The Buddha Within

I salute the Buddha within you. You may not be aware of it, you may not have ever dreamed about it - that you are a Buddha, that nobody can be anything else, that buddhahood is the very essential core of your being, that it is not something to happen in the future, that it has happened already. It is the very source you come from; it is the source and the goal too. It is from buddhahood that we move, and it is to buddhahood that we move. This one word, buddhahood, contains all - the full circle of life, from the alpha to the omega.

But you are fast asleep, you don't know who you are. Not that you have to become a Buddha, but only that you have to recognize it, that you have to return to your own source, that you have to look within yourself. A confrontation with yourself will reveal your buddhahood. The day one comes to see oneself, the whole existence becomes enlightened. It is not that a person becomes enlightened - how can a person become enlightened? The very idea of being a person is part of the unenlightened mind. It is not that I have become enlightened; the 'I' has to be dropped before one can become enlightened, so how can I become enlightened? That is absurdity. The day I became enlightened the whole existence became enlightened. Since that moment I have not seen anything other than Buddhas - in many forms, with many names, with a thousand and one problems, but Buddhas still.

So I salute the Buddha within you.

I am immensely glad that so many Buddhas have gathered here. The very fact of your coming here to me is the beginning of the recognition. The respect in your heart for me, the love in your heart for me, is respect and love for your own buddhahood. The trust in me is not trust in something extrinsic to you, the trust in me is self-trust. By trusting me you will learn to trust yourself. By coming close to me you will come close to yourself. Only a recognition has to be attained. The diamond is there - you have forgotten about it, or you have never remembered it from the very beginning.

There is a very famous saying of Emerson: "Man is God in ruins." I agree and I disagree.

The insight has some truth in it - man is not as he should be. The insight is there but a little upside down. Man is not God in ruins, man is God in the making; man is a budding Buddha.

The bud is there, it can bloom any moment: just a little effort, just a little help... And the help is not going to cause it - it is already there! Your effort is only going to reveal it to you, help to unfold what is there, hidden. It is a discovery, but the truth is already there. The truth is eternal.

Listen to these sutras because these are the most important sutras in the great Buddhist literature. Hence they are called The Heart Sutra; it is the very heart of the Buddhist message.

But I would like to begin from the very beginning. From this point only does Buddhism become relevant: let it be there in your heart that you are a Buddha. I know it may look presumptuous, it may look very hypothetical; you cannot trust it totally. That is natural, I understand it. Let it be there, but as a seed. Around that fact many things will start happening, and only around that fact will you be able to understand these sutras. They are immensely powerful - very small, very condensed, seedlike. But with this soil, with this vision in the mind, that you are a Buddha, that you are a budding Buddha, that you are potentially capable of becoming one, that nothing is lacking, all is ready, things just have to be put in the right order, that a little more awareness is needed, a little more consciousness is needed... The treasure is there; you have to bring a small lamp inside your house. Once the darkness disappears you will no longer be a beggar, you will be a Buddha; you will be a sovereign, an emperor. This whole kingdom is yours and it is just for the asking; you have just to claim it.

But you cannot claim if you believe that you are a beggar. You cannot claim it, you cannot even dream about claiming if you think that you are a beggar. This idea that you are a beggar, that you are ignorant, that you are a sinner, has been preached from so many pulpits down through the ages that it has become a deep hypnosis in you. This hypnosis has to be broken.

To break it I start with: I salute the Buddha within you.

To me, you are Buddhas. All your efforts to become enlightened are ridiculous if you don't accept this basic fact. This has to become a tacit understanding, that you are it! This is the right beginning, otherwise you go astray. This is the right beginning! Start with this vision, and don't be worried that this may create some kind of ego - that "I am a Buddha." Don't be worried, because the whole process of The Heart Sutra will make it clear to you that the ego is the only thing that doesn't exist - the only thing that doesn't exist! Everything else is real.

There have been teachers who say the world is illusory and the soul is existential - the 'I' is true and all else is illusory, maya. Buddha says just the reverse: he says only the 'I' is untrue and everything else is real. And I agree with Buddha more than with the other standpoint.

Buddha's insight is very penetrating, the most penetrating. Nobody has ever penetrated into those realms, depths and heights of reality.

But start with the idea, with this climate around you, with this vision. Let it be declared to your every cell of the body and every thought of your mind; let it be declared to every nook and corner of your existence, that "I am a Buddha!" And don't be worried about the 'I'... we will take care of it.

'I' and buddhahood cannot exist together. Once the buddhahood becomes revealed the 'I' disappears, just like darkness disappears when you bring a light in.

Before entering into the sutras, it will be helpful to understand a little framework, a little structure.

