Share Through Your Being

Question 1:

There are things which cannot be told, you cannot share them verbally. But there is a way to share them and that is through your being. Be a sannyasin; that is the only way to tell others what sannyas is.

If you are a sannyasin, your whole being will say that which cannot be said. Then your whole way of life will tell stories which cannot be conceptualized.

Language is impotent. It cannot say that which is alive, it can say only dead things. You can say something about sannyas, but it will not be true. How can you say anything about sannyas? It is an inner flowering, it is an inner freedom, it is an inner ecstasy, a benediction.

You can share it of course, but the sharing will be through your being, through your very being - the way you walk, the way you sit, the way you look, your eyes, your body, your very breath. The silence that surrounds you, the bliss that goes on and on being thrown all about you, the vibrations of you, they will tell and only they can tell.

Be a sannyasin; that is the only way. And what is sannyas? It is a freedom from the mind. It will be difficult to understand sannyas if you don't understand what mind is.

Mind is the accumulated past. All that you have experienced, all that you have known, all that you have lived through is accumulated in the memory. That accumulated past is the mind. So mind is always dead because it belongs to the past. Mind is always dead, never alive. Whenever a thing has become dead it becomes part of the mind. It is just like dust that a traveler gathers. You are here and now, and mind is always in the past. Mind is your shadow that follows you.

Sannyas is getting free from the past, living in the moment - not carrying the past in the head, not being burdened by it. Moment-to-moment, die to the past, as if it never existed, as if you are born anew. Every moment be fresh and young. Put aside the past. Don't gather the dust.

If you gather the dust you will get duller and duller every day, your consciousness will be covered, your mirror-like being will not be able to mirror anything. The longer you have lived with the past, the more the mirror will be covered. It will not reflect. You will become less and less sensitive. This is what has happened.

Sannyas means a breakthrough. Looking at the past, understanding that it is useless because it is no more, understanding that it is useless, a burden, you put it aside. Then you are here and now this very moment, in the present, in the plenitude of the present.

Sannyas means living without time: not being influenced by the past, and not being carried by the future. No burden of the past, and no desire in the future, sannyas is a goalless, purposeless life.

If somebody says that sannyas is a means to achieve god, he is talking nonsense. Sannyas is not to achieve anything. Sannyas is to live in such a way as if you have achieved everything. It is not a desire, because it makes no difference whether you desire wealth, power, prestige, or you desire god - MOKSHA it makes no difference. The basic mechanism remains the same: you desire.

And whenever you desire, the future comes in. Whenever the future is there, it is nothing but a projection of the past. Whenever the future is, it is nothing but the modified known. It is never the unknown. How can you desire the unknown? That which you don't know - how can you desire it?

God cannot be desired. If you desire, it is something else. God is the unknown, how can you desire it? God is the unexperienced, how can you desire it? You can desire sex, you can desire power, you can desire the ego, because you have known them. You have known them for many, many lives. But how can you desire god? How can you desire love? How can you desire ecstasy? You have never known them, desire is impossible.

That's why all the scriptures and all the buddhas say: God happens to you when you are desireless.

Moksha comes to you; you never go to moksha. You cannot go because you don't know. Nirvana happens to you when you are desireless.

Sannyas is desirelessness, and desirelessness means living in the now.

And remember, now is not part of time; now is beyond time. Time comes in only when you think in terms of the past, in terms of the future. This very moment is not part of time. This very moment is not recorded on your watch, because the watch is always moving in the future. It is always moving in the future, never here and now. It is coming from the past and moving into the future.

The watch is representative of your mind, it is NEVER here! The moment you say it is here, it has moved. The moment you see where it is, it has become past. From past to future it is jumping. If you look minutely at your watch, you will see it is not moving, it is jumping. The minute hand looks as if it is moving because the jump is very slow, but the hand that records seconds, you can see it is jumping. It jumps from the past to the future. It is never here and now. And this is the way of the mind.

Now is beyond time, it is timeless; or you can call it eternal. You NEVER leave it. It is always there.

You never go into it, you never come out of it - it is there. If you can live in such a way that your whole life is surrounded by the now, you are a sannyasin, you are desireless - you don't desire even god.

