The wisdom of innocence

Once I was asked, "What is philosophy?" I said, "Philosophy is the art of asking the wrong questions." The blind man asking "What is light?" - this is philosophy. The deaf asking "What is music? What is sound?" - this is philosophy.

If the blind man asks, "How can I get my eyes back?" this is no longer philosophy, this is religion. If the deaf goes to the physician to be treated so that he can hear, then he is moving in the direction of religion and not in the direction of philosophy.

Philosophy is guesswork, it is speculation; knowing nothing, one tries to invent the truth. And the truth cannot be invented, and anything invented cannot be true. The truth has to be discovered. It is already there...all that we need is open eyes - eyes to see it, a heart to feel it, a being to be present to it. The truth is always present but we are absent, and because we are absent we cannot see the truth. And we go on asking about the truth, and we don't ask the right question: How to be present? How to become a presence?

We ask about the truth and that asking is also going away from it, because the asking implies that an answer is possible from somebody else. Asking implies that somebody else can tell you what the truth is. Nobody can tell you it, it can't be told.

Lao Tzu says: The truth that can be said is no longer truth. Once said, it becomes a lie.

Why? - because the person who knows, knows it not as information; otherwise, it would have been very easy to transfer the information to anybody who was ready to receive it. The truth is known as an inner experience. It is like a taste on the tongue. If a man has never tasted what sweetness is, you cannot explain it to him - it is impossible.

If a man has not seen color, you cannot explain to him what it is.

There are things which can only be experienced, and through experience understood.

God is that ultimate experience, which is utterly inexpressible, untransferable. It cannot be conveyed. At the most, a few hints can be given; but those hints are also to be received with a very sympathetic heart, otherwise you will miss them.

If you interpret them with your mind you are going to miss them, because what can your mind do as far as interpretation is concerned? It can bring only its own past. It can bring only its own chaos. It can bring its conflicts, doubts, confusions. And all those it will impose on the truth, on the hint given to you, and immediately everything is distorted. Your mind is not in a state to see, to feel.

Religion simply means creating a space in your mind which is capable of seeing, which is capable of nonconflict, which is capable of being one without any split, which is capable of integrity, clarity, perceptiveness. A mind which is full of thoughts cannot perceive; those thoughts go on interfering. Those thoughts are there, layer upon layer.

By the time something reaches your innermost core, if it ever reaches, it is no longer the same as it was delivered by someone who had known. It is a totally different phenomenon.

Buddha used to repeat each hint thrice. Somebody asked him, "Why do you repeat one thing thrice?"

He said, "Even thrice is not enough. When I say it for the first time, you only hear the words. Those words are empty, just empty, hollow shells, with no content. You cannot hear the content the first time. The second time, you hear the content with the words, a fragrance comes, but you are so dazed, you are so mystified by its presence, that you are not in a state to understand. You hear, but you don't understand. That's why I have to repeat it thrice."

I go on repeating again and again for the simple reason that you are so asleep - it has to be repeated, hammered. Maybe in some moment, some auspicious moment, you will not be so deep in sleep; you may be close, very close to awakening, and something may enter into you. You may be able to hear. Yes, there are moments when you are very close to awakening - not awake, not asleep, just in the middle, somewhere in between.

Each morning you know, there are a few moments when the sleep is no more but you are not yet awake, you cannot say you are awake. You can hear, in a very vague way, the sounds of the birds, and the milkman, and the wife talking to the neighbor and the children getting ready to go to school, and the traffic noise, and a train passing by - but in a very vague way, not totally, partially. And you go on dozing off into sleep. One moment you hear the noise of the train passing by, another moment you have gone deeper into your sleep.

Now the sleep researchers say that it happens continuously in your sleep: if you sleep for eight hours, you are not on the same level continuously, your level goes on changing, peaks and valleys. The whole night you are going up and down. Sometimes you are very deep in sleep where even dreams disappear - Patanjali has called it SUSHUPTI, dreamless sleep - and sometimes you are full of dreams. And sometimes you are just on the verge of awakening. If something shattering, shocking happens, you will be awake, suddenly awake.

That's the effort of all the buddhas: waiting for that right moment when you are very close to awakening. Then a little push and your eyes open and you can see.

God cannot be explained but can be seen, can be experienced - can NOT be explained.

Any explanation about God is nothing but explaining him away; hence, the more priests, theologians, professors there are, the less religion there is in the world. The more popes and the more shankaracharyas, the less religion there is in the world - because these people go on explaining and God cannot be explained. They have stuffed your minds with so many explanations, now those explanations are in conflict. Now it is almost impossible to figure it out, what is what, which is which. You are in utter confusion. Man has never been in such confusion before, because humanity has never been so close before. The earth has REALLY become a village, a global village.