The ancient Buddhist scriptures talk about seven temples. Just as Sufis talk about seven valleys, and Hindus talk about seven chakras, Buddhists talk about seven temples.

The first temple is the physical, the second temple is psycho-somatic, the third temple is psychological, the fourth temple is psycho-spiritual, the fifth temple is spiritual, the sixth temple is spiritual-transcendental, and the seventh temple and the ultimate - the temple of temples - is the transcendental.

The sutras belong to the seventh. These are declarations of someone who has entered the seventh temple, the transcendental, the absolute. That is the meaning of the Sanskrit word, pragyaparamita - the wisdom of the beyond, from the beyond, in the beyond; the wisdom that comes only when you have transcended all kinds of identifications - lower or higher, this worldly or that worldly; when you have transcended all kinds of identifications, when you are not identified at all, when there is only a pure flame of awareness left with no smoke around it. That's why Buddhists worship this small book, this very, very small book; and they have called it The Heart Sutra - the very heart of religion, the very core.

The first temple, the physical, can correspond to the Hindu map with the muladhar chakra; the second, the psychosomatic, with svadisthan chakra; the third, the psychological, with manipura; the fourth, the psycho-spiritual, with anahatta; the fifth, the spiritual, with vishudha; the sixth, the spiritual-transcendental, with agya; and the seventh, the transcendental, with sahasrar. 'Sahasrar' means one-thousand-petaled lotus. That is the symbol of the ultimate flowering: nothing has remained hidden, all has become unhidden, manifest.

The thousand-petaled lotus has opened, the whole sky is filled with its fragrance, its beauty, its benediction.

In the modern world a great work has started in search of the innermost core of the human being. It will be good to understand how far modern efforts lead us.

Pavlov, B.F. Skinner and the other behaviorists, go on circling around the physical, the muladhar. They think man is only the body. They get too much involved in the first temple, they get too much involved with the physical, they forget everything else. These people are trying to explain man only through the physical, the material. This attitude becomes a hindrance because they are not open. When from the very beginning you deny that there is nothing other than the body, then you deny the exploration itself. This becomes a prejudice. A communist, a Marxist, a behaviorist, an atheist - people who believe that man is only the body - their very belief closes doors to higher realities. They become blind. And the physical is there, the physical is the most apparent; it needs no proof. The physical body is there, you need not prove it. Because it need not be proved, it becomes the only reality. That is nonsense.

Then man loses all dignity. If there is nothing to grow in or to grow towards, there cannot be any dignity in life. Then man becomes a thing. Then you are not an opening, then nothing more is going to happen to you - you are a body: you will eat, and you will defecate, and you will eat and you will make love and produce children, and this will go on and on, and one day you die. A mechanical repetition of the mundane, the trivia - how can there be any significance, any meaning, any poetry? How can there be any dance?

Skinner has written a book, Beyond Freedom and Dignity. It should be called Below Freedom and Dignity, not beyond. It is below, it is the lowest standpoint about man, the ugliest. There is nothing wrong about the body, remember. I am not against the body, it is a beautiful temple. The ugliness enters when you think this is all.

Man can be conceived of as a ladder with seven rungs, and you get identified with the first rung. Then you are not going anywhere. And the ladder is there, and the ladder bridges this world and the other; the ladder bridges matter with God. The first rung is perfectly good if it is used in relationship to the whole ladder. If it functions as a first step it is immensely beautiful:

one should be thankful to the body. But if you start worshipping the first rung and you forget the remaining six, you forget that the whole ladder exists and you become closed, confined to the first rung, then it is no longer a rung at all... because a rung is a rung only when it leads to another rung, a rung is a rung only when it is part of a ladder. If it is no longer a rung then you are stuck with it. Hence, people who are materialistic are always stuck, they always feel something is missing, they don't feel they are going anywhere. They move in rounds, in circles, and they come again and again to the same point. They become tired and bored. They start contemplating how to commit suicide. And their whole effort in life is to find some sensations, so something new can happen. But what 'new' can happen? All the things that we go on being occupied with are nothing but toys to play with.

Think of these words of Frank Sheed: "The soul of man is crying for purpose or meaning.

And the scientist says, 'Here is a telephone.' Or, 'Look! Television!' - exactly as one tries to distract a baby crying for its mother by offering it sugar sticks and making funny faces at it.

The leaping stream of invention has served extraordinarily well to keep man occupied, to keep him from remembering that which is troubling him."

All that the modern world has provided you with is nothing but sugar sticks, toys to play with - and you were crying for the mother, you were crying for love, and you were crying for consciousness, and you were crying for some significance in life. And they say, "Look! the telephone. Look! the television. Look! we have brought so many beautiful things for you."

And you play around a little bit; again you get fed up, again you are bored, and again they go on searching for new toys for you to play with.

