With love among the unloving

Only the master can look because only the master has eyes. Without meditation you are blind. You can see, but only the most superficial things, only the surface of things, only the circumference and never the center. You cannot penetrate into the nature of things.

And truth remains hidden at the very core.

Meditation gives the master an insight into himself and the same insight becomes his bridge to the whole of existence. He is no more blind. Only a man of meditation is not blind. Unless you have attained meditation think of yourself as blind. Yes, you can see, but you can see only outwardly. And the real nature is inside you; it is in your interiority, it is in your subjectivity.

You live outside the house of your being; you have never entered into the innermost shrine. Not knowing yourself, you know nothing. And if you don't know even yourself, what else can you know? All that you think you know is only inferences - not knowledge, not authentic knowledge but only guesswork.

All your knowledge depends on guessing. Sometimes it works only by coincidence, sometimes it does not work. When it works you think you are very intelligent, when it does not work you think fate is against you. But you never realize the fact that you have no eyes yet to see into things.

Two men were riding on a train for the first time. One of them had a bunch of bananas.

He offered one to his friend and began to peel one for himself. Just then, the train entered a tunnel.

"Have you tasted your banana yet?" asked the first man, very alarmed.

"No, I haven't," replied his friend.

"Well, for heaven's sake don't!" said the first man. "I took one bite and went blind."

This is what your knowledge is - just inferences from coincidences.

Just the other day I told you a joke about a Polack who had come to New York to earn name, fame, money, power, prestige. He heard a voice coming from far away in the sky, "Climb up to success!" A little hesitant, a little scared, he tried; he started climbing the ladder, a fifty-story-high ladder, rung by rung. He reached the very end and there he found a young man who said, "Hi there, my name is Cess!" And would you believe that last night the young man came to take sannyas! In my whole life this is the first time a man with the name of Cess has come to take sannyas! I must have given sannyas to more then one hundred thousand people; thousands of Johns and Peters have turned up, but Cess for the first time! And I think it may be the last time too.

Life is full of coincidences; there is nothing esoteric about it. And he looked exactly like the description! But he was an intelligent man - he wanted to change his name.

You go on inferring. Inference is not knowing, inference is just guesswork. Yes, sometimes it may work, but more often it fails. Knowing is totally different; it is never guesswork, it is a clear insight into things, into the very nature of things. To see into the very nature of things is the whole purpose of meditation.

Meditation is not something occult, it is very scientific. It is a process of cleansing your eyes, of giving you clarity, of making you alert. Your minds are so full of prejudice that you can't see. Your minds are so full of a priori conclusions that whatsoever you see is colored by your conclusions, by your conditionings. Your observation is not pure; it is polluted, it is poisoned. You don't see what is the case, you go on seeing what you want to see or what you are prepared to see or what you are conditioned to see. This is not real seeing.

Meditation means removing all your prejudices, putting all your conclusions aside - seeing without any hindrance, seeing without any curtains, seeing clearly without any mediation of any thought, seeing without Buddha standing between you and reality, or Krishna standing or Christ standing.

That's why Buddha is reported to have made one of the most strange statements; only a man of the caliber of Buddha can say it. He said to his disciples, "If you meet me on the way, kill me. Don't allow me to stand between you and the truth. Immediately kill me, remove me; otherwise I will be the barrier."

The true master is one who helps the disciple finally to get rid of the master too, so that the disciple can encounter reality directly, immediately. The false master is one who creates more and more dependence in the disciple, makes him a slave, so much so that the disciple cannot even think of being without the master.

That's what is happening all over the world. So many so-called saints go on creating dependence in you; their whole effort is how to enslave people. They condition you in such a way that their conclusions become your conclusions. They don't give you eyes, they give you ideas.

The real master gives you eyes, not ideas. He gives you insight into reality and then leaves you in total freedom to function out of that insight.

Buddha says:

HE LOOKS DEEPLY INTO THINGS AND SEES THEIR NATURE.

HE DISCRIMINATES AND REACHES THE END OF THE WAY.

 'Discrimination' is one of the very important words to be understood. Buddha has used the word again and again; his word is VIVEK. Vivek has far deeper meanings than the English equivalent 'discrimination'. Vivek contains awareness, and discrimination through awareness. One can discriminate without being aware; then it will not be discrimination according to Buddha. You can be told what is right and what is wrong and you can discriminate, "This is right and this is wrong," but because it is not your awareness it is not discrimination. Unless you see what is right and what is wrong it is not going to help much.

