What you desire you will become

Gautama the Buddha is the greatest breakthrough that humanity has known up to now.

Time should not be divided by the name of Jesus Christ; it should be divided by the name of Gautam Buddha. We should divide history before Buddha and after Buddha, not before Christ and after Christ, because Christ is not a breakthrough; he is a continuity. He represents the past in its tremendous beauty and grandeur. He is the very essence of the whole search of man before him. He is the fragrance of all the past endeavors of man to know God, but he is not a breakthrough. In the real sense of the word he is not a rebel. Buddha is, but Jesus looks more rebellious than Buddha for the simple reason that Jesus' rebellion is visible and Buddha's rebellion is invisible.

You will need great insight to understand what Buddha has contributed to human consciousness, to human evolution, to human growth. Man would not have been the same if there had been no Buddha. Man would have been the same if there had been no Christ, no Krishna; there would not have been much difference. Remove Buddha and something of tremendous importance is lost; but his rebellion is very invisible, very subtle.

Before Buddha, the search - the religious search - was fundamentally a concern with God: a God who is outside, a God who is somewhere above in the heavens. The religious search was also concerned with an object of desire, as much as the worldly search was. The worldly man sought money, power, prestige, and the otherworldly man was seeking God, heaven, eternity, truth. But one thing was common: both were looking outside themselves, both were extroverts. Remember this word, because this is going to help you understand Buddha.

Before Buddha, the religious search was not concerned with the within but with the without; it was extrovert, and when the religious search is extrovert it is not really religious. Religion begins only with introversion, when you start diving deeply within yourself.

People had looked for centuries for God: Who is the builder of the universe? Who is the creator of the universe? And there are many who are still living in a pre-Buddha time, who are still asking such questions: Who is the creator of the world? When did he create the world? There are some stupid people who have even determined the day, the date and the year when God created the world. There are Christian theologians who say that exactly four thousand and four years before Jesus Christ - Monday, 1st January! - God created the world or started creating the world, and he finished the job in six days. Only one thing is true about it: that he must have finished the job in six days, because you can see the mess the world is in - it is a six-day job! And since then he has not been heard about. On the seventh day he rested, and since then he has been resting....

Maybe Friedrich Nietzsche is right, that he is not resting - he is dead! He has not shown any concern. Then what happened to his creation? It seems to be completely forgotten.

But Christians say, "No, he has not forgotten. Look! He sent Jesus Christ, his only begotten son, to save the world. He is still interested." That is the only interest Christians say he has shown, in sending Jesus Christ... but the world is not saved. If that was the purpose of sending Jesus Christ to the world, then Jesus has failed and through him God has failed - the world is the same. And what kind of concern was this - that his messenger was crucified and he could not do anything?

There are many who are still living in this pre-Buddha worldview.

Buddha changed the whole religious dimension, he gave it such a beautiful turn: he asked REAL questions. He was not a metaphysician, he never asked a metaphysical question; to him metaphysics was all rubbish. He was the first psychologist the world had known, because he based his religion not on philosophy but on psychology.

Psychology in its original meaning means the science of the soul, the science of the within.

He didn't ask: Who created the world? He asked: Why am I here? Who am I? Who is creating me? And it is not a question of the past - "Who created me?" - we are constantly being created. Our life is not like a thing created once and for all; it is not an object. It is a growing phenomenon, it is a river flowing. Each moment it is passing through new territory. "Who is creating this life, this energy, this mind, this body, this consciousness, that I am?" His question is totally different. He is transforming religion from extroversion into introversion.

The extrovert religion prays to God; the introvert religion meditates. Prayer is extrovert; it is addressed to some invisible God. He may be there, he may not be there - you can't be sure or certain; doubt is bound to persist. Hence every prayer is rooted somewhere in doubt, in fear, in uncertainty, in greed.

Meditation is rooted in fearlessness, in greedlessness. Meditation is not begging anything from anybody, it is not addressed to anybody. Meditation is a state of inner silence. Prayer is still noise, you are still talking - talking to a God who may not be there. Then it is insane, neurotic; you are behaving in a mad way. Mad people go on talking; they don't bother much whether there is anybody to listen to them or not. That is a sure sign that they are mad - they imagine that somebody is there; not only that, they can almost see the other. Their visualization is great, their imagination is very substantial. They are capable of changing shadows into substance, imagination into realities, fiction into facts. To you they seem to be involved in a monologue; to themselves they are involved in a dialogue. You cannot see who is present there - they are alone - but they see that somebody is there.