In the ancient days the Buddhist knew only what the Buddha had said, and the Mohammedan knew only about what Mohammed had said, and the Christian knew only about Jesus. Now we have become inheritors of the whole heritage of humanity.

Now you know Jesus, you know Zarathustra, you know Patanjali, you know Buddha, you know Mahavira, you know Lao Tzu and hundreds of other explanations, other hints - and they are all jumbled up in you. Now it is very difficult to pull you out of this confusion. The only possible way is to drop this whole noise, not in parts but in toto. That's what my message is.

And by dropping it, you will not be dropping Jesus or Mohammed or Buddha; by dropping it you will come closer to them. By dropping it, you will simply be dropping the priests and the traditions and the conventions and the exploitation that goes on in the name of tradition and convention. By being clear of all this, forgetting the Bible and the Vedas and the Gita, you will attain to a clarity, a cleanliness. Yes, you need a spring cleaning, you need a total unburdening of the heart. Only then, in that silence, will you be able to understand.

Buddha says:

Thousands had gathered around Buddha, just as you have gathered around me - thousands of seekers had come to Buddha and they were asking all kinds of questions.

And Buddha was not interested in their questions at all; he was not interested in answering them. He was interested, certainly, in showing them the way, but the problem was that they were so much troubled with their questions AND the answers that they had collected, they were so much disturbed by all the knowledge that they had been carrying all along, that it was impossible, almost completely impossible to show them the way. Hence this sutra: HOW CAN A TROUBLED MIND UNDERSTAND THE WAY?

So rather than giving them more answers, more explanations, more knowledge, Buddha started taking away their knowledge, their ready-made answers, their a priori conceptions, their prejudices. India has never been able to forgive Buddha for that.

Immediately after he died the traditional mind of this country started uprooting all the plants that he had planted; all the rosebushes were burned. Buddha was completely thrown out of this country. The greatest son of this land had no shelter here; the teaching had to seek shelter in foreign lands.

This is not accidental, this has happened always. Jesus was condemned by the Jews, crucified by the Jews, and Jesus was the greatest Jew who has ever been on the earth, the greatest flowering of the Jewish consciousness, the uttermost expression, the crescendo, the Everest. But why did the Jews deny him? They should have been happy, they should have danced and celebrated, but they could not - they could not forgive him, because his presence made them feel very mediocre; that was his crime. He had to be punished for it, for being so high, for being so beyond, for being so superior, for being so graceful, for bringing such love. For his presence he had to be punished, because his presence was making people feel ugly by comparison. He had to be removed so the mediocre mind could feel at ease.

Jesus was not killed by Jews, he was killed by the mediocre mind. It happened to be the Jewish mediocre mind in the case of Jesus. The same happened with Buddha. Buddha has not been forgiven by the Hindus, and he was the greatest Hindu ever. He was the purest Hindu possible, the very quintessence of Hinduism. What the Upanishads were saying, he had actualized it. He was the realization of the deepest longings of this land, but he was uprooted from here, he was thrown out of here.

Buddhism disappeared from India, not even a trace was left behind - utterly washed away. Why? He was tremendously respected in Tibet, in China, in Korea, in Japan, in Thailand, in Burma, in Sri Lanka. The whole of Asia loved the man, so unique is his teaching, so pregnant are his words. But India simply forgot all about him - the Indian mediocre mind. It has nothing to do with the Indian - again the mediocre mind. The mediocre mind never allows the genius; the mediocre person is happy with other mediocre people. The stupid people are happy with stupid leaders. The more stupid the leader is, the more people are happy - because he looks so much like them.

I have heard:

A new superintendent was appointed in a mental asylum. The old one was giving his charge over, he was retiring, and a small feast was arranged for the old one to be thanked for all his services, for the new one to be received by the inmates. All the mad people gathered.

The old superintendent was a little puzzled; he had never seen them so happy. All the mad people were so happy, so joyous, that he could not resist the temptation of asking them - and he was to leave the same day, so he had to ask immediately; otherwise it would always remain a curiosity in his mind and he would never know the answer.

He asked the mad people. "Why are you looking so happy?"

They said, "Because of the new superintendent - he looks just like us! You were a foreigner amongst us, you were sane. He looks mad!"

And that was a truth - the new superintendent was almost insane. But the insane people were very happy. Somebody had now come who would not make them feel insane.

This has always been the situation on the earth - this earth is the madhouse - and whenever a sane person happens, we misbehave with him. Thousands of people had come to Buddha to ask, "Where is God? What is God?" And especially the brahmins, the pundits, the scholars, who were fully informed, well informed about the scriptures, they used to come to him to ask, "Do you believe in God? Define your belief, explain your concept."

