Peace of mind, my foot!

Friends, the other day, the hilarious drama of procession against me reached to the very peak. I have heard that three hundred donkeys surrounding one bodhisattva reached to the police commissioner's office asking for me to be arrested, because I am destroying the culture of a self-styled city which dreams of being cultured.

The one bodhisattva was carrying my effigy. The one bodhisattva looked like a donkey, and the three hundred donkeys looked like human beings. Even the donkey was laughing, because he was the only authentic being in that crowd: "What has happened to this cultured city and these so-called cultured people?"

Donkeys by their very nature are very silent people, very philosophical, very cultured.

And this donkey was wondering, "Except me... all the three hundred donkeys who are hiding behind human masks, are doing my work, 'cheepon, cheepon.'" (HINDI FOR "HEE-HAW, HEE-HAW.") These so-called human beings, self-styled, cultured ones, thought that they were insulting me. Nobody in the world can insult me, because it is in my hands: if I accept the insult, it is okay; if I don't accept it, you have to carry it to your home. Nobody can humiliate me.

Humiliation needs my acceptance.

On the contrary, these people were proving everything right that I have been saying to you. They were thinking that they are destroying my arguments by such processions. No procession can be an argument. No procession proves intelligence, it only proves retardedness. And carrying my effigy on a poor donkey simply exposes their real face:

they are donkey-worshippers.

All human beings are not human beings. There are so many categories: a few are still chimpanzees, a few are still gorillas, a few are still monkeys, a few are still donkeys, a few are still yankees.

But in this so-called, self-styled cultured city, not a single person objected to these people, that "You are exposing yourselves, your vulgarity, your unculturedness."

And why are you harassing a bodhisattva? I call that donkey a bodhisattva.

And not only I, but since the day twenty-five centuries ago when Gautam Buddha gave Mahakashyapa a lotus flower, and told to the whole commune of ten thousand sannyasins, "What I could say to you I have said. What cannot be brought into language, I am transferring to Mahakashyapa. This lotus is just a symbol of transferring something which does not come into words."

And why to Mahakashyapa? -- because he was the only one who had remained for years utterly silent. This day, when Buddha came for his morning discourse, everybody was puzzled. He had never carried anything in his hands, and today for the first time he was carrying a beautiful lotus flower. They were all waiting with excitement for what he was going to say, but he did not say anything. On the contrary, he simply went on gazing at the lotus flower for one and a half hours.

Everybody was puzzled, disappointed: "What is going on?" And at that moment, Mahakashyapa, after twenty years of silence, laughed so loudly.

At his laughter, Buddha called him close to him and gave him the lotus flower, and told the commune, "All that I could bring into words I have given to you. That which has remained beyond words, I am transferring to Mahakashyapa." That was the beginning of Zen. Mahakashyapa was the first patriarch of Zen.

Since that day, all these twenty-five centuries, hundreds of enlightened, awakened buddhas in the very thin stream of Zen have been asked again and again a question: Is the dog also a buddha? It can be changed to: Is the donkey also a buddha?

And all the masters in these twenty-five centuries have said, "Yes," without any hesitation. Every living being has the seed of the buddha. To have the seed of the buddha is expressed by the word 'bodhisattva'. Fundamentally, a buddha may have gone far away, may have become a donkey, may have become a dog. It does not matter. At the very center of his being he is carrying the seed. Someday, sometime, somewhere, the spring will come and the seed will start growing into a plant with foliage, and the seed will become a lotus flower.

So I say that, amongst these three hundred and one donkeys who had made a procession against me to the police commissioner, the three hundred were just phony human beings; only one was a bodhisattva -- the donkey.

It was not an insult to be carried by a bodhisattva. I take it with great respect.

But these people are trying to prove me wrong, and they don't see that there is no connection: carrying my effigy... you can burn it, but why torture the poor bodhisattva, the donkey? Even that will not refute me.

I am going to take the issue of poverty.

All the religions are responsible for human poverty.

Jesus says, "Blessed are the poor, for they shall inherit the kingdom of God." Reading such statements, Karl Marx said that all these religions are nothing but opium to the people.

Jesus was consoling the poor: Don't be worried about your poverty, it is a test. Without complaint, patiently, just wait a little while, and you will be the inheritors of the kingdom of God. Just one life's poverty, and then an eternity of being a king in the kingdom of God. It is a good bargain.

And Jesus also said -- just to console the poor so that they don't revolt against the rich, against the vested interests, against the exploiters and oppressors -- he also said, "A camel can pass through the eye of a needle, but a rich man cannot pass through the gates of paradise."

It is not only Jesus, the same story is repeated in different forms, in different ways, to keep the poor poor.

In India it takes a different framework, but the conclusion is the same. All the three religions born in India don't agree on anything except this one point. You can understand why. They have their philosophies, mythologies, completely antagonistic to each other -- Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism -- but they all agree on one point: that the poor man is suffering because of his evil acts in the past life, and the rich man is rejoicing because of his good acts of his past life. They transfer the whole issue and misguide people.

