Buddha in the Supermarket

The first question:

Vasumati, the most fundamental thing to be remembered is that life is dialectical. It exists through duality, it is a rhythm between opposites. You cannot be happy forever, otherwise happiness will lose all meaning. You cannot be in harmony forever, otherwise you will become unaware of the harmony. Harmony has to be followed by discord again and again, and happiness has to be followed by unhappiness. Every pleasure has its own pain, and every pain has its own pleasure.

Unless one understands this duality of existence, one remains in unnecessary misery.

Accept the total, with all its agonies and all its ecstasies. Don't hanker for the impossible; don't desire that there should be only ecstasy and no agony.

Ecstasy cannot exist alone, it needs a contrast. Agony becomes the blackboard, then ecstasy becomes very clear and loud, just as in the darkness of night the stars are so bright. The darker the night, the brighter are the stars. In the day they don't disappear, they simply become invisible; you cannot see them because there is no contrast.

Think of a life without death, and it will be unendurable pain, an unendurable existence.

It will be impossible to live without death. Death defines life, gives it a kind of intensity; because life is fleeting, each moment becomes precious. If life is eternal, then who cares?

One can wait for tomorrow forever -- then who will live now and here? Because tomorrow there is death, it forces you to live now and here. You have to plunge into the present moment, you have to go to its ultimate depth, because who knows, the next moment may come, may not come.

Seeing this rhythm, one is at ease, at ease with both. When unhappiness comes one welcomes it, when happiness comes one welcomes it, knowing that they are partners in the same game.

This is something which has to be continuously remembered. If it becomes a fundamental remembrance in you, your life will have a totally new flavor -- the flavor of freedom, the flavor of unclingingness, the flavor of nonattachment. Whatsoever comes, you remain still, silent, accepting.

And the person who is capable of being still, silent, accepting of pain, frustration and misery, transforms the very quality of misery itself. To him, misery also becomes a treasure; to him, even pain gives a sharpness. To him, even darkness has its own beauty, depth, infinity. To him, even death is not the end but only a beginning of something unknown.

Vasumati, you say, "One of the essential laws of nature seems to be relationship, interdependence."

They are not synonymous. Relationship is one thing, interdependence totally another.

Relationship means you are separate; you are independent and so is the other, and you decide to relate. Relationship is not interdependence, it is a contract between two independent persons. Hence all relationships are false, because basically independence is false. Nobody is independent -- and if you are not independent how can you relate? With whom can you relate?

Life is interdependence. Nobody is independent, not for a single moment can you exist alone. You need the whole existence to support you; each moment you are breathing it in and out. It is not relationship, it is utter interdependence. Remember, I am not saying it is dependence, because the idea of dependence again presumes that we are independent. If we are independent then dependence is possible. But both are impossible; it is interdependence.

What do you say? Are waves independent from the ocean or are they dependent on the ocean? Neither is true. They are the ocean, neither independent nor dependent. The ocean cannot exist without the waves, the waves cannot exist without the ocean. They are utterly one, it is a unity.

And so is our whole life. We are waves of a cosmic ocean of consciousness. That means love can have three dimensions. One is that of dependence; that's what happens to the majority of people. The husband is dependent on the wife, the wife is dependent on the husband; they exploit each other, they dominate each other, they possess each other, they reduce each other to a commodity. In ninety-nine percent of cases, that's what is happening in the world. That's why love, which can open the gates of paradise, only opens the gates of hell.

The second possibility is love between two independent persons. That too happens once in a while. But that too brings misery, because there is constant conflict. No adjustment is possible; both are so independent and nobody is ready to compromise, to adjust with the other.

Poets, artists, thinkers, scientists, those who live in a kind of independence, at least in their minds, are impossible people to live with; they are eccentric people to live with.

They give freedom to the other, but their freedom looks more like indifference than like freedom, looks more as if they don't care, as if it doesn't matter to them. They leave each other to their own spaces. Relationship seems to be only superficial; they are afraid to go deeper into each other, because they are more attached to their freedom than to love, and they don't want to compromise.