It is because of this fact that psychoanalysis is very cautious about religion, because the religious person behaves just like the neurotic. And there are many psychoanalysts who think that religion is nothing but a mass neurosis - and they have a point: the extrovert religion is a mass neurosis.

But psychoanalysts have not yet become aware of Buddha. Buddha will give them a new insight into religion, into true religion. There is no prayer, no God. Meditation is not a dialogue, or even a monologue - meditation is pure silence.

People ask me, "What should the object of meditation be?" They are asking a wrong question, but I can understand why they are asking it. They have lived in the religions of prayer, and prayer cannot be without somebody there to pray to. Prayer needs an object of worship; prayer is a dependence. The worshipper is not independent; he is dependent on the object of his worship and he is afraid also.

But the meditator has no object. Meditation does not mean to meditate upon something.

The English word 'meditation' gives a wrong connotation; in English there is no word to translate the Buddhist word DHYANA. In fact, in no other language of the world is there a word which is absolutely synonymous with dhyana. It is because of this fact that when Buddhism reached China they could not translate it into Chinese; hence dhyana became CH'AN - it is the same word. The Sanskrit word is dhyana, but Buddha used Pali, another language, the language that was understood by the people amongst whom he lived. In Pali, dhyana becomes JHANA; from jhana, in Chinese it became ch'an, and from ch'an, in Japanese it became ZEN. Chinese had no equivalent, the Japanese had no equivalent. In fact, no other language has any equivalent because no other language has given birth to a man like Buddha. And without a Buddha it is impossible to give this new meaning, this new vision, this new dimension.

In English, 'meditation' means meditating upon something; but then it is thinking, at the most contemplation - it is not meditation. Meditation means BEING meditative, silent, peaceful, with no thoughts in the mind, a consciousness without content. That is the true meaning of meditation: a pure consciousness, a mirror reflecting nothing. When a mirror is not reflecting anything, it is meditation.

Buddha turned the whole religious quest from metaphysics into a great psychology, because he asked: What are the causes of my life and my death? He is not concerned with the universe. He says: We should start from the beginning, and anything, to have a real significance in life, has to be concerned with me MYSELF: who am I and why am I?

What are the causes that go on creating me?

His first sutra is:

He is saying, "I have been seeking and searching for God for countless lives. It was all in vain, it was futile. I could not find any God, because in fact God is not a person and you cannot find him. God is not a 'he'."

Now there is great controversy whether God is a he or a she. He is neither. And if you insist that we have to choose between these two words, 'he' and 'she', I will suggest that 'she' is far better because she contains he, but he does not contain she. But in truth, God is not a person at all; hence the question of whether he is he or she is irrelevant.

God is a quality, not an object. God is not God but godliness - and godliness has to be found first within yourself. Unless you have a taste of it in your own being you will not be able to see it anywhere else. Once you have tasted it, once you have become drunk on the divine, then you will see it in the trees - in the green of the trees, in the red of the trees, in the gold of the trees. You will see it in the sun, in the moon, in the stars. You will be able to see it in the animals, birds, people, rivers, mountains. The whole existence will reflect your understanding, will become a mirror to you. You will be able to see your own face everywhere. We can see only that which we are, we cannot see that which we are not.

This is Buddha's great contribution: he dropped prayer, he dropped the idea of God, and he gave a new approach - that new approach is meditation.

He says: VAINLY I SOUGHT THE BUILDER OF MY HOUSE THROUGH COUNTLESS LIVES. I COULD NOT FIND HIM.... Not because something was lacking in his effort, not because his effort was partial and not total, no. He was not that kind of man: his effort was so total that it could not have been more total. It was because of his total effort that he came to this great understanding, that he came to this great realization.

He went to all kinds of teachers and whatsoever a teacher told him to do, he did it with such passion, intensity, that no teacher was ever able to find any fault with him. And whatever task was given to him, he always fulfilled it. And it happened with so many teachers that finally they said to him, "This is all that we know, and we cannot say that you have not followed us. You have followed so totally that there is no question about your sincerity and your search, but more than this we don't know. You will have to go and find some other master - this is all that we know. We are sorry that we could not help you more. And if any time you can find something more than this, remember us, and if we are still alive, convey your new realization to us."