You are exploited right now, and they are talking about past lives. It is not a coincidence that all the founders of these three religions had the patronage of the kings and the super- rich. Gautam Buddha was surrounded by kings and princes and the super-rich.

Who was there to give food and clothes and shelter to his ten thousand disciples? He moved with ten thousand disciples from one village to another village. The people were so poor, they could not afford food for themselves; how could they manage for ten thousand people?

But kings, super-rich people, followed the traveling caravan of Gautam Buddha, and provided them with shelter, provided them with food, provided them with clothes and every necessity that was needed. Why were they so much interested in Gautam Buddha? - - because he was also saying that the poor are suffering from their evil acts in the past life.

It is very strange. The same is the logic of the Jainas, and the same is the logic of the Hindus: transfer the poverty to evil acts in the past. Nobody knows about the past; all that we know are the evil acts of the super-rich right now! They are exploiting in as many ways as possible.

You will not believe it, but even today in India there are five million human beings almost functioning as slaves. They are called bonded laborers. Rich people give them money in advance, and then they give them work, dangerous work in coal mines, in marble mines, and they are paid such a small amount of money per day that they are not able to repay the advance -- and until they repay the advance they are bonded laborers.

This is a very tricky phenomenon. Nobody sees it as slavery.

They have given one thousand rupees to a poor man so that he can make a hut, so he can get his daughter married, and then he has to work in a coal mine. Six rupees per day! -- and he has to look after his whole family with six rupees. He will never be able to pay back that one-thousand-rupee advance, and until he pays that he has to remain in the coal mine.

People have suffered their whole lives in a strange, tricky slavery. Now, nobody can directly call them slaves, but the fact is they are bonded laborers; they will die, they will never get the money to pay the advance. The advance is given just the same way as in the past human beings were auctioned.

You will not believe that neither Buddha nor Mahavira nor Krishna nor Rama... nobody has said a single word against slavery. People, particularly women, were simply auctioned in the marketplace, and all these great religious leaders had nothing to say about it. Perhaps they are suffering from their evil acts of a past life.

And the most amazing fact is that not only did they not oppose it...

I am reminded of an Upanishadic Hindu seer -- of course, self-styled and so-called -- who was known as Gadiwan Raikva, because he used to travel in a bullock cart. Raikva was his name, gadiwan means a man who owns a bullock cart.

He was also in the marketplace bidding for a beautiful woman, but a king came -- and of course against the king he could not win. He went ahead as much as he could, because Hindu seers were not poor people; they had many wives, they had plenty of land, and their disciples worked on the land to pay for their discipleship. They gathered much money, and that money was used to purchase women.

Gadiwan Raikva was one of the most famous self-styled, so-called saints. What kind of saint is ready to purchase human beings as a commodity?

But because he was defeated and the king gave more money for the woman, he was very angry -- and all these people have been saying, "Don't be angry, don't be greedy." He was waiting for his chance to take revenge -- and these people have been talking about, "Drop all revengefulness, be kind, be compassionate, love your enemies."

After many years the king who had purchased the woman became fed up with his kingdom and riches and the whole crowd of women, and he wanted some peace of mind.

Forgetting the incident that had happened twenty years before, he went to Gadiwan Raikva to find some peace of mind, taking lots of money, diamonds, emeralds, rubies, to offer to the saint. He had taken with him his prime minister.

He touched the feet of Gadiwan Raikva and offered the whole lot of money. But Gadiwan Raikva was still boiling with rage. Twenty years had not made any difference, the fire was still alive. He pushed aside the king and said, "Get lost, and take all your money!"

The king could not believe it. He asked his prime minister, "What is the matter? Why is this man behaving so angrily? I used to think he was a great saint."

The prime minister said, "He is a great saint, but you don't remember.... Twenty years before you were both bidding for a young woman, and you defeated him. Bring that woman, offer that woman to the saint, and he will give you peace of mind." Peace of mind, my foot!

And he brought the woman, and Gadiwan Raikva accepted the woman, and he agreed to initiate the king into peace of mind.

A man who has been burning for twenty years with revenge, is he capable of offering peace of mind to anybody? He does not know anything about mind or peace!

These are the founders of religions. He is still respected by the Hindus.

All these three religions console the poor; that's why in India there has never been a revolution by the poor against the oppressors, exploiters. They take it as a matter of course that their poverty is because of their sins in the past, it has nothing to do with anybody else; there is no question of any revolution.

Mohammed said to his disciples -- and they are still following his idea and being poor -- he told his disciples one of the most absurd ideas: "You should not take interest on money, and you should not give interest on money."

Now the whole world of economics depends on interest. The more the money moves, the more money you have. That's why another name for money is currency: it has to be a current, continuously moving. But why should it move if I am not going to gain any interest on it? Why should I give it to anybody and take the risk? He may not return it.

So Mohammedans don't give interest on money, they don't take interest on money. Their whole economics is basically false, goes against the whole science of economics. The game of money depends on interest. Mohammedans have remained poor, utterly poor, and they are still following an out-of-date idea, thinking it is something spiritual.