The moment you desire god, you have made god into a commodity. Then you will be exploited by the priests because they sell that commodity. Then you will be exploited by temples and churches and mosques, because those are the shops where that commodity is sold. A sannyasin has nothing to do with temples and churches, because god is not a commodity.

What happens when you are not desiring? It doesn't mean that you kill yourself, suppress yourself; it doesn't mean that you kill your desires. The point has to be understood deeply, because this has happened.

Scriptures say, those who have known say: When you are desireless, the divine happens to you.

Then the mind jumps, just like a cat jumping on a mouse, catches hold of this desirelessness and says: Okay, if god can be attained through desirelessness, then I will desire desirelessness. Now this becomes the desire, and again you have missed. Then sannyasins try to be desireless, so this state of desirelessness becomes the thing to be achieved in the future.

So what can you do? You can kill desire and think that you are desireless. Desirelessness is not the death of desire, because when desire dies, you are also dead. This will look very subtle and difficult: if there is no desire, if you have killed all desire, you will also be dead. That is not the way for desirelessness to happen. It is not the death of desire but a transformation of the desire.

Desire moving into the future is one way of desire; desire remaining here and now and enjoying the present is another way of desire. The second way is desireless, because it is not moving into the future.

A man who is desireless is not dead. He is more alive than you because his desire is concentrated here and now. If he is eating his food, you cannot even conceive how happy he is - eating his ordinary food, just bread and butter. His whole being is here: he is not just throwing things inside.

A man who lives in the future never eats well. He is just throwing food inside. He is not concerned with eating because his mind is concerned with the future. He lives in ambition. He cannot eat well; he can think of what he will eat tomorrow, but he cannot eat this moment. He can imagine what type of foods, where he is going to eat tomorrow, but today is vacant and empty. And every tomorrow, unfortunately, becomes today - he will miss his whole life.

While he is making love he doesn't feel anything - he is frustrated - but he thinks of other women that he is going to capture in the future. And the same will happen again with every woman, with every man - because the meeting is here and now and the mind always moves.

He will not be able to make love. He will not be able to eat well. He will not be able to enjoy the bliss that nature gives, continuously showers all around you. As in autumn when leaves are falling down from a tree silently, the bliss is showering every moment silently without making any noise around you. Everything is beautiful, everything is a benediction - but you are not present.

So a sannyasin doesn't mean a man who has killed his desires. A sannyasin means a man who has brought all his desiring force here and now. He lives totally. Whatsoever he is doing he is totally absorbed in it. Nothing is left standing behind. He is not divided. While eating, he becomes eating.

While making love, he becomes love. While moving, he becomes movement.

Buddha has said - and very few have understood what he means - when you move, only movement exists, not the mover; when you talk, only talking exists, not the talker; when you listen, only listening exists, not the listener; when you observe, only observation exists, not the observer.

This is what a sannyasin is. The activity becomes so total that the actor is lost in the activity. There is nobody standing behind - no division. You have moved completely; you have flowed into the activity, whatsoever the activity. Then enjoyment becomes perfect.

So a sannyasin, a man who is desireless, is not a man with dead desires. He is a man whose desiring-forces, all the energies that can desire, have turned upon the present moment. They are not running in the future, they have turned upon the present moment. His desires are concentrated here and now. He has become a world. Everything moves back into him. Nothing goes into the future, because future is false, it is nonexistential.

If your desires move into the future, it is as if a river is moving into a desert: it will be lost, it will never reach the sea, it will never enjoy the ecstasy that comes to a river when it meets the sea. When a river reaches an ocean, the orgasm is felt all over the river, the dance, the ecstasy, the blessing. It will not come if a river moves into a desert and is lost. It will evaporate, it will die. There will be no communion with existence.

When desire moves into the future, the river of desire has moved into the desert. Future is nowhere, it is always the present. Future is a creation of the mind - it is false, it is a dream. A sannyasin lives IN the reality, not in the dream. He enjoys the reality.

So remember this: I insist again and again that a sannyasin is not a man who is against life; really, he is the man who is for life. And a sannyasin is not a man who has killed all his being and desires and has become a dead thing. He is life in abundance, he is a great source of aliveness.

