A Tree Grows

THE GREATEST ENEMY OF RELIGION is not material-ism but morality. Why? Because morality tries to impose spirituality it is a conditioning and religion can flower only from the within, it cannot be imposed from the without. Hence morality creates an illusion of false religion.

Morality is a pretender, morality is a pseudo-religion. It gives you respectability but it does not give you understanding. It gives you a great ego trip but it cannot give you humility. It makes you feel superior but it doesn't help inner growth. And the man who feels superior cannot grow. He is stuck with the ego.

Morality is a sort of decoration of the ego. Yes, through morality you can cultivate great virtues, but you will never be virtuous. Through morality you can become very talented in certain directions but those talents will remain unconscious. Morality cannot bring awareness because morality is not based on enlightenment.

The essential has to come from the inner, the essential has to grow like a tree, the essential is alive.

The non-essential is imposed from the outside.

Before we enter this beautiful parable four things have to be very clearly understood. First, there are two kinds of unity in life. One unity is mechanical - for example, a car. A car has a certain unity, a functional unity, but it is assembled, it comes out of an assembly line. You cannot assemble a tree, you cannot assemble a baby. They also have a sort of unity - but it is totally different. Their unity is organic. A car is mechanical, a baby is organic. A machine is mechanical, a tree is organic. You cannot put a tree together, it grows. It grows out of its own inner centre. At the most you can help - or hinder - but you cannot put a tree together.

You can put a car together, you can assemble a car - hence a car has no soul, no self, no centre. It is a superficial unity. And the car cannot grow, it cannot give birth to new baby cars.

The tree grows and can give birth to millions of trees. And the tree has a centre, it is run by its innermost centre. When fall comes and the old leaves drop, who brings the new leaves? From where do they come? They evolve from the innermost core of the tree.

If a mechanical part of the car is missing you will have to replace it. The car cannot evolve it itself. It depends on you; it has no soul, it has no inner discipline of its own. If you cut off a branch of a tree another branch is supplied by the centre, but if you destroy a machine nothing will come from the centre... there is none, there is no centre.

Morality is mechanical, religion is organic. This is the first basic thing to be understood. Morality is put together from the outside, religion grows from the innermost core of your being. Morality comes out of conditioning, religion comes out of meditation. Morality is enforced by others, religion you have to seek and search for yourself. Morality is a social device, religion is an adventure. Morality is dominated by the politician and the priest, religion is a rebellion. Very rarely is a person religious - and whenever there is a religious person there is a great revolution around him.

Moral people are ordinary people, as ordinary as the immoral - sometimes even more ordinary than the immoral. The immoral may sometimes have courage but the moral has no courage. The immoral may sometimes have intelligence but the moral has no intelligence. The immoral may sometimes be original but the moral is always repetitive.

Morality is the greatest enemy of religion because it is a pseudo-coin. It pretends and it can deceive people. It has deceived down the ages; millions and millions of people are and have been deceived by morality. And they think that when they have morality they have religion.

The second thing: morality is always relative. You can have more intelligence than somebody else or somebody else can have more virtue than you. Somebody can be more courageous than you or more cowardly than you. Somebody can be more sharing, more loving, or you can be more loving than somebody else. Morality is comparative.

Nobody can be more religious than you or less religious than you - religion is non-comparative.

when religion is there it is simply there. Can you say Buddha was more religious than Jesus? Can you say Mahavira was more religious than Mohammed? Can you say Lao Tzu was more religious than Krishna? It would be absurd, the very statement would be absurd - because religion is not quantity, it is quality of being. You cannot have more or less. There are no degrees. You can be more honest than somebody else, you can be more of a thief than somebody else - there are possibilities - but how can you be more religious or less religious than somebody else? Religion means awakening. Religion means you have come home. How can you be less at home or more at home than somebody else?

When a man has become aware, his awareness is always total and complete, utterly complete.

It does not come in parts, it comes as a whole - hence it is holy. Religion comes as a whole, morality comes in all shapes and sizes. You can have a family size or a medium size morality - like toothpaste. Morality comes in all shapes and sizes, religion is just complete. Either it is or it is not.

Sometimes people come to me and they ask, 'Who is more enlightened - Buddha or Mahavira?' The question is absurd. Who is more enlightened? Enlightenment means that you have gone beyond relativity; more and less cannot exist now. Who is more enlightened? Enlightenment means that you have disappeared - and so have all relative concepts. You are simply there a pure isness.

Whenever anybody becomes a pure isness, a pure existence, a primordial innocence. there is no comparison. To go beyond comparison is to become enlightened - so you cannot ask the question, 'Who is more enlightened?' The very question is meaningless.

Religion either is or is not. This is the second thing to be remembered .

The third thing: when religion comes you are naturally moral but the vice versa is not the case - you may be moral but you may not be religious. When you are religious you are naturally moral; morality comes like a shadow.

A disciple came to Lieh Tzu and asked Lieh Tzu, 'What should I do, Master, to become enlightened?'

And Lieh Tzu said, 'You stand in the sun, walk, and watch your shadow.'

The man went out, stood in the sun, walked and watched his shadow, came back, bowed down, thanked the Master and said, 'You have shown me the way.'

