The mystery of the knack

Question 1:

Maneesha, the path of the mystic is the path of growing qualities, of transforming the quantitative into the qualitative. For example, love can be a quantity - and as love is understood in the world of sleeping people, it is a quantity; hence, it is followed by jealousy.

If I love you, you are in continuous fear that I may start loving somebody else too.

And with the love divided, you will not be getting the same quantity you were getting before.

Jealousy is nothing but an expression that love is still a quantity in your mind: shared, it becomes less; shared with many people, you are getting less and less. Hence a monopoly is needed, so that you can have the whole lot of it.

And both of the lovers - because of this stupid idea - are suspicious, are always spying on each other. If your husband sees you laughing with somebody else, even that is enough to create a quarrel, a conflict, a fight. Your laughter is his monopoly. You cannot smile anywhere else, you cannot be joyful with somebody else; you are confined to an imprisonment. And the same way you are confined, you are jailed, in return you are creating a jail for your jailer. All lovers are functioning as jailers to each other.

Hence, love promises so many roses but brings only thorns, promises stars but brings only wounds.

The awakened person, the person who is conscious of his acts, of himself, transforms every quantity into quality. His love becomes lovingness. He is a loving person.

Now, lovingness is not a quantity, it is a quality. It is not confined to somebody, it has nothing to do with the other, it has something to do with yourself. Your heart is overflowing with a loving energy; everybody is invited ... whoever is receptive.

The same is true about other ingredients of your consciousness.

Gratitude is also one of the most important things in the interior world of man. But always remember the distinction: if gratitude is a quantity, then you are going to become burdened with it because quantity is material, and matter has weight; you need to be unburdened.

And when I said there is no way to show your gratitude to the master, naturally a problem arises:

what you are going to do with this burden? You will be crushed under it. It may turn sour.

But gratitude can be transformed into gratefulness. Gratefulness has nothing to do with quantity; it is a quality. You are simply grateful - not only to the master, because the idea of being grateful only to the master is again a hangover of your old ideas of monopoly. The master is to free you; the master is to destroy all limits that confine you, imprison you.

If you are grateful, you are grateful to the earth, you are grateful to the sky, you are grateful to the stars, you are grateful to the ocean, you are grateful to the whole of existence.

This is the only way not to feel burdened.

Gratitude is transformed from matter into energy. Matter is like stone - heavy and hard. The moment it is transformed into quality, it becomes just an energy, a radiant energy. And energy can never be kept confined - its life is in the flow from one end of eternity to the other end; this whole universe is its space.

A single man can fill the whole universe with his gratefulness, with his lovingness, with his friendliness, and there will be no burden on him. In fact, the greater the transformation from quantity to quality, the lighter you will feel. A moment comes when you have transformed all that is material in you. In the immaterial you are freed of weight - then gravitation does not work on you.

Then you have wings and the whole sky is yours. And there are skies beyond skies, and they are all yours.

Love for the master, gratitude to the master should bring freedom to you.

And that is possible only if you start changing nouns into verbs. Existence really consists of verbs.

Nouns are fictions created by man.

In existence, there is nothing which is a noun. You say this is a tree, but have you ever thought? - while you are saying this is a tree, the tree is bringing new leaves, old leaves are falling; new flowers are blossoming, old flowers are disappearing. It is not a dead thing; hence, it cannot be a noun. It is a living entity, it is changing constantly.

The word 'tree' gives a false idea, as if there is something unchanging. It will be better to call it a 'treeing' - because the tree is continuously moving. The river is 'rivering' - it is a movement, it is not stale, it is not dead. In other words, the existence does not consist of dead matter, it consists of living energy.

There is nothing permanent except change. If you can, with awareness, change your burdens into wings, your treasures into fragrances, you will be unburdened and the whole of existence will be more beautiful, will be more graceful, will be more blissful and a benediction to you. It will go on showering flowers on you. You have fulfilled your destiny - the whole existence rejoices.

There are beautiful stories ... I will call them stories because there is no way to prove that they are facts. I would love to think of them as facts.

It is said that wherever Gautam Buddha moved, even if trees were out of season they suddenly became green, full of flowers, foliage. People used to know that Buddha had passed this way just by looking at the trees on the side of the road - because the whole forest would be naked, barren, no leaves, no flowers; it was not the season.

