This moment

This morning it is raining so beautifully.

Tomorrow ... one never knows; it may be sunny, the clouds may have disappeared.

This morning the cuckoo is continuously singing, tomorrow it may have gone. Life is such. You cannot ask permanency, consistency, that things should always remain the same.

Watching life you will come to know the very secret, and you will also become aware that mind is not functioning according to life. Mind believes in consistency; it wants that it should rain every morning, just the same. Mind is not able to cope with the unknown, with the spontaneous, with the ever-renewing existence.

The disparity between mind and life is the whole problem. Either you listen to the mind ...

then you live in misery, because life is not going to fulfill the demands of the mind.

Unfulfilled, miserable, your life will become just a long drawnout tragedy. But nobody else except you is responsible. You listened to the wrong adviser: you should have listened to life, not to mind.

Mind is a small mechanism, good for day-to-day affairs, good for the marketplace, but if you want to enter into the vastness of existence mind is absolutely incapable. But you are accustomed to the mind, and even when you are seeking for truth or for love or for the ultimate meaning you go on carrying your old mind, which is absolutely a hindrance; it is not a help on the way.

If you listen to life instead of mind, things are very simple. You never say to life, "You are contradictory. Yesterday there was no rain and today it is raining. Yesterday it was hot and today it is cold." You simply accept life as it comes -- there is no other way. It is one of those inescapables Ta Hui has talked of before. It is unavoidable.

The child will become a young man, the young man will become old, and the old man will die. A man of understanding simply accepts this whole flux, change, without any resistance, because he knows this is how things are. By your expectations they don't change. Your expectations only create frustrations for you.

My whole life I have been told, "You have said something a few years before; now you are saying something else. Your philosophy is contradictory, you are not consistent."

And they have been shocked when I told them, "Yes, you are right. But it is not an objection against me, it is a compliment. It means my philosophy is in tune with life. It changes ... the climate changes, the season changes. Sometimes it is fall and the trees are standing naked; against the sky they have their own beauty. And sometimes it is spring, and the trees are so green with foliage and ready to shower their flowers for anyone who happens to be nearby. No introduction is needed, no acquaintance is needed; the friend and the foe are both treated the same way."

From my very childhood I watched the river of my village swelling in the rains, becoming so vast as if it is the ocean itself. In summer it shrinks to a small stream. I have told people, "You don't ever say to the river, 'Your behavior is very inconsistent.' You never ask the flowers, you never ask the birds, 'Why are you not singing today? What has happened?' But you go on asking about philosophies, ideologies, whether they are consistent or not."

Once and for all, in a single blow, you have to drop the idea of consistency. It is a by-product of the training of your mind. Mind cannot be with the inconsistent -- but life is inconsistent. I am not responsible for it, and neither are you. Nobody is responsible for it; it simply happens to be so. And it is beautiful.

Ta Hui is making a great statement. No philosopher can make such a statement, only a mystic who has put his mind aside and looks directly into existence and becomes aware of its constantly changing flux. Except for change, everything changes. The only permanent thing in the world is change. And the moment you ask things not to change, you are creating misery for yourself.

Ta Hui says, DON'T REMEMBER WHAT I HAVE SAID, AND CONSIDER IT RIGHT.

Mysticism is not academic, it is not an ordinary school. It belongs to the beyond, the ultimate and the mysterious. If you live with a living master, you have to learn that. There is no need to remember what he has said yesterday. Yesterday was yesterday; today is today.

A living master responds to reality moment to moment; he never bothers whether it is consistent with yesterday or not. His only concern is whether it is true to the moment or not; whether his response to the moment is authentic or not. If it is authentic, then there is no need to bother what he has said yesterday or the day before yesterday.

This is where the philosopher and the mystic differ. Philosophers remain consistent; they avoid inconsistency. Their only fear is to commit a mistake, to say something which goes against something that they have said before. But just because of this consistency they remain unaware of the mysteries of existence, they remain confined in their mind. They never come to know the rain, the sun, the moon, the trees, the children playing. This whole drama of tremendous beauty is missed by the so-called philosophers.