The other disciples were very much puzzled. What had transpired between the Master and this new man? They asked Lieh Tzu and he laughed. He said, 'It is so simple. I told him to go into the sun and walk and watch his shadow. And he understood the point. If the body walks the shadow follows.

The shadow cannot walk on its own. And even if you can arrange for the shadow to walk on its own, the body will not follow, there is no necessity.'

Morality is like the shadow, religion is the real figure. When religion is there, morality comes on its own - it has to come, there is no other possibility. But if morality is there, there is no necessity for religion to be there. You can become a moral person without becoming religious at all. You can have good qualities. You can be honest, sincere, true, non-violent, but that doesn't make you religious. If you are religious all moral qualities simply follow you.

When you are moral you have to manage those good qualities continuously they have to be maintained otherwise they will disappear. A moral man has to manage his honesty continuously because every moment there is a fear that he may function dishonestly. The dishonesty has not disappeared, it has been repressed. It is there, it is waiting in the base-ment of his being for its opportunity, and once the opportunity is there it will assert itself with vengeance. It is there and the moral person knows it well. He may be trying to be loving but he knows that the hatred is there boiling within him. He may be smiling but he knows that his eyes are full of tears. He may not be showing his anger but he knows that his heart is burning, and he wants to kill. He may be praying but really he wants to curse. He knows it. There is no way not to know.

You can deceive others but how can you deceive yourself? Even if you try to deceive yourself, reality will assert itself again and again and you will have to encounter it again and again. And you know that although you can pretend that you are a very good man, deep down you know how bad you are.

That hangs like a stone around your neck, like a rock and keeps you pulled down.

The moral person is dual: he is one thing on the outside and just the contrary on the inside. There is a continuous struggle in his being. He is split. The moral person is a schizophrenic. The whole earth has become schizophrenic because of moral teachings. Teach a person to be moral and sooner or later you will send him to the psychiatrist's couch. You have created madness in him. The person is feeling angry and you say, 'Don't be angry, anger is bad - because Moses says so, or Mohammed says so, or Mahavira says so. Anger is bad. Don't be angry.' Anger is coming up naturally but you teach against it - because great is the stake. If he becomes angry he will lose his respect. He can be respected only if he is not angry, so he has to pretend in order to get respectability.

Look at people. They have lost their original faces. They are carrying masks, they are hiding behind masks. You can never be certain who is hiding behind the masks. You love a person but by and by you will find it is not the same person you fell in love with. Have you not observed it again and again? When you fall in love with a person, after a few months - or even after a few days if you are a great observer you will find that the person is something else. The woman is not the same woman, the man is not the same man that you fell in love with. You fell in love with the mask and now, by and by, the reality becomes clear. When you live with a person he cannot wear the mask for twenty-four hours. It is heavy and he wants to rest. And sometimes he is on a holi-day even saints have their holidays.

I have heard.

In a circus there was a man whom the circus manager used to claim was the tallest man in the world - he was somewhere near nine feet tall.

A press reporter went to interview him because he was the tallest man in the world. He naturally chose Sunday because Sunday morning was free for him. He went to the circus and found the man Lying down in front of his tent, sunbathing. He was very much surprised to find that although the face was the same the body wasn't nine feet tall at all.

He asked, 'What is the matter? You don't look more than five-foot-five to me. But your face seems to be the right one.'

The man laughed. He said, 'Yes, you are right. I am the right person - I am the tallest man in the world.'

'But,' replied the reporter, 'what is the matter? You don't look more than five-foot-five.'

And the man said, 'This is my Sunday. This is my holiday. If you want to see me nine feet tall then you have to see me on duty.'

It is a managed thing.

When you see a leader delivering a lecture to the masses it is a different face. When you see a priest in the temple worshipping it is a different face. When you fall in love with a woman it is a different face. She is trying to be as good as possible - but that is not the reality, that is a managed reality. She cannot manage it forever - that's why wives are not very beautiful, that's why husbands are ugly. You know them. You have seen them on their holidays.

Morality creates a division - the inner, the real, becomes hidden and the outer, the false, becomes manifested. This is one of the greatest calamities that has happened to humanity. Religion makes you one. It spreads the inner to the outer.

Religion makes you healthy - then you taste the same always and you are never on a holiday because you are always on a holiday. It is your natural quality.

The fourth thing: a tree is alive, a machine only exists, it is not alive. A man of morality only exists, he is not really alive. You will not find vitality, you will not find radiance, you will not find a surging energy, you will not find a flood of life coming from him. He has to curb his being and cut his energies continuously. He has to live at the minimum, he is never aflame. He is always afraid. If he becomes too much alive then that which is repressed will start asserting itself. So he is always afraid. He keeps himself pulled down. He goes on holding onto himself. He never allows himself a total let-go because a total let-go will naturally mean that that which is repressed will suddenly erupt on the surface. It will be like a volcano erupting. So he has to keep himself at the mini-mum, he has to allow only minimum energy - only then can he control himself. With the maximum energy flowing he will be out of control, he will be off-balance.

A man of morality just appears to be living, it is an appearance. Only a man of religion is alive. A man of religion lives at the optimum and the man of morality lives at the minimum. Naturally, at the minimum you live like an impotent person. You cannot be angry so you cannot love either because there is always the fear that if you love too much sometimes anger may come. When one energy is allowed total expression, other energies also get freedom. When you open your door for one thing, other things will also escape. You cannot open your door, you have to be always on guard. Just think of the misery of a man who is always on guard, who cannot relax. A man who is always on guard is a tense man.