And Buddha insisted again and again: HOW CAN A TROUBLED MIND UNDERSTAND THE WAY? He used to say, "Please don't ask about God. Your asking about God is just like a blind man asking about light - it cannot be explained. I am a physician," he insisted. "I can treat your eyes, I can give you your vision back. And then you will be able to see by yourself, and the light has to be seen by you. My seeing the light is not going to help. I may see the light, I may even describe it, but it is not going to give you any idea of what it is."

In fact there is no possible way to explain to the blind man what light is. Light is an experience, something existential, unexplainable. And God is the ultimate light, the light of all the lights, the light behind all the lights, the source of all lights. How can God be explained to you if you are blind?

Hence Buddha never talked about God. And the pundits and the brahmins would go back to their places spreading rumors and saying that "This man does not answer the question because he does not know; otherwise, why can't he say simply yes or no? We asked a very simple question, 'Do you believe in God?' He could have said yes or no - if he knows then the answer is simple. But he talks in a roundabout way; we ask about God and he talks in parables. He says, 'How can it be said? How can it be explained?'

The real fact is he does not know. The real fact is that he is an atheist in disguise; he is deceiving people, corrupting people."

Hindus have invented a very cunning story about Buddha. They say that God created the world, and at the same time he created hell and heaven - hell for those who were to be punished and heaven for those who were to be rewarded for their virtues. But it happened that thousands of years passed and nobody entered hell, because nobody committed a sin. Of course, the Devil was very tired of waiting and waiting and waiting - with no work, with no business! Not even a single soul had turned up!

Tremendously angry, he approached God and said, "Why have you made this hell, for what? And why have you put me there in charge? We are tired, my whole staff is tired.

Nobody ever turns up. We open the shop and we sit the whole day and not a single customer! We keep the doors open - not a single soul ever enters. What is the point?

Please make us free from this job."

God said, "Why didn't you come earlier? I had completely forgotten about it. I will make arrangements. Soon I will be born in the world as Gautama the Buddha, and I will corrupt people's minds. I will corrupt their minds so much that you will be overcrowded. You just go back to hell and wait."

And that's how it happened. The story says, God came to the world as Gautama the Buddha, corrupted people's minds, destroyed their beliefs, uprooted their conventions, shook their faith, created doubt in their minds, suspicions. Since then hell is so crowded that the Devil goes again and again and says to God, "Now stop! Please stop! We are tired, so many people! We are running a twenty-four-hour service, day in and day out; even in the night the doors can't be closed. People simply go on coming!"

A very cunning story. Do you see the delicate cunningness in it? In one sense Buddha is recognized as God's AVATARA. Hindus are more cunning in that way than Jews. They simply denied that Jesus was the Son of God, they rejected Jesus. Hindus are more sophisticated in that way, more polished, more cultured - of course, a more ancient civilization. And the more ancient the civilization becomes, the more cunning it becomes.

See the cunningness: Buddha is accepted as the tenth incarnation of God, and yet God takes this incarnation into the world to corrupt people's minds. So although Buddha is God, beware, don't listen to him! You see the strategy, the trick? They don't deny Buddha godhood - in fact it was almost impossible to deny Buddha godhood.

H.G. Wells has said that Gautama the Buddha is a paradox: the most godless man and yet the most godly. He never talked about God, he never told people to believe in God.

God is simply missing from his teaching. It is not a necessary hypothesis, it is not needed. The most godless and yet the most godly...nobody seems to be so godly as Buddha, so graceful as Buddha - just a lotus flower, the purest consciousness conceivable, as fresh as dewdrops in the early morning sun.

They could not deny that, they had to accept that he was God. But they could not accept his approach because his approach, if accepted, would destroy the whole established religion, the whole establishment. He takes away all the beliefs; in fact he makes it a very important thing, very essential, that a man of belief will not be able to know ever.

He does not mean become a disbeliever, because disbelief is again belief in a negative way. Neither be a believer nor be a disbeliever.

Buddha's approach is that of an agnostic. He is neither a theist nor an atheist - he is an inquirer. And he wants you to remain open to inquire. Go with no prejudice, go with no ready-made idea - because if you go with a certain idea, you will project your idea onto reality. And if you have some deep-rooted idea in your mind, you will see that idea being fulfilled in reality and it will be only a hallucination, a dream projected by you.

You have to go utterly empty. If you really want to know the truth you have to be absolutely empty, you should not carry any idea, any ideology; you should go naked, nude, empty. You should function from the state of not knowing. The state of not knowing is the state of wonder.