The Ten Commandments are of no help to you unless they are handed over to you by God himself, not to Moses. They may have been of infinite value to Moses because he came to those insights himself, independent of the whole past, of the whole tradition.

But you are simply repeating like parrots.

From their very childhood we start teaching children what is right and what is wrong, what should be done and what should not be done. And they become conditioned so much that they forget completely that this is not their own voice. They start thinking this is their conscience - it is not. It is a strategy of the priests and the politicians, a conspiracy against man. They have created a conscience in you and because they have created a conscience in you they have prevented the growth of your own conscience.

Your own conscience comes out of your own consciousness; it can't come from the outside. Nobody can give it to you, it has to happen to you in your deep aloneness.

Buddha says: The master knows what is false and what is true. He knows on his own authority, not on any other authority. He does not know according to the Koran and he does not know according to the Talmud, he does not know according to the Vedas - he knows himself. And only when you know yourself does your knowing have a validity, an authenticity - an authenticity that can transform you, that can give you a new birth.

And he REACHES THE END OF THE WAY.... The moment that authentic insight has arisen in you, your consciousness is born, YOU are born. This is a rebirth. You are born anew. You have reached the end of the way, there is nowhere else to go. You have arrived home.

HE DOES NOT LINGER WITH THOSE WHO HAVE A HOME NOR WITH THOSE WHO STRAY.

WANTING NOTHING, HE TRAVELS ON ALONE.

In India, people are divided into two categories; this is a traditional division. It was so in Buddha's time too, it is a very ancient division. Buddha is trying to make a distinction: he is trying to make his disciples a third category. The old, ancient categories are two. The first is the worldly, the householder, those who have a home.

They are called householders for the simple reason that they live in the fallacy of security, safety - a safety that they think comes through money, power, prestige, a security that they think comes out of relationships. The wife thinks she is safe with the husband, the husband thinks he is safe with the wife, the parents think they are safe with their children. The safety is fallacious because neither the family nor money nor anything else of this world can save you from death.

When death comes it shatters everything; it shatters all your sandcastles. The householder lives in a kind of dreamworld, a world of his own projections. It is not true, it does not correspond to reality; it is his own projection. The wife thinks the husband is her security and the husband thinks the wife is his security. Now, both are insecure.

How can two insecure persons give security to each other? Two insecure persons together become doubly insecure, but the fallacy is created.

This is the first category: the GRIHASTHA, the householder.

And the second category is of those who have renounced the first category, who have moved to the other extreme - who don't live in houses, who don't live in families, who don't earn money, who don't even touch money, who have moved to exactly the opposite extreme. They are known as sannyasins. They used to wander around the country in small or big groups.

Jaina monks are not allowed to move alone. In Buddha's time there were thousands of Jaina monks because Jainism had existed for at least three thousand years before Buddha. Thousands of Jaina monks - they are not allowed to move alone, they have to move in a group of at least five, for the simple reason that a person moving alone cannot be trusted. He may fall into some error and, knowing that nobody is with him, nobody knows, he may drink wine somewhere or he may fall in love with a woman or he may go and visit a prostitute or he may do something.... But moving with four others it is impossible; the other four are constantly watching.

So that was a strategy to prevent anybody getting any kind of freedom, any kind of license - a psychological strategy. Unless all the five decide to conspire together... and that is very difficult, that is almost impossible. Sinners are known to become friendly to each other, saints are not known to become friendly to each other. They don't know what friendship is, they can't conspire. They will watch, they will try to find every kind of fault in the other and they will report to the master. And Hindu monks used to move - even now they do the same - in big groups of hundreds.

Buddha says: You have dropped a small family and now you have moved into a bigger crowd - you have become another family. Nothing has changed. First you were thinking that was your security, now you think this is your security, but the old idea of security still persists.

He says that to be a sannyasin means to accept the natural insecurity of life. That very acceptance is sannyas - to accept that, "I am born alone and I will die alone, and between these two alonenesses all ideas of being together with somebody are just fantasies. I am alone even while I am alive." One is born alone, one lives alone, one dies alone.

Buddha's emphasis is very much on the fact of your aloneness; he wants you to be aware of it. Once you are aware of it you will be surprised at the beauty of it, at the joy of it. You will not be scared; you will rejoice in it because it has a freedom, it has an ecstasy in it, it has a purity and innocence in it. And why hanker for security?

Life is insecure in its very nature, hence it is simple logic: those who want to be more alive, they have to live in insecurity. The greater the insecurity, the more will be your aliveness; the greater the fallacious, so-called security, the less will be your aliveness.