But strangely enough they are the people who dominate the mind of humanity. There is a natural reason: they can dominate the mind because mind loves consistency and philosophers are consistent people.

Ta Hui is saying: DON'T REMEMBER WHAT I HAVE SAID, AND CONSIDER IT RIGHT ... The day has passed, the statement is out of date. 'Right' belongs to the present.

Never compare dead corpses with living people; never compare flowers which have disappeared with the flowers that are blossoming now, otherwise you will be getting into a confusion. To come out of such a confusion is very difficult, almost impossible. It is good to remember it from the very beginning: DON'T REMEMBER WHAT I HAVE SAID.

Teachers go on saying to the students, "Remember what I'm saying to you." Only a master can say to the disciples, "Forget all that I have said to you. When it was needed, when it was a response to something actual, it was said and you heard it, and you absorbed it. Now there is no need to remember it. It has become part of you."

Memory never becomes part of you. That's why after the universities your so-called gold medalists, your so-called first-class people, simply disappear in the world; nobody ever hears about them. What happened? They were so great in the university. They should have made a remarkable life outside the university; they should have left a mark in the world; they should have left their signature in life. But nobody ever hears about them, and the reason is that in the university memory is all. They were good at remembering.

In life just memory is of no use. In life something more and something better -- intelligence, spontaneity, being in tune moment to moment with all the changes that are happening -- is needed. A man who is stuck with his memories falls far away from life. That's what happens to your so-called scholars. They know much about scriptures, but they know nothing about life.

DON'T REMEMBER WHAT I HAVE SAID, AND CONSIDER IT RIGHT. TODAY I SPEAK THIS WAY ... because today is today. It has never been before, and it will never be again. It is absolutely new and fresh. It is not a repetition, it is not a continuation either. Life goes on jumping from moment to moment abruptly.

Do you see this rain? Abruptly it starts, abruptly it is gone, abruptly it becomes intense and for no other reason becomes soft again.

TODAY I SPEAK THIS WAY, BUT THEN TOMORROW I WILL SPEAK OTHERWISE. Ta Hui knows one thing certainly: tomorrow is not going to be the same.

Naturally he can say with confidence, TOMORROW I WILL SPEAK OTHERWISE ..." and if you go on collecting what I say, you will become puzzled. You will start wondering what is right and what is wrong."

As far as the mystics are concerned, their statements are not to be considered the way you consider the statements of philosophers. You have to look at the mystic; his statements are only responses to changing life. You have to see that the mystic is always in the moment; he never looks back, he never looks ahead. Feeling this will bring you closer to the mystic.

I have heard an ancient story ... A drunkard went in the night, after getting completely drunk, to a sweet shop and he purchased some sweets. He gave a ten rupee note, but the shopkeeper said "I don't have any change. Tomorrow you can collect the remaining rupees; right now I don't have them. Either you can keep your ten rupees and tomorrow you can pay, or you can leave ten rupees and tomorrow you can take the remaining part."

The drunkard said, "I am not in a fit state; I may forget those ten rupees somewhere. You keep it. Tomorrow I will collect them."

But in his drunkenness -- confused and dismal -- still he thought, "I should remember exactly the name of the shop, the face of the man, exactly where the place is, because tomorrow morning I will not be drunk and I will have to remember. I should make something special as a mark so that this man cannot deceive me."

He looked all around. He could not see anything except a bull sitting in front of the shop.

He said, "That's right. This man could change the sign; tomorrow his father or his brother may be sitting there and they can simply refuse, saying, 'You never came last night' -- but they won't think about the bull who is so silently sitting."

Happily he left, and the next morning he came to collect his money. But the bull was sitting before a barber's saloon. The drunkard said, "My God! Just for a few rupees you have changed the sign; you have changed even your profession -- you have become a barber just for a few rupees!"

The barber said, "What nonsense you are talking! I have been a barber always."

