Don't do Nothing!

Question 1:

Yes, it is. And the most selfish. There is nothing like it, it is incomparably selfish.

And one has to be selfish, there is no other way to be. And all the teachings that go on telling you not to be selfish have not helped; rather, they have distracted your being, they have made you unnatural.

Self is your centre, and to be selfish is the only way there is to be. The more you try to be NOT SELFISH the more you become eccentric. (The word eccentric is beautiful; it simply means off-centre.)

Then you are rooted no more in yourself, then you are grounded no more in your being, and a man who is not grounded in his being lives a false life, lives an artificial life. His whole life is more like a dream than like a reality.

And deep down you cannot help. Deep down you remain selfish. At the most you become hypocrites.

You try to be unselfish, but that is an impossibility. Even in your effort to be unselfish you will remain selfish. So you create a duality, a conflict, and whatsoever you say on the surface deep down you go on denying it - and you know it well because how can you deceive yourself.' The surface says one thing, the depth goes on broadcasting just the opposite.

It happened, there was a case against Mulla Nasrudin in the court and the judge asked: Did you sleep with this woman, Nasrudin.' Nasrudin said, No, your honour, not at all, your honour, not even a wink!

This is the situation. You say something and immediately your inner depth contradicts it. You become a contradiction. You become tense. Your life becomes a deep anguish, a suffering. I teach you to be totally selfish because I teach you that which is natural. But if you understand me well - which is difficult, you may misunderstand me - if you are really selfish then much flows out of your life which is absolutely unselfish. Because when a man is grounded in his own being he has so much to share, so much to give, there is no need to be altruistic.

If you are centred you ARE altruistic because you have overflowing love, overflowing being, you HAVE to share. You are just like a flower, so full of fragrance it goes on sharing it with the winds.

You are like a pregnant being, you carry so much within you that you have to give, to share, and by sharing it grows more - but you share it from your centre.

So I am not saying that when you become selfish you are not unselfish then, no, just the opposite.

When you try to be unselfish you remain, deep down, selfish. When you become totally selfish a tremendously beautiful unselfishness happens in your life. But you are not even conscious about it because if you are conscious it is false.

Things which are natural and healthy need no consciousness. Are you conscious of your breathing?

Yes, sometimes, when something goes wrong, when something is ill, when the breathing is not as it should be - then you become alert, then you are alarmed, then you become conscious. Otherwise the breathing goes on day and night, twenty-four hours, whether you are asleep or awake, whether you are in love or in hate, whether you move or you sit, whatsoever you do the breathing continues.

It does not depend on your being conscious of it - and it is fortunate that it doesn't depend on your consciousness, otherwise you would have been already dead.

If you had to be careful about it, if you had to DO it, it would have stopped long before.

Unselfishness should be like breathing. You should be centred, then it happens. Unselfishness is not the opposite of selfishness, unselfishness is the by.product of being totally selfish. This is what I teach you. And all the churches and all the religions and all the priests and preachers, they have been teaching you just the opposite. They have corrupted humanity, they have poisoned your minds.

You cannot be centred and you are trying to help others, to be of service to them. The only help that you can give, the first and the very basic thing, is to be centred and rooted within yourself.

Yes, enlightenment is a selfish search.

This is half of the answer I would like to give you.Now the other half.

Because enlightenment is a selfish search, the most selfish, incomparably selfish - that's why you cannot attain enlightenment through search. The search will make you a beautiful person, wise, compassionate, in a thousand and one ways, but not enlightened.

So, for me there exist three types of persons; one, the so called religious person, the moral, the puritan, the so-called good, who goes on trying to be unselfish and remains selfish. Second, the person who knows there is no other way to be, that to be selfish is the only way there is, who becomes centred and becomes unselfish, who through selfishness attains to unselfishness, as a by-product, he makes no effort to attain it. And the third person who is neither selfish nor unselfish.

He is the enlightened person who goes beyond duality, who goes even beyond self.

Hidden in yourself is no self. Hidden behind you is emptiness, nothingness, what Buddha has called SUNYATA, absolute nothingness.