And the third possibility is of interdependence. That happens very rarely, but whenever it happens a part of paradise falls on the earth. Two persons, neither independent nor dependent but in a tremendous synchronicity, as if breathing for each other, one soul in two bodies -- whenever that happens, love has happened. Only call this love. The other two are not really love, they are just arrangements -- social, psychological, biological, but arrangements. The third is something spiritual.

Vasumati, you also say, "I have watched two birds fly, intimate with each other and with the wind, so easy and without strife, in perfect harmony."

Yes, it creates jealousy. But birds are not aware; they have no consciousness, they exist below consciousness. Their harmony looks like harmony to you, not to them. And their joy on the wing is your interpretation, not theirs. Remember it: it is your interpretation.

They can't interpret; they have not yet evolved that consciousness which can interpret, which can look back, which can look forward, which can observe and look into things.

Their behavior is mechanical.

Man is a higher being, man has the capacity to be conscious. And with consciousness, trouble begins. The higher you move, the more dangerous becomes every step. If you fall, you will be falling from such heights that you will disappear somewhere in the valley. In the valley you can walk unconsciously, there is no fear. But when you are moving towards the top, reaching to the peak, you will have to be more and more conscious.

Man is very close to God, the closest. Hence the responsibility and the danger, the hazard, the adventure. You can fall. And what is the fall?

Because you are capable of being conscious, there are two possibilities. You can become self-conscious -- that is the fall. If the self overpowers your consciousness, you have fallen. If consciousness does not allow the self to overpower it, if you simply are conscious and there is no self in it -- a consciousness without a center, a consciousness without anybody being there to be conscious -- then you are rising and rising and rising and the climax is not far away. Maybe a few steps more, and you will have arrived home.

Then you will know what harmony is. And you will know the eternal harmony of existence, the silence that has never been broken; from the beginningless beginnings to the endless end, it continues the same. Then you will know the virgin purity of existence, which has never been polluted.

What can poor birds and animals know of it?

But I can understand, Vasumati, sometimes it creates great jealousy. Two birds on the wing in such harmony, in such love and intimacy, not only between themselves but with the wind, with the sun, with the rain, and man starts feeling, "Why can't I be so happy?

Why can't I relate with such beauty? Why can't I enjoy the wind and the rain and the sun so relaxedly?"

It is not because you are lower than the birds, it is because you are higher and much more is required of you. It is because you are higher that God's criterion for you is higher too.

Yes, a drunkard looks lost, without any anxiety, without any worry, and Buddha also looks without any worry and without any anxiety; Buddha also looks drunk. But do you think they exist on the same plane? The drunkard has fallen from consciousness, and the buddha has risen from the self.

Self-consciousness is human. If you fall from consciousness you will have a certain forgetfulness of anxiety. If you rise from the self you will not only have a forgetfulness of anxiety; anxieties simply evaporate, they exist no more.

You can become buddhas. Vasumati, you have the capacity, the potential, to become a buddha. The birds are poor. But man has fallen so low that he even starts feeling jealous of poor birds.

You ask, "What is the secret of this that seems so hard for human beings?"

The secret is consciousness. Consciousness brings freedom. Freedom does not mean only the freedom to do right; if that was the meaning of freedom, what kind of freedom would it be? If you are only free to do right, then you are not free. Freedom implies both the alternatives -- to do right, to do wrong. Freedom implies the right to say yes or to say no.

And this is something subtle to be understood. Saying no feels more of a freedom than saying yes. And I am not philosophizing, it is a simple fact you can observe in yourself.

Whenever you say no, you feel more free. Whenever you say yes, you don't feel free, because yes means you have obeyed, yes means you have surrendered -- where is the freedom? No means you are stubborn, keeping aloof; no means you have asserted yourself, no means you are ready to fight. No defines you more clearly than yes. Yes is vague, it is like a cloud. No is very solid and substantial, like a rock.

That's why psychologists say that between seven and fourteen years of age each child starts learning to say no more and more. By saying no, he is getting out of the psychological womb of the mother. Even when there is no need to say no, he will say no.

Even when to say yes is in his favor, he will say no.

There is much at stake; he has to learn to say no more and more. By the time he is fourteen, sexually mature, he will say the ultimate no to the mother; he will fall in love with a woman. That is his ultimate no to the mother, he is turning his back on the mother.