All the religions are against money.

All the religions are praising the poor.

When you praise the poor, you are destroying all his possibilities of becoming rich. When you talk against money, you create a non-productive society. You can see it in India: five hundred million people are living in starvation at this very moment. And those who understand how an increasing population is going to create more poverty, they all predict unanimously that by the end of this century half the country will die because of starvation: one man amongst two. You will be surrounded in this country with corpses; you won't have enough wood for their funeral pyres, you will not have enough people to carry them to the graveyard. They will deteriorate, they will stink. The only people who will be happy will be the animals, the birds, who eat human flesh.

Amongst five hundred million corpses, do you think you will be able to live? I don't think any man of any intelligence is going to tolerate it. He would rather commit suicide, the scene will be so ghastly, so agonizing; such a tremendous anguish it will create.

But still the religious leaders are against birth control methods.

The pope comes to India and says to the poor people, "Using any birth control methods is against God." And the shankaracharyas, the heads of Hindu religion, talk in the same way. And the Jaina acharyas, who are the heads of the Jaina sects, are all against birth control methods. There is not a single religious leader who is in favor of birth control methods. These religious leaders will be responsible for the death of millions of people!

But why are they against birth control methods?

They say, "It is God who is giving you a child. To refuse it is against God." But to allow it to starve...? God seems to be a monster. He rejoices in children dying on the streets. He rejoices in the poor people who can't afford a single meal.

I have come across poor people who eat nothing but water. I cannot say they are drinking water, they eat water, and put on their stomach a brick to feel that their belly is full.

God loves these people.... God seems to be a greater devil than any other devil -- and all these preachers, religious leaders, represent God. And they are all against humanity living in comfort, living an educated, cultured life, enjoying great paintings and literature and poetry and music and dance.

A hungry man cannot enjoy Beethoven.

A hungry man cannot enjoy Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci.

I am reminded of a great poet, Heinrich Heine. He got lost in a deep forest in Germany, where he had gone hunting. But he could not find his way out of the jungle for three days... and then came the night. Three days hungry... and he was afraid all the time of the wild animals, so in the nights he was sitting in the trees.

And then came the fullmoon night. He has written such beautiful poems about the full moon. No poet can afford not to write about the full moon; it has such a hypnotic power.

It is the purest poetry.

Heinrich Heine has written many beautiful poems about the moon, but that night, after three days of hunger and tiredness and being afraid of death any moment, sitting in a tree he saw in the sky not a moon, but a loaf of bread. He could not believe his eyes. He rubbed his eyes, he looked again: it was a loaf of bread floating in the sky.

When he was found by a search party and brought back, he wrote in his diary, "Now I know how a poor man can enjoy the full moon, how a starving person can enjoy a lotus or a rose."

A poor hungry man has no time or mind to think about the greater mysteries of life; he thinks only of bread and butter. And God loves this drama... and the representatives of the gods are all in favor of poverty.

The world would have been finished with poverty long ago. It can still finish it! -- but the religious leaders will not like it, because the religious leaders have power over the poor, not over the rich.

Who will give Mother Teresa a Nobel Prize if there are not orphans to be found on the streets in Calcutta? Just a one-day-old child, and the mother or the father has dropped it by the side of the road because they cannot manage its upbringing. And Mother Teresa and her seven hundred nuns are running around Calcutta, finding children who have been left by their mothers or fathers, and collecting them with great joy. Everybody is counting how many you have got. The joy is to convert them into Catholics.

Of course the pope is against birth control. If there were birth control, there would be no Mother Teresa, and there would not be six hundred million Catholics. These are all the poorest of the poor.

In India I have been searching for thirty years for a single rich man who has been converted by the Catholic missionaries. I have not found one yet -- but I have found that the people they have converted are the poorest of the poor. They don't understand a word about religion. They don't understand -- they are not in a situation to understand. Mind needs a certain nourishment; they don't have that nourishment. And if somebody offers food and clothes and shelter, they are very willing to be called whatever you want:

Catholics, Protestants, Christians -- whatever you want.

Aboriginals, the primitive people who live in the forest almost naked -- they don't have clothes, they eat the roots of the trees, they don't have food, and Christian missionaries are very happy to move into those parts and convert them to Christianity.

I was staying in the state of Bastar, which is inhabited by aboriginals, very primitive people but very simple and innocent.

The king of Bastar was my friend. Just because he was my friend, he was killed by the politicians -- because he was supporting me in Bastar to help the poor people of his state to understand something about meditation. He had fallen in love with me, because he had learned meditation, and he wanted his poor people to learn meditation. So I used to go to Bastar... and to prevent me from going to Bastar, the king of Bastar was shot dead by the politicians.

I was staying in a small village where a missionary was managing to demonstrate to the aboriginals who is more powerful, Krishna or Jesus. I was sitting behind the crowd, so he would not recognize anybody from the contemporary world -- and it was a dark night. He had a bonfire, and he set down a bucket of water and said to the people, who were very much excited to know who is more powerful...

