forever. Stop shopping around for an undertaker and let me read!"

This time he was rewarded with three whole minutes of peace and quiet, when his wife again took up the thread of conversation exactly where it had broken off.

"I'd hate to be forgotten by my own husband. I suppose it is because I'm so sensitive - because I have so much emotion. Darling, are you positive that you'll keep my grave green?"

"Yeah, I'm positive," he growled, his eyes glued to the page.

"Well, that's a great consolation. Only, I'd like for you to say it with more feeling....

Precious, are you absolutely, positively sure you'll keep my...."

"Hilda," shouted the pestered man, casting his book aside, "I will keep that damn grave of yours green if I have to paint it myself!"

First we create these relationships - wife and husband... and then they start hankering for children, great desire for children arises... and it goes on and on. Then they want their children to get married; then they want their children to have children. This is an unending process. They go on and on thinking that this is going to fulfill them; if this is not going to fulfill them, then something else.... Your whole life is wasted.

And I am not saying don't love or don't have a wife or don't have a husband or don't have children. What I am saying is that the most essential thing should be looked at first. First be aware, be meditative, and then if you feel like having a little fun, enjoying a little misery, you are welcome! Get married, have children and children's children, but don't forget your awareness because only that is going with you. Only your awareness will pass through the fires of death; everything else will be left behind.

And one thing very important, Buddha says: OR ELSE ABANDON YOUR SORROWS FOR THE WAY.

People find it very difficult to abandon their sorrows. It looks, on the surface, somehow not right. Why should people hesitate to abandon their sorrows for the way?

A real master never asks you anything except to sacrifice your sorrows. He wants you to give your sorrows to him, nothing else. But it is the most difficult thing to abandon your sorrows because you have lived with them for so long, you are so friendly with them, and to live with the familiar sorrows feels so cozy, so warm - old friends, and to abandon them.... And suddenly all your walls will disappear and you will be under the open sky because your walls consist of nothing but your sorrows. Your prison will disappear! - and you have lived in the prison for so long, for so many lives that it has become your home.

I know many prisoners. Whenever they are released from the prison, within three or four months they are back; they will do something and they will be back in the prison. I used to visit prisons and I asked a few people who were coming again and again back to the prison, "What is the matter?"

They said, "When we leave the prison it feels as if we are leaving our home! We have lived in here so long and all our friends are here." One man said, "Not only my friends but my whole family is here! Outside I am just a stranger and I start feeling homesick, so I have to do something and come back."

Once a person is imprisoned it is very rare that he will not come back again. He will come back again because the prison gives some security, some safety. You need not bother, you need not worry about tomorrow. At the right time the food will be provided, at the right time you will go to bed, at the right time you will be awakened in the morning. Life is so disciplined - like a monastery!

In fact, monasteries and prisons are not very different, just the names are different.

Monasteries are a little harder, that's all! Prisons are a little more human. And modern prisons, particularly in the developed countries, are far superior to the monasteries. It is better to be in a prison than to be in a monastery.

I have heard about a Trappist monastery. A man entered and he was told by the abbot, "Remember, our rule is that you can speak only once in six years." So for six years he was silent, boiling within.

After six years the abbot called him and asked him, "Have you something to say?"

He said, "Yes. The bed is too hard. I need another bed."

The abbot said, "Okay, that will be done. You can go."

For six years again he was boiling. Six years afterwards the abbot called him and said, "Have you something to say?"

He said, "Yes" - he was really angry. He said, "The people who were bringing the new bed broke the glass of the window and it is too cold."

The abbot said, "Well, it will be mended. You go back."

For six years again he was boiling within. He was called and the abbot said, "Have you something to say?"

He was just going to say it and the abbot said, "Wait! For eighteen years you have done nothing but complain and complain. You get out of the monastery! You are not meant to be a monk. You want to live a soft and easy life."

Jails are far better, and modern jails are really worth living in, with color television and everything!

Man has been improving continuously for centuries. He has improved his prisons very well. He has become very sophisticated, cultured, civilized. And this is nothing but just painting the prison walls, making them beautiful. And now suddenly a buddha comes and says to you, "Come out in the open. Abandon your miseries, your sorrows." You cannot abandon your miseries and sorrows so easily.

That's why people who leave the world, renounce the world, create new miseries of their own. If there is nobody else to create misery for them - if you don't have a wife to create it, if you don't have a husband to create it, if there is nobody to support you in your misery - you will create it yourself. People are sleeping on beds of thorns... now, no wife prepares it, they themselves work hard on it! People are fasting, almost killing themselves. Now, nobody is doing it to them, that is their own idea.

The ascetics are self-destructive; they are suicidal people, masochistic, perverted, but they are worshipped. They are worshipped because they create their own misery! You worship people as saints, as mahatmas, if they create their own misery. They should be entered into mental asylums, they should be treated! They need medical care. They are not mahatmas, they are simply masochists. They have renounced the world, but they cannot renounce misery so they start creating their own misery. And when a person creates misery for himself, you all respect him. You have been told that this is something great; he is sacrificing his life for God.

God is not a sadist. He does not enjoy your miseries and your sorrows. Don't be foolish, don't be stupid! But the reason is that people cannot abandon their miseries. They can renounce the gold and the palaces and the money and the power, they can renounce everything, but when it comes to renouncing the miseries, this becomes the most difficult thing they encounter, because miseries have been with you so long that you don't know any other style of living. The only style that you have become accustomed to is sorrow.