He says, "I am finished with you, I have chosen my woman. I have become an individual, independent in my own right. I want to live my life, I want to do my own thing."

And if the parents insist, "Have short hair," he will have long hair. If the parents insist, "Have long hair," he will have short hair. Just watch a little longer. When hippies become parents then they will see, their children will have short hair -- because they will have to learn no.

If the parents insist, "Cleanliness is next to God," the children will start living in every kind of dirt. They will be dirty. They won't take a bath, they won't clean themselves, they won't use soap. And they will find rationalizations that soap is dangerous to the skin, that it is unnatural, that no animal ever uses soap. They can find as many rationalizations as possible, but deep down all those rationalizations are just cover-ups. The real thing is, they want to say no. And of course when you want to say no, you have to find reasons.

Hence, no gives you a sense of freedom; not only that, it also gives you a sense of intelligence. To say yes needs no intelligence. When you say yes, nobody asks you why.

When you have already said yes, who bothers to ask you why? There is no need of any reasoning or argument, you have already said yes. When you say no, why is bound to be asked. It sharpens your intelligence, it gives you a definition, a style, freedom. Watch the psychology of the no.

It is so hard for human beings to be in harmony, because of consciousness.

Consciousness gives freedom, freedom gives you the capacity to say no, and there is more possibility to say no than to say yes. And without yes, there is no harmony. Yes is harmony. But it takes time to grow up, to mature, to come to such a maturity where you can say yes and yet remain free, where you can say yes and yet remain unique, where you can say yes and yet not become a slave.

The freedom that is brought by no is a very childish freedom. It is good for seven-year- olds up to fourteen-year-olds. But if a person gets caught in it and his whole life becomes a no-saying, then he has stopped growing.

The ultimate growth is to say yes with such joy as a child says no. That is a second childhood. And the man who can say yes with tremendous freedom and joy, with no hesitation, with no strings attached, with no conditions -- a pure and simple joy, a pure and simple yes -- that man has become a sage. That man lives in harmony again. And his harmony is of a totally different dimension than the harmony of trees, animals and birds.

They live in harmony because they cannot say no, and the sage lives in harmony because he does not say no. Between the two, the birds and the buddhas, are all human beings -- un-grown-up, immature, childish, stuck somewhere, still trying to say no, to have some feeling of freedom.

I am not saying don't learn to say no. I am saying learn to say no when it is time to say no, but don't get stuck with it. Slowly slowly, see that there is a higher freedom that comes with yes, and a greater harmony. A peace that passeth understanding.

The second question:

Mukti Gandha, yes. Love is not a relationship. Love relates, but it is not a relationship. A relationship is something finished. A relationship is a noun; the full stop has come, the honeymoon is over. Now there is no joy, no enthusiasm, now all is finished.

You can carry it on, just to keep your promises. You can carry it on because it is comfortable, convenient, cozy. You can carry it on because there is nothing else to do.

You can carry it on because if you disrupt it, it is going to create much trouble for you.

Relationship means something complete, finished, closed. Love is never a relationship; love is relating. It is always a river, flowing, unending. Love knows no full stop; the honeymoon begins but never ends. It is not like a novel that starts at a certain point and ends at a certain point. It is an ongoing phenomenon. Lovers end, love continues. It is a continuum. It is a verb, not a noun. And why do we reduce the beauty of relating to relationship? Why are we in such a hurry? -- because to relate is insecure, and relationship is a security, relationship has a certainty. Relating is just a meeting of two strangers, maybe just an overnight stay and in the morning we say goodbye. Who knows what is going to happen tomorrow? And we are so afraid that we want to make it certain, we want to make it predictable. We would like tomorrow to be according to our ideas; we don't allow it freedom to have its own say. So we immediately reduce every verb to a noun.

You are in love with a woman or a man and immediately you start thinking of getting married. Make it a legal contract. Why? How does the law come into love? The law comes into love because love is not there. It is only a fantasy, and you know the fantasy will disappear. Before it disappears settle down, before it disappears do something so it becomes impossible to separate.