So the second part of the answer: You cannot attain to enlightenment through search. All search fails there, because until the seeker is lost enlightenment is not possible, and how can the seeker be lost if there is search? How can the seeker be lost if there is self?

It is not possible. So what happens? How does a man become enlightened?

He searches and searches, and there comes a moment when he realizes the total absurdity of searching for it; because you can search for something which is not already within you, you can search for something which is in the future, but how can you search for that which is already the case? Through searching you will miss it.

How can you search for the seeker himself? The seeker can search for everything except himself.

Trying to search for himself is absurd. How can the seeker seek himself? For search a distance is needed between the seeker and the sought.

When the distance is not there - and it is NOT THERe - the seeker is the sought. When this is realized... and this is realized after much search, remember - don't drop searching, I am not saying that - this is realized after many failures, when all hope is lost. This is realized only when you have searched in all the ways possible, when you have done all that you could, no stone has been left unturned, not even a single corner has been left unsearched, you have done all that can be done, nothing is left - then you simply sit; the search drops from you; no hope, no possibility of ever gaining this goal; in a moment of absolute frustration you drop the search - this is how it happened to Buddha, this is how it happened to me, this is how it always happens.

You make tremendous effort, that is needed! I'm not saying that right now you can drop the search, how can you drop it if you have not got it?

Search hard. Make all the efforts you can, bring your total energy to it, but I am not saying that through it you will attain. Without it you will never attain, through it no one has ever attained. You will have to pass through it.

Go in, and then a moment comes when you come out freed from all search and seeking. Suddenly you turn inwards, because search is always outward: seeking, you always look somewhere else, seeking, you run all over the space, seeking you go in all directions - and there is within you something that is beyond all directions. You may call it the eleventh direction.

There is within you something which need not be searched for but only realized. It happens in a single moment, not even in a single moment, in a split second - not even that; it doesn't happen in time.

Search stopped, seeker gone, suddenly it is there. It has always been there.

Question 2:

There is a lot of difference, and the difference is not quantitative, it is qualitative. Knowledge is belief.

Knowledge is others' experience not your own. They say there is God and you believe in it. This is knowledge.

A young man can become very knowledgeable. There is no trouble in it. You need a good memory, you need to make a little effort. The same thing can be done some day by a computer: you will carry a computer in your pocket, no need to make your head too heavy with the libraries, the computer will carry all the knowledge.

Remember, soon computers will replace all your knowledge. The pundit is going to disappear from the world, the computer will take its place. And I say 'its' place knowingly, consideredly, because a pundit is a mechanism, he is not a man.

That's all you have been doing with the brain - you go on feeding it information.

Knowledge is borrowed. Others know it, you believe they must be true. Wisdom comes through your own experience. Knowledge is an accumulation, wisdom is also an accumulation. But knowledge is accumulation of others' experiences, wisdom is accumulation of your own experience. A young man can never be wise; he can be knowledgeable, but for wisdom time is needed. Old people are wise because you have to pass through experiences.

You can read many books on love and you can know much about love, what others have said about it, but to know love itself you will have to pass through experience - which is time absorbing. By the time you know something about love the youth, your young age, will have gone. You will be old, but wise.

Old age is wise, youth can be knowledgeable. Wisdom is one's own experience accumulated, knowledge is others' experience accumulated by you.

Then what is understanding? Understanding is non accumulative. What difference does it make whether somebody else experienced and you believed, or you experienced and then you believed?

That experience is of the past. It is no more there, and you have changed so much - and everybody is changing every moment - that an old man who says that 'In my youth I experienced THIS,' is talking about somebody else because he is no more the same.

A little closer wisdom is than knowledge, but not very close. Understanding is non-accumulative, you don't accumulate either others' experiences or your own. You need not accumulate, you grow.

Understanding is always fresh, wisdom is a little dusty and old, wisdom is always of the past, your own past. Knowledge is also of the past - of others' pasts. But what difference does it make finally?