This happens very rarely. It is always easy to find fault with the disciple, and if the disciple is at fault, then certainly the master, the so-called master, is at ease. A real disciple is a danger to the pseudo master, because with a real disciple his pseudoness is exposed sooner or later. It is because of the pseudo disciples that pseudo masters live.

And there are so many pseudo seekers... just curiosity, they are seeking just out of curiosity; it is not existential. It is very rare to find a disciple like Buddha, because if you find a disciple like Buddha, sooner or later, either you will be proved right through his transformation, or you will be proved pseudo. But you cannot blame him, because he will put his total energies into the effort.

Buddha tried every possible way. He went to all the known and not-so-known teachers who were alive in the country, and from everywhere he came back empty-handed.

Finally he decided, "There is something wrong in asking others, there is something basically wrong in going behind others, following others. It is better, it is time, that I should dive deep within myself, that I should seek and search alone." And that's how meditation was born.

Buddha dropped all extrovert efforts, became totally introverted, his whole energy turning in. He started tuning himself to his innermost core. God cannot be found outside you, because there is no God who can ever be outside you. God is the ultimate fragrance of your consciousness. When your consciousness opens like a lotus, the fragrance that is released is God - better to call it godliness.

God is not a noun but a verb. Let this sink deeply into your heart: that God is not a noun but a verb. In fact, the whole existence is a verb. Change all your nouns into verbs and you will be on the right track, because everything is alive and flowing - how can you call it a noun? A noun gives a fixed idea. A noun is always dead and a verb is always alive.

And God is alive. He is alive in you, he is alive in me, he is alive in the birds. Wherever life is, God is; God is synonymous with life.

It was a misunderstanding and, unfortunately, a misunderstanding which still persists.

Rather than searching for their own selves, people go on searching for God. They will not find God, and meanwhile they are missing the opportunity of finding themselves.

The very word 'God' has created trouble. Start using 'godliness', 'divineness', 'love'.

Drop that God! The word 'God' looks like a dead rock: no flow, no movement, no growth. Let your God become a river.

Remember Herman Hesse's Siddhartha: he learned the deepest realms of meditation by living on the shore of a river, seeing the river in different moods, in different seasons. In the summer it was so thin, like a silver line, and in the rains it was so overflooded. And sometimes it was so silent and so musical, and sometimes it looked so angry, in a rage; sometimes it was so compassionate, and sometimes it was so cruel. Just sitting on the bank of the river, slowly slowly he became aware of the great life of the river, its emotions, its moods....

The first thing my own father taught me - and the only thing that he ever taught me - was a love for the small river that flows by the side of my town. He taught me just this - - swimming in the river. That's all that he ever taught me, but I am tremendously grateful to him because that brought so many changes in my life. Exactly like Siddhartha, I fell in love with the river. Whenever I think of my birthplace I don't remember anything except the river.

The day my father died I only remembered the first day he brought me to the riverbank to teach me swimming. My whole childhood was spent in a close love affair with the river. It was my daily routine to be with the river for at least five to eight hours. From three o'clock in the morning I would be with the river; the sky would be full of stars and the stars reflecting in the river. And it is a beautiful river; its water is so sweet that people have named it Shakkar - SHAKKAR means sugar. It is a beautiful phenomenon.

I have seen it in the darkness of the night with the stars, dancing its course towards the ocean. I have seen it with the early rising sun. I have seen it in the full moon. I have seen it with the sunset. I have seen it sitting by its bank alone or with friends, playing on the flute, dancing on its bank, meditating on its bank, rowing a boat in it or swimming across it. In the rains, in the winter, in the summer....

I can understand Herman Hesse's Siddhartha and his experience with the river. It happened with me: so much transpired, because slowly slowly, the whole existence became a river to me. It lost its solidity; it became liquid, fluid.

And I am immensely grateful to my father. He never taught me mathematics, language, grammar, geography, history. He was never much concerned about my education. He had ten children... and I had seen it happen many times: people would ask, "In what class is your son studying?" - and he would have to ask somebody because he would not know. He was never concerned with any other education. The only education that he gave to me was a communion with the river. He himself was in deep love with the river.

Whenever you are in love with flowing things, moving things, you have a different vision of life. Modern man lives with asphalt roads, cement and concrete buildings.