In a better world, with more meditative people, with a little more enlightenment spread over the earth, people will love, love immensely, but their love will remain a relating, not a relationship. And I am not saying that their love will be only momentary. There is every possibility their love may go deeper than your love, may have a higher quality of intimacy, may have something more of poetry and more of God in it. And there is every possibility their love may last longer than your so-called relationship ever lasts. But it will not be guaranteed by the law, by the court, by the policeman.

The guarantee will be inner. It will be a commitment from the heart, it will be a silent communion. If you enjoy being with somebody, you would like to enjoy it more and more. If you enjoy the intimacy, you would like to explore the intimacy more and more.

And there are a few flowers of love which bloom only after long intimacies. There are seasonal flowers too; within six weeks they are there in the sun, but within six weeks again they are gone forever. There are flowers which take years to come, and there are flowers which take many years to come. The longer it takes, the deeper it goes.

But it has to be a commitment from one heart to another heart. It has not even to be verbalized, because to verbalize it is to profane it. It has to be a silent commitment; eye to eye, heart to heart, being to being. It has to be understood, not said.

It is so ugly seeing people going to the church or the court to get married. It is so ugly, so inhuman. It simply shows they can't trust themselves, they trust the policeman more than they trust their own inner voice. It shows they can't trust their love, they trust the law.

Gandha, forget relationships and learn how to relate. Once you are in a relationship you start taking each other for granted. That's what destroys all love affairs. The woman thinks she knows the man, the man thinks he knows the woman. Nobody knows either. It is impossible to know the other, the other remains a mystery. And to take the other for granted is insulting, disrespectful.

To think that you know your wife is very very ungrateful. How can you know the woman? How can you know the man? They are processes, they are not things. The woman that you knew yesterday is not there today. So much water has gone down the Ganges; she is somebody else, totally different. Relate again, start again, don't take it for granted.

And the man that you slept with last night, look at his face again in the morning. He is no more the same person, so much has changed. So much, incalculably much, has changed.

That is the difference between a thing and a person. The furniture in the room is the same, but the man and the woman, they are no more the same. Explore again, start again.

That's what I mean by relating.

Relating means you are always starting, you are continuously trying to become acquainted. Again and again, you are introducing yourself to each other. You are trying to see the many facets of the other's personality. You are trying to penetrate deeper and deeper into his realm of inner feelings, into the deep recesses of his being. You are trying to unravel a mystery which cannot be unraveled.

That is the joy of love: the exploration of consciousness. And if you relate, and don't reduce it to a relationship, then the other will become a mirror to you. Exploring him, unawares you will be exploring yourself too. Getting deeper into the other, knowing his feelings, his thoughts, his deeper stirrings, you will be knowing your own deeper stirrings too. Lovers become mirrors to each other, and then love becomes a meditation.

Relationship is ugly, relating is beautiful.

In relationship both persons become blind to each other. Just think, how long has it been since you saw your wife eye to eye? How long has it been since you looked at your husband? Maybe years. Who looks at one's own wife? You have already taken it for granted that you know her. What more is there to look at? You are more interested in strangers than in the people you know -- you know the whole topography of their bodies, you know how they respond, you know everything that has happened is going to happen again and again. It is a repetitive circle.

It is not so, it is not really so. Nothing ever repeats; everything is new every day. Just your eyes become old, your assumptions become old, your mirror gathers dust and you become incapable of reflecting the other.

Hence I say relate. By saying relate, I mean remain continuously on a honeymoon. Go on searching and seeking each other, finding new ways of loving each other, finding new ways of being with each other. And each person is such an infinite mystery, inexhaustible, unfathomable, that it is not possible that you can ever say, "I have known her," or, "I have known him." At the most you can say, "I have tried my best, but the mystery remains a mystery."

In fact the more you know, the more mysterious the other becomes. Then love is a constant adventure.

The third question:

Deva Saguna, you seem to be very old fashioned. The world has changed a lot since these kinds of stories were written. Now just the vice versa exists. Touch a prince and he becomes a frog, kiss a prince and immediately there is a frog.

This fable is no longer applicable. But it will be good to go a little deeper into it. Why were such kinds of stories invented? -- why in the first place? What is their psychology?