A moral man is never happy. He may not be sad - at the most but he is never happy, he is never ecstatic. For millions of years man has existed on the earth but a single exception has never been seen. Never has a moral man been found who is ecstatic. He cannot dance, he cannot sing, he cannot rejoice. Joy is freedom - and he does not know what freedom is. Ecstasy is going beyond oneself and that is possible only when you move through your optimum, when you are aflame with a great passion to live, when you love totally, when you are flooded with God. Only then is ecstasy possible.

Ecstasy is not yours; ecstasy is God dancing in you. You cannot allow God to dance in you because you cannot allow nature to dance in you. You have not even been natural, how can you be spiritual?

Remember, spirituality is a higher stage of being natural; spirituality is the ultimate flowering of being spontaneous.

A moral person is never spontaneous. A moral person lives through the past. He has a character and he has to follow the character. He has a blue-print, he has a map, and he always looks at the map and functions through it. He never functions in the present, he is a dead man, he carries his character around with him. His response is never a real response, it is only a reaction. A man of religion is responsive not reactive.

And because he has a character, a man of morality is predictable. You can depend on him, you know that he will be honest tomorrow because he has been always honest. He will be honest even in circumstances where honesty is going to harm the other person. Where honesty is going to be destructive, even then he is going to be honest - you can depend on that. He has no freedom, he has no eyes to look into things, he does not respond to reality. He responds to principles. When you respond to principles you are simply reacting, you have a program in your mind, you are like a computer. You go according to the program - right or wrong is not the question.

And the circumstances of life change every moment - but your principles are rigid, your principles remain the same. Naturally a man of morality never fits anywhere; he is a misfit. It is very difficult to live with a moral man because he is always a misfit. He does not look at the reality, at what reality is. He simply lives through his principles; principles are more important than the reality.

A religious man has no principles. Let it sink deep into your heart. A religious man has no principles whatsoever, he has only an awareness. He looks into reality and whatsoever is required he responds accordingly. His response is spontaneous, not dominated by the past - hence a religious person is not predictable. You don't know what he will do. Not even he can say what he will do because it will depend on the circumstances. If there is a slight difference in the circumstances the response will be different.

A religious man has no character - it will be difficult for you to get that. A religious man has no character, because character comes from the past. A religious man has consciousness instead. Or, to say the same thing in other words, a religious man has no conscience. He has consciousness and the moral man has a conscience - no consciousness. He functions through dead codes. He carries the commandments, and he always looks into his commandments to try to find a way to behave. He is always a misfit, he is never true any-where. A moral man cannot be true because he has a character. How can you be true when you have a character? If the circumstances are different what will you do? You cannot change so easily.

A moral man is very rigid; he has no dynamism, he is not flowing and fluid. He has a fixed identity:

things should be done only this way. He cannot do things in any other way, whatsoever the situation.

The situation may have completely changed but the things have to be done in only one way.

A Zen Master, Bokuju, asked a disciple, 'What is the sound of one hand clapping?'

And the disciple remained silent. He closed his eyes and fell into deep silence. Bokuju was happy and said, 'Good, good, I agree.'

But another Master was sitting there while this happened. When the disciple had gone the other Master said, 'You agreed too early. I don't see it. Call the disciple back.'

The disciple was called back and the other Master asked, 'Tell me, what is the sound of one hand clapping?' And he again closed his eyes and remained silent. And the Master laughed and he said, 'Wrong, absolutely wrong.' And Bokuju said, 'Yes, I agree with this other Master.'

The disciple was puzzled. He said, 'But why? Just a moment before, I answered the same way - through my silence - and you said, "Right."' Bokuju said, 'That was true in that moment but now you are repeating. It cannot be true in this moment because everything has changed. That was a response, this is a reaction. Now you have become fixed. When you responded for the first time there was no idea in what you were doing. It came naturally. It came just simply, innocently. Your mind was not manipulating. Now it is not a response of a meditative consciousness, it is of a mind manipulating. Now the mind knows the answer. Now the mind says, "Good. The same question again, so again the same answer."'

The Master says that although the question may be the same the answer cannot be the same the next moment. It will depend on a thousand and one things.

It used to happen to Buddha every day. Somebody would ask, 'Is there a God?' and he would say, 'No.' Somebody else would ask, 'Is there a God?' and he would say, 'Yes.' And somebody else would ask, 'Is there a God?' and he would keep silent. And again somebody else would ask, 'Is there a God?' and he would say, 'Don't ask nonsense questions.' In one day he gave a thousand and one answers to one question.

His chief disciple, Ananda, became very worried. He said, 'Master, the question is the same but you answer so differently, you answer so contradictorily, that we have become puzzled, confused.'