There is an ancient saying of Jesus, not recorded in the Bible, but Sufis have preserved it. Sufis have preserved many beautiful sayings of Jesus. The saying is so tremendously important that one wonders why it was not recorded in the Bible, but if you ponder over it the reason becomes clear.

The saying is: Blessed is the one who marvels, because his is the kingdom of God.

Blessed is one who wonders. This has not been recorded in the Bible. Why? - because the Bible wants to create a certain religion, a certain sect; it wants to propagate a certain ideology. And the man of wonder has to drop all ideology.

Blessed is the one who wonders, because only in wondering can you be like a child, innocent. And only in that innocence can you know that which is. HOW CAN A TROUBLED MIND UNDERSTAND THE WAY?

So whenever a person would come to Buddha and inquire - great questions about life and life's mysteries - Buddha would say, "You wait, you meditate. First let your troubled mind become untroubled. Let this storm of your mind go past. Let silence come, because silence will give you the eyes. I can show you the way to be silent, and then you don't need anybody's guidance. Once you are silent, you will be able to see the way and you will be able to reach the goal."

And our minds are really troubled. A thousand and one troubles are there. First, everybody is in a state of schizophrenia, more or less; the differences are only of degrees. Everybody is split because the exploiters, both religious and political, have depended on this strategy: divide the man, don't allow man integrity, and he will remain a slave. A house divided against itself is bound to be weak. So you have been taught to fight with the body; that is the root strategy of division, of dividing you.

"Fight the body, the body is your enemy. It is the body that is dragging you towards hell. Fight, dagger in hand! Fight day and night! Fight for lives together! Only then, one day, will you be able to win over it. And unless you are victorious over your body, you are not going to enter into the world of God."

For centuries this nonsense has been taught to people. And the result is that everybody is divided, everybody is against his body. And if you are against your body, you are bound for trouble. You will fight with your body, and you and your body are one energy. The body is the visible soul, and the soul is the invisible body. The body and soul are not divided anywhere, they are parts of each other, they are parts of one whole.

You have to accept the body, you have to love the body, you have to respect the body, you have to be grateful to your body. Only then will you attain to a certain kind of integrity, a crystallization will happen; otherwise you will remain troubled. And the body will not leave you so easily; even after hundreds of lives the fight will be there.

You cannot defeat the body.

I am not saying that the body cannot be won over, mind you, but you cannot defeat the body. You cannot defeat it by being inimical towards it. You can win over it by being friendly, by being loving, by being respectful, by trusting it. That's exactly my approach:

the body is the temple, you are the deity of the temple. The temple protects you, shelters you against rain, against wind, against heat. It is in your service! Why should you fight?

It is as stupid as the driver fighting the car. If the driver fights with his car, what is going to happen? He will destroy the car and he will destroy himself in fighting with it.

The car is a beautiful vehicle, it can take you on the farthest journeys.

The body is the most complex mechanism in existence. It is simply marvelous! - and blessed are those who marvel. Begin the feeling of wonder with your own body, because that is the closest to you. The closest nature has approached to you, the closest God has come to you, is through the body. In your body is the water of the oceans, in your body is the fire of the stars and the suns, in your body is the air, your body is made of earth. Your body represents the whole existence, all the elements. And what a transformation! What a metamorphosis! Look at the earth and then look at your body - what a transformation, and you have never marveled about it! Dust has become divine - - what greater mystery is possible? What greater miracles are you waiting for? And you see the miracle happening every day. Out of the mud comes the lotus...and out of the dust has arisen our beautiful body. And such a complex mechanism, running so smoothly - no noise. And it is really complicated.

Scientists have made very complicated machines, but nothing to be compared with the body. Even the most sophisticated computer is just a toy compared to the inner mechanism of the body. And you have been taught to fight with it. That creates a split, that keeps you troubled, that keeps you in a constant civil war.

And because you fight with yourself - which is utterly stupid - your life becomes less and less one of intelligence and more and more one of stupidity. And then you want great transformations - you want jealousies to drop and you want anger to disappear and you want no greed in you. It is impossible! With such misunderstanding from the very beginning, how can you create the space where transformations happen, where anger becomes compassion, where hate becomes love, where greed becomes sharing, where sex becomes samadhi? How can you hope, how can you expect such great transformations, with such a troubled state?

The fundamental thing is to drop the split, to become one. Be one, and then all else is possible; even the impossible is possible.

The way is very simple and direct. Even a child can understand it. It is as simple as two plus two equals four, or even more simple. It is as simple as the song of a bird, as simple as a roseflower - simple and beautiful, simple and of tremendous grandeur. But only an untroubled mind can understand it, only an untroubled mind has the capacity to see it; otherwise you will live in greed and you will live in anger, and you will live in jealousies and possessiveness, and you will live in hatred. You can pretend, you can become a saint on the surface, but you will remain a sinner deep down. And the greatest sin is to divide yourself. The greatest sin is not committed against others, it is always committed against yourself. This is a state of suicide, creating this division between your body and yourself. Condemning the body you can become only a hypocrite, you can only live a life of pretensions.