It looks like a fiction. But in a deeper sense, it is a reality. Perhaps visibly the trees had not become green with flowers and foliage, but invisibly the trees felt as if the spring had come. When a man has reached the highest peak of consciousness, it is not an individual achievement. In him, the whole universe has achieved its deepest longing. It is natural that the whole existence should rejoice and dance and sing.

Just remember: even things which are beautiful and good can become a burden, and the moment they become a burden you can even start taking revenge on the person.

Great masters have been betrayed, and they have been betrayed by their great disciples - not by their ordinary disciples, but by those who were very close to them.

It is tremendously interesting to go into the psychology of it. What happened to Judas? He was very close to Jesus. He was the most intelligent of Jesus' disciples, he was the only one who was educated, and the only one with a very sharp intellect. What happened to him?

On the surface, the facts are very simple: He betrayed; he betrayed because Jesus' enemies offered him thirty pieces of silver.

This is sheer nonsense. A man with the qualities of Judas cannot betray a master of the quality of Jesus just for thirty pieces of silver. There must be much more to it. Perhaps Jesus was becoming a burden.

Jesus was giving him so much love, and there was no way to return it. Jesus was giving him so much insight into existence, and there was no way to show his gratitude. Jesus was doing everything that a master should do for his spiritual growth.

But one should always remember that the person who is being benefitted is also an individual. He cannot go on taking because deep down it is humiliating, it is a spiritual insult. And there is only so much one can tolerate. The same thing which was so sweet and so beautiful can turn into its very opposite, can become a poison.

It was just to unburden himself that Judas betrayed Jesus.

And I say it with certain authority: When he saw what he had done to a man who has always been nothing but love, nothing but compassion, who was always ready to give everything; when he saw the crucifixion and the torture and he realized what he had done, within twenty-four hours he hanged himself from a tree and killed himself.

Christians don't talk about the suicide of Judas. But the whole secret is in the suicide of Judas - not in the crucifixion of Jesus.

Judas crucifying himself - and all those thirty silver pieces, he had thrown on the ground - indicates something deeper than historical fact, something concerned more with the inner world. At a certain point, he became so burdened that he became angry at Jesus.

He was a disciple: he had loved Jesus his whole life and he was grateful to Jesus.

But neither did Jesus tell him nor did he inquire how to transform love when it becomes a burden, gratefulness when it becomes a burden, how to avoid the danger of all those beautiful feelings turning into poison. But when he saw Jesus being crucified, suddenly all anger disappeared. Instead of anger there was only repentance - and not ordinary repentance; he threw down those thirty silver pieces and committed suicide.

His suicide is so significant.

And the Christians' silence about his suicide is also significant: they don't want to bring it in because to bring it in they will have to go deeper than the superficial facts of history. History consists only of daily newspapers, collected, just superficial. It does not give insight. And if it was only the case with Jesus one could think that it may have been an exception. It is not so. It has been happening with almost every great master. Seeing that it happened with Mahavira, it happened with Gautam Buddha, I started thinking that there seems to be something much more than the mere fact that some important disciple betrays the master - but why?

My understanding is that it is because the science of the relationship between the master and the disciple has not yet been completely discovered. This is one of the basic contributions that I would like to make to the science: that a master has to be aware not to burden the disciple to such an extent that what was beautiful starts becoming humiliating, insulting.

I am reminded....

I had a friend who was a great politician. He was the education minister, with great longings to one day go even higher, to the highest post in the country.

He was also a very rich man. Once in a while, whenever I was not traveling, he would come to me to ask about peace, silence, relaxation. And I told him, "Unless you drop your ambitions, you cannot be at peace and you cannot be silent and you cannot relax - because in a competitive world where you are not the only one who is trying to become the prime minister of the country, if you are relaxing and others are not relaxing, you have lost the game. Those who are able to remain tense and go on rushing, speeding, who are almost mad, will not even stop to rest unless they have reached to the very peak." He said, "This is very difficult. I cannot drop the ambition, I have come so far - now the goal is only two steps away. Once I have reached the goal, I will renounce politics and I will sit with you and meditate, and do whatsoever you say. But before that, if I can have a little peace of mind, a little silence in the heart, a little relaxation, I can compete more efficiently." I said, "That is a contradiction.