These are nouns, remember, these are not verbs. The skyscrapers don't go on growing; the road remains the same whether it is night or day, whether it is a full-moon night or a night absolutely dark. It doesn't matter to the asphalt road, it does not matter to the cement and concrete buildings.

Man has created a world of nouns and he has become encaged in his own world. He has forgotten the world of the trees, the world of the rivers, the world of the mountains and the stars. THERE they don't know of any nouns, they have not heard about nouns; they know only verbs. Everything is a process.

God is not a thing but a process. But words can mislead you. This word 'God' has misled millions of people. It gives you an idea, a very childish idea of course, but once it settles in you, you carry it your whole life. You have an idea of God: some very ancient- looking man with a long white beard, sitting on a golden throne up in the skies, ruling, ordering, commanding the whole world. And whoever disobeys him has to suffer much - a very dictatorial father. He has not yet forgiven Adam and Eve because they disobeyed him.

In the Garden of Eden there were two trees: one was known as the tree of knowledge and the other as the tree of life. God had said, "Don't eat from these two trees." But children are children - if you prevent them from doing something they are bound to do it. The serpent is not needed; that is just a strategy, an ancient strategy of man, to throw the responsibility on somebody else. It was Eve herself who became curious.

They disobeyed God and God became afraid: "Now they have eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge - soon they will find the other tree and they will eat the fruit of life, and then they will become as eternal as gods." And he became very jealous, because once they had eaten from the tree of knowledge, they would be able to find the tree of life; it would not be long. Soon they would find it. They had become wise enough, and a wise man is bound to seek and search for immortality. Being afraid that they would become like gods, God threw them out of the Garden of Eden and closed the doors. Now there are naked swords preventing the re-entry of man into paradise.

This is a very childish concept of God, anthropocentric. But millions of people are still living with this idea of God. It is a sheer misunderstanding. Children can be forgiven, but you cannot be forgiven.

Old Lindley sat down at the doctor's desk.

"What is your problem?" asked the physician.

"Well, Doc, after the first, I am very tired. After the second, I feel all in. After the third, my heart begins to pound. After the fourth, I break out in a cold sweat. And after the fifth, I am so exhausted I feel I could die!"

"Incredible!" said the M.D. "How old are you?"

"Seventy-six."

"Well, at seventy-six, don't you think you should stop after the first?"

"But Doctor," exclaimed old Lindley, "how can I stop after the first when I live on the fifth?"

Words can be very deceptive - and the word 'God' has deceived millions. Buddha is the first to recognize this fallacy. Hence I say we should divide history by Buddha, not by Christ - before Buddha, after Buddha - because he brings such a total and new vision to humanity. He brings a new idea of God: the idea of godliness. With Buddha, humanity becomes mature; it drops its childhood concepts.

I COULD NOT FIND HIM....

Of course there was no possibility of finding him. Nobody has ever found God; many have found godliness but nobody has ever found God.

And Buddha says: Without knowing who I am, without knowing the significance of life, without knowing the meaning, the goal and the destiny... HOW HARD IT IS TO TREAD LIFE AFTER LIFE. It is hard, it is tiring, it is boring, it is a burden.

Socrates says: A life unexamined is not worth living. Buddha would have agreed with him. Yes, a life unexamined is not worth living, because a life unexamined is not a life at all. It is only carrying a load, dragging - dragging somehow towards your death. Your feet won't have a dance to them and your heart will not have a song in it. You will be utterly fruitless, impotent, futile. And the more intelligent you are, the more sensitive you are, the more clearly you can see the point.

And Buddha was one of the most sensitive men who has ever walked on the earth.

This is one of the most important sutras. Meditate over it, ponder over it, because it has been misunderstood also.

When Buddha says: BUT NOW I SEE YOU, O BUILDER! many have thought that he means he has seen God. That is a total misunderstanding. He is not talking about God.

When he says: BUT NOW I SEE YOU, O BUILDER! AND NEVER AGAIN SHALL YOU BUILD MY HOUSE... he is not talking about God, he is talking about desire. His word is TANHA; tanha means unconscious desire. He says, "It is because of my own unconscious desiring that I have been creating these lives. Nobody else is responsible."

He takes the whole responsibility on his own shoulders. This is the beginning of a really religious man; you are no longer throwing responsibility on others - fate, God, this and that.