The drunkard said, "You cannot deceive me. Look at the bull; he is still sitting silently where I had left him last night."

The drunkard was behaving like a philosopher, finding a certain consistency. Reality is different. The bull can change places; there is no obligation for him to sit continuously before the sweet shop -- he can sit anywhere. Life goes on changing.

A mystic is committed to life, not to his own statements. Those statements are old newspapers. He remains alert moment to moment and he remains alert to the disciple, his changes. Your questions may be the same, but the master may answer differently because you are not the same. And the question is not important; you are important.

AS SOON AS YOU ARE THUS, I AM NOT THUS ... Living with a master one has to be flexible, not dogmatic. Whatever the master is saying is not an ultimate statement -- no statement can be ultimate. So don't take it as an ultimate answer, because tomorrow he will change and then you will be in a difficulty.

Your mind would like to remain with the past because it has become familiar, accustomed to the statement. Now this new statement disturbs the mind and its constant search for consistency.

Ta Hui is saying, AS SOON AS YOU ARE THUS, I AM NOT THUS; WHEN YOU ARE NOT THUS, THEN I AM THUS. WHERE WILL YOU SEARCH OUT MY ABIDING PLACE? SINCE I MYSELF DON'T EVEN KNOW, HOW CAN ANYONE ELSE FIND WHERE I STAY?

The mystic has no philosophy as such. You will be surprised to know that in India we don't have any equivalent word for philosophy. The word that India has used for centuries and which has now become synonymous with philosophy is darshan.

Darshan has a totally different meaning. Darshan means clarity of vision, ability to see; it has nothing to do with philosophy. Philosophy literally means love of knowledge, love of wisdom. Darshan means seeing the reality and responding accordingly. Philosophy is of the mind, darshan is of meditation.

THIS IS THE LIVING GATE ... this understanding that life is changing, you are changing, everything is changing. Don't cling to anything, don't be a fanatic; don't be a fundamentalist Christian, don't be a Hindu. How can you be a Hindu? Five thousand years ago your scriptures were written; in five thousand years the bull has moved! Bulls are not predictable, they are very free, beautiful animals. And you are still holding the dead scripture, and thinking you are a Hindu, you are a Mohammedan, you are a Christian, you are a Communist.

Belonging to the past -- even the closest past, yesterday -- is a wrong approach. Not to belong to anything but to remain available to whatever life brings to you -- this is the living gate. Then every moment is an excitement and every moment is a discovery and every moment is a challenge. Every moment you have to grow because you have to learn to respond in a way you have never responded. You become mature.

All fanatics, fundamentalists, fascists remain retarded. They are living in the past, which is no more. They are completely blind as far as the reality is concerned. They go on seeing things which have disappeared from the scene, and they are incapable ... they really avoid seeing what has become real.

YOU CAN ENTER ONLY WHEN YOU'VE PUT TO DEATH YOUR FABRICATED "REALITY." Unless you learn the art of dying every moment to the past, you are not really living. The past goes on becoming heavier and heavier, because the past is growing every day.

And your future is so fragile, so small, that the past does not allow you to live in the present. It pulls you backwards.

It is as if you, being a fundamentalist, go on insisting, "I will continue to use my underwear from my childhood." You will be a phenomenon ...!

I have heard about a man who had ordered a tailor to make a beautiful suit for him. He was going to a marriage celebration in a few days, "so make it really beautiful." The suit was made, the man tried it and he could not believe it: one arm of the coat was long, the other arm was short; one leg of the suit was long, another was short. He said, "What kind of thing have you made?"

The tailor said, "Nothing is wrong with it. The arm of the coat which is short ... you just pull your hand inside!"

He said, "This is a difficult job, continuously to keep the hand pulled inside. And what about the other hand?"

The tailor said, "You put your hand outside, and you have to do the same with your legs."

You can conceive ... and the tailor said, "It is such a beautiful suit. I have worked day and night over it, and you complain about small things!"

So the poor fellow went out. A couple came by and the woman said, "Look at that poor fellow. He seems to be paralyzed or crippled. What has happened to him? One arm is short, one arm is long, and the way he is walking ...!"