" Again and again it was the same thing. I told him, "I will never change my position, and I think you are not going to change your position - why waste time? Don't you have any other problem?" He said, "I have so many problems. One problem particularly I came today to ask you about... " And his problem was that he was a very generous man, but very proud. He was not born into the family which he had become the head of - he was adopted. He was born a poor man, and suddenly he became one of the richest men in the country. All his relatives were poor. He made all those relatives rich - gave them factories, gave them shops, gave them as much money as possible because he had so much.

He said to me, "The problem is nobody loves me. I have been giving to everybody - my friends, my family, even strangers have come to me and I have never said no to anything. But nobody loves me.

I don't see in their eyes any respect towards me and I am puzzled. I have done everything - nobody would have done what I have done.

" I said, "I want to ask you one question: Have you allowed those people to do something for you?"

He said, "I am a very proud man. I would rather die, but I will not beg. And in fact there is no need; I have everything. They cannot do anything for me, I don't need it.

" I said, "The problem is very clear: they are disrespectful, they are unloving, unfriendly, because you have burdened them; you have in a very subtle way humiliated them. You are the man who can help, who can give millions of rupees to people and who does not need anything in return.

" I said, "That is hurting their pride. I know your friends, I know the relatives you have supported and you have made rich. And I know that they are full of anger, rage and hatred for you. You have done everything good for them, but you don't understand human psychology. You do a few small things ... you need not ask them for big things, but you can ask them for something: 'I love your roses.

One day can you send a few roses to me?' And all their anger will disappear. You have many cars.

Those people have cars because you have given them money. There is no need for you, but once in a while you can just phone them and say, 'I need your car; can you send the car?' You have your own guest houses, you don't need any help from anybody, but once in while you can ask a friend: 'If your guest house is available, one of my friends is coming and I would like you to take care of him - just do this much kindness for me.'

And you can change the whole atmosphere around you; then they are equal to you. Right now you have reduced them to such a state - you are so high, so beyond their reach - they are just like insects crawling on the earth.

" He said, "I never thought about it in this way." And after ten years, he met me in a train and he told me, "You were right. I started asking for small things, which don't mean anything, and they have all changed. Now there is no anger, no hatred, no humiliation; they feel equal to me because they know they have also done something for me. It is not only me who is always doing things for them; they have also been doing things for me. It may be just bringing me a few roses from their garden."

The relationship between the master and the disciple is a very subtle one. And in the past, it has not been understood why great masters have been betrayed. If this understanding becomes part of the relationship in the future, no master will be betrayed; there will be no reason. But the master has to understand that the disciple is also a human being - and this game should not be a one-way traffic where the master goes on giving and the disciple has just to receive it. The master should be capable - whether he needs it or not; perhaps he does not need it - just to give the disciple an idea that he can do something for the master.

If Judas could have done something for Jesus, there would have been no crucifixion.

So your question is signficant. Transform your gratitude in gratefulness - and not towards the master only; the master is only a door. Beyond the door is the whole existence.

Don't cling to the master - because the master is only the frame of the door; he allows you an opening into existence, he is not a wall. But remember that you are not to become attached to the frame; you have to go beyond the frame. There is no need to betray.

Just go beyond.

And let every experience in you become an expanding energy phenomenon, a resonance - not like a stone, solid and heavy, but with no weight ... just spreading all over space, with no limits.

Question 2:

It is true that all scientific discoveries come to the scientist out of the blue. It is not his effort, but on the contrary his no-effort, allowing existence to reveal its secrets to him.

This is not new.

The East has known it for at least five thousand years.

Lao Tzu has even given it a name: 'effortless effort', 'action without action'. And he was trying to explain that whatever man has come to know is not through effort, although there is much effort involved; hence there is great misunderstanding.

I will give you an example that will help.

For six years Gautam Buddha continuously did everything that was supposed to make him enlightened, and he was such a sincere seeker....

He lived with many masters. With ordinary people - insincere seekers, halfhearted seekers - even the bogus masters can go on pretending that they are authentic.

But it was not possible with Gautam Buddha.

The masters themselves confessed to him, "Forgive me, you are such a sincere seeker. I can always say to others that, 'You are not doing it wholeheartedly,' but you are doing it so wholeheartedly that it simply proves that I don't know how one achieves enlightenment - I am not enlightened. With others it is okay, because they never do anything wholeheartedly, and I can always tell them that it is because they are not working that they are not achieving - and the question of my enlightenment does not arise, I remain enlightened. But with you it is impossible. To lie to you is inhuman. You simply go to some other master."

He went to all the known famous masters, and the result was the same.