What happens? - because this is subtle - what happens? What will be the difference? You feel hunger. You start thinking about food. You never feel the hunger in its totality, otherwise it has its own beauty. A person who cannot feel hunger is already dead. When hunger is there, hunger is in the present, but you start thinking about food. When food is there, you start thinking about some other food that you are going to get tomorrow.

A sannyasin, a man who lives in the present, enjoys hunger when hunger is there. He is totally hungry, he becomes hunger. Every cell of the body waiting for food as if it has not rained for many days and the earth is waiting for the rains. Every pore praying, waiting, inviting; the whole body waiting, inviting, enjoying the hunger. Then food is there. Then he enjoys the food and satisfaction comes to the whole being, spreads all over the body and mind and soul. He enjoys this contentment.

One Zen master was asked: What is meditation? He said: When I am hungry, I am hungry, and when I feel sleepy, I fall asleep.

The questioner could not understand; he said: I am asking about meditation, not about you.

The master said: This is all that we know meditation to be: when I feel hungry, I feel hungry. There is no division. When I eat, I eat; and when I feel sleepy, I go to sleep.

No fight with life, no resistance - surrender, floating, becoming a white cloud. A sannyasin is a white cloud moving in the blue sky, enjoying every moment that God has given, enjoying every grace that comes to him.

If this is possible - and this IS possible; this has happened to many, this can happen to you; only a deep understanding is needed - then no karma is accumulated. Then you don't accumulate anything. You eat, you love, you do everything - but you do it so totally that there is no ego to accumulate any memory out of it. You never say: I did this. How can you? When the doing was there you were not there, so who can say: I did this?

If you say to a sannyasin: You were hungry and you have taken your food; he will say, "I was not hungry, I have not taken the food. Hunger was there and the hunger has taken the food; no action on my part, I was not there". If you are not there, if the actor is not there, who will accumulate karma?

That's what Krishna says to Arjuna: Do whatsoever happens to you, whatsoever the situation demands, do it, and forget the doer. Don't think: I am doing; rather, think: God is doing through me. This is another way of saying the same thing: God is doing through me. I am just a NIMITTA - an instrument, a passage, a vehicle. I am just a flute, hollow within, nothing substantial. God goes on singing and bringing new tunes, creating new songs, I am just a passage, a bamboo flute.

A sannyasin is a bamboo flute, a passage. He is not there. Much happens around him, much happens through him, but he is not there. Become a sannyasin, because this...this is beautiful!

This must come to your mind, that you have to share. You are here. Your mother will be waiting at home - your wife, your husband, your children - and love always shares.

You will go back. You will not be taking any visible thing with you - not a present to your mother or your wife, some ornaments or something from this country - you will be taking something invisible.

This invisible cannot be talked about because you are not taking a philosophy with you. I am not giving you a philosophy, I am not giving you any ideology, I am giving you a different type of life, a way of being.

It will be difficult to tell them. If they ask directly, it will be difficult. Don't try to say anything, because that will not be of any help, that may create more problems. Rather, be open to them so they can share. Rather, be vulnerable. Be with them - laugh, enjoy, eat, meditate, and tell them to share your being, a new way of life that has happened to you. Your very presence, your being which is laughing, enjoying, will become infectious - it becomes and they will feel it! This will take time. It will not be easy, it will be difficult. So before you go, be prepared. Be ready to share.

They will not always understand. In the beginning, there is going to be misunderstanding, more possibility of misunderstanding, because they have never thought about it. This is something unknown, and whenever the unknown knocks at the door the mind feels scared, because the mind cannot categorize it, the mind cannot tackle it. It is shattering and shocking. Mind always feels happy if it can categorize a thing, put it into a corner and say: This is this - label it and be finished.

Mind is always happy if it can analyze a thing - divide it, cut it, look into it, and be finished with it.

But sannyas cannot be categorized. It is not a category. It is such an altogether different quality of being, there exists no category for it. It cannot be analyzed, it cannot be broken into fragments. It is not a mechanism; you cannot break it, take the pieces apart and put them together again. No, it is an organic unity. If you analyze it, it is no longer there, and you can never put it back together again.

It is impossible.