But the man said, "Forget about him, look at the suit; it is really beautiful. And what can the tailor do? -- if the man is like that, the tailor has done the best he could do."

Almost everybody in the world -- the Christian, the Hindu, the Jaina, the Buddhist, the Mohammedan, the Jew -- they are all wearing coats and suffering immensely. One hand has to be kept pulled in, another has to be kept pulled out. Man is not important, but doctrines, philosophies, ideologies are important. They are not for man, but man is for them; he has to fit accordingly.

Every idea that comes from the past is crippling your consciousness. You have to learn the art of dying to everything that has passed, so that you can live in the present with totality, with no burden. And when the present moves, you also move, because now the present is becoming past -- die to it.

Always remember that the fresh, the present has to be totally lived, and anything that hinders has to be dropped. Don't bother about being consistent; otherwise to be consistent you will have to wear for your whole life the underwear that you happened to wear in childhood.

Then you cannot be inconsistent; you have to be consistent, however you suffer -- and you are going to suffer. Your whole life will be destroyed by underwear that is to small. You cannot walk, you cannot sit, you cannot talk; you have always to consider the underwear. But everybody is in the same psychological position.

Ta Hui's golden gate is certainly a golden gate. YOU CAN ENTER ONLY WHEN YOU'VE PUT TO DEATH YOUR FABRICATED "REALITY." YET STUDENTS CONSIDER PAYING HOMAGE TO THE BUDDHA, UPHOLDING THE SCRIPTURES, AND DISCIPLINING THEMSELVES IN BODY, MOUTH, AND MIND, AS THEIR SUSTENANCE, HOPING TO FIND REALIZATION. WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH IT? THEY ARE LIKE FOOLS INTENT ON GOING WEST TO GET SOMETHING IN THE EAST -- THE FARTHER THEY GO, THE FARTHER AWAY THEY ARE; THE GREATER THE HURRY, THE GREATER THE DELAY.

A few things that he has said ... First, remain fresh and clean; go on dropping the dust that naturally gathers as time passes by.

One Zen master, Rinzai, was sent by his own master to another master. This has been a tradition in Zen, that sometimes masters sent their disciples to different masters just so that they don't become accustomed to a certain way, a certain style; they don't become fixed, they remain flexible. Naturally a different master will have a different style -- and Zen masters are very unique people.

The disciple went to the other master, and he was very much puzzled. What he heard there was almost in contradiction to what he had been hearing from his own master. He asked the new master, "What am I to do? I have come from a master -- he has sent me -- and I have become accustomed to a certain way of life, a certain way of thinking, and here things are totally different."

The master said, "Forget your old master and forget all that you have learned there. One of the greatest principles of learning is the art of forgetting. You have heard that learning is the art of remembering, but you can remember the new only if you forget the old. So forget the old! While you are here, be here!"

After a year or two he became accustomed to the new master, and as he was becoming more and more familiar, relaxed, and the conflict was disappearing, the master said, "Now you go back to your old master."

The disciple said, "This is a strange thing. It took me two years to forget that fellow, and now to go back again ..."

The master said, "You will not find the same fellow, because in two years he must have changed."

The disciple said, "This is a very difficult thing. If he has changed, then I will have to learn again. I will have to forget you."

The master said, "Obviously! That is the whole purpose of exchanging disciples -- so they become flexible and more and more capable of dying to the old and always resurrecting themselves into the new."

When the disciple arrived, he was surprised: everything had changed. And he said to his old master, "Now it will be very difficult for me. First, I became accustomed to your old style; as I was settling you disturbed me, you sent me to another man. As I was settling there, that man threw me back to you. I was hoping deep in my heart that perhaps it won't be a difficult matter to get back into the old style I have already lived, but you have changed. You are saying things you have never said before; you are doing things you have never done before.

You look almost like another person. What I am supposed to do?"

The master said, "Forget all those ... both your old master and your new master. Now you are here with me. I'm not the same man, although I look the same. So much water has gone down the Ganges ..."