Because your own past is as far away from you as others' pasts; you are no more the same. Every moment the river is flowing, says old Heraclitus, you cannot step in the same river twice.

Your own youth - you cannot step in it twice; you have learnt something from your experience, you carry it. Knowledge can be washed away, wisdom also. They can be brainwashed, completely wiped from your mind. Understanding can never be brainwashed, it is not part of the brain, it is non accumulative. All that is accumulative is accumulated in the brain.

Understanding is of your being, it cannot be washed away - you cannot brainwash a Buddha; in fact he himself has brainwashed himself completely, he has cleaned his slate himself, how can you clean him? He is non-accumulative, he lives moment to moment. Through living his being grows. If through living your knowledge grows, it is wisdom; if through living your being grows, it is understanding; and if without living your accumulation grows, it is knowledge.

Understanding is the real flowering of being. A man of understanding is mirror.like. A mirror carries nothing. A mirror always lives in the immediate present, whosoever comes before it, it reflects.

You ask me a question. The question can be answered through knowledge, that is, experience of others; the question can be answered through wisdom, experience of my own; the question can be answered through understanding - then I am just a mirror, I simply respond.

You ask, you come before my mirror, I simply respond. That's why a man of understanding will always be felt contradictory, inconsistent, because what can he do? He does not carry the past, his answers are not coming from his past, his answers are coming right now this very moment from his being. And every moment the world is changing, it is a flux, so how can an old answer be given again? Even if the words appear to be old the answer cannot be old.

Understanding is non-repetitive and non-accumulative. Wisdom is accumulative, repetitive, knowledge is accumulative, repetitive. Knowledge is sheer belief, wisdom has a little experience in it, understanding is totally different. It is your presence, your mirror-like presence. It is a response.

Old people can be wise, young people can be knowledgeable, only children can be understanding.

That is the meaning when Jesus says that, Only those who are like children will be able to enter in my kingdom of God.

When you again become childlike, fresh, carrying no past, carrying no ready-made answers within you, carrying NO answers, just a deep emptiness, then something echoes in you. Somebody asks a question - no answer comes from the memory, no answer comes from the experience, but the answer is a response this very moment.

Understanding is always of the now and the here.

Understanding is the most beautiful thing that can happen to a person. Drop knowledge, and then drop wisdom also. Don't believe in others' experiences and don't believe in your own experiences either, because they are of the past - you have passed from there, they are no more a part of existence things have flowed on, the river has passed under a thousand-and-one bridges, and it is not the same river, even if you see it flowing. It is not the same river, it is constantly changing.

Except for change, everything is changing. Change is the only permanent factor in existence so how can you rely on the past? If you rely, you will always miss the present.

Old people, wise, are always ready with great advice to give to anybody - full of advice; nobody listens to them - that is good, never listen, because you will never live the same experiences as they have lived. The river will never be the same again. If you follow them you will become false, inauthentic, untrue, you will be a lie.

And never listen to your own experience either because you are also getting old every day, and yesterday will always be giving advice. A new situation arises and the yesterday is ready there, and the yesterday says, the old man within you says: This is the advice, do THIS, because we did this yesterday and it was good, and it worked, and you succeeded.

Don't listen to your own inner old man. Be alert! Aware of the total situation. AND DON'T REACT; respond. If everything is new let your answer also be new. Only the new can meet the new, only the new can solve the new, only with the constantly fresh and new do you remain alive and true to life.

Question 3:

That is the only fear there is: the fear of time. The fear of death is also fear of time because death stops all time.

Nobody is afraid of death. How can you be afraid of something that you have not known? How can you be afraid of the absolutely unknown, unfamiliar, strange? Fear can only exist with something which is known. No, when you say 'I am afraid of death' you are not afraid of death - you don't know!

Who knows? - death may be better than life.

The fear is not of death, the fear is of time.

In India we have the same term for both. Time we call KALA and death also we call KALA. We have one term for both death and time. It is meaningful, the word KALA is meaningful, very significant, because time is death, and death is nothing but time.