He had made two statues, one of Krishna, made of wood.... No, the Jesus statue was made of wood, and Krishna's statue was made of steel! -- but painted, they looked exactly the same. He took both the statues and put them into the bucket of water. Of course, Jesus remained swimming on top, Krishna drowned. People said, "Certainly Jesus seems to be more powerful than Krishna."

He said, "I have been telling you again and again that Jesus will save you, and Krishna will drown you, remember! Be converted to Catholics."

At that point, I could not resist. I stood up, and I said to the crowd, "It has been a very good experiment, but I want to ask you, have you ever heard of any test like a water test?"

They said, "We have never heard about it, but we have heard about the fire test."

So I said, "Now we should check both these fellows in the fire." And I told the people, "Catch hold of the missionary so he cannot escape," and I put both the statues in the bonfire, and Jesus burnt to ashes and Krishna came out.

They said, "My God! This man was deceiving us."

But this is the way they have been converting utterly primitive, poor people. And they want these people to be poor, otherwise they will not be able to convert them.

The Hindus have a difficulty: it is a non-converting religion just like the Jews. These are the two ancientmost religions of the world, and both are non-converting. You are born a Jew, never converted to be a Jew; you are born a Hindu, never converted to be a Hindu.

Because these are the ancientmost religions, there was no need to convert anybody.

Everybody was Hindu.

And more particularly, the Hindus have a caste system: the brahmins at the head, then the warriors, number two, then the business people, number three, and then the sudras -- the poorest of the poor, the oppressed of the oppressed.

If you convert somebody, where will you put them, in which class? The brahmins will not allow anybody... Brahmins are born; it is their past lives together with austerities and purifications and discipline and virtue that has caused them to be born as brahmins. You cannot convert anybody to Brahmanism. Neither are the warriors, the kshatriyas, willing to accept anyone -- they are high caste -- nor the business people; they are the richest people. They don't want anybody to be converted, unnecessarily sharing their money.

The only class that remains is the sudras. But nobody would like to be converted to be a sudra, because they have a definite work to do: cleaning the Indian toilets, which are the worst toilets in the whole world, so primitive and ugly. And these sudras are carrying all kinds of shit on their heads! It is dropping on their faces!

Hindu society is immobile; nobody can move from his caste to another caste. The question of converting somebody from another religion does not arise. So it has been a good place to convert the sudras into Christianity.

I had a friend who was the principal of the greatest Christian theological college in the whole of Asia. Once or twice I went to visit him. I asked him, "Are you a born Christian?"

He said, "No, I am a born sudra," and he took me into his sitting room, and he brought an album to show me a picture of his father, who was a beggar. He and his children were converted to Christianity. The principal was educated, not only in India, but in Western countries. He showed me his picture before conversion and after conversion, and then he called his daughter.

I have come across millions of women, but she was a rare beauty, unbelievable. The grandfather, an ugly, starving beggar, and she was educated in America, had a doctorate, and was married to an American psychiatrist. They both used to come to India six months a year to convert poor people into Christianity, and six months they used to go to America to teach in the universities.

The old man, the principal, asked me, "What do you think?"

I said, "It is sheer exploitation of poverty. You are not converted on religious grounds; you are converted on financial grounds, and financial grounds cannot make a man religious. You are the head, the principal of the greatest theological college in Asia, and what is your work? -- preparing missionaries to go around Asia to convert more poor people. None of these people..."

He had five thousand students in his college. He took me around. I said, "None of these people are convinced of the truth of your religion. You yourself are not."

He said, "I don't know anything about religion. All I know is about the scriptures, which I have been taught." And he took me to a class, which was so hilarious. This was the last postgraduate teaching for the missionaries, where they were taught how to speak, how to be great orators.

I watched for a few minutes; I could not resist laughing. I said, "This is such stupidity."

They were being told when to speak loudly and when just to whisper, when to raise the hand, and when to beat on the table. I asked him, "Is this a college for actors? I thought you said to me it prepares missionaries. These are missionaries?"

When a man has something to say, then that very truth finds its way, its expression, its gesture. It has not to be taught.

But when you don't have anything to say, obviously you have to learn every gesture, every word. These actors are pretending to be missionaries; they will convert people to Christianity -- and this they think one of the most virtuous acts. But for it they need poor people.

In the West, in the East, the framework may be different, but the outcome is the same.

Don't allow the poor to rise upwards, keep them repressed, because they are the people to work and labor and do all kinds of things.

I have heard... A Rolls Royce stops before a hotel in Miami Beach. A woman comes out and shouts, "I need four persons to carry my son inside the hotel."

The son was not more than eight years old, but was really fat.

Four waiters came, and they said, "The boy looks so beautiful, can't he walk?"

The woman said, "I can afford for him to be carried by people. He does not need to walk!

He's not crippled, he's rich."

On one hand, millions and millions are dying of starvation, and on the other hand, a few people have gathered all the money. Even their children have to be carried, because they can afford it. On one hand people are dying in the streets....