I remember old Heraclitus, whose statement has not been taken very seriously in the Greek tradition of philosophy because he goes against the whole trend. He is unique and alone. He says, "You cannot step in the same river twice," because the river is constantly flowing.

If I ever meet Heraclitus -- and I think I am going to meet him some day, because in this eternity people are bound to stumble again and again on the old fellows -- I am going to tell him, "Change your statement. It was great when you made it, but it has a flaw in it. You say, 'You cannot step in the same river twice.' I want you to say, 'You cannot step in the same river even once' -- because even while you are stepping in, the river is flowing. When your foot touches the surface, the water underneath is flowing; when your foot is in the middle, the waters above and below it are flowing; when you reach the bottom, everything above it is flowing ... you cannot enter into the same river even once!"

And such is the nature of life. Everything goes on renewing itself; only mind is a dead thing, it remains the same. Hence mind has no resonance with life. If the mind is Christian or Hindu or Mohammedan it is fixed, it is a fossil, it is dead. It cannot live in the present; it is still searching for answers in the ashes of the burned bodies which do not have any life any more.

The golden gate is available only for those who are always alive to the new, and who are open -- and joyfully, not reluctantly -- who are happy to drop the past and remain unburdened.

And the second thing Ta Hui says is that your whole life is moving towards the future, and your whole mind is moving towards the past. You are in a dichotomy; you are in a very strange conflict, as if one leg is going backwards and one leg is going forwards. You are bound to suffer immense anguish. You can neither go back, nor can you go forwards; you will remain stuck, you will become paralyzed.

As I see it, all fanatics are paralyzed people. They think they are believers, they think they are faithful people, but actually their psychology is paralyzed. They don't have any contact with the living sources which surround them; they are not contemporaries. It is very rare to find a contemporary. Somebody has come to a full stop one thousand years before. He is still hanging there with Hazrat Mohammed, with Jesus Christ, with Krishna, with Buddha -- and life has left all those places.

Life is here, this very moment.

And Ta Hui makes a very significant statement: THE FARTHER THEY GO, THE FARTHER AWAY THEY ARE -- because if you are going backwards and life is moving forwards, you will become farther and farther away from reality. THE GREATER THE HURRY, THE GREATER THE DELAY ... hurrying in a wrong direction is dangerous!

I have heard ... Three professors were standing on the platform. The train was getting ready ... and they became involved in a discussion. One was to leave, two had come to give him a send-off. Suddenly the train whistled, the guard showed the flag, but they were so involved in their discussion that they did not hear anything. Just when the last compartment of the train was leaving the platform, they saw it. They all ran ... two could make it, one was left behind.

A porter was looking at the whole thing. He came to the man and said, "It is sad that you missed."

The professor said, "You don't know the real story. Those two fellows had come to send me off, but in their hurry they jumped into the train going in a wrong direction!"

THE GREATER THE HURRY, THE GREATER THE DELAY. One has to be very clear about one's direction. The direction can be either towards the past ... that's the direction of the majority of humanity. Their golden age has passed. A small section of humanity, a minority, has its golden age in the future: the communists, the socialists, the fabians and all kinds of anarchists are hoping that the golden age is going to come in the future.

But the past is no more and the future is not yet: both are unnecessarily moving in directions which don't exist. One used to exist, but no longer exists, and one has not even started to exist.

The only right person is one who lives moment to moment, whose arrow is directed to the moment, who is always here and now; wherever he is, his whole consciousness, his whole being, is involved in the reality of here and in the reality of now. That's the only right direction. Only such a man can enter into the golden gate.

The present is the golden gate.

Here-now is the golden gate.

THIS IS THE GATE OF THE GREAT DHARMA: UNCONDITIONED, UNDEFILED, WITHOUT ACCOMPLISHMENT. IF YOU AROUSE THE SLIGHTEST NOTION OF GAINING EXPERIENCE OF IT, YOU ARE RUNNING OFF IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION.