Time passing means life passing. Fear arises. In the West the fear is more acute; it has almost become chronic. In the East the fear is not so much, and the reason is that the East believes that life continues for ever and ever; death is not the end; this life is not the only life; there have been thousands and thousands of lives in the past and there will be thousands and thousands in the future. There is no hurry. That's why the East is lazy: there is no hurry! That's why in the East there is no time-consciousness - somebody says: I will come at five o'clock SHARP, and he never turns up. He does not feel any responsibility towards time, and you are waiting and waiting, and he comes after four, five hours and he says, What is wrong in it? So what?

In the West time is very short, because Christianity, Judaism, both believe in only one life. That has created the anxiety. There is only one life, seventy years at the most; one third lost in sleep - if you live sixty years, twenty years are lost in sleep, twenty of the remaining years are lost in education, this and that; the remaining twenty years - the job, the occupation, the family, marriage and divorce, and if you really calculate you will find there is no time to live!

When will I live? Fear grips the heart, and life is passing, time is flowing out of your hands and death is reaching every moment with such a constant pace - any moment it can knock at the door. And time is irrecoverable, you cannot recover it back, gone - gone for ever.

Fear, anxiety, a time neurosis - it is becoming chronic, it is almost as if it has become second-nature to Western man, continuously alert that time is going, and afraid.

The fear is basically that: I have not yet been able to live, and time is moving, and it cannot be recovered, I cannot undo it; gone - gone for ever. And every day life is shrinking, becoming smaller and smaller and smaller...

The fear is not of death, the fear is of time, and if you look deeply into it then you find that the fear is of unlived life - you have not been able to live. If you live, then there is no fear. If life comes to a fulfilment, there is no fear. If you have enjoyed, attained to the peaks that life can give, if your life has been an orgasmic experience, a deep poetry vibrating within you, a song, a festival, a ceremony, and you lived each moment of it to its totality, then there is no fear of time, then the fear disappears.

You are ready even if death comes today, you are ready. You have known life - in fact you will welcome death because now a new opportunity opens, a new door, a new mystery is revealed: I have lived life, now death is knocking at the door; I will jump to open the door - Come in! Because life I have known, I would like to know you also.

That's what happened to Socrates when hc was dying. His disciples started crying and weeping - and it was natural. Socrates opened his eyes and said, Stop! What are you doing? Why are you crying and weeping? I have lived my life, and I have lived it totally. Now death is coming and I'm very very enthusiastic about it. I am waiting with such great love and longing; with hope. A new door opens, life reveals a new mystery.

Somebody asked, Are you not afraid? Socrates said: I don't see the point why one should be afraid of death? Because in the first place I don't know what is going to be, and secondly: there are only two possibilities, either I will survive - then there is no problem of fear, or I will not survive - then too there is no problem of fear. If I don't survive there is no problem - when I am not, there cannot be any problem, and if I survive as I am here, if my consciousness survives, there is no problem because I am still there.

Problems were there in life also - I solved them, so if I am there and there are problems I will solve them - and it is always a joy to solve a problem, it gives a challenge. You take the challenge and you move in it, and when you solve it a great release of happiness happens.

The fear of death is fear of time, and the fear of time is, deeply, fear of unlived moments, unlived life.

So what to do? Live more, and live more intensely. Live dangerously. It is your life, don't sacrifice it for any sort of foolishness that has been taught to you. It is your life, live it. Don't sacrifice it for words, theories, countries, politics, don't sacrifice it for anybody.

There are many who are ready like butchers; they can get hold of you; and they have implanted within you conditionings: Your nation is in danger - die for it! Absolute foolishness. Your religion is in danger - die for it! Nonsense. It is your life, LIVE IT! Don't die for anything else, die only for life.

That's the message. And then there will be no fear.

But there are people who are ready to exploit you. They go on saying - Die for this, Die for that.

They are ready for only one thing - that you should become a martyr, and then there will be fears.

Live it! And don't think that it is a courage to die. The only courage is to live life totally, there is no other courage. Dying is very simple and easy. You can go and jump off a cliff, you can hang yourself - it is such an easy thing. You can become a martyr to a country, to a god, to a religion, to a church - all butchers! all murderers!