In a first-class railroad compartment, two beautifully dressed ladies are discussing clothes while a gentleman in the corner pretends to be asleep. When one lady says she finds the cost of clothes impossible nowadays, the other suggests she should follow her example and take a boyfriend on the side: "He will give you five hundred a month for a little present - your husband would never do that."

"But what if I can't get a friend with five hundred dollars?"

"Then take two with two hundred and fifty each."

The gentleman speaks up: "Listen, ladies, I am going to sleep now. Wake me up when you get down to twenty bucks."

People are pretending in every possible way. The person who is pretending to be a saint may be just the opposite, and the person who is pretending to be awake may be asleep, and the person who is pretending to be asleep may be awake...all kinds of pretensions, because the society creates the context where it allows you only either to live an utterly condemned life, the life of a criminal, or the life of a hypocrite, of a pretender. The society gives you only two alternatives: either be honest and be a criminal, or be dishonest and be respectable. It does not allow you the third alternative. Why does it not allow you the third alternative? - because the third alternative creates a Jesus, a Buddha, a Krishna, and their presence makes the crowd feel very mediocre, very insulted, humiliated.

So please don't decide by looking at people's appearances. More are the chances, almost ninety-nine point nine percent, that whatsoever they appear on the surface they will not be deep down. You can be certain about it; I say almost completely certain, because only point one percent can you miss - which is not much. Only once in a while will you come across a Buddha, whose appearance is the same as his inwardness; otherwise you will come across people who are one thing on the outside and another on the inside.

Don't be deceived by appearances.

An actress picks up an out-of-work tramp and takes him to her apartment because he has very large shoes on and she has been told that men with big feet have big pricks.

She gives him a steak dinner with plenty of pepper and beer, and then drags him off to bed.

In the morning the man wakes up alone and finds a ten-dollar bill on the mantlepiece, with a brief note: "Buy yourself a pair of shoes that fit you."

But that's how we all go on deciding...from the outside. In fact, because we don't even know our own insides, how can we look into other people's insides? We don't know the art of looking in. First you have to practice the art with yourself. First you have to go into your interiority, your inner world. You have to go deeper and deeper into your consciousness, to the very center of it. Once you have penetrated the core of your being, you will be able to see into anybody else's core of being. Then nobody can deceive you, because then you don't see the appearance - you see the reality.

The troubled mind cannot understand anything. It is not a state where understanding is possible. Understanding does not mean knowledge. A troubled mind can become very knowledgeable - you can go to the universities and you can see the professors, very knowledgeable - but they are more troubled than you, far more in inner conflict than you. Their knowledge does not help them at all. Knowledge has never helped anybody, it only burdens. It gives you respectability, certainly. It is a great ego trip, and the ego feels very puffed up; but the more the ego is puffed up, the more you will be in trouble inside because the ego is a false phenomenon. And when you become too attached to the false, you start losing contact with the real. When you start growing roots in the false, you forget to grow roots in the real.

The man of knowledge is as unconscious as you are. The ignorant and the knowledgeable are not in different boats; they are fellow-travelers. The difference between them is only of information - which is not a difference at all, which is not a difference that makes any difference. I may know only a few things, you may know a few more, somebody else may know a thousand and one things, and somebody else may be just a walking ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA - that makes no difference at all.

A buddha is not a man of knowledge, he is a man of understanding - not full of information but full of insight. Full of vision, not full of thoughts - a clarity, a mirrorlike clarity, and a great awareness.

You are moving like a somnambulist, a sleepwalker. You don't know what you are doing, you don't know why you are doing it; you don't know where you are going, you don't know why you are going. Your life is accidental, and an accidental life is an unconscious life - it is like a robot.

A man at the theater with his wife goes out to the toilet at the intermission, but goes through the wrong door and finds himself in the garden. As it is too well kept to think of using the ground, he lifts a plant out of a flowerpot and uses that, then replaces the plant.

He goes back and finds the next act has already begun. "What has happened so far in this act?" he asks his wife in a whisper.

"You ought to know," she says coldly. "You were in it!"

Man lives in unconsciousness. He is not aware, not at all aware. You can watch any person, you can watch yourself, slowly slowly, and you will see so many unconscious acts happening that it will be almost unbelievable how you have lived up to now. You are lying for no reason at all! And when you catch yourself red-handed lying, you will be surprised: why were you lying in the first place? - because there is no reason, you are not going to gain anything out of it. Just a habit, just a mechanical routine. You become sad for no reason at all.