That's why you see so many dead people in the world, almost dead, for the simple reason that they have become so much attached to the idea of security. And the more dead you are, the more secure you are. Don't do anything that can create any insecurity, remain confined to the familiar, don't ever go beyond the limits. You will never know the ecstasy of going beyond the limits. You will never know the ecstasy of exploring the unknown and the unknowable.

According to Buddha, both categories are the same people. Of course they are extremists and they appear opposite to each other, but don't be deceived. They are not really opposite; they have found different kinds of security.

A Jaina monk wrote to me that he would like to come here. He has been reading my books and he wants to become my sannyasin, but he is afraid he will lose all his security because now the Jaina community protects him, feeds him, takes every care of him, respects him. Once he leaves the monkhood, the Jaina community won't be protecting him anymore.

He asked me whether I am ready to take his life in my hands, whether I will be his security. Now he wants to change from one security to another security, he cannot take a jump into insecurity. And my sannyas is insecurity.

Real sannyas is always insecurity because real life is insecurity. There is a great security in being insecure. In dropping the very idea of security you are secure with the whole, with God, with the total. And there is great excitement then, because each moment you don't know what is going to happen.

Buddha says that the master... DOES NOT LINGER WITH THOSE WHO HAVE A HOME. He does not linger with the first category, the people who are obsessed with money, power and prestige. He does not waste his time with these people, he does not linger with these insane people.

And he says: ... NOR WITH THOSE WHO STRAY - nor with those who go on roaming around the country in groups because that is another kind of security, a subtler kind, but the mind is the same. One wants to belong, one can't be alone.

He says: WANTING NOTHING, HE TRAVELS ON ALONE - because the real master has no desire, not even desire for life; hence he is not afraid of death. He has no desire in this world or in the other; hence he is not concerned with creating all kinds of safeties around himself. He is not concerned. He can be alone, utterly alone. He is not trying to be clever and cunning with existence; he trusts existence.

People are trying to be very cunning with existence, although they call their cunningness their intelligence. They always give good names to ugly things. Just look at your life, how cunning you have been trying to be - even with existence. On the one hand you will go to the church and pray, and on the other hand you are trying to be very cunning in every possible way, seeking your ends, sacrificing everybody else for your ends, not caring about anybody, utterly uncaring, having no respect, no love, no reverence for life. And on the one hand you go on praying in the churches and the temples; that too is part of your cunningness. You know what you are doing in your life; to compensate you go to the church every Sunday, or you go to Kaaba....

At least once in his life every Mohammedan is expected to go to Kaaba. For what? - to repent for all the sins that he has committed, so that he can be forgiven. Hindus go to the Ganges as many times in their lives as possible, just to take a dip in the Ganges because they think the Ganges cleanses you of all your sins. You commit sins and the Ganges has the responsibility of cleansing you of your sins. And what will happen to the Ganges, taking so many people's sins? It must be the most polluted river in the whole world, the most impure! Each drop of the Ganges must be full of millions of sins.

So many Hindus for so many thousands of years have been cleansing their sins there.

Avoid the Ganges! Even if by chance you come near the Ganges, escape as fast as you can!

Once a man came to Ramakrishna; he was going to the Ganges to take a dip, a holy dip.

He asked Ramakrishna, "Paramahansadeva, you bless me - I am going for a holy dip.

Do you think all my sins will be cleansed?"

Ramakrishna was a very polite man. He said, "Of course, when you take a dip in the Ganges all sins fly away from you; you are freed."

The man said, "When YOU are saying it, I trust it. So it is worth going."

Ramakrishna said, "It is worth going, but remember one thing: when you dive in the Ganges, don't come out."

The man said, "What are you saying? Have you gone mad? I will have to come out, I cannot survive under the water for more than a few seconds!"

Ramakrishna said, "Then it is futile because whenever you come out... have you seen the big trees standing on the banks of the Ganges?"

He said, "Yes, I have seen."

"Do you know their purpose and their function?"

He said, "That I don't know. It is not mentioned in any scriptures."

Paramahansadeva said, "I will tell you the secret. When you take the dip, when you dive in, your sins have to leave you because of the purity of the Ganges, but they sit on the trees waiting for you. When you come back they jump upon you! And the danger is that some other sins may also jump upon you which were not yours in the first place. So be very alert - if you take a dive, then don't come out!"

