Darshan 28 March 1978
We are alone, all togetherness is just a dream, because in fact there are not two to be together: only one exists. So all relationship is illusory. There is nobody to relate to - only consciousness exists - that is the meaning of kaivalya; and to understand it is to understand all. That is the ultimate peak of understanding. With that understanding, all misery disappears. The misery is created by the illusion of the other.
Jean-Paul Sartre has said 'The other is hell', but in fact the other is not hell because the other exists not. It is the illusoriness of the other that is hell. It is just like a dream: in the night you are alone and dreaming of a thousand and one things. When in the morning you wake up, you start laughing: all those dreams look absurd, ridiculous.
So it happens when a man becomes a Buddha. That is the real morning.
Veet means beyond, sanskara means conditionings. Beyond all conditionings is truth - beyond Christianity, beyond Hinduism, beyond this philosophy and that. There is no way to conceive the truth through the mind, because the mind is nothing but conditioning. The mind is not yours; it is projected in you by the society, by the parents, by the teachers, by the priests. It is society in you.
And the more the mind is there, the less you are.
Let the mind go! - then for the first time you start evolving. When the mind is utterly gone you have arrived. And both cannot exist together. They are like light and darkness: only one can exist. It is very hard to drop the mind because we think we are it. That's the whole trick. of the society: it has taught us this identification with the mind. It is very strange: you are not it, but everybody goes on living as if he is the mind. Hence we go on missing the truth.
It is possible to drop it but one has to be very courageous.
[The new sannyasin's Taoist teacher in Japan has sent him and another disciple to take sannyas.
He asks about entering the path through methods like Aikido and Do-en.]
Tao has no methods, it is anti-method, because Tao means that which is natural. The method always creates the artificial, the method is always against nature. Nature needs no method, nature means that which already is. You need not discover it, you need not create it. You need not practise it; in fact, if you practise it you will miss it, because all practising will be of the mind and will create more conditionings.
A Taoist life can be lived but cannot be practised. It is a sheer understanding. These trees are Taoists, the animals are Taoists, and they have never heard about Tao, they have not been reading Lao Tzu. They are not following any path, they are not trying to enter into any way: they are simply in it! We are also in it. Relax, rather than practising. A,low nature to take possession of you; don't try to grab nature, don't be active, be passive.
And that's where everything has gone wrong: those methods. If you practise them too long you will go very very far away from Tao. Live it but don't practise it. Enjoy the small things of life - food, sleep, walking, working, loving - and just forget all about goals.
There is nowhere to go and no one to go. From the very beginning we are there. And there is no way to enter into Tao because we are in it. Trying to enter Tao is like a dog trying to catch its own tail: he will go crazy! And Taoists go crazy because Tao is one thing and to be a Taoist is another.
Tao is not Taoism. It has no ism, no philosophy, that's the beauty of it. It is not a religion either: it is just pure life!
But it is very difficult for the mind to be natural. That's why I have given you the name: if you practise, you will be conditioning yourself. Go beyond all conditioning - good and bad, moral, immoral. Just relax and be a child and suddenly you will find: Tao is here, Tao is now.
But when you come next time, stay a little longer. I will destroy your Taoism and really make you somebody who knows nothing of Tao but who lives in Tao.
Prem means love, akshara means immortal, indestructible, eternal - deathless love. In life everything dies except love. Love is the eternal element in existence. It is the bridge from the lowest to the highest. The lowest mind is also in love, maybe with wrong things, the love is contaminated, but it is there. And the highest consciousness - a Buddha, a Lao Tzu, a Christ, are also in love.
Their love is absolutely pure, uncontaminated, but it is still love.
The lowest and the highest are joined together in love; this is the thread that runs through the whole of existence. Be loving - that is the only prayer for you.
[The new sannyasin says that he is an I-Ching reader. He is living together with the same Taoist teacher. He says: I feel the I-Ching tells me how to live according to nature.]
Nature is not enough - you have to ask the I-Ching? Why not look directly into nature? Why go through the I-Ching? And who is going to interpret it?you will be the interpreter. It becomes a game.
One can enjoy it, the game is beautiful: one of the most beautiful games is the I-Ching. But always remember that the way to nature goes through no book at all, because the book represents the mind. When you read the book, you must have to interpret it; it will be all projected from your mind.
So first there is the mind of the author who wrote I-Ching and then your mind. Between these two nature will be completely killed and murdered!
Enjoy it as a game, it is a beautiful game, but don't think that you can get into nature through it. Nature is available without going through anything. Go directly, be immediate. No mediator is needed, and the moment the mediator comes in, the mind has entered. The mind is the basic mediator, it is the sole agent of all that is unnatural.
Come back again! and if you feel any difficulty, read the I-Ching and it will tell you to come?
[A sannyasin who is leaving says: When I came I thought big things would happen but they're just....
He indicates things very small.]