In the cold winter, three million Americans are living on the streets; nobody is going to take any care of them. And there are millions of people who do nothing; they simply sit before their television sets. The average time given to television in America is seven and a half hours per day. They cannot even move; they are so hypnotized by the television that now there are services from hotels available: they just have to phone for them to bring anything they want. These people go on becoming fatter and fatter... ice cream and Coca-Cola.

Now they have made a society -- the society of the couch potatoes. They have become potatoes, they are no longer human beings.

You will not believe me, but there are people who cannot leave the television for any reason -- even for making love. So they make love doggie-style, so both can watch the television!

This whole mess is created by your religions!

I blame everybody.

Moses destroyed the Jews by telling them a lie -- that God has chosen them as his people.

Because of this lie, the Jews have been tortured for four thousand years around the world, everywhere. Nobody can tolerate them, because they all think they are the chosen people.

Brahmins think they are the chosen people; God has written their scriptures himself.

Mohammedans think they are the chosen people; God has sent his own last messenger with his message in the Koran. And, of course, Christians think God never sent to any other race in the whole world his only begotten son, Jesus Christ.

Everybody thinks... And Moses was the first to bring the lie, without knowing the implications. If you try to impose yourself as the chosen few of God, you will be destroyed, you will not be tolerated.

He went on Sinai mountain and after many days brought back ten commandments. Those ten commandments can be written on a small postcard. What was he doing for that long?

And if God was preparing the ten commandments on tiles of stone, could he, who created the whole world in six days, not create ten tiles in six days? Moses is lying; he was preparing those tiles, they are nothing to do with God. He deceived his people, just as all founders of religion are deceiving their people.

In the first place, God is a lie, the most fundamental lie. Out of the fundamental lie arise many lies. Lies don't believe in birth control either; they are very religious, they go on producing. One lie produces thousands of lies.

When God is accepted, how can you deny his only begotten son?

How can you deny his reincarnations in Rama and Krishna?

How can you deny his messenger, Mohammed?

Once you have accepted the fundamental lie, then you have to accept all these people, who seem to be a little bit insane. And these people have written your scriptures in the name of God -- because the holy Koran is so faulty linguistically that it shows who has written it.

And if there is only one God, what is the need of so many religions, and so many scriptures, and so many prophets? Is it because God loves bloodshed, Mohammedans killing Hindus, Hindus killing Mohammedans? Just after India became independent, one million people were killed by Hindus and Mohammedans together, in the name of God.

An old Jew was dying. He had never gone to the synagogue. The rabbi came to tell him, "Now at least, make peace with God."

The old man said, "I have never quarreled with him in the first place. I have never gone to the synagogue, you know it well!"

The rabbi said, "You have always been strange. At this moment of death, pray to God!"

He said, "I am praying. I am praying that 'It is enough! We have been tortured enough because you have chosen us! Now choose somebody else!'"

Religions don't have any reason to exist in the world. Yes, religiousness is a totally different affair. One can be religious without belonging to a religion. In fact, those who belong to any religion cannot be religious. They can be Christian, they can be Jewish, they can be Hindu, they can be Buddhist, but not religious.

If you want to be religious, you have to stand on your own feet and look withinwards.

God is nowhere outside. There is no person like God in existence. Inside you will find an eternity of consciousness. That is the only divineness, that is the only godliness -- but there is no God.

To experience the godliness in your being will bring a great transformation, a metamorphosis. You will become a new man, with compassion, with love, with understanding, with intelligence, without any fear of death, because you know your eternity, because you know your very center.

A new series begins today: ONE SEED MAKES THE WHOLE EARTH GREEN.

Maneesha has asked:

There have been men of intelligence even in such strange positions as governor. The governor asked Rinzai to take the high seat, higher than the governor. He knew.

Rinzai is one of the most beautiful masters. He had more enlightened disciples than any other master. His very air was that of enlightenment. His eyes were those of any awakened buddha. Those who had eyes to see and ears to hear, those who were sensitive enough to feel the fragrance of the man, immediately understood. He is in the crowd but not of the crowd. He looks just like a human being, but he has gone far beyond. He radiates his beyondness.

The governor must have been a man of great intelligence, understanding. He must have tasted something of meditation, otherwise it is impossible for a governor to tell somebody to take a higher seat.

This is just a metaphor for any awakened man. It simply means he can use his two eyes almost as if he has one thousand eyes.

You know my eyes: I have ten thousand eyes, and I look into every one of you. You may not know, you may not find it out, but I am watching continuously at the deepest core of your being.

It is a metaphor: the awakened one has one thousand hands. Can you see in my two hands, ten thousand hands?

The metaphor simply means that a master, just with two hands, manages to work almost as if he has a thousand hands. He works on thousands of disciples. He is the greatest creator in the world. He does not paint, he does not play the guitar, he does not sing. But what he creates is... he peels every disciple, uncovers the hidden treasure at the very center of every living being. His two hands are not just two hands, because he is working on thousands of people -- hence the metaphor.