The psychology is to cover up something ugly about human beings. The reality is that the moment you kiss a woman or a man, the moment you fall in love with a man or a woman, immediately the process starts that the man starts becoming a frog, the woman starts becoming a frog.

Now, this is a fact, and you all know it. And these fables were created to cover up this reality. These fables were created to deceive you, that this is not so, that in reality you can kiss a frog and he becomes a prince. To deceive you about the reality of life, these stories were created. Small children read these stories and believe in them, and later on they are very much disillusioned.

These stories are fantasies, wish-fulfillments. That's how man would like things to be.

Kiss a frog and the frog is transformed into a handsome prince. These are wish- fulfillments; it does not happen, what happens is just the contrary. But how to hide it?

How not to look at it? Create beautiful fables around it.

Ninety-nine percent of our religion and a hundred percent of our literature consists of deceptions. It goes on talking about things as they are not, never have been, and never will be.

But man is the animal who lives through illusions. He cannot live with reality; reality is too much, it hurts. Have you not seen it in your own life? Fall in love with a woman; she was so beautiful when she was unavailable; when she was beyond your grasp she was like a Cleopatra. And once you are married to her you are fed up with her, bored to death.

Now you cannot believe how you managed to see Cleopatra in this woman; she looks utterly ugly in every possible way.

And the same is the case from her side. She was thinking you were a charming prince, like the princes in the fables who come on their beautiful horses. She thought she had found her charming prince. And when she lives with the reality, he snores in the night, he stinks, and he has such dirty habits -- he smokes, she cannot even kiss him because he smells so much of smoking. And suddenly she becomes aware that the charming prince was never there in reality; he was a projection, she had projected him.

Every day the person becomes more and more ordinary. The reality is: kiss a prince and he becomes a frog. But then how to live?

If all these realities are made known, then life will become impossible. So we create fantasies, fables, fictions, to create some consolation, to create a little cozy atmosphere. If it is not real, at least you can dream, you can fantasize, you can believe that if it is not real today, tomorrow it is going to be real. Go on kissing the frog, and sooner or later he will become a prince. These are make-believes.

People believe in the immortality of the soul because they are conscious of death -- not that they know the soul is immortal, but just because they see everybody dying, they know the certainty of death. Now, how to escape from a certainty? Create a fiction.

Remember, I am not saying that the soul is not eternal, I am simply saying that people's belief that the soul is eternal is a fiction. The belief is a fiction.

People believe in a God who cares, because they feel so uncared for. Nobody cares about them, they feel so left alone, nobody seems to be interested in them; whether they live or die will not matter. They have to create a father figure high in heaven who cares for them.

Even if nobody cares, God cares. It is a great solace.

In the name of religion, in the name of literature, in the name of poetry, music, we have been creating fictions -- we create a few buffers around ourselves, so the shocks of reality don't reach to us.

You must have seen buffers in railway trains. Between two bogies, two compartments, there are buffers, so if somehow some accident happens, the compartments don't run into each other and the shock of the accident can be absorbed by the buffers. Cars have springs so that you don't feel the bumps on rough roads. Those springs go on absorbing the bumps, the shocks; they are shock-absorbers.

Man has created many psychological shock-absorbers around himself. And what I would like to say to you is this: that unless you drop all shock-absorbers you are never going to be free.

Only truth liberates. And in the beginning, truth shocks very much -- but that's how it is, that's how things are, that's how nature functions. You have to open yourself, you have to be vulnerable to all the shocks of life. It will hurt, it will wound, you will cry, you will weep, you will be in a rage against life. But slowly slowly you will start seeing that truth is truth, and it is pointless to be in a rage against truth. And once the rage has subsided, the truth has a beauty of its own. Truth liberates.

The real work of a master is to destroy the absorbers of the disciples. And it is really very hard work -- hard in the sense that the disciples resist in every possible way. They protect their absorbers, and if they feel that there is some danger, they create more absorbers around themselves. If they see that somebody is after them to snatch their absorbers, they become very defensive, very protective and they create more armors around themselves.

The real master cannot give you solace, he can only give you freedom. He can give you bliss, but he cannot give you consolation. And he will have to destroy many things in you which you have cherished for long, nourished for long. He will have to take away all the clothes that protect you, he will have to leave you nude in reality.