Now there are a few researchers who say you can make a calendar of your moods, and I find their research significant - you can really make a calendar of your moods. Just go on noting down for one month: Monday in the morning how you felt, and in the afternoon and in the evening and in the night...just at least eight times per day, go on noting every day at the exact same times how you feel. And within three or four weeks you will be surprised that on each Monday at the same time you feel exactly the same.

Now this cannot be because of any circumstances outside, because each Monday they are different. It is something inner - although you will find excuses outside, because nobody wants to feel responsible for his own misery. It feels good to make others feel responsible for your misery. And you can find excuses, you can invent them if they are not there.

That's where people have become very very creative. In fact their whole creativity consists in creating excuses: "Why am I sad?" and you can find a thousand and one reasons. The wife said this and the children are not behaving well and the neighbors and the boss in the office and the traffic and prices are rising high...and you can find a thousand and one things; they are always there. And you can paint the whole world very gloomy, dark, and then you can feel at ease that it is not your responsibility that you are sad.

But the same world, and Tuesday morning you are feeling very bubbly, very joyous, radiant - again you can find excuses: "This is a beautiful morning, and the sun and the birds and the trees and the sky, and all is so full of light - such a beautiful morning!"

You can find excuses for all kinds of moods, but if you make a diary of four to eight weeks you will be really shocked that everything that happens to you is almost completely dependent on you. You have an inner wheel that goes on moving, and the same spokes go on coming on top again and again.

Yes, there are circumstances outside, but they are not causes; at the most they trigger. A certain mood that is bound to happen is triggered by a certain circumstance. If this circumstance were not there, then something else would have been the triggering point - but it was bound to be triggered.

People who have lived in isolation have become aware of this fact. Buddha used to send his disciples for isolation. In the new commune we are going to have underground caves so I can send you for one month's isolation - absolute isolation. You disappear from the world, so you cannot blame any circumstances outside because there is nothing outside...you and the walls of the cave. And you will be surprised: one day you are happy, one day you are unhappy, one day you are feeling very greedy, one day you are feeling angry and there is nobody who has insulted you, irritated you. One day you will find you are telling lies to yourself because you cannot find anybody else.

"Could I buy you a drink?" he asked, by way of striking up a conversation.

"No thank you," she said. "I don't drink."

"What about a little dinner with me in my room?"

"No, I don't think that would be proper," she said.

Having had no success with the subtler approaches, the young man pressed directly to the point: "I am charmed by your refreshing beauty, mademoiselle, and will give you anything your heart desires if you will spend the night with me."

"Oh, no, no, monsieur, I could never do a thing like that."

"Tell me," the young man said, laughing, "don't you ever do anything the slightest bit improper?"

"Oui," said the French girl, "I tell lies."

You watch how many times in the day you tell lies - and for no reason at all - and how many times you become angry, for no reason at all, and then you will see that you are living in an inner world, a subjective world of your own. Understanding means understanding these fundamentals of life's functioning. And if you understand these fundamentals, transformation is not difficult. In fact, understanding itself becomes the transformation.

The word 'knowledge' does not mean what YOU mean by knowledge. When Buddha uses the word 'knowledge' he means wisdom, not information; he means knowing, not knowledge.

IF A MAN IS DISTURBED...is in conflict, is in confusion, is in a divide, is split inside, if a man is a crowd within...HE WILL NEVER BE FILLED WITH wisdom.

Wisdom needs unity, wisdom needs integration, wisdom needs a crystallization of awareness, of watchfulness, of watching your acts, your moods, your thoughts, your emotions...of watching everything that is happening in your inner world. By just watching it, a miracle starts happening. If you start seeing that you tell lies for no reason at all, just that very awareness will become a hindrance. Next time you are just on the verge of telling a lie a voice within you will say, "Watch, beware - you are moving into the trap again." The next time you are falling into sadness, something inside you will make you alert, will alarm you.

This is the path of transforming your energies - AES DHAMMO SANANTANO. AES MAGGO VISUDDHYA - this is the way of purification, this is the eternal law of transformation.

So the first requirement for a sannyasin is: AN UNTROUBLED MIND,NO LONGER SEEKING TO CONSIDER WHAT IS RIGHT AND WHAT IS WRONG....

A tremendously important and revolutionary statement. Buddha is saying: Don't consider what is right and what is wrong, because if you consider what is right and what is wrong you will be divided, you will become a hypocrite. You will pretend the right and you will do the wrong. And the moment you consider what is right and what is wrong, you become attached, you become identified. You certainly become identified with the right.