Buddha said, 'I was not answering you, so you need not listen. Somebody asked a question and the answer was given to him, not to you. And the questioners were different, the time was different, the situation was different - how can the question be the same? One man who had asked, "Is there a God?" was an atheist. He didn't believe in God. I had to say yes to him, I had to s-hake him, shock him. I had to bring him out of his ideology, so I had to say yes. But it is not that God exists - it was a response to that man's reality. Then somebody said, "Is there a God?" and because he was a believer and believed in God I had to say no. I had to shake him and shock him too and bring him out of his sleep. If I had said yes to him he would have gone home thinking that I agreed with him, that I also believed in the same way that he believed. Then his ideology would have been strength-ened and any strengthened ideology is a danger. All ideologies have to be shattered, utterly shattered, so the mind becomes completely free from ideologies.

'I had to remain silent to another person because he was neither a theist nor an atheist. His question was very simple and innocent. He had no ideology so I did not need to shock him. He was a really silent man so I kept silent. And he understood me. He understood the idea that about questions about God one should be silent. They are meaningless questions, there is nothing to be said about them.'

Whether you believe in God or not makes no difference, you don't change. Go and look.... Look into the lives of the person who believes in God and the person who does not believe in God. Their lives are the same. There is no difference at all. Somebody goes to the church, somebody else goes to the temple, somebody else goes to the mosque, but look into their lives - there is no difference at all. So what is the point of believing?

You will find a different quality of being in a person who believes in nothing, who has dropped all beliefs, whose consciousness is freed, freed from all ideology. Every ideology becomes a fixation.

A moralist is a man of fixation, a religious man is flowing and fluid. The moralist has an idea about how to live his life; the religious person has no idea about how to live his life. He leaves it to Tao, to God, to the whole. He su;renders to the whole and the whole lives through him. He has no ideas about how to live his life.

Remember, if you have an idea about how to live your life, you will live wrongly. When somebody asks me, 'What is the right way to live my life?' I say, 'The right way to live your life is not to have any ideas about how to live your life.' Live without ideas and you live rightly. Live without mind and you live rightly. Live moment to moment and you live rightly. Don't live out of the past and don't live out of the future - just live herenow and you will live rightly.

TZU-HSIA ASKED THE MASTER, 'WHAT SORT OF A MAN IS YEN HUI?'

'FOR KINDNESS HE IS A BETTER MAN THAN I AM.'

Tzu-hsia is asking the Master about four persons who are the Master's disciples. They all serve him.

But they must have been very famous people, sometimes outshining the Master himself. And these problems must have been in many people's minds.

Tzu-hsia asked, 'What sort of a man is Yen Hui?' Yen Hui was a disciple, a famous disciple. And the Master said, 'FOR KINDNESS HE IS A BETTER MAN THAN I AM.'

'WHAT ABOUT TZU-KUNG?'

'FOR ELOQUENCE HE IS A BETTER MAN THAN I AM.'

'TZU-LU?'

'FOR COURAGE HE IS A BETTER MAN THAN I AM.'

'TZU-CHANG?'

'FOR DIGNITY HE IS A BETTER MAN THAN I AM.'

The Master is saying that if you take different qualities and you compare them, then these people are in some way or other better than him. If you take individual characteristics these people are better than him. Somebody is better as far as courage is concerned, somebody is better as far as kindness is concerned, somebody is better as far as eloquence is concerned, somebody is better as far as dignity is concerned. Relatively, morally, these people are better than him.

TZU-HSIA ROSE FROM HIS MAT AND ASKED...

He must have become very much puzzled.

...'THEN WHY DO THESE FOUR SERVE YOU?'

Why? If these four people are better in some way than you, you should be serving them. Why do they serve you?

And the Master said, 'SIT DOWN, I WILL TELL YOU.'

This saying from the Master - 'SIT DOWN' - IS very meta-phorical. When Tzu-hsia stood up it means that he became excited, he became feverish, his mind was confused. A thousand and one thoughts started rumbling in him. He could not believe it. Yes, this was true. What the Master was saying was true. Everybody felt that these four people had great qualities, that they outshone the Master in some way or other. Tsu-hsia must have become very curious. He forgot that you are not supposed to stand in front of the Master, that you are not supposed to ask a question while standing in front of the Master.

These are just symbols - symbolical, metaphorical things. When you ask a question of a Master you have to ask in a certain posture, bowing down, in a deep receptivity. The question should come from a very humble attitude. And the question should come out of deep silence, not out of a perturbed mind, not out of disturbance, not out of excitement. It should come out of a quiet, silent mind, out of tranquillity.

The Master said, 'SIT DOWN.' The disciple must have forgotten. With the answer the Master gave he must have become really very much excited. He forgot what he was doing. He must have acted in an unconscious way.

The Master says, 'Sit down, first sit down.' And it is not only that the body should sit down, the deep indication is towards the mind. Let the mind settle down. Only then will one be able to understand what the Master is going to say... that's what he means when he says, 'SIT DOWN, I WILL TELL YOU.'

Remember, only when the mind is in a deeply settled state will you be receptive. Otherwise, if the mind is stirred and there are clouds and dust arising all over, you are in a sort of storm. Then how are you going to receive the Master's answer?

These are not philosophical discussions, these are penetrations into reality, into your own nature.

And the answers to the questions that are being asked are not meant to satisfy curious people.

One day it happened that a great philosopher came to Buddha. Buddha was sitting under a tree.