Don't sacrifice yourself. You are here for yourself, for nobody else.

And then live. And live in total freedom so intensely that every moment is transformed into eternity.

If you live a moment intensely it is transformed into eternity. If you live a moment intensely you move into the vertical, you drop out of the horizontal.

There are two ways of being related with time: one is just to swim on the surface of the ocean, another is to dive deep, to go to the depths.

If you are just swimming on the ocean of time you will be always afraid because the surface is not the reality. The surface is not really the ocean, it is just the boundary, it is just the periphery. Go to the depth, move towards the depth. When you live a moment deeply you are no more part of time.

If you have been in love, and deeply in love, time disappears. When you are with your beloved or your lover or your friend suddenly there is no time. You are moving in depth. If you have loved music, if you have a musical heart, you know time stops. If you have the sense of beauty, aesthetic sensibility and sensitiveness - look at a rose and time disappears, look at the moon and where is time? The clock immediately stops. The hands go on moving but time stops.

If you have loved anything deeply you know that you transcend time. The secret has been revealed to you many times. Life itself reveals it to you.

Life would like you to enjoy. Life would like you to celebrate. Life would like you to participate so deeply that there is no repentance for the past, that you don't remember the past, because every moment you go more and more deep - every moment life becomes more and more beautiful, more orgasmic, a peak experience, and by and by, when you become attuned to the peak, that becomes your abode.

That's how an enlightened man lives, he lives totally and moment to moment.

Somebody asked a Zen Master: Since enlightenment what have you been doing? He said: I carry water from the well, I cut wood in the forest, when I feel hungry I eat, and when I feel sleepy I sleep, that's all.

But remember well, when a man who has come to a deep understanding of his own being cuts wood, he simply cuts wood. There is nobody else there. In fact the cutter is not there, only the cutting of the wood, the chopping. The chopper is not there because the chopper is the past. When he eats he simply eats.

One great Zen Master has said: When sitting sit, when walking walk, above all, don't wobble.

Time is a problem because you have not been living rightly - it is symbolic, it is symptomatic. If you live rightly the problem of time disappears, the fear of time disappears.

So, what to do? Each moment, whatsoever you are doing, do it totally. Simple things - taking a bath; take it totally, forget the whole world; sitting, sit; walking, walk, above all don't wobble; sit under the shower and let the whole existence fall on you. Be merged with those beautiful drops of water falling on you. Small things: cleaning the house, preparing food, washing clothes, going for a morning walk - do them totally, then there is no need for any meditation.

Meditation is nothing but a way to learn how to do a thing totally - once you have learnt, make your whole life a meditation, forget all about meditations, let the life be the only law, let the life be the only meditation. And then time disappears.

And remember, when time disappears, death disappears. Then you are not afraid of death. In fact you wait.

Just think of the phenomenon. When you wait for death how can death exist?

This waiting is not suicidal. This waiting is not pathological. You lived your life. If you have lived your life death becomes the very peak of it all. Death is the climax of life, the pinnacle, the crescendo.

You lived all small waves of eating, drinking, sleeping, walking, making love, small waves, great waves, you lived - then comes the greatest wave. You die! You have to live that too in its totality.

And then one is ready to die. That very readiness is the death of death itself.

That's how people have come to know that nothing dies. Death is impotent if you are ready to live it, death is very powerful if you are afraid. Unlived life gives power to death. A totally lived life takes all power from death. Death is not.

Question 4:

Nothing repeats itself except stupidity and history is stupidity - it repeats.

Question 5:

There is no other way except to die.

One Zen Master was asked - a great emperor came to enquire; he was afraid of death, as everybody is, and of course an emperor has more to lose than a beggar so an emperor is bound to be more afraid of death than a beggar; death will take more from an emperor than from a beggar and so of course obviously he is more afraid. He became old and he came to the Zen Master and he asked:

Tell me something about death, Master. The Master said, How am I to know about it? The emperor said, But you are an enlightened Master. He said: Yes, but - an alive one, not dead, how am I to know about it?