This state of affairs is ridiculous. It is so absurd that it seems almost inconceivable how we go on living in it. We have got caught at the first rung.

Remember that you are in the body, but you are not the body; let that be a continuous awareness in you. You live in the body, and the body is a beautiful abode. Remember, I am not for a single moment hinting that you become anti-body, that you start denying the body as the so-called spiritualists have done down the ages. The materialists go on thinking that the body is all that is, and there are people who move to the opposite extreme, and they start saying that the body is illusory, the body is not! "Destroy the body so the illusion is destroyed, and you can become really real."

This other extreme is a reaction. The materialist creates his own reaction in the spiritualist, but they are partners in the same business; they are not very different people. The body is beautiful, the body is real, the body has to be lived, the body has to be loved. The body is a great gift of God. Not for a single moment be against it, and not for a single moment think that you are only it. You are far bigger. Use the body as a jumping board.

The second is: psychosomatic, svadisthan. Freudian psychoanalysis functions there. It goes a little higher than Skinner and Pavlov. Freud enters into the mysteries of the psychological a little bit more. He's not just a behaviorist, but he never goes beyond dreams. He goes on analyzing the dreams.

The dream exists as an illusion in you. It is indicative, it is symbolic, it has a message from the unconscious to be revealed to the conscious. But there is no point in just getting caught in it. Use the dream, but don't become the dream. You are not the dream.

And there is no need to make so much fuss about it, as Freudians go on making. Their whole effort seems to be moving in the dimension of the dream world. Take note of it, take a very, very clear standpoint about it, understand its message, and there is no need really to go to anybody else for your dream analysis. If you cannot analyze your dream nobody else can, because your dream is your dream. And your dream is so personal that nobody else can dream the way you dream. Nobody has ever dreamed the way you dream, nobody will ever dream the way you dream; nobody can explain it to you. His interpretation will be his interpretation.

Only you can look into it. And in fact there is no need to analyze the dream: look at the dream in its totality, with clarity, with alertness, and you will see the message. It is so loud! There is no need to go for psychoanalysis for three, four, five, seven years.

A person who is dreaming every night, and in the day is going to the psychoanalyst to be analyzed, becomes by and by surrounded by dreamy-stuff. Just as the first becomes too much obsessed with the muladhara, the physical, the second becomes too much obsessed with the sexual... because the second - the realm of psychosomatic reality - is sex. The second starts interpreting everything in terms of sex. Whatsoever you do, go to the Freudian and he will reduce it to sex. Nothing higher exists for him. He lives in the mud, he does not believe in the lotus. You bring a lotus flower to him, he will look at it and reduce it to the mud. He will say, "This is nothing, this is just dirty mud. Has it not come out of dirty mud? If it has come out of dirty mud then it has to be dirty mud." Reduce everything to its cause, and that is the real.

Then every poem is reduced to sex, everything beautiful is reduced to sex and perversion and repression. Michelangelo is a great artist? - then his art has to be reduced to some sexuality. And Freudians go to absurd lengths. They say: Michelangelo or Goethe or Byron, all their great works of art which bring great joy to millions of people, are nothing but repressed sex - maybe Goethe was going to masturbate and was stopped.

Millions of people are stopped from masturbation, but they don't become Goethes. It is absurd. But Freud is the master of the world of the toilet. He lives there, that is his temple. Art becomes pathology, poetry becomes pathology, everything becomes perversion. If Freudian analysis succeeds then there will be no Kalidas, no Shakespeare, no Michelangelo, no Mozart, no Wagner, because everybody will be normal. These are abnormal people. These people are psychologically ill, according to Freud. The greatest are reduced to the lowest. Buddha is ill, according to Freud, because whatsoever things he is talking about, they are nothing but repressed sex.

This approach reduces human greatness to ugliness. Beware of it. Buddha is not ill; in fact, Freud is ill. The silence of Buddha, the joy of Buddha, the celebration of Buddha - it is not ill, it is the full flowering of wellbeing.

But to Freud the normal person is one who has never sung a song, who has never danced, who has never celebrated, never prayed, never meditated, never done anything creative, is just normal: goes to the office, comes home, eats, drinks, sleeps, and dies; leaves not a trace behind of his creativity, leaves not a single signature anywhere. This normal man seems to be very mediocre, dull and dead. There is a suspicion about Freud that because he himself could not create - he was an uncreative person - he was condemning creativity itself as pathology.

There is every possibility that he was a mediocre person. It is his mediocreness which feels offended by all the great people of the world.

The mediocre mind is trying to reduce all greatness. The mediocre mind cannot accept that there can be any greater being than him. That hurts. It is a revenge from the mediocre - this whole psychoanalysis and its interpretation of human life. Beware of it. It is better than the first, yes, a little ahead of the first, but one has to go, and go on going, beyond and beyond.