But there are idiots who will not understand metaphors, who will try to find out, "Is it true?" They want facts. As far as facts are concerned, Buddha has only two eyes and two hands, but as far as truth is concerned, he has ten thousand eyes and ten thousand hands.

To see what the tree contains one should look at the fruit of the tree; the fruit is decisive.

If one awakened master creates a tremendous atmosphere in which unlit souls become afire, with his two hands he is doing miracles. With his two eyes he is looking in thousands of souls to awaken them. But it is a truth, it is not a factuality. You cannot take a photograph of it.

Ma-yu asked Rinzai,

"In one thousand eyes," he is asking, "which is the true eye?" He is behaving just like an average, blind, sleepy, unconscious human being, because those thousands of eyes are nothing but reflections of the one eye that is just in the middle of your two eyebrows. We have called it the third eye. These two eyes look outwards, that third eye looks inwards; that is the true eye. But that true eye can function on a thousand people, on ten thousand people, on ten million people.

The master never gives you any carbon copy; all are as authentic as the original. He always shares with you the original, the authentic. His clarity, his vision, is so vast that millions can share it. That is the meaning of the metaphor.

But the stupid persons would always ask questions about metaphors. They don't understand that there are things which cannot be said without metaphors -- and those are the great things and great experiences in life, which cannot be expressed without metaphors, without poetry, without symbols.

Perhaps you know; that's why you are asking.

It is one of the greatest fallacies with people who have accumulated some knowledge -- all borrowed from scriptures, from teachers, from missionaries -- all rubbish, because unless it is your experience, it is not true.

Rinzai must have looked into this man, Ma-yu. He seems to be a scholar who has been reading scriptures; hence the question. He already knows the answer -- the answer from the scriptures, not the answer from his own experience. That's why he said, "THE GREAT COMPASSIONATE ONE HAS A THOUSAND HANDS AND A THOUSAND EYES. WHICH IS THE TRUE EYE? SPEAK, SPEAK!"

He wanted to expose Ma-yu: "Your knowledge is not your knowing. Your knowledge is all borrowed."

Don't depend on borrowed knowledge. That simply burdens you, makes you heavy, binds you into chains, imprisons you in words, and you forget completely your wings and the whole sky that is yours. But chained with religions and churches and scriptures, you cannot fly across the sun into the faraway blue sky; you cannot become one with the cosmos.

It is a very beautiful anecdote. Because Rinzai did not answer, and on the contrary started asking him, "WHICH IS THE TRUE EYE? SPEAK, SPEAK!"

He thought, "This fellow does not know even the scriptures. He is not a scholar." To show this, he pulled the master down off his high seat and sat on it himself. That's what scholars have been doing always.

Scholars are the arch enemies of those who have experienced the truth. That very experience of the truth makes the scholars feel so inferior that they become almost enraged. They lose all rationality and sensibility. They become insane.

That's the beauty of a man who knows how to treat the idiots:

He could not understand what to say.

... and because of his hesitation he exposed himself.

The authentic master never hesitates. Hesitation comes out of doubt. Hesitation comes because you don't really know, you are only pretending. And just a small question -- not a metaphysical or a philosophical question -- just a simple question, "HOW DO YOU DO?", and MA-YU HESITATED.

That was enough.

He was not interested in sitting on the high seat. He was interested in making Ma-yu understand that he does not know, but still he is pretending as if he knows.

All your scholars, all your preachers, all your so-called bishops and cardinals and imams and shankaracharyas are of the same category: they know much without knowing anything. They are very well trained parrots.

One bishop was very much in love with his parrot, but the parrot died. The beauty of the parrot was that he used to say the whole authorized Catholic prayer to God so phonetically, so accurately, that it amazed everybody who came to visit the bishop. But the parrot died.

It was a great despair how to find another such parrot, but he went to the pet shop and he told the sad story of his parrot dying. The shopkeeper said, "It will cost much, but I have the right parrot for you -- far more refined than the one that has died."

The bishop said, "Money is not the problem. You just show me the parrot."

He took the bishop inside the shop, where he had put a parrot in a golden cage -- a very beautiful specimen. The bishop asked, "What is so great about this parrot?"

He said, "You look closely. There are two threads hanging from his two feet. If you pull the right thread, he will immediately give the Sermon on the Mount."

The bishop said, "My God! And what about the left?"

"If you pull the left, he will recite what your parrot used to do. He will recite the Catholic authorized prayer to God."

The bishop was amazed, and he said, "If I pull both the threads together?"

The parrot said, "You idiot! I will fall on my asshole!"

Even parrots are far more intelligent than your so-called knowledgeable people.

Kikaku wrote:

Always visualize these haikus.

A BRILLIANT FULL MOON! -- and because of the brilliant full moon, ON THE MATTING OF MY FLOOR SHADOWS OF PINES FALL... and a deep silence, and a tremendous blissfulness.

Those things are not said. They have to be understood by visualizing.