In that sense, Marx is as immature as any other so-called saint, and so is Freud - because they all agree on one point. Marx says: Man is in suffering because of the economic structure of society. The responsibility is thrown on the economic structure of society. Hegel says: Man is suffering because of a wrong history, a wrong past. This is throwing responsibility on the god named "History." And for Hegel, history was almost God: he used to write History with a capital H - for him history is the most determining factor. And to Freud, the unconscious is responsible. What can you do?

You are utterly helpless.

All these people are saying that you are utterly helpless, you cannot do anything; you have to be the way you are, this is the only way you can be. You are a victim of great forces, against which you cannot win.

Buddha says: You can be victorious, but take the responsibility upon your own shoulders. It is your own desiring mind that has been creating your lives. This wheel of life and death is your own creation. When for the first time you realize this, you are shocked, shaken - shaken to the very roots. But slowly slowly, you start seeing a great freedom in it. You start rejoicing that, "If I am responsible, then there is a possibility for me to change the whole pattern."

BUT NOW I SEE YOU, O BUILDER! AND NEVER AGAIN SHALL YOU BUILD MY HOUSE. He is saying, "Now I see that it is desiring, constant desiring - for this, for that, for money, power, prestige, God, paradise, nirvana...." It is desiring, always desiring, projecting yourself into the future, that is creating your wheel of life and death. And you are crushed between these two rocks: life and death. You have to be free from life and death.

That is Buddha's meaning of nirvana: to be free from life and death, to be free from desire. The moment you are free from all desires... remember, I repeat, ALL desires. The so-called religious, spiritual desires are included in it, nothing is excluded. All desires have to be dropped because every desire brings frustration, misery, boredom. If you succeed it brings boredom; if you fail it brings despair. If you are after money there are only two possibilities: either you will fail or you will succeed. If you succeed you will be bored with money.

All rich people are bored with money. In fact, that's how a rich person is known to be really rich - if he is bored with his money, if he does not know what to do with it. If he is still hankering for more money he is not yet rich enough. If you succeed, you are bored, because the money is there but there is no fulfillment with it. All those illusions that you had carried for so long - those illusions for which you had suffered so much, struggled so much, staked so much.... Your whole life has gone down the drain because of those dreams that when you have money you will be fulfilled. But when you have it you suddenly see the pointlessness of it: the money is there but you are as poor as ever - - in fact more so, because, in contrast to the money, you can see your poverty more clearly.

There is a story by Leo Tolstoy:

A poor tailor had this habit for thirty years of purchasing one lottery ticket every month, and for thirty years it had become a routine. Each month he would purchase a lottery ticket. He never won the lottery, he even stopped thinking of ever getting it, but it had become an old ritual: every month, in the first week he would purchase a ticket.

But one day it happened: a big Rolls Royce suddenly stopped in front of the poor tailor's house. A man walked up with a big bag. The poor tailor could not believe his eyes, because never had a Rolls Royce stopped before his house... and this rich-looking man! And the man said, "Rejoice! You have won the lottery - here are one million rubles."

The man was overjoyed. He locked his shop, threw the key into the well - because now he would never need this shop, he would never open this shop again. One million rubles is more than enough for ten lives!

But within a year that one million rubles was gone. He purchased the biggest cars, beautiful houses, the costliest prostitutes, the best food, the best clothes. He lived like the czar, utterly oblivious of the fact that the money was running out of his hands. After one year all was finished. And not only was it finished, but he had been a healthy man, young, and in one year he had aged at least ten years and he had become weak and ill - all those prostitutes and alcohol and too much rich food. He was weak, ill, old, and he had to jump into the well to search for the key!

People had to pull him out - he was almost drowning - but he found the key and he opened his shop again. The whole year had been like a long long nightmare. And he said, "Enough is enough! I will never ask for money again."

But just out of old habit he started purchasing one ticket every month again. And after one year the same car stopped... he said, "My God! do I have to go through all that again?"

If you have money, you will know the misery of it; if you don't have money, you know the misery of not having it. Either way you suffer. Desire brings suffering - success or no success, desire brings suffering. But you go on desiring in the hope that it may not be so with you.

Remember, life allows no exceptions: its rules are universally valid. Whatsoever is true for me is true for you, whatsoever is true for Buddha is true for you. Truth is the same!

You cannot bribe truth, you cannot persuade truth to be a little different for you. Truth is neutral; it is not a respecter of persons. It is like gravitation: it does not care whether you are rich or poor, famous or notorious, known or unknown. If you go against the law of gravitation you will have a few fractures. Gravitation will not consider that you are the president or the prime minister of a country, or a beggar; it makes no distinctions. And the same is true about inner laws.