The third is psychological. Adler lives in the world of the psychological, the will to power; at least something - very egoistic, but at least something; a little more open than Freud. But the problem is, just like Freud reduces everything to sex, Adler goes on reducing everything to inferiority complex. People try to become great because they feel inferior. A person trying to become enlightened is a person who is feeling inferior, and a person trying to become enlightened is a person who is on the trip of power. This is utterly wrong, because we have seen people - a Buddha, a Christ, a Krishna - who are so utterly surrendered that their trip cannot be called a power-trip. And when Buddha blooms he has no ideas of superiority, not at all. He bows down to the whole of existence. He has not that idea of holier-than-thou, not at all. Everything is holy, even the dust is divine. No, he is not thinking himself superior, and he was not striving to become superior. He was not feeling inferior at all. He was born a king; there was no question of inferiority. He was at the top from the very beginning, there was no question of inferiority. He was the richest man in his country, the most powerful man in his country: there was no more power to be attained, no more riches to be attained. He was one of the most beautiful men ever born on this earth, he had one of the most beautiful women as his beloved. All was available to him.

But Adler would go on searching for some inferiority because he could not believe that a man could have any goal other than the ego. It is better... better than Freud, a little higher. Ego is a little higher than sex; not much higher, but a little higher.

The fourth is psycho-spiritual, anahatta, the heart center. Jung, Assagioli and others penetrate that realm. They go higher than Pavlov, Freud and Adler, they open more possibilities. They accept the world of the irrational, the unconscious: they don't confine themselves to reason. They are more reasonable people - they accept 'irreason' too. The irrational is not denied but accepted. This is where modern psychology stops - at the fourth rung. And the fourth rung is just in the middle of the whole ladder: three rungs on this side and three rungs on that side.

Modern psychology is not yet a complete science. It is hanging in the middle. It is very shaky, not certain about anything. It is more hypothetical than experiential. It is still struggling to be.

The fifth is spiritual: Islam, Hinduism, Christianity - the mass-organized religions remain stuck with the fifth. They don't go beyond the spiritual. All the organized religions, the churches, remain there.

The sixth is the spiritual-transcendental - yoga and other methods. All over the world, down the ages, many methods have been developed which are less like a church organization, which are not dogmatic but are more experiential. You have to do something with your body and mind; you have to create a certain harmony within yourself so that you can ride on that harmony, you can ride on that cloud of harmony and go far away from your ordinary reality.

Yoga can comprehend all that; that is the sixth.

And the seventh is transcendental: Tantra, Tao, Zen. Buddha's attitude is of the seventh - pragyaparamita. It means wisdom that is transcendental, wisdom that comes to you only when all the bodies have been crossed and you have become just a pure awareness, just a witness, pure subjectivity.

Unless man reaches to the transcendental, man will have to be provided with toys, sugar sticks. He will have to be provided with false meanings.

Just the other day I came across an American car advertisement. It says - with a beautiful car - on top of the car it says: Something to believe in.

Man has never fallen so low. Something to believe in! You believe in a car? Yes, people believe - people believe in their houses, people believe in their cars, people believe in their bank balances. If you look around you will be surprised - God has disappeared, but belief has not disappeared. God is no longer there: now there is a Cadillac or a Lincoln! God has disappeared but man has created new gods - Stalin, Mao. God has disappeared and man has created new gods - movie stars.

This is for the first time in the history of human consciousness that man has fallen so low.

And even if sometimes you remember God, it is just an empty word. Maybe when you are in pain, maybe when you are frustrated, then you use God - as if God is aspirin. That's what the so-called religions have made you believe: they say, "Take God three times a day and you won't feel any pain!" So whenever you are in pain you remember God. God is not an aspirin, God is not a painkiller.

A few people remember God habitually, a few others remember God professionally. A priest - he remembers professionally. He has nothing to do with God, he is paid for it. He has become proficient. A few people remember habitually, a few professionally, but nobody seems to remember God in deep love. A few people invoke his name when they are miserable; nobody remembers him when they are in joy, celebrating. And that is the right moment to remember - because only when you are joyous, immensely joyous, are you close to God.

When you are in misery you are far away, when you are in misery you are closed. When you are happy you are open, flowing; you can hold God's hand.

So either you remember habitually, because you have been taught from the very childhood - it has become a kind of habit, like smoking. If you smoke you don't enjoy much; if you don't smoke you feel you are missing something. If you remember God every morning, every evening, nothing is attained, because the remembrance is not of the heart - just verbal, mental, mechanical. But if you don't remember you start feeling something is missing. It has become a ritual. Beware of making God a ritual, and beware of becoming professional about it.