This man, Buddha, must have loved trees tremendously. He was always sitting under a tree. He became enlightened under a tree - although it is not such a big thing to become enlightened under a tree; many people have. But you will be surprised to know that Buddha was also born under a tree. And he died under a tree as well.

Although Buddha was a king's son he was not born in a palace. His mother was travelling and they came to a garden and suddenly she felt the pain arising. There was no other place so she got down, stood under a tree and Buddha was born. Later he became enlightened under a tree and then, when he was dying, he again lay down under a tree and died under it.

He must have loved trees very much. For five hundred years after him the tree remained his symbol.

For five hundred years no statue of him was made - just trees were painted. Trees were placed in temples and people worshipped the trees. In a way it was very beautiful.

I would like to remind you again - the tree is symbolic of religion because it grows. And it grows out of the innermost core.

Buddha was sitting under a tree and this great philosopher said, 'Have you said everything that you know?' Buddha had become very old - almost eighty years old - and within a few months he would be gone. The great philosopher had come from a long way to enquire if he had said all that he knew.

And Buddha took a few dry leaves in his hand and asked the philosopher, 'What do you think, sir?

How many leaves have I got in my hand? Are they more than the number of dry leaves in this forest?'

The paths, the whole forest, was full of dry leaves; the wind was blowing here and there and the dry leaves were making much noise and much music. The philosopher looked and he said, 'What type of question are you asking? How can you have more leaves in your hand? You have only a few, a dozen at the most, and there are millions of leaves in this forest.' And Buddha said, 'So re-member.

That which I have said is only like the few leaves in my hand. And that which I have not said is like the dry leaves in this forest.'

The philosopher said, 'Then one question more. Why have you not said that?' Buddha said, 'Because it will not help you to attain nirvana, it will not help you to meditate - that's why I have not said it. And moreover, it cannot be said. Even if I wanted to say it, it cannot be said. You will have to experience and know it. It is experiential, it is existential.'

The Master will say something only when he feels it is going to help your enlightenment. The Master will say something only when he feels you are ready to receive. The Master will say something only when he sees that clarity is there and the mind is open; that transparency is there and you are ready, with great humbleness and gratitude, to receive it. You are not quarrelsome, you are not ready to discuss and debate. Only in great sympathy, in great love, when the disciple is in rapport with the Master, can these things be transferred. These are delicate things.

The Master says, 'SIT DOWN:' Not only physically - settle down inside and don't get excited.

'I WILL TELL YOU. YEN HUI CAN BE KIND BUT CANNOT CHECK THE IMPULSE WHEN IT WILL DO NO GOOD.'

This is the difference between religion and morality. Listen well. Sit down and listen well. Many of you are standing up. Sit down and I will tell you.

'YEN HUI CAN BE KIND BUT CANNOT CHECK THE IMPULSE WHEN IT WILL DO NO GOOD.'

This kindness is not of awareness. One has to be capable sometimes of not being kind. Great kindness is capable of being kind and of not being kind, both. Great kindness is capable of being hard too. If your kindness is such that you cannot be otherwise then it is not strength, it is weakness.

If you cannot act otherwise that simply means that you are fixed, you are not fluid. Sometimes it is necessary to be hard.

I have heard about a Zen Master who was driving a carriage with a woman and her child in it. Much snow was falling and the morning was very cold and there was no sun in the sky, it was cloudy.

The Master started freezing and the woman in the carriage did too. By and by he saw that she was becoming blue and was losing consciousness. So he took away the child, pushed the woman out of the carriage and drove away.

The woman was shocked. She was left standing there in the falling snow, her child had been taken away - what type of man was this? And he had taken the carriage. She started running and shouting and screaming and cursing - and within half a mile, because of all the running and cursing and shouting and screaming, she was perfectly okay!

Then the Master stopped the carriage, took her in and said, 'Now it is okay. I had to do that otherwise you would have died.'

Sometimes to be really kind implies that you can be unkind too. If you cannot be unkind then your kindness is not of much worth. It is cultivated. It is not out of awareness.

Now think. If you had been that driver you could not have done that. It looks immoral. But it is not.

In the Zen tradition there are thousands of cases which look very immoral. Sometimes the Master jumps on the disciple, beats the disciple, throws him out of the window. And the story says he becomes enlightened - when he falls out of the window he becomes enlightened. To people who are not acquainted with the Zen methods it looks absurd. How can a person become enlightened like this?

But you must be made alert that the disciple may have been working for twenty years - meditating, working, meditating, working. And then one day the Master finds that only a thin layer of unawareness is left, a very thin layer. He watches the disciple but he cannot get through that thin layer. Remember, when the unconsciousness is very thick you can fight with it but when it is very thin it is very difficult to fight with it. In fact, there comes a moment when it is so thin that you think it is not there. It is almost like transparent glass; it is so transparent you don't see it. Then how can you fight it? Only the Master can see that you are still behind a glass. You are seeing very clearly, almost as if there is no glass, but still you are behind glass. In those moments the Master will be very hard. He will do something very shocking. In that shock that thin layer will be broken. And only when it is broken, not before, will you be able to know that some-thing was there in front of your eyes. When it is gone you will understand that a thin layer was there - a thin film which was so thin and so transparent that there was no way for you to know. Then you will feel thankful to the Master.