This moment life is there - live it. That is the training for death. Otherwise when you are dead you will ask What is life? When you are asking 'what is death?' and whether the same continues to be after death or not, know that you are alive missing the possibility, the opportunity, to know what life is.

I will tell you one secret don't tell it to anybody, and if you do tell, please tell them not to tell anybody else. People who are alive, they come to me and they ask, What is death? And ghosts also come to me and they ask, What is life?

Please, while you are alive live it well so that when you become a ghost you need not go to a Master and ask: What is life? And if you can know life you will be able to know death, because knowing is the thing. If you have the capacity to know life you will have the capacity to know death.

Knowing should be developed, that's what Lao Tzu goes on saying - not knowledge but knowing.

And remember, if you ask me, and if I say Yes, you will survive death, that will be knowledge for you, not knowing.

And I am not here to help you become more knowledgeable. That would be a sin and I would suffer for it. I am here to make you more knowing; not to give you information but just to give you a situation in which you grow and your being flowers.

Don't bother about death. Right now you are alive, so alive. Live life, so that you can know it. If you can know life you have already known death because death is the innermost core of life.

A child is born. You think he will die after seventy years? Then you are wrong. A child is born, he brings his death within him at the innermost core of his being. It takes seventy years for him to discover that core. It takes seventy years for that core to spread all over him, then one day suddenly he disappears.

Death is nothingness within you, nothing else, just nothingness within you. A beautiful phenomenon!

Life is beautiful, but it is nothing compared to death. Death is tremendously beautiful. Thousands and thousands of lives are nothing before death because death is the very crescendo. It is nothingness.

In deep meditation you will realize what nothingness is. You will come across death, and that is the only way to know it - come across it.

So if when meditating deeply one day suddenly you feel that you are going to die - don't get scared.

Die! Let go. Let it happen. And death would have happened, and you would have remained a witness. Death will be all around and you will be hovering over it, and knowing it. But let it be a knowing not a knowledge.

Question 6:

Awareness is enough to bring this about but that awareness is not enough in you. Awareness is enough to bring it about; if it is not coming that means that awareness is not enough in you, and what you call awareness may be nothing but a thinking about it, otherwise the explosion will come.

You go on thinking about things, and when you think, you think it is the real thing.

There are people who think they love, there are people who think they are aware, there are people who think that they are in meditation - but these are all thinkings, not lived experiences. Then the explosion will not happen. Otherwise it has to happen!

If it is not happening know well you are not aware, you are simply thinking that you are aware.

And why be so anxious about the explosion? You have moved into the future. Only thinking moves into the future, awareness never. Awareness is always here now. I use the word here now as one word, they are one. Awareness is here now. The moment you have started thinking about the future, are anxious about the future, worried about the result, you are not aware. Only thinking is worried about the result. Life is totally unworried about the result. Result is not the point at all.

You love a person, you think about the result, what is going to happen out of It. If you think, you have not loved; if you love, you never think of the result, it is enough unto itself, there is no going anywhere.

If you meditate, meditation is so beautiful, who bothers about the result? And if you bother about the result, meditation is not possible. This result oriented mind is the only barrier, the only block.

There are not many blocks, the only block is that of the result oriented mind: never here-now, always somewhere else thinking of the result; while making love, thinking about the result.

They have destroyed in the West even the beautiful phenomenon of love because now books are there which are giving you clues and concepts about results. While making love people are thinking whether the orgasm is going to happen or not. You have stopped it, it cannot happen now because with this mind orgasm is impossible. Orgasm is a no mind state. It happens when the mind is not there, it happens when you are totally in the moment.

Because of so many people in the West thinking about orgasm more and more books are published on how to attain it. The more books are published, the less it becomes possible to attain it. Then more books are needed.

This is how supply and demand go on in a vicious circle.

It seems within twenty-five years, this century - we all will be there to see it - when this century ends the West will have become completely incapable of orgasm, because when you think, thinking functions as a barrier. And then we start manipulating.