Buddha discovered one of the most fundamental laws: that desire is always frustrating.

Even though you succeed in achieving your goal, you will be frustrated.

It is because of this that America is now the most frustrated country in the world. They have succeeded: they have created affluence, they have created richness - about which humanity has been dreaming for centuries - and they are more frustrated than the Indians. And India is poor, starving, yet India is not in such frustration as America is.

And the reason is, when you are poor and starving you can hope that tomorrow things will be better, but when you are rich and you have all that you can imagine, you can't hope. Tomorrow can't be better - it is already better! Seeing that you have all that you need, what more can happen tomorrow? At the most you will have a little more money - but if this much money cannot help, a little more is not going to help. You have two cars - you may have four; you have two houses - you may have four: the changes are going to be only quantitative, and quantitative changes are not real changes.

The poor person thinks, "There will be qualitative changes when I am rich." He can hope, and through hope he can desire.

Hence I say again and again that before this world can become really religious it has to become very rich. It is not an accident that Buddha was the son of a king. All the twenty-four TIRTHANKARAS of the Jainas were kings, and all the AVATARAS of the Hindus - Rama and Krishna... were kings. It can't be just coincidence. Why only kings?

Why have beggars and poor people not become buddhas? The reason is simple: the poor person can still hope, the rich person has no hope.

When hope disappears, desire is seen in its nudity. Hope keeps on hiding desire in beautiful garments.

BUT NOW I SEE YOU, O BUILDER! AND NEVER AGAIN SHALL YOU BUILD MY HOUSE. Buddha says... this is his first statement after his enlightenment. The moment he became enlightened, the morning he became enlightened, with the last star disappearing, this was his first utterance, tremendously pregnant. He looked at the sky; the sun had not yet risen and the last star had just disappeared. He was as empty as the outer sky. And this was his first declaration to existence - not to anyone in particular.

He simply said, uttered - as if talking to himself or thinking aloud: BUT NOW I SEE YOU, O BUILDER! AND NEVER AGAIN SHALL YOU BUILD MY HOUSE.

He says, "I have seen the secret of desire. It is desire that has been creating new bodies, new minds for me, new bodymind mechanisms for me - and I have seen it. Now it will not be possible for it to create any more trouble for me."

The moment you see the cause of your trouble, the trouble disappears - and the cause too. Seeing is transformation. To know is to be liberated.

What are the rafters and what does he mean by the ridgepole? These are his metaphors.

By rafters he means the past and the memories. The past tries to persist, the past goes on perpetuating itself. Yesterday you were angry, the day before yesterday you were angry, and so on and so forth. Now that anger is waiting in you just for an excuse to explode. The past perpetuates itself. And if you cannot find an excuse you will be angry without any excuse. You will create an excuse, you will invent one - you will have to, because the anger that you have been going through every day is waiting for its time. It is like tea-time, and your body starts asking for tea. A little tannin is needed... or a little nicotine.

This is happening to Krishna Prem! Just a few weeks ago Laxmi was after him: "Stop smoking!" He was smoking too much. And finally he stopped; with great will he forced himself and stopped. Since that time he has not been in good shape. He became ill, for weeks he remained ill, weak. Now he has come out of his illness. He had to take many medicines and treatments. Now he gets angry at any slight excuse, or no excuse.

Just the other day he asked me, "Beloved Master, what should I do?"

I said, "Smoke! And don't listen to Laxmi again!"

An old habit... now the body needs a certain quantity of nicotine; if it is not there then uneasiness is created. And there is nothing unspiritual in nicotine, remember; nicotine is as spiritual as anything else.

If you have been doing something for a long time you become habituated, and once you become habituated to a certain thing, it forces you to do it again and again. Buddha calls it "the rafters of desire": the past tries to perpetuate itself.

He says: I HAVE SNAPPED THE RAFTERS. I am finished with the past! I am disconnected from my past, I am no longer continuous with my past. I have SPLIT THE RIDGEPOLE. By "ridgepole" he means the future. Desire has these two dimensions: it comes from the past and it goes to the future, it never stays in the present. The present becomes a death to desire.

Hence all meditations are nothing but efforts to bring you to the present. When you live in the present moment, with no past hanging around you, with no future projection, you are free from life and death, you are free from body and mind. You are free - simply free - you are freedom.