Sannyas is a live force - organic, just like a flower. Analyze the flower, take each petal away, break it, look inside it, be satisfied that you have inquired, then try to put it back together. By that time, the flower is gone, the petals are dead and they can never be put back again in the same way, because it was an organic unity, it was not a mechanism.

Sannyas is a flowering, a flowering of human consciousness - just as flowers coming on a tree show the tree has come to a completion and sooner or later, fruits will follow. Flowers are just indications that the tree is ready to give fruits. The tree is ready, it is fulfilled. Flowers are just the ecstasy of the tree before it starts giving fruit, because fruit means the fulfillment. The tree has come to its peak, its climax; it has achieved the crescendo of its being. It is happy, it enjoys it - its life has not been futile now fruits are going to come. The tree is ecstatic and gives flowers.

Sannyas is a flowering, and MOKSHA is the fruit. Sannyas means now your inner being, your inner tree, has come to a point where the jump, where the explosion is going to happen. Before it happens, the whole being enjoys it. You are fulfilled. It has not been a waste. Many, many lives you waited - and it has come now. So long a waiting, so much patience...but it has been meaningful. Now you have achieved, you have reached. The whole being flowers.

Hindus have chosen red, orange, ochre, as the color of sannyas because of flowers. Green and red are the basic colors in nature. Green is the tree, red is the flower. Your being has come to a flowering. Soon the fruits will follow. Soon the seeds will be coming. Take this flowering with you.

It is good that you think how to share with loved ones, with friends, with wife and husband, with the family: how to share it? It is beautiful, it is good. It is virtuous to think of sharing such a beautiful thing, but you can share only if it has happened to you. If you have been only listening to me, thinking about flowers and you have not flowered, you cannot share.

If you take my words, they will not be real flowers, because words cannot be real - they will be plastic flowers. You can carry them, you can give them to your friends, but there will be no fragrance in them. They will not say what I have been saying to you, they will not convey anything. There will be no communication through them.

So if you want to share sannyas, meditation, be meditative, become more and more deeply involved in this way of life. Desireless, still enjoy every desire when it comes. Whatever happens, keep enjoying it as a gift, as a grace, but never asking for it, never demanding it, never planning for it, never thinking about it. Live totally, and not through thought.

Thought is the corrupting force. It corrupts everything and corrupts absolutely, because thought is cunning - it is cunningness personified. The more you think, the more you will become cunning. You will think it is cleverness, you will think it is intelligence. It is not, because if there is intelligence, then thought is not needed. Intelligence is enough; thought is not needed. You need thought because intelligence is not there. If intelligence is there, then you respond moment-to-moment. You need not think about what you should do next, because when the next moment comes, intelligence will be there and you will respond.

A mirror never thinks: When another man comes in front of me, what am I going to do? There is no need! The mirror is there, so it mirrors. If intelligence is there you never think about the next problem, because when the problem is there - the intelligence will respond. You can rely on it.

Because we don't have intelligence, we think about it. Thinking is a substitute. Greater intelligence - less thinking. When intelligence is perfect - no thinking. A buddha never thinks - there is no need!

Whatsoever life brings before him, he responds.

You think because you cannot rely on your intelligence, so you have to plan beforehand. When the moment comes, then you will follow the blueprint that you prepared in the past. What type of living is this? You live out of the past! That's why so many errors are unnecessarily committed, and everything goes stale and dead - because you always act out of the past. Life goes on, new every moment, riverlike, changing. The change never stops, but you have stopped in the past.

You carry a blueprint. Whenever life gives you a problem, you look in your memory, the blueprint, the planning - and then you act out of it. You have missed. Life is always new. Blueprints are always old.

Life is just like birds flying in the sky. They never leave any mark, there is no path. When they have flown, the sky is as vacant as it was before. It is not like earth where people walk, and through their walking, through their footprints, paths are created. Life is like the sky - no paths are created.

A sannyasin is like a bird flying in the sky, following no footprints, following no paths, because no paths exist. He moves, moment-to-moment through his present intelligence, not through his past memory.

Look! We have done something quite the contrary - we have made everything a planning. Even a husband coming back from his office, from his work, thinks how he has to meet his wife; he plans inside, talks with himself. He will say this, he will touch her hand this way, he will give her a long kiss - or something. What is the need to plan it? Don't you have any love?