It frightens, it scares, but that is the only way you can grow. Growth has to be with reality, not against reality. And once you have tasted something of reality as it is, you will never gather any other buffers, shock-absorbers, around you again.

Saguna, you say, "I feel like the frog in the fairy tale who gets kissed and starts growing up to be the handsome prince."

You must be dreaming. Things are not done that way here. You came here, Saguna, as a charming prince. You have been kissed, and now you are a frog. But there is nothing wrong with being a frog -- frogs are beautiful people.

You say, "But I'm still wearing froggy clothes...." Of course -- you are still a frog!

"And they are too tight" -- you are imagining -- "and the princess isn't interested and wouldn't it be nice just to be a frog again?"

What are you talking about? You don't need any help, you already are one! Accept your frogginess and forget all about the princess. In fact I have never seen a frog interested in a princess -- foolish idea! Become interested in another frog! And in that way I can help you. I have so many frogs here.

The fifth question:

Henk Faassen, in enlightenment there is nobody there to get angry, and there is nobody there not to get angry either. So whatsoever happens, happens. Krishnamurti does not get angry the way you get angry. Everything with an enlightened person happens on a totally different plane. His anger comes out of his compassion. Your anger comes out of hate, aggression, cruelty. He becomes angry -- sometimes he starts pulling his hair out, he hits his own forehead -- but out of compassion.

Just think, for fifty years or more he has been teaching a certain kind of truth to the world, and nobody understands him. The same people gather each year to listen to him -- the same people.

Once he was talking in Bombay... somebody reported this to me, and the person who reported it to me is an old lady, older than Krishnamurti. She saw Krishnamurti when he was a child, she has seen him and listened to him for fifty years. And because she is a little deaf, very old, she sits in the front on a chair. And for fifty years Krishnamurti has been saying that there are no methods for meditation, that meditation is not needed at all.

Just be in the present and live your life, that's enough meditation, no other technique is needed....

For one and a half hours he poured his heart out, and at the end the lady stood up and asked, "How to meditate?" Now, what do you suppose he should do? He hit his head.

This is not your anger. This is so unbelievable! He is tired of this lady, but this lady is not tired of him. She comes to every talk to listen to him, and asks the same stupid questions.

When I say Krishnamurti can get angry, I don't mean, Henk, that he can get angry like you get angry. His anger is out of compassion. This situation is unbelievable! He wants to help this lady and he feels so helpless. He tries this way and that. His message is very simple, singular, one-dimensional. For fifty years he has been saying only a single word.

In essence his whole teaching can be printed on one side of a postcard. He has been saying it in as many possible ways as one can invent, but it is the same citadel that he attacks from the north, from the south, from the west, from the east. And still people go on listening to him and go on asking the same old foolish questions.

He certainly gets angry. And when a man like Krishnamurti gets angry, he is pure anger.

Many in India have felt very disappointed with Krishnamurti because he gets angry. They have a certain concept that a buddha should not get angry. They go with a prejudice. And when they see that Krishnamurti can get angry, they are disillusioned, "So this man is not a buddha, he has not become enlightened yet."

I say to you that he is one of the most enlightened persons who has ever walked on this earth. Still he can get angry, but his anger comes out of compassion; it is condensed compassion. He cares about you, so much so that he becomes angry. This is a totally different quality of anger.

And when he becomes angry he is real anger. Your anger is partial, lukewarm. Your anger is like a dog who is not certain how to behave with a stranger. He may be a friend of the master, so he wags his tail; he may be an enemy, so he barks. He does both together. On one hand he goes on barking, on the other hand he goes on wagging his tail.

He is playing the diplomat, so whatsoever the case turns out to be, he can always feel right. If the master comes and he sees that the master is friendly, the barking will stop and his whole energy will go into the tail. If the master is angry with the intruder, then the tail will stop completely, and his whole energy will go into barking.

Your anger is also like that. You are weighing up how far to go, how much will pay; don't go beyond the limit, don't provoke the other person too much.

But when a man like Krishnamurti becomes angry he is pure anger. And pure anger has a beauty because it has totality. He is just anger. He is like a small child, redfaced, just anger all over, ready to destroy the whole world.