That's why your saints are so ugly, so sad, so serious. And the more serious and the more sad they are, the more they are worshipped, so their ego is again nourished. When their ego is nourished they torture themselves more; you worship them still more, then they torture themselves still more. This becomes a vicious circle.

If you really want to reach to the ultimate, to the deathless, to the timeless, you will have to abandon yesterday. That which is gone is gone forever. Don't look back and don't look ahead. That which is not yet is not yet. Don't look for the tomorrow.

And people are so foolish: they are not only looking for tomorrow, they are looking for life after death; they are even thinking of heavenly pleasures. They are rejoicing in the idea that there will be the eternal possibility of enjoying the same foolish things that they have renounced here. Strange logic! Here they say, "Don't drink alcohol, it is irreligious." But in BAHIST, in the Mohammedan paradise, there are rivers, streams, waterfalls of alcohol! There you can drink as much as you want, you can swim in alcohol, you can dive deep in alcohol - and you don't have to pay anything for it!

Here they say, "The woman is the door to hell"; particularly Hindu scriptures say, "The woman is the door to hell." And what is happening in heaven? Beautiful women, continuously dancing! How did these women enter there? And they are doors to hell....

Your gods must have all reached hell long ago! Here, renounce the woman and then you will be rewarded with beautiful women in heaven. And do you know? - those women never grow old. In the Hindu paradise, nothing is told about the men, whether they grow old or not, but it is absolutely certain that women are stuck at the age of sixteen, they cannot grow beyond that. That is the Hindu idea: sixteen is the climax of beauty, according to the Hindu idea. And ideas differ....

In the Mohammedan paradise, even beautiful boys are available, not only girls, because homosexuality was very much prevalent in the days when the Koran was being written.

And of course, saints will not be satisfied only with girls, they will need beautiful boys too.

Louis Jourdan, the French movie star, was in the United States seeking a good literary script for his next film. He happened to run into Budd Schulberg, the American author and playwright.

"There is a new book out called PRECOCIOUS PAULA," Schulberg suggested tentatively. "It would give you a great co-starring role."

"I nevair hear of zis book," said Jourdan.

"It is something like Nabokov's novel, LOLITA," explained Schulberg.

"And what ees zis LOLITA about?"

"Well, frankly, it is about a middle-aged man who falls in love with a twelve-year-old."

The Frenchman gave him a blank look. "I do not undairstan," he said. "A twelve-year- old what?"

Man, woman, animal - what? The Frenchman has his own ideas. I don't know what happens in the French paradise - it must be worth visiting! Not worth living in, but worth visiting. You will see all kinds of sexual perversions.

Two professors were talking, one French, another American, about how many positions there are for making love.

The Frenchman said, "One hundred and twelve," and the American said, "One hundred and thirteen."

The Frenchman said, "You surprise me, because we French are the experts. You start telling me what those one hundred and thirteen positions are."

And the American said, "First, the woman lying down on her back and the man on top of her."

The Frenchman said, "Wait! Yes, there are one hundred and thirteen. I never thought of that!"

It must be worth visiting, the French paradise! And what to say about the French hell?

That may be even worth living in! You will find great company, and on each step a surprise.

And these are the people... all over the world they have been thinking of the same joys in a far bigger way in paradise - the same joys they are condemning here! This is not renunciation; this is just repression.

Real renunciation comes out of understanding. It is not renunciation at all. The real renunciation is not renunciation at all, it is pure understanding. You see the point, and all that is stupid and all that is false disappears, and you start living your ordinary life with more awareness.

ABANDON YESTERDAY, abandon TOMORROW, abandon TODAY. Buddha says:

Abandon time - past, future, present, abandon everything. Forget about time; that's the way to enter into a timeless space within yourself. That is meditation. CROSS OVER TO THE FARTHER SHORE, BEYOND LIFE AND DEATH.

DO YOUR THOUGHTS TROUBLE YOU?

If they trouble you, then something immediately is needed. If your thoughts trouble you that means you have not yet been able to disidentify yourself from your mind.

DOES PASSION DISTURB YOU?

If it disturbs you that means you are still identified with the body. You think, "I am the body," then passion disturbs you. If you think, "I am the mind," then thoughts disturb you.

BEWARE OF THIRSTINESS....

This word 'thirstiness' is a translation of a Buddhist word TANHA. Tanha has many more dimensions than thirstiness; thirstiness is a literal translation. Tanha means desire, desire for more, unending desire, endless desire. The more you get, the more you want.

It is like throwing fuel in a fire. That is called tanha, and tanha is the root cause of your misery.

BEWARE OF THIRSTINESS LEST YOUR WISHES BECOME DESIRES.... Beware, because desires don't arise suddenly. First they are just wishes, then slowly they condense and become desires. And once they become desires it is more difficult to become aware; you can become aware more easily when they are just wishes. Destroy the seed rather than wait for the whole tree to grow and then to cut it; it will be unnecessary work.

... LEST YOUR WISHES BECOME DESIRES AND DESIRE BINDS YOU.

Desire is our imprisonment. The man who wants nothing, who is absolutely contented as he is, is free of all bondage. He has attained to ultimate freedom, nirvana - and that is the goal of life. And it is only by attaining that freedom that you will know the significance of being, the song of being, the celebration of being. Your life will become a continuous bliss, and not only that YOU will be blissful, you will be able to bless others too. The whole existence will be blessed by you, by your very presence.

Enough for today.