If love is not, then planning is needed, because you cannot rely on yourself, you may completely forget. If you have not planned it beforehand, you may reach home and you may completely forget that your wife has been waiting the whole day - preparing food for you, washing your clothes, just surrounded by you, by your love. She has been waiting and waiting and waiting, and getting impatient. And now you have come, and you don't even look at her. You sit in your chair and you start reading your paper or you put on your radio or TV, as if the wife does not exist.

You are afraid of this, you can't do this, so you plan. You make it a point to remember. You have to remind yourself how to behave with your wife, with your beloved. What type of love is this which cannot respond without planning? If love is there, there will be no thinking about it. The same is true about intelligence. If intelligence is there, there will be no thinking about it. Thinking is a substitute.

Thought is very clever and cunning. It can create the illusion of the real - that is the cleverness. You can smile without smiling. A smile comes to your lips, but it is only on the lips, just a painted smile, not related to you at all. There is no bridge. It is not bubbling from the center of your being. It has not come from you; you have just put it on, it is a mask. Thought can do that and then by and by you go on becoming more and more false. Cunningness means creating a pseudo-life around yourself.

A sannyasin is real. If he smiles, his smile comes from his being. If he is angry, anger comes from his being. If he loves, he loves from his being. He is not pseudo, he is not a phoney. He is real and authentic. You can rely on him. If he loves, he loves. If he is a friend, he is a friend. If he is not, you can rely on him - he is not. But he is not deceptive.

This is what I mean by a really virtuous man - authentic, reliable. Whatsoever is, is REALLY there.

He wears no masks; he uses no false faces. He lives with the real. And remember: you can come to the real only if you are real. If you are false, you can never come to the real. If you are unreal, then the world that you see is going to be unreal, because the unreal can be connected only with the unreal. You are unreal. That's why the world is illusory, a maya. If you ARE real, the world disappears: it becomes divine, it becomes real.

The word maya is beautiful. It means that which can be measured. Maya means that which can be measured. Mind is the measuring phenomenon. Mind goes on measuring things, mapping out, analyzing. Mind tries to measure everything. That's why Hindus have called the world maya that which can be measured by the mind.

What is your science? Nothing but measuring. Hindus call science AVIDYA. They call it not knowledge but anti-knowledge; it is not real knowing, because that which is real cannot be measured. It is immeasurable, it is infinite. It has no beginning and no end. The real is immeasurable; the unreal is measurable. And with measure come reason, logic; with the immeasurable, logic drops, reason drops. Mind is very clever and cunning, it has created the world of illusion.

Then what is a sannyasin? He is not a mind; on the contrary, he is innocence. He is innocent, like a child just born - with no past, with no idea of the future. A sannyasin, every moment, is a child just born. This is the process: every moment he dies to the past. Whatsoever has passed, he throws it away, he renounces it, because it is a dead thing, dust; no need to carry it. He cleanses himself; his mirror becomes again fresh. He goes on cleansing the mirror. This cleansing I call meditation.

People ask me: When will we be able to drop meditation? You will not be able to drop it. It will drop one day when you are not, but you will not be able to drop it, because you will need cleansing. You become continuously dirty; every moment the dirt gathers - it's the nature of life. Every moment you need a bath, a cleansing. When you are not there, then nothing, there is no problem because there is no one who can get dirty. But you are there, so meditation has to be continued. It is an effort to remain innocent.

Look! If you are innocent, there is nothing you are lacking. If you can look with innocent eyes towards the sky, you become the sky. With mind you start measuring. You say: This is beautiful or not beautiful, or today's sky is clouded, or tomorrow's sky will be better, or yesterday's sky was more beautiful. You start measuring.

But if you are innocent, not a mind, but just a being looking at the sky, there is nothing to say, nothing to think. The sky is there, and you are also like a sky: the inner and the outer meet. Both the spaces become one and there is no boundary. The observer becomes the observed. That's what Krishnamurti goes on saying: the observer becomes the observed. The outer and the inner lose their boundaries, become one.

If you look at a tree with innocence, with no mind measuring, what happens? There are not two, the tree and you. Somehow, the tree has entered you and you have entered the tree. Only then do you come to know what a tree is. You look at the stars, you look at a river, you look at a line of birds flying against the blue sky.... Boundaries go on merging. All differentiation is lost, all distinction is lost. Unity arises.