'SIT DOWN. I WILL TELL YOU. YEN HUI CAN BE KIND, BUT CANNOT CHECK THE IMPULSE WHEN IT WILL DO NO GOOD.'

This kindness is impulsive. You are almost a victim of it - you are not the master of it. If you cannot help but be kind it is an impotency.

In Japan there exists a statue of Buddha, a very rare statue, of tremendous significance. One of my friends went to Japan where somebody gave him a replica, a plastic replica, of the statue. My friend is a Jaina, and he could not understand it because it looked a little illogical and unhistorical.

In this statue Buddha has a sword in one hand. A sword? Buddha has never been known to carry a sword. He was not a Mohammed, neither was he a Krishna. A sword? But in this statue he has a sword in one hand.

And the one side of his face is tremendously illuminated by the sword - and it does not look like the face of a Buddha, it looks like that of an Arjuna, a great warrior, a great soldier. The expression of the face has a sharpness to it.

In the other hand he is carrying a lamp, a small earthern lamp, and on that side of the face the expression is very quiet, very silent, very Buddha-like.

Now this is very absurd. When my friend came back from Japan and showed me the statue he said, 'I cannot understand it. What does it mean?' I said, 'It is very meaningful. It is a Zen expression. It shows that your silence should be capable and strong also.'

The lamp of peace should be capable of becoming a sword any moment it is needed to be that way.

And the sword should be capable of becoming a lamp of peace any moment it is needed to be that way. One should be fluid and all the polarities should meet in one.

A man is rich when all the polarities meet in him. When all the contradictions have lost their contradictions and have become friends, when you can befriend the contradictions, then you are really rich. This is the state of a religious man. The moral man chooses, the religious man lives in choiceless-ness.

'YEN HUI CAN BE KIND BUT CANNOT CHECK THE IMPULSE WHEN IT WILL DO NO GOOD.'

Even when it will not do any good, in fact, it may even be doing harm - then too he cannot check the impulse. He is incapable of checking it. He is incapable of being responsive to the reality. He functions according to a principle. So the Master says, 'For kindness he is a better man than I but still there is something missing in his kindness. He has moved too much to the extreme. He has lost balance. And a balanced man is the goal - not the bad nor the good but the one who is exactly in the middle; not the bad nor the good but the one who has transcended both.'

And he is capable of being both - whatsoever the situation may demand. Listen to this point: the capacity to be all is the capacity of a religious person.

'TZU-KUNG CAN BE ELOQUENT BUT CANNOT HOLD HIS TONGUE.'

If you can be eloquent but cannot be silent your eloquence is meaningless. Unless words come out of silence they are dead. Unless words come out of your inner emptiness they are not full. When words come out of your inner emptiness they carry a fullness; when they come out of your silence, soaked with your silence, they have a music around them, they have a poetry and a life totally of their own.

When you cannot be silent, when you have to speak and you cannot do otherwise, then your words are meaningless, gibberish. Then there is no poetry, then they are very ordinary. Have you not watched it? Jesus speaks the same words that you speak, Buddha uses the same words that you use - then what is the difference? When you speak certain words they carry no meaning, not at all. When Jesus speaks the same words they are tremendously significant - so burningly alive, so aflame with his vitality. From where do they come? They come from his silence.

Jesus used to go into silence again and again. Whenever he came to the masses, for a few days he would talk to people, meet people, convert them, and then one day suddenly he would say, 'Now I will go to the mountains or to the desert. I would like to be silent.' He would leave even his disciples and go alone into the wilderness, just to be silent. He had exhausted his silence by speaking, the silence was spent in words - now he had to go back to become full again, to be full of silence. Then he would be full of poetry, then he would be full of song, then his words would not be ordinary words, they would be full of luminosity. Then they would hit you and go directly into the heart.

Remember, the words go to exactly the same depth from which they come. If my words come from my heart they will touch your heart. If they come only from my head they will touch only your head.

It depends.

Have you seen an archer pulling his bow backwards? The farther back he pulls his bow, the farther ahead will go the arrow. If the bow is not pulled back the arrow will fall short.

The deeper the words come out of the silence of your innermost core, the further they will go - like an arrow - into the hearts of the people.

The Master said:

'TZU-KUNG CAN BE ELOQUENT BUT CANNOT HOLD HIS TONGUE.'

Eloquence is of no importance as far as religion is con-cerned. Eloquence is important in politics, but in religion eloquence is secondary. The basic, the fundamental import-ance is silence. Words are secondary, stillness is primary. If words come out of stillness then they have some significance.

If they don't come out of stillness they are just rubbish.

The Master said:

'FOR ELOQUENCE HE IS A BETTER MAN THAN I AM.'

But he makes the difference. Tzu-kung may have practised eloquence but he does not know what silence is. He cannot hold his tongue.

'TZU-LU CAN BE BRAVE BUT CANNOT BE CAUTIOUS.'

When you are brave but cannot be cautious you turn into a fool - you become foolhardy, you become stupid . Bravery in itself is of no value. It can be suicidal, it can be murderous. Bravery in itself is of no value unless there is a light inside it of awareness, alertness. That's what cautiousness is.

'TZU-LU CAN BE BRAVE BUT CANNOT BE CAUTIOUS.'