I have heard a very famous story:

The story is about one great yogi, very famous, who was promised by a king that if he could go into deep samadhi and remain under the earth for one year, the king would give him the best horse in the kingdom as a reward. The king knew that the yogi had a soft heart for horses, he was a great lover of horses.

The yogi agreed; he was buried alive for a year. But in the course of the year the kingdom was overthrown and nobody remembered to dig up the yogi.

About ten years later someone remembered: "What happened to the yogi?" The king sent a few people to find out. The yogi was dug up; he was still in his deep trance. A previously-agreed-to mantra was whispered in his ear and he was roused, and the first thing he said was, "Where is my horse?"

After ten years of remaining in silence underneath the earth... but the mind has not changed at all - "Where is my horse?" Was this man really in trance, in samadhi? Was he thinking about God? He must have been thinking about the horse. But he was professionally proficient, skillful. He must have learned the technique of how to stop the breathing and how to go into a kind of death - but it was technical.

Remaining ten years in such deep silence, and the mind has not changed a little bit! It is exactly the same as if these ten years had not passed by. If you technically remember God, if you professionally remember God, habitually, mechanically remember God, then nothing is going to happen. All is possible, but all possibilities go through the heart. Hence the name of this scripture: The Heart Sutra.

Unless you do something with great love, with great involvement, with great commitment, with sincerity, with authenticity, with your total being, nothing is going to happen.

For some people religion is like an artificial limb: it has neither warmth nor life. And although it helps them to stumble along it never becomes part of them; it must be strapped on each day.

Remember, this has happened to millions of people on the earth, this can happen to you too. Don't create an artificial limb, let real limbs grow in you. Only then will your life have a warmth, only then will your life have joy - not a false smile on the lips, not a pseudo kind of happiness that you pretend to, not a mask, but in reality. Ordinarily you go on wearing things:

somebody wears a beautiful smile, somebody wears a very compassionate face, somebody wears a very, very loving personality - but these are like clothes that you put on yourself.

Deep down you remain the same.

These sutras can become a revolution.

The first thing, the beginning, is always the question, "Who am I?" And one has to go on asking. When first you ask, "Who am I?" the muladhar will answer, "You are a body! What nonsense! There is no need to ask, you know it already." Then the second will say, "You are sexuality." Then the third will say, "You are a power-trip, an ego" - and so on and so forth.

Remember, you have to stop only when there is no answer coming, not before it. If some answer is coming that, "You are this, you are this," then know well that some center is providing you with an answer. When all the six centers have been crossed and all their answers canceled, you go on asking, "Who am I?" and no answer comes from anywhere, it is utter silence. Your question resounds in yourself: "Who am I?" and there is silence, no answer arises from anywhere, from any corner. You are absolutely present, absolutely silent, and there is not even a vibration. "Who am I?" - and only silence. Then a miracle happens: you cannot even formulate the question. Answers have become absurd; then finally the question also becomes absurd. First answers disappear, then the question also disappears - because they can live only together. They are like two sides of a coin - if one side has gone, the other cannot be retained. First answers disappear, then the question disappears. And with the disappearance of question and answer, you come to realize: that is transcendental. You know, yet you cannot say; you know, yet you cannot be articulate about it. You know from your very being who you are, but it cannot be verbalized. It is life-knowledge; it is not scriptural, it is not borrowed, it is not from others. It has arisen in you.

And with this arising, you are a Buddha. And then you start laughing because you come to know that you have been a Buddha from the very beginning; you had just never looked so deep. You were running around and around outside your being, you had never come home.

The philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer, was walking down a lonely street. Buried in thought, he accidentally bumped into another pedestrian. Angered by the jolt and the apparent unconcern of the philosopher, the pedestrian shouted, "Well! Who do you think you are?"

Still lost in thought the philosopher said, "Who am I? How I wish I knew."

Nobody knows.

Knowing this - that I don't know who I am - the journey starts.

The first sutra:

HOMAGE TO THE PERFECTION OF WISDOM, THE LOVELY, THE HOLY!

This is an invocation. All Indian scriptures start with an invocation for a certain reason.

This is not so in other countries and in other languages; this is not so in Greece. The Indian understanding is this: that we are hollow bamboos, only the infinite flows through us. The infinite has to be invoked; we become just instruments to it. We invoke it, we call it forth to flow through us. That's why nobody knows who wrote this Heart Sutra. It has not been signed because the person who wrote it didn't believe that he was the writer of it. He was just instrumental. He was just like a steno; the dictation was from beyond. It was dictated to him, he has faithfully written it, but he is not the author of it - at the most, just the writer.

HOMAGE TO THE PERFECTION OF WISDOM, THE LOVELY, THE HOLY!