I have come across books titled HOW TO MAKE LOVE. Can you think of anything more foolish?

Love is being transformed into a technique, then love also becomes a know how.

Love, or God, are not techniques. They are not things to do, they are ways of being, not ways of doing. And the way of being insists for only one condition to be fulfilled and that is - you be totally there.

Why think about the results? What is wrong in the present moment? Right now what is lacking? I am here, you are there, the trees are happy, the sky is beautiful, what is lacking? How can there be more perfection than there is right this moment? Everything is perfect as it is.

But your mind says No. Many things have to be done, then you can become perfect. This is the disease, the canceric growth in the mind about the result, about improving things, about doing better.

Everything is perfect, you need not be perfectionists, you will only mess things up more, you cannot improve upon them. Just try to be in the present, relax in the present, and let the future take its own course.

Don't be end oriented. Let the means be the end. Let the way be the goal.

Question 7:

It is because of you, otherwise it is a beautiful joke. But it is your interpretation, this NASTY, this TRICK, it is your interpretation. Drop your interpretation and look again. Give a fresh look to it; it is a joke, and beautiful, and God is a joker.

There is a beautiful Jewish parable: It happened in a certain village that whenever there was some difficulty the rabbi would go to the forest, there perform a certain ritual magic and pray to God, and always then the village was helped.

Then the rabbi died. He was succeeded by another rabbi. There was some difficulty, so the next rabbi went to the forest; but he didn't know the exact place so he said to God: I don't know the exact place where that old man used to do the trick so I will do it anywhere - you are everywhere so that is not the point, you can listen from everywhere. He performed the ritual and the village was helped.

Then he died, and another young man followed. Again there was some difficulty. The man went to the forest and he said to God: I don't know the place, I don't know the ritual, but you know all, so what is the point of doing it? I simply say to you: Save my village from this difficulty. And the village was helped.

Then that man died. Then it was another young man, and the village was again in difficulty. The young man never went to the forest, he sat in his chair and he said, Listen! I don't know the place where those old people used to go, I don't know the ritual, I don't know the prayer that they used to say, but I will tell you a story - and I know you love stories - please help my village. And he told a story, and the village was helped.

I love this parable. God is a story.teller, he loves jokes, but if it looks a nasty trick it is your interpretation. Drop your interpretation and just look again with a fresh mind, with no interpretations, with no hangover from the past, and you will start giggling. The world is so beautiful, the joke is perfect.

Question 8:

The moment you ask how much, you miss the point. You cannot ask how much patience is needed.

The very question says that the patience is not there, you are impatient. Patience never asks how much, patience always knows that whatsoever you do it is always less than needed.

That's why those who have attained always say: When we attained it was not because of our efforts, it was because of his grace.

Don't ask how much patience. The very question comes out of impatience.

And IS THERE REALLY NOTHING WE CAN DO? Yes, there is really nothing that YOU can do. The doer is the barrier. You are the hindrance. Drop this you and the doer. Life is a happening, it is not an act, and all that is great and beautiful is a happening. You cannot do it, you can only allow it to happen, please allow it; all that you need to do is to allow it.

It happened, a man came to the rabbi of the village, very harassed he was, very puzzled, worried.

He said: Now you will have to help me, Rabbi. I am in much trouble. My twelfth child was born today - I am a poor man, I cannot support myself, my wife and twelve children. You can understand my plight. You help me, what should I do?

The rabbi jumped. He said, Do? Take my advice - don't do nothing!

And you also please take my advice - don't do nothing.

Allow, let it happen. It is always around the corner, you are so closed! It is always ready to happen any moment, but you don't allow it, you go on pushing the river. Float with it, flow with it.

Question 9:

I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. I know only one thing, that everybody is already enlightened.

Whether you will come to know it eventually or not depends on you. How can I answer for you?

If you go on doing the things you have been doing, you can go on doing for eternity.

This much I know: that everybody is already enlightened. Whether he will come to know it eventually or not depends, depends on himself.