People have found cunning ways to continue their lives as they are. All your so-called religions are your cunning ways of avoiding God, not of finding God.

A young clerk in a telegraph office got married and, after a couple of years, was going to attain fatherhood. He was sure that the child would be a boy. However, he wanted to keep the whole thing secret from his co-workers so that he could surprise them with the news that he was the father of a male child.

As the delivery was imminent, he sent his wife to her father's place and asked her to send a telegram to him. The telegram, he told her, should contain only the following words: "Cycle arrived," so that he would know that she had safely delivered.

When the time was ripe she gave birth to a female child. As the telegram, "Cycle arrived," was to be given only after the delivery of a male child, the wife was in a fix as to what to do. Luckily her brother was an intelligent person and he sent the telegram in this fashion: "Cycle arrived with front tire punctured."

Now these people are thought to be intelligent. All kinds of cunning people are thought to be intelligent people. And you have to watch your own cunningnesses. To be cunning is not to be intelligent; to be intellectual even is not to be intelligent.

Intelligence has a totally different flavor from intellectuality. Intelligence is the fragrance of meditation - only a master is intelligent.

WANTING NOTHING, HE TRAVELS ALONE. He can see that the householders are living in a projection, in a projected world of their own; and the so-called monks and nuns are living in another projection, but again it is a projected world. He moves alone - - it has not only to be an outward act, it has to be an inward feeling also.

To be alone is the most fundamental thing for a meditator - to experience aloneness, to sit silently and just be yourself, just be with yourself, not hankering for any company, not hankering for the other. Enjoy your being, enjoy your breathing, enjoy your heartbeat. Enjoy the inner accord, the harmony. Enjoy just that you are, and be utterly silent in that enjoyment.

People find a thousand and one ways to avoid this aloneness; there are worldly ways and there are otherworldly ways. The worldly person will start listening to the radio or he will turn on his idiot box - his television. He can't be alone. And the otherworldly person, the religious person, will start praying or reading the Bible. He is also doing the same.

You have to be constantly aware that there are religious ways of avoiding yourself too - irreligious ways, religious ways, all kinds of ways are available to avoid yourself. The religious person will start a dialogue with God. He will start praying in a formal way - the Christian prayer, the Lord's Prayer, or the Jewish prayer or the Hindu prayer - and he will recite mantras, just like a gramophone record, meaning nothing. All that he wants is occupation. All that he wants is somehow not to feel alone. All that he wants is that God is there: "If nobody is there then at least God is there; I am not alone."

The whole idea of God as a person is the fiction created by the people who cannot be alone; hence they have created God. When nobody is there, at least God is always there; you need not be worried about that, he is everywhere. To have an idiot box you need some money and you cannot carry the idiot box everywhere, but God is always there following you like your own shadow. He is always with you. Even when you are in your bathroom he is not gentlemanly enough to leave you alone; he comes with you.

You are lying down in your bath naked and he sits by your side. He is a kind of Peeping Tom - he goes on looking at you! You are making love to your wife and he is standing there; you don't even allow him to be a little gentlemanly. No need for him to be British, but if he is a little gentlemanly, there is nothing wrong in it.

This idea of God is created out of fear - fear of aloneness. When you close your eyes you are alone, but God is there. Even in your inner being he persists, he insists on being there. This is violence! But there is no God - it is your idea.

It is like when you are alone and moving into a dark lane in the night or you have lost your way in the forest and you start whistling, just to cheer yourself up. Now that is stupid. It is your whistling, there is nobody else, but even that helps. It is psychologically helpful. You start whistling, you start singing, humming - to forget that you are alone, to forget that you are lost.

All your prayers are nothing but whistling in the dark.

Buddha is not in favor of prayers. And this difference has to be understood: he is absolutely in favor of meditation, but never in favor of any prayer. Prayer is again the old trick, the old game which does not allow you to be alone. Meditation is the art of being alone. He says: WANTING NOTHING, HE TRAVELS ON ALONE.

Aloneness is not loneliness, remember it. Aloneness is not solitariness, remember it.

Aloneness is solitude. It is tremendously beautiful; it is innocent because there is nothing to pollute it, there is nothing to disturb it, to distract it. It is pure stillness, it is silence. It has a music of its own.

Once you have heard the music of your own aloneness you will not like any other music. Then all other music is only noise; howsoever beautifully arranged, it is noise.

HE HURTS NOTHING.

HE NEVER KILLS.