The last master said to him, "You have worked enough, you have done everything that is possible for human beings, nothing more can be done. Now you just retire into the forest. You have renounced the world, now renounce this spiritual effort. Forget all about enlightenment. And I know you are capable - if you can forget all about your kingdom, you can forget all about this enlightenment. Just relax, deep in the forest."

He moved to the forest.

And the first night, relaxing under a bodhi tree near Bodh Gaya by the side of a small river, Niranjana, on a full-moon night, he became enlightened. He was not doing anything for enlightenment. The enlightenment came out of the blue.

But don't think that you can go and catch the train to Bodh Gaya, on a full-moon night lie down by the side of the tree near the Niranjana river and wait for enlightenment. Nothing will happen. Those six years of tremendous effort did not produce enlightenment, but those six years produced so much relaxation that enlightenment became possible.

Enlightenment is not caused by effort. By effort, relaxation is caused. You have done so much that you simply give up. But without doing it you cannot give up. So in the Buddhist religion there is a problem. There are sects who think that Buddha's enlightened happened because of six years of effort: those six years preceded, enlightenment followed. To the ordinary logic it seems so.

Only one school, Zen, has been very extraordinary in its insight. It says it was not caused by six years of effort; but six years of effort have caused relaxation - and relaxation simply opens you up to the unknown, to the unknowable.

Enlightenment is not an effect of six years' effort, but without those six years' effort there would have been no enlightenment either.

You have to understand the subtlety of it.

The whole day you work, and then you have a good sleep in the night.

Emperors cannot sleep. And it is very illogical, because the whole day long they are resting - it is logical that the person who is practicing rest the whole day long should rest deeper in the night than you, who have been working the whole day, tiring yourself ... your practice is not for relaxation, your practice is against it.

But life is not logic, fortunately. Otherwise the person who has been working hard the whole day will have to work hard the whole night too. In his whole life he will not get any rest, because his training and his discipline will become more and more mature and more and more ripened.

It is good that life has a dynamic, a dialectics.

All day you have been making great effort - you have earned relaxation. You need relaxation, you have worked hard.

Nature is compassionate.

The emperor has been resting the whole day, he does not need any sleep at night. Nature does not care whether he is an emperor or a beggar.

The dialectics of life is that the people who make great effort for enlightenment will not achieve by their effort. One day they will have to give it all up, and in that moment of relaxation something opens up - you are not the doer, something happens to you.

And the same is true about scientific discoveries - the law is the same. A scientist works for years on a certain project, and then one day he has done everything that he could possibly think of; he drops the whole idea. And suddenly a window opens, and what he was searching for with such great effort is made available to him without any effort at all.

In fact, there are deep reasons in it: whenever you are making effort you become tense; when you are tense, your mind becomes narrow. And you are so ambitious, so desirous, so much in a hurry to get something, that you are almost a chaos.

And to know anything - either scientific or religious - you need to be a silent, peaceful awareness, not doing anything, not even desiring anything, not even looking for anything.

But all the time before, when you have been looking and not finding, has created a certain seed in you. In this relaxed moment, that seed starts becoming a sprout. It happened in Madame Curie's case - which is the most famous example. She was the first woman to achieve the Nobel prize.

She had been working for three years on a particular mathematical problem. She tried from every direction, from every angle, but nothing happened - the problem seemed to be insoluble.

And one night she was working late, up to two o'clock, and finally gave up the whole thing, thinking "I have wasted three years, I could have discovered many other things. This idiotic problem is stubborn - just like me. I am stubborn too, but now I drop out of this fight." She closed the notebook in which she was working, went to sleep, and in the morning... She was alone in the room, and the room was locked from inside. And anyway, even if it was not locked, nobody could have done it ... if Madame Curie was not able to do it in three years. She went to her table and she found a piece of paper just on top of her notebook, under the paperweight, with the solution to the problem.

She could not believe it.

Her husband was not at home; he had gone for a weekend with his friends. No servant would have been capable of doing it. Moreover, the room was locked from inside.

Then she looked more minutely; the handwriting was her own.

Then slowly she remembered that she had had a dream that she was working on the problem and she had solved it. Perhaps in sleep she got up and wrote down the answer which had come in her dream - not to forget it in the morning.

This has been happening to almost all great scientists.