It is not a unity put by thought. It is not a unity of philosophers. It is a totally different unity. You don't think that it is one, you suddenly know that it is one. You don't say inside your mind: This is one because the Upanishads have said so, because the Vedas have said so. It is one.

If the Vedas are in your mind and the Upanishads, you are not innocent, you are cunning.

Measurement is continuing. You are measuring, applying mind and thought, comparing. You are clever and cunning, you are not intelligent, and howsoever clever you are, a clever mind is mediocre.

Intelligence is needed.

A child is born intelligent, not clever. He looks at the world with clear eyes; his perception is absolutely clear, unclouded.

When I say innocence is sannyas, I mean your perception should be clear, with no thoughts to become barriers. You should look. You should become a look. You should observe, but there should be no observer behind you manipulating.

This innocence is possible and only this innocence goes beyond time and space. Only this innocence reaches to the ultimate, to moksha, the absolute freedom.

Become a sannyasin - an innocent one, reborn, cleansing, moving moment-to-moment into the unknown. Then you will be able to share.

The whole process of human education, culture, conditioning, is just the opposite: it teaches you how to be cunning and clever. It teaches you the mind, it never teaches you the innocence. It teaches you automatization. This word has to be remembered, it makes you more and more automatic, because if you are more and more automatic, you are more efficient.

You learn driving: in the beginning it is difficult. The difficulty is not in the driving or in the car or in anything else - the difficulty is in you, because you have to be alert. In the beginning you have to be alert; the danger is there. You have to be continuously conscious of what you are doing. You have to be alert to the traffic, to the people passing, to the mechanism; you have to be alert to the clutch, to the gear, to the wheel - and everything. You have to be alert to so many things that your mind cannot continue its routine inner chattering. It has to be alert. That creates the trouble.

Later on, after a few days, you become automatic. Now the hand goes on working, the legs go on working, the car and you have become one mechanism, and your mind can continue its inner chattering. There is no problem, your mind is not needed.

This is what I mean by automatic. Now your body is a mechanism; it functions. You will be needed only in certain rare cases. If there is going to be an accident, suddenly you will be needed. Then your thinking process will have to stop. Suddenly there will be a shock, your whole body mechanism will shiver, and you will have to be there, you will have to be alert. But these are rare moments.

Otherwise you can continue: you can smoke, you can sing, you can even talk with somebody, you can listen to the radio or you can continue your inner talk, the inner dialogue - there is no need to be there. You have become automatic.

But this is more efficient, because if you need to be continuously aware, you cannot be very efficient, you cannot go very fast - because you don't know how to be aware. Because of this factor, because people are not aware, they live unconscious lives. Society has learned a trick: make everybody more and more automatic. The whole of schooling is nothing but making you automatic. Language, mathematics - everything becomes automatic. You can do it without being worried about it. It becomes mechanical.

When I say become innocent, it means a de-automatization. It means: whatsoever you do, do fully conscious. If you are driving a car, then drive only - become driving; don't do anything else, don't continue the inner talk. Just become so deeply involved and alert that there is no driver - only driving, fully conscious.

It will be difficult - that's why societies have not bothered about it. Only individuals can pass through such an arduous path. Do everything consciously; by and by, your body-automatism will dissolve, you will become de-automatized. Then innocence will flower.

A child is innocent because nothing is automatic yet. He has not learned anything, he is not conditioned yet. Sooner or later we will condition him. He will learn things, then more and more mind will be there and less and less he himself. Less and less being and more and more mind will be there. Then he will become just an automaton, a mechanism - efficient, working well, serving the society, but dead.

Serve, help the society work, but don't become automatic. As you have already become automatic, de-automatize yourself. By and by, bring more and more consciousness. Whatsoever you are doing, bring more consciousness, because whatsoever you are doing, if you are less conscious it becomes automatic. That is the way of automatization, being less and less conscious, doing things like a mechanism.

More and more conscious doing, not like a mechanism, but a presence, then innocence will flower in you. and that innocence is the greatest thing that can happen to a human being.

Innocent, you are divine. Innocent, you have become gods.