The next time there is a full moon, just watch the shadows of the trees falling on your floor. They don't disturb even a small particle of dust. They are there, but almost absent -- just like the awakened being. He is here, but you can also say he is everywhere.

You can say about the awakened person that his presence and his absence are in equal parts -- a higher mathematics for those who are searching for the highest pinnacle, the highest expression of their potentiality.

Neither does the moon want in any way to make shadows, nor are the pine trees interested in making shadows, nor is the matting of your floor interested in keeping those shadows. They come, they go, they move with the moon. Nobody is interested... but everything is happening so silently and so beautifully.

For a man who comes to his very being, life becomes just like that: everything happens so silently, so peacefully. There is not even a small disturbance in the dust.

Question 1:

Maneesha has asked a question:

Maneesha, first you have to understand that you have not only this body of flesh and bones and blood, not only this brain which is part of the body. Behind the brain you have a mind -- that mind is abstract -- and behind the body you have an astral body. The word 'astral' comes from stars; it means a light.... Instead of flesh or bones, only a body made of light. This body of light, the astral body, has the mind in it.

When you die, your physical body and your physical mind are left behind. But the astral body travels with you, with the mind, with all the remembrances of the past life and the body, remembering all the scars and the wounds that have happened to the physical body.

This abstract phenomenon travels with you; hiding within it is your ultimate, existential center.

Until you know the center, you will have to travel continuously from one body to another body. You have been traveling already for thousands of lives, gathering more and more memories in your astral mind, more and more memories in your astral body. Although your center is unaffected, it is surrounded by the astral body, and the astral body goes on from womb to womb, from grave to grave. That is your individuality; it has a continuum.

But the continuum comes to an end when you become a buddha.

When you penetrate deeply to the center, you are also cutting the astral body apart, making a way through the mind, beyond the mind, through the astral body and beyond the astral body, to the center of your being. Once you have reached to the center of your being, the continuum of your individuality stops. Now begins the universal existence.

You will not enter into another womb again, and you will not be burnt on another funeral pyre again. Now you will be one with the whole.

Of course, everything has a cost. You will have to drop your long-cherished love of individuality. Millions of years you have loved your individuality, but your individuality at the final stage is a hindrance.

Now take a jump out of the continuum and become one with the whole. You will disappear just like a dewdrop in the ocean. But it is the ultimate bliss, it is the most profound ecstasy to become the oceanic, to become the cosmic. You will never repent that you have lost your individuality.

What was in your individuality?

Have you ever thought?

Your individuality was a light prison, which carried you from one womb, passing through the grave, to another womb, and repeating the same things again and again and again.

That's why in the East they call it the life and death cycle. To jump out of this cycle is the whole purpose of meditation -- to come out of this continuum, which has been just a deep anguish, anxiety and angst, and to disappear into the blue sky.

This disappearance is not your death. This disappearance makes you one with the whole.

And to be one with the whole is the greatest joy, the greatest blissfulness. Nothing is more significant, more full of splendor, more majestic. Here all the buddhas have disappeared in the ultimate eternity of existence. It is freedom from individuality, freedom from yourself.

You have known freedom from others, but you don't recognize that you are still a slave of your own individuality. It is a cage... it may be golden.

Open the cage and fly across the sun into the blue sky and disappear, without leaving any footprints, any trace behind.

This Gautam the Buddha used to call anatta, no self, no mind, no you, no I. This in fact can be said in another way....

I have told you about Kabir, one of the great mystics of India. When he was young he became enlightened, and he wrote a small poem, in which comes the line: The drop has disappeared in the ocean.

When he was dying, he called his son Kamaal and told him to change that line. Kamaal said, "It is so beautiful -- the dewdrop has disappeared in the ocean. Why are you changing it? And what is the substitute?"

Kabir said, "These are my last breaths; don't argue, simply do what I am saying. You write instead: The ocean has disappeared in the dewdrop. That was my first impression, this is my last impression." And he closed his eyes.

But both the impressions are beautiful. In the beginning, of course, you will see the dewdrop is disappearing in the ocean. But finally you will realize the ocean has disappeared in the dewdrop.

Now it is time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh.

Miss Goodbody says to her class one afternoon, "Okay, children, the one who gives me the right answer to the next question may go home right away."

Immediately, Little Albert throws his schoolbag out of the window.

"Who did that?" snaps Miss Goodbody, angrily.

"I did!" says Albert. "See you tomorrow!"

Paddy decides that it is time to get a full-time job. A new salami factory has opened in town, so he goes to apply. He picks up his application form, and he meets Mussolini McVey, the manager.

"Now, Mr. Murphy," says Mussolini, "we have got many applications for these jobs, so we have included two intelligence-testing questions. Come back tomorrow with your application and the answers to the questions."

At home, Paddy looks at the form.

Question 1 reads: How many seconds are there in a year? Question 2 reads: How many days of the week begin with the letter "T"?

The next morning, Paddy goes for his interview at the appointed time.

"Good morning, Mr. Murphy," says Mussolini McVey. "And what is your answer to the first question -- How many seconds are there in a year?"