It is impossible for him to hurt or to kill, because now he knows that he is not separate from existence, that there is nobody else. It is all one, it is one organic unity. We are all waves of the same ocean. Hurting another wave is hurting yourself. It is like hitting your hand, one hand with another hand. It is childish, it is insane. Sometimes small children do that. If the table has hurt them they hit the table hard; they are hurt more, but they enjoy. They think they are punishing the table.

Whenever you punish somebody you are punishing yourself. Whenever you torture somebody you are torturing yourself - because there is nobody else. The master knows it. It is not only a belief for him, it is his experience. Reaching his own center he has reached the center of the whole existence.

This fundamental has to be remembered: that as far as the circumference is concerned we are all different, but as far as the center is concerned we have only one center. That one center you can call God or truth or nirvana.

HE MOVES WITH LOVE AMONG THE UNLOVING, WITH PEACE AND DETACHMENT AMONG THE HUNGRY AND QUERULOUS.

HE MOVES WITH LOVE AMONG THE UNLOVING.... His work is difficult. He is talking to his bodhisattvas, making them aware of the arduousness of their work. It is not going to be easy, it is not going to be cheap, because the awakened one has to move amongst those who are fast asleep. The person who has eyes has to live with those who have no eyes. Communication becomes impossible. He says one thing, they understand something totally different. He tries to help them and they feel offended. He tries in every possible way to save them, but they think that he is trying to exploit them or something.

Just a few days back, a friend from Germany took sannyas. His name was Richard; I have called him Veet Richard. Richard means "hard"; German names are like that.

Strange, that all German names I come across, either they mean "hard" or they mean "strong" or they mean "masculine" or they mean "bear-strong" or they mean "the walk of the wolf" - Wolfgang. I told him, "Go beyond your hardness. VEET means going beyond. Become soft, become a little less German."

And just the other day he wrote a question, saying, "While you were giving me sannyas I was looking at your shoulders and I could not believe that 'This man is my master.'" Now, what do my shoulders have to do with my being a master or not? This is something new! I have come across thousands of definitions of what a master means, but neither Buddha nor Lao Tzu nor Zarathustra nor Jesus, nobody has said anything about the shoulders! And he was looking at my shoulders, not looking into my eyes - I had asked him to look into my eyes.

But this is how things are. When you are moving with people who are fast asleep they have their own ideas. Then, Veet Richard, go to Muhammad Ali! Find some stupid wrestler for your master. And now I am wondering - whatsoever I was saying to him, was it worth saying to him? I was simply wasting my time and his time. There is no possibility of any communication. He was in his own world; maybe he was looking for Adolf Hitler or somebody. I am not Adolf Hitler and I am not Muhammad Ali either, but he must be carrying some idea....

Everybody is carrying some idea - strange ideas people are carrying. And I cannot fulfill your ideas. You are so unloving and I go on pouring my love on you and there seems to be no response.

People write me such ugly letters that if you come to know about those letters you will be simply shocked. You will not be able to believe it. One woman wrote just the other day, "Either you are mad or you are a fool!" Madam, can't I be both together? Is there any contradiction? Not all fools are mad, true, not all madmen are fools, true, but there are a few who are both together. I belong to that third category. And certainly I must be mad; otherwise why should I be working on you? And I should be a fool, I must be a fool; otherwise I would not have initiated this madam into sannyas. You don't belong here.

But the problem is, everybody who comes is asleep, unloving, and they can't see their sleep, they can't see their unlovingness, they can't see their prejudices.

So many questions have come from British ladies and British gentlemen saying, "The British lady is just a myth and you should not be so interested in a myth. It is not a reality - the British lady exists nowhere." But these same people believe that the Polack exists, the Italian exists, the Jew exists; they are not myths... because when I am joking about Jews or Italians or Polacks no British lady or gentleman writes to me that these are myths - they are realities.

Now, no Jew, no Italian, no Polack is writing to me that the British lady is a myth. Why are only the British writing to me about it? Can't you see the point? And if it is a myth - and I know it is a myth! - why not enjoy it? Why become so much worried about it?

Somewhere deep down you believe it is not a myth, otherwise why? Have a good laugh and it is finished!

But your concern to make me aware of the fact that the British lady does not exist... I KNOW it! I am surrounded by British ladies! I have more British ladies around me than I have Jews or Polacks or Italians. I know it is a myth - but a beautiful myth!

And one thing is very good about British ladies: they never disappoint you because from the very beginning they are ice-a box-a. That must be said in their appreciation.