For example, you see on the side of the road a hundred-rupee note; it may have fallen from somebody's pocket. Now the question arises: To take it or not to take it? One part of you says, "It is perfectly right to take it. Nobody is looking, nobody will ever suspect.

And you are not stealing - it is just lying there! If you don't take it, somebody else is going to take it anyway. So why miss it? It is perfectly right!"

But another part says, "This is wrong - this money does not belong to you, it is not yours. In a way, in an indirect way, it is stealing. You should inform the police, or if you don't want to be bothered with it, then go ahead, forget all about it. Don't even look back. This is greed and greed is a sin!"

Now, these two minds are there. One says, "It is right, take it," the other says, "It is wrong, don't take it." With which mind are you going to identify yourself? You are certainly going to identify with the mind which says it is immoral, because that is more ego-satisfying. "You are a moral person, you are not ordinary; anybody else would have taken the hundred-rupee note. In such times of difficulties, people don't think of such delicacies." You will identify yourself with the moral mind. But there is every possibility you will take the note. You will identify yourself with the moral mind, and you will disidentify yourself from the mind which is going to take the note. You will condemn it deep down; you will say, "It is not right - it is the sinner part of me, the lower part, the condemned part." You will keep yourself aloof from it. You will say, "I was against it. It was my instinct, it was my unconscious, it was my body, it was my mind, which persuaded me to do it; otherwise, I knew it, that it was wrong. I am the one who knows that it was wrong."

You always identify yourself with the right, the moralistic attitude, and you disidentify from the immoral act - although you do it. This is how hypocrisy arises.

Saint Augustine has said in his confessions: God, forgive me, because I go on doing things which I know I should not do, and also I don't do things which I know I should do.

This is the conflict, this is how one becomes troubled. Hence Buddha gives you a secret key. This is the key that can take you out of all identification: don't be identified with the moral mind - because that too is part of the mind. It is the same game: one part saying good, another part saying bad - it is the same mind creating a conflict in you.

Mind is always dual. Mind lives in polar opposites. It loves and it hates the same person; it wants to do the act and it does not want to do the act. It is conflict, mind is conflict. Don't get identified with either.

Buddha is saying: Become just a watchfulness. See that one part is saying this, another part is saying that. "I am neither - NETI, NETI, neither this nor that - I am just a witness." Only then is there a possibility that understanding will arise.

To go beyond judgments of good and bad is the way of watchfulness. And it is through watchfulness that transformations happen. This is the difference between morality and religion. Morality says, "Choose the right and reject the wrong. Choose the good and reject the bad." Religion says, "Simply watch both. Don't choose at all. Remain in a choiceless consciousness."

Religion is very very different from morality. Morality is very ordinary, mundane, mediocre; morality cannot take you to the ultimate, it is not the way of the divine.

Morality is only a social strategy. That's why one thing is right in one society and the same thing is wrong in another society; one thing is thought to be good in India and the same thing is thought to be bad in Japan. One thing is thought to be good today and may become wrong tomorrow. Morality is a social by-product, it is a social strategy to control. It is the policeman inside you, the judge inside you - it is a trick of the society to hypnotize you according to certain conceptions that the society wants to be imposed upon people. So if you are born in a vegetarian family, then the nonvegetarians are the greatest of sinners.

One Jaina monk once told me that "I love your books, but why do you mention Jesus, Mohammed and Ramakrishna with Mahavira? You should not mention them in the same line. Mahavira is Mahavira - how can he be compared and put in the same way, in the same category with Jesus, Mohammed and Ramakrishna?"

I said, "Why not?"

He said, "Jesus drinks wine, eats meat - what greater sin can one commit?"

Mohammed ate meat and got married to nine women! One has to renounce the woman - and not only one but nine! A perfect number. In fact, there are no more numbers; nine is the last number, then again repeats the same....

"Mohammed got married to nine women, was a meat-eater - how can you put Mohammed with Mahavira? And how can you put Ramakrishna with Mahavira? He used to eat fish."

A Bengali is bound to eat fish.

His only criticism of my books is that I have put these people together.

Now ask a Christian.... I once asked a Christian missionary, "What do you say about this Jaina monk? He has said this...have you any objection?"

He said, "Certainly! How can you put Mahavira with Jesus? Jesus lived for humanity, sacrificed himself for humanity - what has Mahavira done? Mahavira is utterly selfish, he thinks only of his own salvation. He cares nothing about others! He never healed a blind person, he never raised a dead person from death. He was just meditating for twelve years in the mountains, in the forests - what more selfishness...? And the world is suffering and people are in great pain, and he didn't come to console them. What more luxury can there be? Just meditating by the side of a river in the forest - what more luxury! What has he done for the poor humanity? Jesus sacrificed himself - he lived and died for others. His whole life was nothing but pure sacrifice. How can you put Mahavira with Jesus?"