That's what happened to Jesus. When he went into the great temple and saw the moneychangers and their tables inside the temple, he was in a rage. He became angry -- the same anger that comes out of compassion and love. Singlehanded, he drove all the moneychangers out of the temple and overturned their boards. He must have been really very angry, because driving all the moneychangers out of the temple singlehanded is not an easy thing.

And reports say -- I don't know how far they are right, but reports say that he was not a very strong man. Reports say that he was not even a very tall man; you will be surprised, he was only four feet six inches. And not only that -- on top of it he was a hunchback. I don't know how far those reports are true, because I don't want to go to court! But it is there in the books, ancient books, very ancient books.

So how did this hunchback, four feet six inches high, drive out all the moneychangers singlehanded? He must have been pure rage!

Indians are angry about that. They cannot trust that Jesus is enlightened -- just because of this incident.

People have their prejudices, their ideas. Rather than seeing into reality, rather than looking into an enlightened man, they come ready with so many concepts, and unless he fits them he is not enlightened. And let me tell you, no enlightened person is going to fit with your unenlightened prejudices; it is impossible.

It happened, a lady came to me. She had been a follower of Krishnamurti for many years, then a small thing disturbed the whole thing and the whole applecart was upturned. The thing was so small that I was surprised. There was a camp in Holland where Krishnamurti holds a camp every year, and the woman had gone there from India. Nearabout two thousand people had gathered from all over the world to listen to him. The next morning the lectures were going to start, and the woman had gone shopping. And she was surprised, Krishnamurti was also shopping. An enlightened person shopping? Can you believe it? Buddha in a supermarket? And not only that -- he was purchasing a necktie.

Enlightened people need neckties? And not only that -- the whole counter was full of neckties and he was throwing them this way and that, and he was not satisfied with any.

The woman watched, looked at the whole scene, and fell from the sky. She thought, "I have come from India for this ordinary man who is purchasing neckties. And even then, of thousands of neckties of all colors and all kinds of material, nothing is satisfying to him. Is this detachment? Is this awareness?"

She turned away. She didn't attend the camp, she came back immediately. And the first thing she did was to come running to me, and she said, "You are right."

I said, "What do you mean?"

She said, "You are right that it was useless wasting my time with Krishnamurti. Now I want to become a sannyasin of yours."

I said, "Please excuse me, I cannot accept you. If you cannot accept Krishnamurti, how can I accept you? Get lost! ... Because here you will see far more disappointing things.

What are you going to do with my Mercedes Benz? So before it happens, why bother?

What are you going to do with my air-conditioned room? Before it happens, it is better that you go and find some Muktananda, etcetera. You have not been able to understand Krishnamurti, you will not be able to understand me."

People like Krishnamurti live on a totally different plane. Their anger is not your anger.

And who knows that he was not just playing with those ties for this stupid old woman?

Masters are known to devise things like that. He got rid of this stupid old woman very easily.

The last question:

Videha, I am not averse to gossiping. In fact, I love it. But what to do with this old man, Atisha? Every day I decide to gossip a little, and he says no. And I have to be a little respectful towards him. And the problem is not so much with Atisha, the problem is the sutra that is coming. I will find a legal way to wriggle out of it. But gossiping is difficult - - but if you promise me not to tell anybody, I will....

A man was walking down the street looking into shop windows and his gaze stopped on a small overnight shaving-kit bag in a shop. What stopped him was the price -- an exorbitant three hundred dollars.

His curiosity got the better of him and he was compelled to go in and ask about it, although he did not need one. "Why is this little bag so expensive?" he asked.

The shopkeeper replied, "It is made out of a very special leather."

"Even if it was made out of alligator skin or mink-lined it wouldn't be so costly," said the inquiring man.

The shopkeeper answered, "The story behind this small bag is special. The leathersmith's uncle is a rabbi and this bag is made entirely out of foreskins."

"I can see that that would be unique," the man came back. "But three hundred dollars is still too high a price!"

The shopkeeper then said, "It is very convenient. When you rub it, it turns into a large suitcase."

Enough for today.

The Book of Wisdom