Buddha says: And this is how I have BEATEN OUT DESIRE. AND NOW MY MIND IS FREE.

A beautiful metaphor, very pictorial: THE LONG-LEGGED CRANES STAND IN THE WATER. Very still they stand, very silent, unmoving, because if they move, ripples are created in the water and those ripples make the fish afraid. The cranes stand absolutely still, like yogis, unmoving, as if they are not there. If there are no ripples in the water, the fish can come close to the cranes and they can catch hold of the fish.

Buddha says: Now a revolution has happened.... THERE ARE NO FISH IN THE LAKE.

By "fish" he means desires: My consciousness is free of desires.

THE LONG-LEGGED CRANES STAND IN THE WATER. But because I am alive - I will not be coming back again into the body, but this body has its own momentum, this mind has its own momentum - it will have to finish its momentum. So the body is there, the mind is there, like long-legged cranes standing in the water, although there are no fish anymore.

Buddha is saying: I am here in the world, but without desire, so the world is not in me. I will not be coming back again because there is no reason to come back: there is no desire to fulfill. All desires have been known to be futile.

The world is nothing but an opportunity to fulfill your unfulfilled desires. You are sent back again and again to the world by the universal law - AES DHAMMO SANANTANO. This is the universal law. Buddha says again and again that if you desire you will be thrown back into the world. Whatsoever you desire you will become; what you become depends on your desires. If your desires are such that they can be fulfilled only in the life of a dog, then you will become a dog. If your desires are such that they can be fulfilled only in the life of an elephant, you will become an elephant. It depends on your desires: your desires create the mold of your bodymind mechanism. It is our desiring that has created us. If you are a man, it is your desire; if you are a woman, it is your desire. You may have forgotten about it....

I have been experimenting in many many ways. I have looked into many people's past lives, and in the beginning I was very much surprised. The most surprising thing was this - that if somebody is a man in this life, he was a woman in his past life, and vice versa: if somebody is a woman in this life she was a man in the past life. I was puzzled - - why? Then slowly slowly, it became clear to me that man thinks that women are enjoying more than men, and more so now, after the research of Masters and Johnson - because women have multiple orgasms! Man has a single orgasm and then he is finished for at least twenty-four hours, and a woman can have multiple orgasms - many orgasms within seconds.

Now many men must be feeling very much frustrated about being men; they may not say so directly, because of their male egos. But it is going to happen. In the coming twenty-five years this is going to happen more and more, that many men will decide to become women - now it can be done scientifically too - and many women will decide to become men. In fact, they are trying in every possible way: they are behaving like men, they want to do everything the way man is doing it; they want to compete with him in politics, in the marketplace - everywhere. They want all the opportunities, because man is enjoying so much. And man thinks that women are enjoying so much: "I have to fight the whole world and the woman simply rests at home!"

This has been happening in the past also, but not scientifically - naturally. Everybody thinks the other is enjoying. And this idea of multiple orgasms! And also the idea has come that women have two types of orgasm and man has only one type of orgasm. The woman can have vaginal orgasm and clitoral orgasm. Man is so poor! And the woman's orgasm is more total - her whole body becomes involved in it - man's orgasm is local.

Poor man!

A pretty coed had been receiving obscene phone calls from the same man for months.

She was beginning to enjoy it. One night she picked up the phone and it was him again.

"I am gonna come over there, throw you down on the bed, rip off your clothes, spread your legs, and shove something into you that you will never forget!"

"Come on over!" said the girl.

"What?" answered a surprised voice.

"I am serious! You turn me on!"

Twenty minutes later the phone nut was in her apartment. Within five minutes they had their clothes off and within ten seconds the guy was all finished. To add insult to injury, he rolled over and went to sleep on the poor frustrated girl.

An hour later he got up, dressed and headed for the door.

"I will say one thing for you," snapped the coed, "you give great phone!"

Man starts feeling that the woman is enjoying more, and the woman feels the same. It is always so. Even kings think that beggars are more happy: no worry, no anxiety; they can sleep so soundly, so deeply. And it is very difficult for kings to sleep. Beggars don't have food, but they have great appetites; and kings have food but no appetites. Beggars are thinking that kings are enjoying such beautiful palaces, such great food, so many beautiful women, and everything that one can desire. But they don't know that kings can't enjoy food - their appetites have disappeared long before the food appeared. Yes, they have marble palaces, but they cannot sleep. Their life is a nightmare, constant anxiety, anguish, fear. The king thinks the beggars are in a far better situation: nothing to worry about. Nobody can steal anything from them, nobody can attack them. They don't need bodyguards, they don't need any defense; they can sleep on the road.