And he too seems to be right. Now, how do you decide? Buddha never healed the sick, the blind, the deaf, the dumb - just meditated. Seems to be selfish! He should have opened hospitals, or at least schools; should have distributed medicine, should have gone to the flood areas and served people...he never did anything like that. What kind of spirituality is this? According to a Christian, it is pure selfishness.

Now, who is right? And who is going to decide? We live according to our prejudices.

The Jaina monk is wrong and the Christian missionary is wrong, because both are judging - and to judge is wrong. Jesus is Jesus - he lives in his own way. Buddha is Buddha - he lives in his own way. Unique personalities, unique expressions of God.

Neither is a copy of the other, and neither needs to be a copy of the other. And it is beautiful that the world has variety. If there were only Jesuses and Jesuses again and again, they would look like Ford cars coming out on an assembly line - each second a Ford car coming out, the same, exactly the same as each other. It is beautiful that Jesus is one and simply one and unrepeatable. And it is good the Buddha is alone and unrepeatable.

A really religious person has a nonjudgmental approach. The moralist cannot avoid judgments, he becomes a judge. Now, this Jaina monk, an ordinary person, stupid, is ready to judge Jesus, Ramakrishna, Mohammed. He knows nothing, understands nothing, has never meditated - has not known himself yet. That's why he had come to me.

He had come to me to understand what meditation is and how to meditate. Meditation has not happened yet, but judgment is there - and he is ready to judge even a man like Jesus, is not even ashamed of what he is doing, is not shy, is very arrogant. And so is the case with the Christian missionary! He knows nothing of meditation, what Buddha was doing, what Mahavira was doing. He knows nothing of the subtle ways in which a Buddha functions. Just his becoming enlightened is the greatest service to humanity possible - nothing more can be done. He has certainly not cured physical eyes, but he is the man who has cured thousands of people's spiritual eyes - and that is real service!

He has made thousands of people hear, listen, understand - THAT is real service.

But this Christian missionary, because he runs a primary school and a hospital, thinks himself somebody who is authorized to judge. The moralist always judges, the religious person never judges. He lives in a nonjudgmental consciousness.

A MIND BEYOND JUDGMENTS, WATCHES AND UNDERSTANDS. He simply watches and understands. If Buddha had come across Jesus, he would have understood; if Jesus had come across Mahavira, he would have understood. Just watching, seeing, and there is understanding.

By 'mind' Buddha means consciousness. By 'mind' Buddha means Mind with a capital M - not this ordinary mind that you have but the Mind which happens when all thoughts have disappeared, when the mind is utterly empty of thoughts. Make a castle of your Mind because this body is going to die - don't depend on it.

And remember continuously, because the struggle is long, and the journey is arduous.

Many times you will fall and forget, many times you will start judging. Many times you will start getting identified with this or that, many times the ego will assert itself again and again. Whenever the ego asserts itself, whenever identification happens, whenever judgment arises, immediately remember: watch, simply watch, and there will be understanding.

And understanding is the secret of transformation. If you can understand anger, immediately you will be showered with compassion. If you can understand sex, immediately you will attain to samadhi. 'Understanding' is the most important word to remember.

Don't depend on the body and don't remain confined to the body. Use it, respect it, love it, care for it, but remember: you have to leave it one day. It is only a cage, it will be left behind, and the bird will be gone. Before that happens, take care of the bird too. Cleanse your consciousness, because that will be going with you. Your understanding will go with you, not your body.

So don't waste too much time in decorating it with cosmetics, with clothes, with ornaments - don't waste too much time with the body, because the body belongs to the earth and the earth will claim it back. Dust unto dust. You don't belong to the earth, you belong to some beyond, to some unknown. Your home is in the unknown, here you are only a visitor. Enjoy the visit and use it as much as possible to grow in understanding and maturity, so that you can take home your maturity, your understanding, your wisdom.

When thoughts are unguarded, unwatched, your mind is your greatest enemy.

But the same mind, if mastered - mastered by watchfulness, mastered by meditation - is transformed. It becomes the greatest friend. Nobody can help you as much as it.

The mind is a ladder: unguarded it takes you downwards, guarded it takes you upwards. The same ladder! The mind is a door: unguarded it takes you outward, guarded it takes you inward. The same mind unguarded becomes anger, hatred, jealousy; guarded it becomes compassion, love, light.

Be watchful, be awake, be alert, be nonjudgmental. Don't be a moralist: create a religious consciousness. And by "religious consciousness" is meant a choiceless awareness. Let this phrase sink deep in your heart: choiceless awareness. This is the very essence of Buddha's teaching - AES DHAMMO SANANTANO.

Enough for today.