So you are right that the scientist has no right to say, "This is my discovery." In a way, it is not his discovery; in a way, it is existence that has chosen him to be a vehicle. Existence has not chosen anybody else to be a vehicle; he has been chosen because he has been working so hard that he had come to the point where relaxation is possible - complete and total relaxation. In that total relaxation, existence opens its secrets. Understanding this, you can see many implications: that in this way science and religion are exactly the same.

Their objects may be different - science may be looking outward, religion may be looking inward - but the discovery either of science or of religion happens in the same kind of state, the totally relaxed mind. Or to use the mystic word, a state of no-mind - because when the mind is completely relaxed there is no mind, the window opens.

Mind is the block. And once the mind is no more, you start seeing things that were always there in front of you but your eyes were covered with thick layers of thought. You were not able to see. You are asking how one can live in this miraculous, in this unknowable continuously.

The moment you ask how, you are asking for a technique, and no technique is possible - all techniques are efforts. So any technique will do, just do it so wholeheartedly that you come to a point where you drop it - because the real thing is to drop it. There are one hundred and twelve methods of meditation.

But the real thing is not the meditation; the real thing is that after all those one hundred and twelve methods the same thing happens. You have done it exhaustively. You have staked everything and now - seeing that you don't have any more energy, any more desire - you relax. All efforts are dropped, all techniques forgotten.

In this innocence, the miraculous is yours.

You are part of it; you have been always part of it. The unknowable is not something separate from you, it is your heartbeat. Your heartbeat has a synchronicity with the heartbeat of the whole universe.

But let me remind you again: first you have to do everything that is possible for you - not holding anything back, not thinking that anyway finally you are going to drop it so why put so much energy into it? No, you have to be madly in it, as if effort is going to give you the truth. Only then one day - tired, exhausted, finished with effort - you relax.

You don't know ... that depth of relaxation will depend on the depth of your effort. If the effort was a hundred percent total, then the relaxation will be a hundred percent total; and with the total relaxation you have moved into the miraculous, into the unknowable.

Then it is your world.

Then you breathe in it, you live in it.

This is what we have called the ultimate realization - enlightenment.

Question 3:

The way things are happening to you is so beautiful and natural that it is better you should not interfere in it.

If I give you any idea, you will start interfering in it.

It is happening on its own.

Just go with it, with the stream - never against the stream.

The watercourse way is my whole philosophy. Just go with the stream in a deep let-go, with all my blessings.

I will not give you any idea.

Existence will take care of it.

Question 4:

My number is zero. So whenever you want to channel with me, remember zero!

Question 5:

Meditation is such a mystery that it can be called a science, an art, a knack, without any contradiction.

From one point of view it is a science because there is a clearcut technique that has to be done.

There are no exceptions to it, it is almost like a scientific law.

But from a different point of view it can also be said to be an art.

Science is an extension of the mind - it is mathematics, it is logic, it is rational.

Meditation belongs to the heart, not to the mind - it is not logic; it is closer to love.

It is not like other scientific activities, but more like music, poetry, painting, dancing; hence, it can be called an art.

But meditation is such a great mystery that calling it 'science' and 'art' does not exhaust it.

It is a knack - either you get it or you don't get it. A knack is not a science, it cannot be taught. A knack is not an art. A knack is the most mysterious thing in human understanding.

For example, you may have come across people.... Somebody has the knack of becoming a friend immediately; just meeting him in the bus for a few moments and you suddenly feel as if you have known each other forever, perhaps for many lives. And you cannot pinpoint what is going on, because you have just seen the man for the first time.

I have a friend. He is a doctor in philosophy. He has never earned a single cent in his life, but he lives like a king. He has a certain knack that anybody becomes his friend; he just has to look at you and you are his friend - and you feel as if you have been his friend forever. He has lived on borrowed money - which he never returns because he cannot, there is no way to return it, but nobody feels hurt about it. Even though he has borrowed money from you and he has never returned it, he has the nerve to ask you again - and you will give it! The man is so lovely, so beautiful, that to ask money from him simply doesn't seem right. And he never feels embarrassed, he never avoids people he owes money to.

I have asked him many times, "How long will you continue in this way?"

He said, "How long? The population goes on growing - even if I live a million years, I will always have people to give me money."

And the beauty is that you give him money and you feel honored that he asked you, not anybody else. Now what will you call it? - art? science? It is simply a knack.