They are real things. Big things are all imaginary, real things are always small. Big things are only in dreams. Reality consists of very small things: eating, drinking, loving, sleeping, washing your clothes, cleaning the floor, life consists of very very small things. It is only the ego that creates big things - god and enlightenment etcetera. It is always the ego that creates the big; it is never satisfied with the small, its trip is the big.
One expects big things and goes on missing the small, which are the real things... just very small things: a child laughing, somebody crying out of joy and those beautiful tears, or the sunset or just a bird on the wing. Just small things but they have immense beauty, immense truth.
One has to learn to live with small things. The small is beautiful, and if you go deeply into it, the small is not as small as it appears; if you enter into it, it becomes bigger and bigger and bigger. Each drop contains the ocean and each leaf of grass contains the whole universe.
The art consists of going into the small. Go into the small and you will find the big, and go on searching for the big and you will never find it; on the contrary, you will miss the small too.
Next time come without expectations. The first time it almost always happens that you come with expectations. But I am here to give you real things, not imaginary trips. Those trips can be given very easily, I can manage them very easily, and your ego can be satisfied, but then I will be your enemy, not your friend. Back home you will fall flat on the earth because all that will be just imagination, fantasies. And in the name of spirituality and religion much fantasy goes on.
I want religion to be very earthly. I want it to be concerned with real life. Tillich has defined religion as the ultimate concern and I define religion as the immediate concern. Mm? the ultimate is a big thing; the immediate.... And that is the whole approach of Zen, of Tao, of Tantra. All these three great traditions coincide on one thing, that the immediate is the concern: just drinking a cup of tea - the taste of it, the flavour of the tea....
That's why in Zen, tea became ceremonious. The teahouse is a temple. It is prayerful, people enter it with reverence. It looks so foolish, mm? if you think of god and cathedrals and all great things that are talked about there, and then these Zen people are just sitting in a small cottage, with such reverence, silence, meditativeness - drinking tea! They are indicating something, that the concern is immediate: pouring tea... the flavour, the smoke and the sound of the samovar, listening to it meditatively, prayerfully. And that is far deeper than any church music and any nonsensical talk about god and paradise and angels, and how many angels can dance on one pinpoint - all nonsense!
I teach the immediate. And if you can drop your trips, you will be immensely enriched. The Zen master says, 'Chopping wood, carrying water from the well - how marvellous! how wonderful!' Just think of chopping wood: the smell of the freshly cut wood, the joy and the flow of energy... or carrying water from the well. Such trivia is transformed if you can be totally there in it. The art of transforming the immediate into the ultimate is being totally in it. That's magic! That's what I teach.
Next time you come, come without any expectation and much more will be the outcome.
[A visitor says she has done one group but is afraid to do more. She feels she is self-destructive and keeps on hurting herself.]
But that you have to decide before you participate in any other group: if you don't want to go into it, then there is no point. Why torture yourself? Don't go into the group. If you want to participate, only then go into it.
[She says she wants to participate but cannot bring herself out.]
Then just go on doing a few groups; it will come.
And then come again, because this will need a little longer time. You will have to go through a few groups; slowly slowly, you will open up. You can do a few groups in Germany too.
[She replies: I did therapies in Germany and they gave up on me, that's why I came here.]
That's great! I always like to defeat the therapist. It seems that somehow you are enjoying it - that you are a toughie, that you have some control over yourself, that nobody can open you up. You are enjoying it.
You have to understand: if you want to enjoy, this is your life, it is nobody else's problem. But if you really want to change it, you can. It is not the therapist's problem, it is yours. He is just there to help you; you can take it or you can reject it. It is like going to a doctor for medicine and then throwing away the medicine. You can do it but you are doing it at your own risk.
Come again for two, three months, whenever it is possible and next time I will give you really hard groups and I will put a few people after you! We will make special arrangements - you come! Mm?
Whenever you can come, come. Good!
[A sannyasin asks: What do I have to do to really accept myself and stop looking all the time, stop searching and trying to... ]
When you come for the leaving darshan, remind me, mm? It is going slowly slowly; it will go, it takes time. Just time is needed, nothing else. The more you understand that it is futile, the more you see that it is creating misery, the more it becomes possible to drop it. Unless you really suffer through it how can you drop it? If you have not suffered enough through any problem then it is only intellectual to think to drop it; but your existence still needs it. It is only your mind which says drop it, but your whole being needs it, it is needed. When something is not needed, it drops. So you have to suffer a little bit more.
All these groups are really to intensify your suffering, nothing else. In an Encounter, in those seven days, or in a Primal, your suffering is intensified, mm? Left to yourself you will take years to suffer that much. The therapist brings his expertise to torture you, so in less time much suffering happens.
Through that suffering you start seeing: you see the pain of it, you see the futility of it, you see the absurdity of it, and in that very seeing you drop it. There is no other way to drop it. You must still be enjoying it a little bit, that's why it continues. That's why whenever somebody raises a question I have to send him to groups; it means he needs a little more suffering! Good!