Everybody is jealous of everybody else, and that's how it goes on changing. If you are a man, you must have been a woman in your past life; if you are a woman, you must have been a man. You started desiring the other and then the desire has brought a new mechanism for you.

Buddha says it is desire, not God, which has to be looked into, which has to be examined, which has to be observed.

And Buddha says: Beware! Time is passing fast, life is slipping out of your fingers; soon it will be gone. Before it is gone, do something to get rid of desire.

SAD IS THE MAN WHO IN HIS YOUTH LIVED LOOSELY AND SQUANDERED HIS FORTUNE.... What is fortune for Buddha? - this opportunity, this great opportunity to be aware of desire and its futility, this great opportunity to get rid of desire. This is the great fortune! And sad is the man who has spent his youth loosely, unconsciously, and squandered his fortune. What to say about old people? Even in old age people are repeating the same stupid games.

Ninety-year-old Parker went to a bordello and was so great in bed that the prostitute said, "Old man, if you can do it again, it's on the house!"

"Okay," said Parker, "but if you don't mind, I'd like to take a fifteen-minute nap."

"Okay."

"And while I'm sleeping I'd like you to hold my ding dong!"

She agreed. When he woke up, Parker gave another great performance. So the girl said, "Look, if you can handle it, I'll give you another one for free!"

He agreed. "Okay, but I gotta take another fifteen-minute nap and while I'm sleeping, you have to hold my knob!"

Parker woke up later and once again performed like a teenager. "Say, Pop," said the hooker, "I can understand why you want to take a fifteen-minute nap, but why did you want me to hold your ding dong?"

"Well," said the old man, "the last place I went to, somebody stole my wallet!"

A ninety-year-old man... but the same stupidities! Young people can be forgiven - although Buddha is not ready to forgive them - but they can be forgiven; they don't have much experience of life. But even old people, even on their deathbed, at the moment of death, they are still thinking of stupid things and desires. Somebody is thinking of money, somebody is thinking of sex, somebody is thinking of becoming famous - even on their deathbed! They are completely unaware that they have wasted a fortune.

SAD IS THE MAN WHO IN HIS YOUTH LIVED LOOSELY AND SQUANDERED HIS FORTUNE.... And almost everybody in the world today IS living loosely. By "living loosely" Buddha means that living unconsciously, we go on wasting opportunities which could become great moments of understanding. I am not saying escape from the world; I am not saying escape from anywhere - but certainly you have to be there with more awareness.

When a recently bought rooster died after only three weeks on the job, Farmer Foster was determined that its replacement would last much longer. So before putting the new rooster to work, Foster dosed it heavily with vitamins and pep pills. The instant the bird was released, it charged into the hen coop and serviced every one of the hens. Then it flew into the adjoining coop and proceeded to do the same for the geese.

Farmer Foster went back to the house, shaking his head and muttering, "He will never last out the day."

Around sunset, Foster was crossing the yard, and there lay the rooster, legs aloft, flat on its back, with two hungry buzzards slowly circling above.

"Damn it!" groaned Foster. "Now I have got to buy me another new rooster!"

The rooster opened one eye, winked, and pointed at the nearing buzzards, saying, "Shhh!"

Be a little more alert than the rooster!

Man is man only when he becomes aware of what he is doing. Otherwise a few are roosters and a few are bulls and a few are horses - in the form of men. A few are money-mad, a few are sex maniacs, a few are power-hungry. These are all ill people and they have suffered for many lives, but it has become such a settled pattern with them that they go on moving in circles.

The day is not far away when you will see that you are just a broken bow. The day is not far away when you will breathe your last, and then you will sigh and weep and cry deep within yourself, because you will know that whatsoever you have been doing has been all just a dream, writing on water. You have lived with shadows; you have not gained any substance in your life. You have wasted a great opportunity in which you could have become a buddha.

Unless you become a Buddha or a Krishna or a Christ, remember that you are wasting a great treasure bestowed upon you by existence. You have not earned it, you don't deserve it. It is a pure gift, a gift of love. Please don't waste it....

Enough for today.