The Italian lady begins with a nice-a box-a; ultimately, finally, you find out, but then it is too late, that she is not a nice-a box-a, she is an ice-a boxa. But the British lady from the very beginning is clear; she never disappoints anybody. She is truthful, sincere. If you want an ice-a box-a, it is your responsibility.

Buddha says: HE MOVES WITH LOVE AMONG THE UNLOVING.... Yes, the master has to move among the Polacks and the Italians and the Jews, the British and the French... and he has to move with people who know nothing about love, although they all believe they love. And the love of the master is so different that you cannot understand his love. His love is very cool; to you it appears it is cold because you know only two categories, cold or hot. You don't know the third category: cool, neither cold nor hot.

Coolness is not coldness, remember. The master is never cold, but certainly he is not hot either. You know a love which is hot, passionate, lusty, and you know a love which has gone dead, has become cold - ice-a box-a - everything has become frozen, it is a corpse.

But you don't know the third possibility: the coolness of love and the freshness of that coolness. And the coolness has a paradoxical quality in it. If you compare it with cold, then it is cool; if you compare it with hot, then it is warm. It is exactly in the middle where warmth and coolness are one. The master has a warmth which is cool and has a coolness which is warm, but that is very difficult for people who live in extremes to understand.

HE MOVES WITH LOVE AMONG THE UNLOVING, WITH PEACE AND DETACHMENT.... He loves but he is never attached, and you cannot understand a love which is not attached. To you love and attachment are always associated; it is impossible for you to keep them separate. Love is always attachment to you; the deeper the attachment, the more you think it is love. But the master's love is utterly detached.

He loves, yet he is not bound by it. He loves, but he is not binding on you. You know a love which creates excitement. The master's love is utterly peaceful; there is no excitement. It is nothing to do with romance.

HE MOVES... AMONG THE HUNGRY.... The people who are always desiring more, Buddha calls them hungry, constantly hungry. They go on stuffing themselves with every kind of thing and they are never satisfied. Their hunger is impossible, their thirst is unquenchable. The more you give, the more they want. They are never grateful.

... AND QUERULOUS. And, of course, when they are always hankering for more they are quarreling with each other. The master is never querulous, he is never hungry. He is fully contented, utterly contented, absolutely contented. He has arrived! He asks for nothing. Hence it becomes more and more difficult for you to understand him.

LIKE A MUSTARD SEED FROM THE POINT OF A NEEDLE HATRED HAS FALLEN FROM HIM, AND LUST, HYPOCRISY AND PRIDE.

The most important thing to remember is: these things have fallen from him. He has not dropped them, they have fallen. If you drop them they will hang around you. He has not repressed them, he has transcended them - and the difference is great. If you repress them they will always be with you. If you repress lust it will spread deep down inside your being like cancer. If you repress hypocrisy you will be creating a deeper kind of hypocrisy, that's all. If you repress pride you will become a pious egoist.

Beware of it. Millions are befooled by this because repression is easy, anybody can do it.

It needs no intelligence; it needs only a little stubborn stupidity and you can do it. You just have to be a little stubborn, you have to insist and you have to force something inside yourself. You have to put pressure on it, you have to sit upon it. But then you will be in trouble. It is always there boiling, ready to explode any moment.

Three priests - an archbishop, a bishop and a rather young, newly ordained priest - stood in the lobby in the airport. The archbishop told the priest to get the tickets while they took care of the baggage.

The priest approached the ticket counter, noting the shapely, seductively dressed young woman behind the counter. By the time she got around to him he was quite flustered by her and stammered, "I would like three pickets to Tittsburgh."

Embarrassed and ashamed, he ran from the counter back to his two companions. He told the archbishop, "Father, I am sorry, I cannot get the tickets. Furthermore, I have sinned... I was tempted by the flesh!"

The archbishop said, "You are young, my son, and weak - we shall pray on your problem."

The archbishop then sent the bishop for the tickets. The bishop, though not easily swayed in his faith, was also quite taken with the young woman's beauty. He said, to her, "I must apologize for my brother - he is young. Now, I would like three tickets to Pittsburgh and I would like the change in nipples and dimes."

Shocked by his slip and completely overwhelmed by embarrassment, he returned to the archbishop without the tickets.

The archbishop was by now quite angry at both the priests and the young woman. He then went for the tickets himself. He said, "I would like three tickets to Pittsburgh and I would like my change in nickels and dimes."