This is the invocation, a few words, but every word is very, very pregnant with meaning.

HOMAGE TO THE PERFECTION OF WISDOM...

'Perfection of wisdom' is the translation for pragyaparamita. Pragya means wisdom.

Remember, it does not mean knowledge. Knowledge is that which comes through the mind, knowledge is that which comes from the outside. Knowledge is never original! It can't be original, by its very nature; it is borrowed. Wisdom is your original vision: it does not come from the outside, it grows in you. It is not like an artificial plastic flower that you go to the market and purchase. It is a real rose that grows on the tree, through the tree. It is the song of the tree. It comes from its innermost core; from its depth it arises. One day it is unexpressed, another day it is expressed; one day it was unmanifest, another day it has become manifest.

Pragya means wisdom, but in the English language even wisdom has a different connotation. In English, knowledge means without experience: you go to the university, you gather knowledge. Wisdom means you go to life and you gather experience. So a young man can be knowledgeable but never wise, because wisdom needs time. A young man can have degrees: he can be a PhD or a DLitt - that is not difficult - but only an old man can be wise.

Wisdom means knowledge gathered through one's own experience, but it is still from the outside.

Pragya is neither knowledge nor wisdom as they are ordinarily understood. It is a flowering within - not through experience, not through others, not through life and life's encounters, no, but just by going within in utter silence, and allowing that which is hidden there to explode. You are carrying wisdom as a seed within you; it just needs a right soil so that it can sprout. Wisdom is always original. It is always yours, and only yours.

But remember again, when I say 'yours' I don't mean that there is any ego involved in it. It is yours in the sense that it comes out of your self-nature, but it has no claim to the ego - because again ego is part of the mind, not of your inner silence. Paramita means of the beyond, from the beyond, beyond time and space; when you move to a state where time disappears, when you move to an inner place where space disappears, when you don't know where you are and when, when both references have disappeared. Time is outside you, so is space outside you. There is a crossing point within you where time disappears.

Somebody asked Jesus, "Tell us something about the kingdom of God. What will be special there?" Jesus is reported to have said, "There will be time no longer." There is eternity, a timeless moment. That is the beyond - a spaceless space and a timeless moment. You are no longer confined, so you cannot say where you are.

Now look at me: I cannot say I am here, because I am there too. And I cannot say I am in India, because I am in China too. And I cannot say that I am on this planet, because I am not.

When the ego disappears you are simply one with the whole. You are everywhere and nowhere. You don't exist as a separate entity, you are dissolved.

Look! In the morning, on a beautiful leaf, there is a dewdrop shining in the morning sun, utterly beautiful. And then it starts slipping, and it slips into the ocean. It was there on the leaf:

there was time and space, it had a definition, a personality of its own. Now once it has dropped into the ocean you cannot find it anywhere - not because it has become nonexistential, no. Now it is everywhere; that's why you cannot find it anywhere. You cannot locate it because the whole ocean has become its location. Now it doesn't exist separately.

When you don't exist in separation from the whole, there arises pragyaparamita, the wisdom that is perfect, the wisdom that is from the beyond.

HOMAGE TO THE PERFECTION OF WISDOM, THE LOVELY, THE HOLY!

A beautiful provocation... It says: My homage is to that wisdom that comes when you move into the beyond. And it is lovely, and it is holy - holy because you have become one with the whole; lovely because that ego that created all kinds of ugliness in your life is no more.

Satyam, shivam, sunderam: it is true, it is good, it is beautiful. These are the three qualities.

HOMAGE TO THE PERFECTION OF WISDOM - truth...

That's what truth is: the perfection of wisdom, the lovely, the beautiful, the holy, the good.

Why is it called holy? - because Buddhas are born out of it. It is the womb of the Buddhas. You become a Buddha the moment you partake of this perfection of wisdom. You become a Buddha when the dewdrop disappears into the ocean, loses separation, is no more struggling against the whole, is surrendered, is with the whole, no more against it. Hence my insistence to be with nature; never be against it. Never try to overcome it, never try to conquer it, never try to defeat it. If you try to defeat it you are doomed to failure, because the part cannot defeat the whole - and that's what everybody is trying to do. Hence there is so much frustration, because everybody seems to be a failure. Everybody is trying to conquer the whole, trying to push the river. Naturally you become tired one day, exhausted - you have a very limited source of energy; the river is vast. One day it takes you, but you give in in frustration.

If you can give in joyfully it becomes surrender. Then it is no more defeat, it is a victory.

You win only with God, never against God. And remember, God is not trying to defeat you.

Your defeat is self-generated. You are defeated because you fight. If you want to be defeated, fight; if you want to win, surrender. This is the paradox: that those who are ready to give in become the winners. The losers are the only winners in this game. Try to win and your defeat is absolutely certain - it is only a question of time, of when, but it is certain it is going to happen.