He is making very significant statements. First, the present is the golden gate, and you can be in the present only if you are not ambitious -- no accomplishment, no desire to achieve power, money, prestige, even enlightenment, because all ambition leads you into the future.

Only a non-ambitious man can remain in the present.

Secondly, IF YOU AROUSE THE SLIGHTEST NOTION OF GAINING EXPERIENCE OF IT, YOU ARE RUNNING OFF IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION. If you are thinking to gain experience of the present moment, you have missed the point already -- because the present moment is so small that if you start thinking of having some experience, you have got into your mind. Thinking, contemplating ... and meanwhile the present moment is slipping by.

A man who wants to be in the present has not to think, has just to see and enter the gate.

Experience will come, but experience has not to be premeditated.

HOW CAN YOU HOPE FOR IT, WANTING TO RELY ON SOME PETTY, CONTRIVED ACCOMPLISHMENTS?

IT IS NOT A FORCED ACTION ... You cannot force yourself to be in the present; it comes out of understanding, not out of force. You have simply to see that the past is not there.

You have simply to understand that the future has not come yet. And between these two is the small golden gate.

Enter into it without thinking, without desiring, without having an achieving mind -- just to explore, just to see what is hidden in the present. Innocently, just like a child, enter into it.

IT'S NOT A FORCED ACTION: THE DHARMA IS FUNDAMENTALLY LIKE THIS.

DON'T TAKE A LIKING TO OTHER PEOPLE'S MARVELS -- THE MARVELOUS MISLEADS PEOPLE.

And the last statement is: don't start thinking of other people, and what are their accomplishments.

A man came to Ramakrishna. He had been in the Himalayas for a long time; he heard about Ramakrishna and he came to see him. Ramakrishna was sitting under a tree by the side of the Ganges, near Calcutta, where he used to live. The man looked at Ramakrishna; he was thinking that he would be a very marvelous man -- but he was a simple villager, uneducated, very humble.

So the man who had been in the Himalayas practicing yoga said, "I have come from afar and I am very disillusioned seeing you. You look to be absolutely ordinary."

Ramakrishna said, "You are right. I am absolutely ordinary. How I can serve you who have come from so far?"

He said, "There is no question of service. You have so many followers -- for what reason?

Can you walk on the water? I can."

Ramakrishna said, "You are tired. Just sit a little, and then if you want to walk on the water we will enjoy it. How long did it take you to learn the art of walking on water?"

The man said, "Nearabout twenty years."

Ramakrishna laughed. He said, "You wasted your life. What is the point in the first place?

When I want to go to the other shore" -- the ordinary rate in those days was two paise -- " because I'm a poor man and people love me, they won't even take me to the other shore if I insist on giving them two paise. They refuse. They say, 'If you want to come, don't talk about money. You can come and we will feel blessed. It is enough to be with you while we are crossing the Ganges.' So something which costs only two paise ... you wasted twenty years to attain it? You surprise me."

The man at first was shocked, but then he realized that what Ramakrishna was saying was right: "What is the point? -- I have become a showman. These twenty years ... almost one third of my life is wasted. And what is my achievement?"

Ta Hui is saying, DO NOT TAKE A LIKING TO OTHER PEOPLE'S MARVELS -- THE MARVELOUS MISLEADS PEOPLE.

The golden gate is open for those who are simple, who are humble, who are almost nobodies, who don't have great achievements to proclaim to the world, who don't carry awards and Nobel prizes, who have nothing to brag about ... who are just as simple as birds, as trees.

Perhaps you have never thought about it, that the whole existence, the trees, the clouds, the mountains, the stars, are all humble. There is no arrogance anywhere. Only a man who understands the secret of being nobody can enter into the narrow gate.

The gate is very narrow; if you are somebody, you cannot enter into it. You have to be almost nothing, only then the gate of the present is available to you. You have to be egoless, nothing to claim, just being as ordinary as the rainwater or the silent trees, as innocent as the just-born child. He looks all around, he is conscious, but he has no claim. He is, but he has no identity. He does not say, "I am this, I am that"; he does not carry certificates and degrees and miraculous powers.