His bravery is not of much use. Either he will create trouble for others or he will create trouble for himself. His bravery is not going to become a beneficial thing to anybody. Bravery is beneficial not because of bravery but because of cautiousness.

Just look into these things. This is a simple parable but the Master is showing what morality and religion are. If you practise eloquence you will forget about silence. If you practise bravery you will forget about cautiousness. If you practise kindness you will forget that sometimes it is kindness not to be kind. You will become fixed. You will have one pole but the other pole will be missing. You will be half, you will not be whole.

To be positive and negative together is what a religious man is. The immoral man has chosen one pole, the negative pole; the moral man has chosen another pole, the positive pole - and the religious person lives in choicelessness. He has not chosen anything but he uses all, whatsoever the need.

Sometimes he is as negative as the immoral and sometimes he is as positive as the moral. But nothing holds him. He is not confined either to positivity or to negativity. He is a free man. He has freedom. He uses all and he is not used by anything.

'TZU-CHANG CAN BE DIGNIFIED BUT CANNOT UNBEND IN COMPANY.'

You can be dignified but if your dignity becomes an ego trip then you cannot bend. And with an ego how can you really be dignified? How can ego be a dignified thing? How can ego give you grace? It will be just a superficial posture, an empty, impotent posture, nothing inside, just a container without any content.

'TZU-CHANG CAN BE DIGNIFIED BUT CANNOT UNBEND IN COMPANY.'

A man should be able to be undignified sometimes too. If you are always dignified you cannot laugh, if you are always dignified you cannot joke, if you are always dignified you will become inhuman, you will lose all humanity.

Have you not watched it? People who can become undignified sometimes have more grace.

Someone who can laugh, laugh like a fool sometimes, has more wisdom than a person who is obsessed with wisdom and cannot laugh. He has to protect his wisdom, he has to be continuously on guard. He cannot laugh, he cannot allow himself to laugh, because people will think that he is a fool. He is a fool. A wise man is capable of being foolish sometimes too.

You must have heard that in the old days great kings used to have a fool in the court - the court fool.

And you will be surprised to know that they were not ordinary fools, they were some of the wisest men in the country. The king used to have wise men and a fool too - to keep a balance. Otherwise the wise people would make things very sober, dry, dull, sad. All joy would be lost. Sometimes you can become too serious, and the very seriousness can become a barrier in looking into things.

The fool was needed. When things would be getting too serious he would do something or say something and bring the atmosphere back to human altitudes.

For example, a king was seriously thinking of turning the whole country moral. Nobody should be allowed to say anything untrue. Untruths should be banned. The wise men were all agreed; in fact, because these wise people were his servants they were even going further than him, exaggerating.

One wise man suggested that of course this was the right thing to be done - untruths should be banned - and one who was found to be saying some untruth should be immediately sentenced to death. He should be hanged in the marketplace so that everybody would know what the cost of saying anything untrue would be.

The fool was listening. He said, 'Okay. Then tomorrow morning I will see you all at the gate.' They said, 'What do you mean?' He said, 'At the gate.' And he said to the king, 'Keep the gallows ready because I am going to say an untruth.' The king said, 'Have you gone mad?' And he replied, 'I have always been mad: But I will see you all, the whole court, at the gate - and keep the gallows ready. I will be the first person to be hanged.'

It was a challenge. The gallows were made ready and the next morning, when they opened the gate of the town, the fool entered on his donkey. The king asked, 'Where are you going, you fool?' He was very angry because they had had to get up early in the morning to get there. And the fool said, 'I am going to the gallows.'

Now he created a problem. If you killed him he had said a truth, if you didn't kill him he had told a lie. He said, 'I am going to the gallows. Prepare them. I am going to die on the gallows.' All these wise men and the king were puzzled. What to do with this man? He was telling a lie. If you kill him the lie becomes a truth. If you don't kill him the lie goes unpunished.

And the fool laughed. He said, 'You are all fools. Who can ban untruth and who can ban immorality?

Everything is needed in proportion.'

Each great king used to have a fool because wise people tend to go to the extreme. And to go to the extreme is a sort of foolishness. To keep a balance one should sometimes forget all about dignity, one should sometimes bend in company, laugh like a fool, be like a child - be human.

You go and look at your mahatmas - they are never human. They will not laugh, they will not joke, they will not do anything that would prove that they are human. They keep above humanity. Hence, if they look sad it is nothing unexpected; if their eyes look dull and sad, if they look 'dead, it is natural.

'TZU-CHANG CAN BE DIGNIFIED BUT CANNOT UNBEND IN COMPANY. EVEN IF I COULD HAVE THE VIRTUES OF THE FOUR MEN ALL TOGETHER I SHOULD BE UNWILLING TO EXCHANGE THEM FOR MY OWN.'

Now listen to this tremendously important sentence.

'EVEN IF I COULD HAVE THE VIRTUES OF THE FOUR MEN ALL TOGETHER I SHOULD BE UNWILLING TO EXCHANGE THEM FOR MY OWN.'

That which is yours is true and that which you take from others is untrue. The borrowed is never true. The borrowed, the imitated, is always false. Morality is imitation, religion is always your own.