It is holy because you are one with the whole. You throb with it, you dance with it, you sing with it. You are like a leaf in the wind: the leaf simply dances with the wind, it has no will of its own. This will-lessness is what I call sannyas, what the sutra calls holy.

The Sanskrit word for holy is bhagavati. That is even more important to be understood than the word holy, because the word holy may carry some Christian connotation to it.

Bhagavati...

Bhagavati is feminine for bhagavan. First, the sutra does not use the word bhagavan, it uses bhagavati, the feminine - because the source of all is feminine, not masculine. It is yin, not yang, it is a mother, not a father.

The Christian concept of God as father is not so beautiful. It is nothing but male ego. The male ego cannot think that God can be a 'she'; the male ego wants God to be a 'he'. And you see the whole Christian trinity: all three persons are men, the woman is not included there - God the father, and Christ the son, and the Holy Ghost. It is an all-male club. And remember well that the feminine is far more fundamental in life than the man, because only the woman has the womb, only the woman can give birth to life, to new life. It comes through the feminine.

Why does it come through the feminine? It is not just accidental. It comes through the feminine because only the feminine can allow it to come - because the feminine is receptive.

The masculine is aggressive; the feminine can receive, absorb, can become a passage.

The sutra says bhagavati, not bhagavan. It is of immense importance. That perfect wisdom out of which all the Buddhas come is a feminine element, a mother. The womb has to be a mother. Once you think of God as father, you don't seem to understand what you are doing.

Father is an unnatural institution. Fatherhood does not exist in nature. Fatherhood has existed only for a few thousand years; it is a human institution. The mother exists everywhere, the mother is natural.

The father came into the world because of private property. The father is part of economics, not of nature. And once private property disappears - if it ever disappears - the father will disappear. The mother will remain there always and always. We cannot conceive of a world without the mother, we can conceive of a world without the father very easily. And the very idea is aggressive. Have you not watched? Only Germans call their country 'fatherland', every other country calls it 'motherland'. These are dangerous people!

'Motherland' is okay. By calling your country 'fatherland' you are starting something dangerous, you are putting something dangerous on foot. Sooner or later the aggression will come, the war will come. The seed is there.

All the religions that have thought of God as father have been aggressive religions.

Christianity is aggressive, so is Islam. And you know perfectly well that the Jewish God is a very angry and arrogant God. And the Jewish God declares: If you are not for me, then you are against me, and I will destroy you. And I am a very jealous God; only worship me! The people who have thought of God as mother have been nonviolent people.

Buddhists have never fought a war in the name of religion. They have never tried to convert a single human being by any force, by coercion of whatsoever sort. Mohammedans have tried to convert people with the sword, against their will, against their conscience, against their consciousness. Christians have tried to manipulate people to become Christians in all kinds of ways - sometimes through the sword, sometimes through bread, sometimes through other persuasions. Buddhism is the only religion that has not converted a single human being against his conscience. Only Buddhism is a nonviolent religion, because the concept of the ultimate reality is feminine.

HOMAGE TO THE PERFECTION OF WISDOM, THE LOVELY, THE HOLY!

And remember, truth is beautiful. Truth is beauty because truth is a benediction. Truth cannot be ugly, and the ugly cannot be true; the ugly is illusory.

When you see an ugly person don't be deceived by his ugliness; search a little deeper and you will find a beautiful person hidden there. Don't be deceived by ugliness. Ugliness is in your interpretation. Life is beautiful, truth is beautiful, existence is beautiful - it knows no ugliness.

And it is lovely, it is feminine and it is holy. But remember, what is meant by 'holy' is not what is ordinarily meant - as if it is otherworldly, as if it is sacred against the mundane and the profane, no. All is holy. There is nothing which can be called mundane or profane. All is sacred because all is suffused with one.

There are Buddhas and buddhas! - buddha-trees and buddha-dogs and buddha-birds and buddha-men and buddha-women - but all are Buddhas. All are on the way! Man is not God in ruins, man is God in the making, on the way.

The second sutra:

AVALOKITA, THE HOLY LORD AND BODHISATTVA, WAS MOVING IN THE DEEP COURSE OF THE WISDOM WHICH HAS GONE BEYOND.

HE LOOKED DOWN FROM ON HIGH, HE BEHELD BUT FIVE HEAPS, AND HE SAW THAT IN THEIR OWN BEING THEY WERE EMPTY.

Avalokita is a name of Buddha. Literally it means one who looks from above - avalokita - one who looks from above, one who stands at the seventh center, sahasrar, the transcendental, and looks from there. Naturally, whatsoever you see is contaminated by your standpoint, is contaminated by the space you are in.