He travels without a ticket, he has never purchased a ticket. I have been traveling with him many times. And he will say, "Why are you wasting money on tickets? Let the ticket checker come; after all, he is a human being." And once the ticket checker comes, he is caught into this man's net. He offers him a cigarette, and they are chit-chatting, and they start playing cards, and the ticket checker completely forgets why he has come. And now it is too late to ask for the ticket - they have become so friendly to each other that the ticket checker asks him, "Can I help you in any way?"

He says, "You have to - because I have lost my ticket!"

He said, "Don't be worried. I will be there at the gate."

He lives in friends' houses. He has no house of his own. He moves from one city to another city, but he knows all kinds of tricks with playing cards, chess, tennis, all kinds of nonsense things in which people are interested. And he is a genius. In chess you cannot win against him, in cards you cannot win.

And he is such a happy person that people like for him to come to them even if he is going to take their money, even if he is going to take their car and never return - still people like him, because he is simply likeable. It is not on any conditions that he is liked, it is just his whole personality.

Once he was staying with me. And just next door used to live another professor who was Indian, married to an American woman. The American woman was also a professor at the university. I spent the day at the university, so he started making friendships in the neighborhood. The American woman got into his net, and her husband also became very friendly.

Things came to such point that the professor's wife wanted to leave with my friend. But he said, "It will be very difficult. I have no house, no shelter anywhere. I don't know where I will be tomorrow morning. You will be in difficulty with me, and I love you so much that I will not create such a difficulty for you. And I love your husband too; I cannot disturb his life."

But the professor was so enchanted by him that he said, "If you want, you can take my wife."

I told him, "Don't be stupid. You can take cars, that is okay; you can take people's tape recorders, that is okay; you can take their cameras, that is okay. But if you start taking people's wives, you will be in great trouble. So make it a point this is the limit. Don't go beyond this limit."

He said, "You are right. Rationally I also think that this is right. But isn't it worth trying once? When the husband is ready...."

I said, "Any husband will be ready! You are an idiot. It is not because of your charm, every husband will be ready. How many wives can you manage? You don't have any money. And remember, you cannot bring any woman into my house."

He said, "That's not right, because that's what I was thinking - I will leave this woman here. Another woman ... I will get caught and I will leave her here. You can have disciples!"

I said, "I - these kinds of disciples are of no use to me."

A knack is something mysterious, just a few people can do it.

I know a man who can make his ear lobes move. I have not found another who can move his ear lobes. Now what do you call it? - science or what? Because I have asked doctors, "What do you say about ear lobes?"

They say, "It is impossible."

But I brought my friend to one doctor and, I told him, "Show this doctor...."

And the doctor said, "My God! He moves his ear lobes very easily, without any trouble."

In fact, ear lobes have no biological possibility of movement, you have no control over them - you try. You don't have any control. They are your ear lobes, but you don't have any control. But I know one man who manages. And I have asked him, "How do you manage?" He said, "I don't know. Just from the very beginning I have been doing it."

It is absolutely impossible, physically impossible - because to move those lobes you need a certain nervous system to control them, and the nerve system is not there. The lobe is just flesh. Meditation, in the last resort, is a knack too.

That's why for thousands of years people have been meditating, teaching, but very few people have achieved heights in meditation, and very few people have even tried.

And the vast majority of humanity has not even bothered to think about it. It is something ... a seed you are born with.

If you don't have the seed, a master can go on showering all his bliss on you, still nothing will happen in you.

And if the seed is there, just the presence of the master, just the way he looks into your eyes, and something of tremendous importance happens in you - a revolution that you cannot explain to anybody.

It is one of the difficulties for all meditators that they cannot explain to their friends, their families, what they are doing. Because the majority of humanity is not interested in it at all. And those who are not interested in it at all simply think about people who are interested, that something is loose in their heads, something is wrong.

Sitting silently, doing nothing, the spring comes and the grass grows by itself - but in the first place, why should you bother about the grass? Basho's beautiful haiku will look absurd to them. Grass is going to grow by itself whether you sit silently or not, why waste your time? - grass is going to grow by itself. Let the spring come - spring comes by itself, grass grows by itself. Why are you wasting your time? - do something else meanwhile.

If a man has not something in his heart already - a small seed - then it is impossible for him.

He can learn the technique, he can learn the art.

But if the knack is missing he is not going to succeed.

So thousands of people start meditation, but very few - so few that they can be counted on ten fingers - ever achieve to enlightenment. And unless meditation becomes enlightenment, you have simply wasted your time.