As the young woman began processing the tickets, the archbishop said, "Look at you...

you should be ashamed. How do you dare to leave the house that way? Why, your breasts are not covered and your skirt is entirely too short. Every man who approaches you is tempted. When you go to heaven," he said, with his voice raising in pitch, "Saint Finger will surely shake his peter at you!"

That is bound to happen. Hence Buddha says: LIKE A MUSARD SEED FROM THE POINT OF A NEEDLE HATRED HAS FALLEN FROM HIM.... He has not dropped it or repressed it; it has fallen of its own accord. ... AND LUST, HYPOCRISY AND PRIDE.

How does this miracle happen that these things fall of their own accord? They fall of their own accord if you become more aware of them - not repression but awareness is needed. Repression makes them more unconscious and more dangerous. Become more conscious of them, watch them, meditate over them. And as you become more and more capable of watching all kinds of thoughts in your mind, you will become more and more detached from them. You will come to know that the observer is separate from the observed, that they are there like the traffic on the road and you are just a spectator. They have nothing to do with you, they are not part of your being. Repress them and they become part of your being. Repress them and you become more and more controlled by them. You will remain afraid your whole life if you repress anything. Repression creates fear, because you know it is there - any opportunity and it can arise again.

My approach is also the same: don't repress anything - watch. Nothing has to be repressed, everything has to be watched. Just by being watchful things start dropping on their own. And then there is a beauty because a silence comes to you, a stillness comes to you which is not forced, not cultivated.

HE OFFENDS NO ONE.

YET HE SPEAKS THE TRUTH.

HIS WORDS ARE CLEAR BUT NEVER HARSH.

HE OFFENDS NO ONE - he cannot because all violence has disappeared from him - but HE SPEAKS THE TRUTH. If truth offends you, then he is helpless. There is no intention to offend you, but if you are living in lies then truth offends. About that the master cannot do anything, he has to say the truth. In fact, he says only the truth; otherwise he is not interested in saying anything to you.

The little baby was very quiet. He never cried or chuckled or said "Mama" or "Dadda."

When he was three, the parents began to get rather worried, thinking he might never talk at all.

At last, when the child was seven years old, he suddenly spoke. They were sitting having lunch when he said, "Not enough salt."

"Good gracious!" exclaimed his mother. Then she asked, "How is it that in seven years you have never said a word?"

"Well," said the child, "up to now everything has been alright!"

The master speaks only if something is wrong; otherwise he keeps quiet, he remains silent. He speaks only if something is wrong. But that can hurt you, that can offend you.

To show that something is wrong with you seems to be offensive to you. You love to be appreciated, not criticized. You love to be buttressed, not to be criticized. You love that your lies should be supported, not destroyed. But about that the master cannot do anything. He has to shatter your lies, he has to bring the truth to your notice. If truth hurts, then that is another matter; otherwise, the master has no intention of hurting anybody. HIS WORDS ARE CLEAR BUT NEVER HARSH.

"How was Lady Hastings' party?" Lord Peter was asked.

With an absentminded, faraway glance in his eyes, he said, "Had the soup been as warm as the wine, had the wine been as old as the chicken, had the chicken been as tender as the maid and had the maid been as willing as the Lady, it would have been a great party!"

The master will not be that roundabout. He will simply say it clearly, although he is not harsh. But he can appear harsh to you - that is your problem. He is always sweet, and if sometimes he appears harsh to you, ponder over it, why he appeared harsh to you.

Maybe something was inside you that started pinching, that started hurting. Maybe there was a wound inside you that you were hiding and the master hit the wound. He has to hit your wounds. He has to pull much pus out of your being. It hurts. The master is a surgeon.

Buddha himself has said again and again: I am not a preacher but a physician.

WHATEVER IS NOT HIS HE REFUSES, GOOD OR BAD, GREAT OR SMALL.

That's exactly the definition of meditation according to Buddha and according to all other buddhas too. Watch your mind, and whatever is not yours, whether it is good or bad, great or small, don't get identified with it, don't accept it, go on refusing.

In the East this method is called - even prior to Buddha it was called - NETI, NETI, neither this nor that. Go on saying that "I am not this, I am not this, I am not that either."

Go on rejecting inside your being whatsoever you can observe you are not.

Slowly slowly, eliminating all that you are not, one day only that is left which you are.

That day is a day of great rejoicing. Then the watcher turns over onto itself. Nothing else to watch, it starts watching itself. Nothing else to see, it starts seeing itself. That is the moment you become a seer. That is the moment your wisdom explodes. That is the moment when darkness disappears and there is just light and light and nothing else.