"No problem, sir," says Paddy. "The answer is twelve."

"Twelve?" asks Mussolini. "How did you get that?"

"Easy," replies Paddy. "The second of January... the second of February...!"

"Okay, okay Mr. Murphy," says McVey. "What about question two: How many days of the week begin with 'T'?"

"No problem, sir," says Paddy. "The answer is two."

"Very good," says McVey. "and by the way, what are they?"

"Easy," replies Paddy. "Today and tomorrow."

Farmer Scrumpy has been in the city for a couple of days, and when he gets back, Homer, his hired hand, collects him from the train station in the old farm Ford.

"How is everything, Homer?" asks Scrumpy.

"Ah, so-so," replies Homer.

"Anything much happen while I was gone?" asks Scrumpy, climbing into the car.

"Nothing much to speak of," replies Homer, driving off. "The dog limps a little."

"Really?" asks Scrumpy.

"Yup," says Homer.

"How did that happen?" asks Scrumpy.

"Well," explains Homer, "I guess the old horse was acting kind of crazy, running out of the stable, half scorched, in the middle of the night, and kicked him."

"The horse?" cries Scrumpy. "Half scorched?"

"Yup," explains Homer. "When the barn burnt down and all the hay went up in smoke, the horse got scorched."

"Really?" cries Scrumpy. "The barn burnt down?"

"Yup," replies Homer. "I guess a few sparks must have jumped from the house to start it.

I got out of the house just in time."

"Really?" cries Scrumpy. "The house was on fire? How did you get out?"

"Well," explains Homer, "your wife kicked me out of bed and woke me up!"

"Really?" shouts Scrumpy. "You were in bed with my wife?"

"Yup! We were drinking your homemade whiskey."

"Really?" shouts Scrumpy. "You were drinking my whiskey and in my bed with my wife? Where is she now?"

"Well," explains Homer, "she got crisped in the fire, but don't worry! I saved the whiskey!"

"Thank God!" cries Scrumpy. "Did anything else happen?"

"Nope," explains Homer, "it was a pretty quiet weekend!"

Nivedano...

(drumbeat)

(gibberish)

Nivedano...

(drumbeat)

Be silent...

Close your eyes...

Feel your body to be completely frozen.

This is the right moment to look inwards, with your total consciousness, with your total life energy, and with an urgency as if this is your last moment on the earth.

Go deeper and deeper, penetrating every layer.

As you go deeper, you will find deep silence descending on you.

Deeper... a great peace that passeth understanding.

Still more, deeper... and flowers start showering on you with a fragrance you have never known.

At the very center of your being you will find yourself -- not the way you have known up to now, but in a totally new way. You will find yourself one of the buddhas, alert, awakened.

And the buddha has only one quality: witnessing.

Now witness: the body is not you, the mind is not you -- even the astral body is not you.

Neither the silence, the peace, nor the fragrances are you. They are all around you, but you are only a witness.

Your only quality that is eternal is witnessing.

To make it clear, Nivedano...

(drumbeat) Relax...

Let go, but remain a witness, remain a buddha.

This moment, you are the most blessed people on the earth. Ten thousand buddhas are melting, dissolving, and the Buddha Auditorium has become an ocean of consciousness.

Drink as much from this divine juice as possible, and persuade the buddha to come with you. He has been hiding in you for thousands of lives. Tell him to come out to the periphery, to the circumference of your life. Carrying water from the well, chopping wood, buddha has to be present every moment -- waking or sleeping.

The day your circumference and center become one will be the greatest day of your life.

The continuum of your birth and death will disappear. You will be enlightened.

And when you will drop this body, this mind... with this body and this mind you will also drop your astral bodies, your inner mind. You will become just a dewdrop -- either disappearing in the ocean, or the ocean disappearing in the dewdrop. This is the ultimate peak of human evolution. The whole existence is waiting for it.

Whenever one man becomes one with the whole, the whole existence dances, sings, showers flowers, celebrates.

Gather as much as you can before Nivedano calls you back. Persuade the buddha.... It is your innermost core, it is nobody else's monopoly. Hold his hand, show him the way, the golden path that you have traveled to the center.

Now don't come alone. Come with the buddha following you. He has to become your everyday life, your breathing, your heartbeat. He has to sing with you, he has to dance with you.

His being with you all the time will make your life a continuous festival.

Nivedano...

(drumbeat)

Come... but don't come alone.

Come as a buddha: peacefully, silent, with great grace.

Sit for a few minutes just to remember where you have been, just to remind you of your inner splendor, the great silence you encountered, and the buddha who has come as a shadow behind you. Each day he is coming closer and closer to you.

The day you and the buddha dissolve into each other, you are awakened, you are enlightened.

This is true religion.

This is authentic spirituality.

It does not depend on any organization or church. It is absolutely your journey towards your home. It is remembering a forgotten language.

And if one man can become a buddha, it is a proof that every man can become a buddha.

One seed makes the whole earth green.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.