It has been one of the most significant things that although you hear the Christian missionaries and the Christian bishops talking about the miracles of Jesus, you never hear anything like that about Gautam Buddha, about Mahavira, about Ramakrishna. In fact, if you take away all the miracles of Jesus which Christians go on bragging about, which are all fictitious ... if they are all taken away, nothing will be left in Jesus.

But Gautam Buddha has no miracles. He has never walked on water and he has never raised anybody from the dead; he has never cured anybody from diseases, he has not turned water into wine -- he has done nothing. You cannot destroy him. His greatness is not in his actions but in his presence. His greatness is not in miracles but in his silence, in his humbleness.

I don't think that Christ ever walked on water -- no intelligent person will do it -- but these stories are fictions created by the disciples. Not a single Jewish scripture mentions it; they don't even mention the name of Jesus. Can you think that if a man today walks on water, raises dead people, turns water into wine and things like that it would not be reported as headlines in all the newspapers of the world?

But not a single mention of the name of Jesus is found in any Jewish scripture. And he was a Jew, remember, he was not a Christian; he had never heard the name Christian. He was born a Jew, he lived a Jew, he died a Jew. A Jewish boy -- he was only thirty-three when he was crucified -- doing such miracles, it is inconceivable that he would not be mentioned in some chronicle by somebody. It is impossible to conceive that a Jew doing such great miracles should be crucified. And he was not saying anything against Judaism; in fact all he was claiming was, "I'm the long-awaited Jewish messiah."

Gautam Buddha was criticizing everything Hindu. If Hindus had crucified him, there would seem to be some justification. But Jesus was not criticizing anything; on the contrary, he was proclaiming himself the Jewish prophet for which the Jews have been waiting since the days of Moses -- "He will come and deliver us." And if this man was walking on water, raising dead people, this must have proved that he was the right messiah: what more can you expect? He must be the only son of God, because no man can walk on water.

The reality is that after three hundred years Christian disciples created fictitious miracles, because if these miracles are not there, then there is nothing in Jesus that can be of any importance. He is not a meditator, he has not said that he has become enlightened, he has not opened any doors of mysteries -- so fictions are needed.

I have heard that a bishop and two rabbis had gone fishing in Lake Galilee, where Jesus used to walk. The bishop said to the rabbis, "I'm new here, you live here. Do you think Jesus really walked on water?"

One rabbi said, "What to say about Jesus -- here almost everybody walks on water."

The bishop said, "What? Can you walk on water?"

The rabbi said, "Yes."

They stopped the boat. The rabbi stepped out, walked on the water a few feet, and came back. The bishop could not believe it. The bishop asked the other rabbi, "Can you also walk ...?"

The second rabbi went out of the boat a few feet on the water, came back and both the rabbis said, "We are not Christians. You are a Christian -- can you walk on water?"

The bishop said, "Of course. If you can walk, even without being Christians, certainly I can also." He gathered confidence, seeing two persons walking, and he got out of the boat ...

and started drowning.

One rabbi said to the other, "Should we tell that idiot that on that side there are no rocks?

The rocks are on this side!"

It is possible to walk on water if you know where the rocks are. But people become very much interested in all kinds of stupid things ...

Ta Hui is saying, "Don't bother about what others have achieved." That always misleads people, because they also start trying to achieve the same marvels, the same miracles. And in existence there is no miracle.

In existence there are mysteries, and you can enter those mysteries, and you can enjoy and relish, and you can dance with great blissfulness. But that does not mean that you will be able to walk on water; nature does not allow exceptions. That does not mean that you will be able to turn water into wine. That is really a crime; don't do that!

It is enough -- perhaps the greatest miracle according to me, and Ta Hui will agree with me -- to be humble, just to be nobody, with no claim, silent, aware, and capable of entering the golden gate, the present moment.

The present moment contains all the mysteries of existence. The present moment is the only temple of God.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.