HE WANTS NOTHING FROM THIS WORLD AND NOTHING FROM THE NEXT.

HE IS FREE.

Once you know that all that the mind contains is not you, all that the mind craves is not you, all that the mind is hungry for is not you, you are becoming free. Slowly slowly, desires disappear. Seeing that all desires are basically futile, that all desires end in frustration, seeing it on your own - not because I say it or the Buddha says it - seeing it on your own, desiring evaporates. You are left without any desire and there is no smoke of desire. Your flame of awareness burns bright, and freedom is the fragrance of that flowering of awareness.

Ordinarily we are living like robots. Ordinarily we are living mechanically. We are not conscious at all, although we believe that we are conscious. We are not conscious at all.

And because we are not conscious, if we drop the desires of this world, then we start desiring something in the other world. It is absolutely ridiculous.

See your so-called saints and mahatmas desiring the same things that they have dropped desiring in this world, but now they are desiring the same things in the other world.... Mohammedans believe that in their paradise there are streams of wine. Now this seems to be very illogical! Here wine is a sin and there it is the reward - reward for all your virtues. And you don't have to go to a pub - streams are flowing everywhere!

Here the woman is hell and the woman has to be renounced, and there...?

In the Hindu paradise beautiful women are available, always young, stuck at the age of sixteen; they don't grow beyond that. In fact, I always wonder how they reached sixteen! They must have been born sixteen years old from the mother's womb. Since then they have not grown. And they have bodies of gold - solid gold, it seems! And not American gold, mind you, pure gold, twenty-four-carat gold! And their eyes are made of emeralds, pure green emeralds. And their bodies don't perspire of course, how can they perspire? If their bodies are made of solid gold it is impossible to perspire. They may melt in the heat, but they cannot perspire!

Here women have to be renounced. And the Hindu scriptures say: The woman is the door to hell. And there the mahatmas are provided with beautiful APSARAS, beautiful women. What kind of nonsense is this?

And the same is the case with all the religions. Because in Mohammed's time when the Koran was written homosexuality was very prevalent in the Arabian countries, provision is made for gay people also! In the Mohammedan paradise not only are beautiful women available but beautiful boys too. They never grow their mustaches, they remain always the same - young. Now here, in all the Mohammedan countries, homosexuality is one of the greatest crimes. The homosexuals have to be beheaded, death is the penalty. Can't you see the absurdity? In paradise you will be provided with all kinds of beautiful boys! I am not against homosexuality, I am simply against this absurdity. It is perfectly good, generous - but then why are you against it here?

It is the stupid, unconscious mind of man. He is ready to let go of something in this world, but then he moves to the other extreme. He lets it go here, he renounces it here, and he starts asking for it in the other - the same thing. The problem does not change.

From one problem he moves to another problem, from one desire to another desire.

A fat, round-bottomed Italian woman comes to the doctor's office with her husband.

"My husband no shit-a!" she exclaims.

The doctor gives her a small bottle of cod-liver oil, saying, "Give him this tonight and he will be alright tomorrow."

But the next day the woman returns and says, "My husband no shit-a!"

So the doctor gives her a bigger bottle with the same instructions.

The following day the woman is back again: "My husband no shit-a!"

The doctor finally gives her a huge bottle of cod-liver oil. The next day the woman comes back again.

"Doctor, Doctor," she exclaims, "no husband, only shit-a!"

But the problem remains; now it is the other extreme.

The seeker of truth has to be very watchful not to move from one prison into another, from one desire into another. He has to be very alert and aware. He has to de- automatize himself. He has to become a man, not continue as a machine. You are born as a machine, and unless you make a great effort, you will remain as a machine and you will die as a machine. Make every effort to become aware so that you are no more a machine. Then the real man is born.

A wild West cowboy purchases a horse from the local priest. "This horse is very special," the priests explains. "When you shout, 'Praise to the Lord' this horse will start galloping like crazy and the only way to stop it is to call out, 'Amen!'" At once the man jumps up on the horse's back and shouts, "Praise to the Lord!"

He shoots like an arrow across the desert. Suddenly he becomes aware of a steep canyon ahead of him. "Goddam! I forgot the other command," he says. "What shall I do with no means to slow down this mad horse?"

Cursing and sweating, he approaches the deep canyon, and at the last moment he remembers: "Amen!" And just above the gorge the horse comes to a standstill.

Trembling and relieved, with tears in his eyes, the cowboy looks up to the sky and says, "Praise to the Lord!"

Enough for today.