On a rosebush flowers a rose flower; somewhere in a pond flowers a lotus. The lotus comes out of the lotus seed, the rose comes out of the rosebush. The rose cannot borrow the lotus, the lotus cannot borrow the rose. When religion flowers it is yours; when you try to be moral you borrow, you imitate, you try to become a carbon copy of someone.

A Christian is one who is trying to become a carbon copy of Christ; hence a Christian is ugly and Christ is beautiful. Christ is a rose flower, out of his own bush he flowered - that was his crime.

The Jews did not like it, they wanted him to become a Moses, they wanted him to become a lotus flower. And he asserted his own self. He said, 'I will be my own being. I will be myself.' That was his crime and the Jews could not forgive him. But Moses was a flower out of his own being, he was not imitating anybody. No religious person has been an imitator. And all so-called religious people who are imitators are not religious at all.

Never borrow. Even if your flower is small, it is good, it is yours. Even if somebody else's flower is very big, has much fragrance, has much colour, don't borrow it. Yours is good. It is your destiny.

God wants you to flower from your own being.

A great Hasid mystic was dying. His name was Josia. Somebody around him said, 'Josia, have you made your peace with Moses?' Josia opened his eyes and said, 'Forget everything about this Moses. He is not important. I am dying, and you are talking nonsense.' The man became afraid - what is he saying? A pious Jew at the time of death is saying, 'Forget all about Moses.' And Josia said, 'Listen, now I am going to die and I will be facing God. He will not ask me, "Josia, why were you not Moses?" He will not ask me that. He will ask, "Josia, why were you not Josia?" So forget all about Moses. At least in these last moments leave me alone. Let me gather together my being so that I can stand before him on my own feet. I have wasted my whole life and now in the end again you have come to ask, "Have you made your peace with Moses?" What do I have to do with Moses?

If Moses has nothing to do with me what have I to do with Moses?'

Sometimes people come to me and they say, 'Do you agree with Buddha?' I say, 'Nonsense! He never agreed with me so why should I bother to agree with him? He did his thing, I am doing mine.

Where arises the question of agreeing?'

Why should you agree with anybody? If you can agree with yourself you have agreed with God.

Enough, more than enough. If you have agreed with yourself, if you have accepted your being - finished. Your journey has come to an end. Now you can flower.

The Master said:

'EVEN IF I COULD HAVE THE VIRTUES OF THE FOUR MEN ALL TOGETHER I SHOULD BE UNWILLING TO EXCHANGE THEM FOR MY OWN.'

It would be a mechanical thing to borrow one thing from one, another thing from another. To borrow from so many people... it would be an assemblage, it would be a mechanical thing.

A car is to be assembled, a tree grows. The tree is the symbol of religion and the car is the symbol of morality. You can assemble a car. You can go to the market and purchase different parts from different places and assemble it. You can make your own hotch-potch car. But you cannot assemble a tree. You cannot go into one garden, take a branch, into another garden, take another branch, take flowers from somewhere, leaves from somewhere, roots from somewhere else - a tree cannot be put together.

You cannot assemble religion. Religion is not born out of an assembly line.

'... I SHOULD BE UNWILLING TO EXCHANGE THEM FOR MY OWN.

THIS IS WHY THEY SERVE ME WITHOUT MISGIVINGS.'

'They know that I have an organic unity, and they know that they have only a mechanical unity.

They know that they have talents but their talents are fixations, and they know that I have something coming from the inner to the outer, from the centre flowing towards my periphery. They know it, hence they serve me without any misgivings. They are great in one way or other but their greatness is dimensional.'

This is the last thing to be understood. A man of morality is dimensional, one-dimensional. He moves in one dimension. A man of religion is non-dimensional, he has no dimension. All dimensions are available to him.

A sportsman entered his horse in the Kentucky Derby. The horse won by twenty lengths. After the victory the horse was entered in more than a dozen races at different tracks and came in last in every one.

Puzzled, the sportsman took the horse to see a vet psy-chiatrist. After a thorough examination, the vet turned to the sportsman and said, 'This is a very simple case - the trouble with this horse is that he has a one-track mind!'

Morality is a one-track thing, one-dimensional. And the moral man becomes lopsided because when he moves in one direction all other dimensions suffer. If you want to be very kind where are you going to get the energy from? From other dimensions? It is as if somebody's head becomes too big and the whole body shrinks and becomes small. Or somebody's legs become big and the whole body shrinks and becomes small. That is the shape of a moral man.

A religious man is an organic unity, in balance. His head, his hands, his feet, his body, his mind, his soul, all are in a deep harmony, in a deep rhythm. He is an orchestra.

This parable has to be deeply meditated upon. Remember always never to borrow; remember always never to imitate; remember always that you have to grow, not condition yourself. You have to become a tree, you have to bloom like a tree. You are not to become an efficient mechanism, you have to become a tree so that your fragrance can be released to the winds. That will be your offering to the feet of God.

And remember, he will ask, 'Josia, why are you not Josia?' He will ask you, 'Why did you miss your being? Why have you not arrived here with your being? Why did you miss your life following other people? I was always within your heart waiting for you but you never came there. You followed Moses, Mohammed, Mahavira, Krishna. You followed everybody. You looked in every nook and comer but you never came into your own being. And I was sitting there waiting for you.'

When you come into your own being you have come home, you have come to God. God is nothing but a name of your innermost core.