If a man who lives at the first rung - the physical body - looks at anything, he looks from that standpoint. A man who lives at the physical only looks to your body when he looks at you, he cannot look at more than that, he cannot see more than that. Your vision of things depends on from where you are looking.

A man who is sexually disturbed, sexually involved in fantasies, only looks from that standpoint. A man who is hungry looks from that standpoint. Watch in your own self. You look at things, and each time you look at things they appear different because you are different. In the morning the world looks a little more beautiful than in the evening. In the morning you are fresh, and in the morning you have come from a depth of great sleep, the deep sleep, the dreamless sleep. You have tasted something of the transcendental, although unconsciously. So in the morning everything looks beautiful. People are more compassionate, more loving; people are purer in the morning, people are more innocent in the morning. By the time evening arrives these same people will become more corrupted, more cunning, clever, manipulating, ugly, violent, deceiving. These are the same people, but in the morning they were very close to the transcendental. By the evening they have lived in the mundane, in the worldly, in the physical too much, and they have become focussed there.

The man of perfection is one who can move through all these seven chakras easily - that is the man of freedom - who is not fixed at any point, who is like a dial: you can adjust it to any vision. That is what is called a mukta, one who is really free. He can move in all the dimensions and yet remain untouched by them. His purity is never lost, his purity remains of the transcendental.

Buddha can come and touch your body and heal your body. He can become a body, but that is his freedom. He can become a mind and he can talk to you and explain things to you, but he is never the mind. He comes and stands behind the mind, uses it, just as you drive your car - you never become the car. He uses all these rungs, he is the whole ladder. But his ultimate standpoint remains the transcendental. That is his nature.

'Avalokita' means one who looks from the beyond at the world.

AVALOKITA, THE HOLY LORD AND BODHISATTVA, WAS MOVING IN THE DEEP COURSE OF THE WISDOM WHICH HAS GONE BEYOND.

The sutra says this state of beyondness is not a static thing. It is a movement, it is a process, riverlike. It is not a noun, it is a verb. It goes on unfolding. That's why Hindus call it the one-thousand-petaled lotus: 'one thousand' simply means infinite, it is symbolic of infinity.

Petals upon petals, petals upon petals go on opening, to no end. The journey begins but never ends. It is eternal pilgrimage.

AVALOKITA, THE HOLY LORD AND BODHISATTVA, WAS MOVING IN THE DEEP COURSE OF THE WISDOM WHICH HAS GONE BEYOND.

He was flowing like a river into the world of the beyond. He is called the holy lord and bodhisattva. Again the Sanskrit word has to be remembered. The Sanskrit word is iswara, which is translated as 'holy lord'. 'Iswara' means one who has become absolutely rich from his own riches, whose riches are of his own nature; nobody can take them away, nobody can steal them, they cannot be lost. All the riches that you have can be lost, can be stolen, will be lost - one day death will come and will take everything away. When somebody has come to that inner diamond that is one's own being, death cannot take it away. Death is irrelevant to it. It cannot be stolen, it cannot be lost. Then one has become iswara, then one has become a holy lord. Then one has become bhagavan.

The word bhagavan simply means 'the blessed one'. Then one has become the blessed one.

Now his blessing is eternally his; it depends on nothing, it is independent. It is not caused by anything so it cannot be taken away. It is uncaused, it is one's intrinsic nature.

And he is called bodhisattva. Bodhisattva is a very beautiful concept in Buddhism.

Bodhisattva means one who has become a Buddha but is still holding himself in the world of time and space - to help others. Bodhisattva means 'essentially a Buddha', is just ready to drop and disappear, is ready to go into nirvana. Nothing remains to be solved, all his problems are solved. There is no need for him to be here, but he is still here. There is nothing else to be learned here, but he is still here. And he is keeping himself in body-form, in mind-form - he is keeping the whole ladder. He has gone beyond, but he is keeping the whole ladder - to help, out of compassion.

A story is told that Buddha reached the doors of the ultimate, nirvana. The doors were opened, the angels were dancing and singing to receive him - because it rarely happens in millions of years that a human being becomes a Buddha. Those doors open, and that day is naturally a great day of celebration. All the ancient Buddhas had gathered, and there was great rejoicing, and flowers were showering, and music was played, and everything was decorated - it was a day of celebration.

But Buddha did not enter the door. And the ancient Buddhas, all with folded hands, asked him, requested him to come in: "Why is he standing outside?" And Buddha is reported to have said, "Unless all others who are coming behind me enter, I am not going to enter. I will keep myself outside, because once I come in then I disappear. Then I will not be of any help to these people. I see millions of people stumbling and groping in the dark. I have myself been groping the same way for millions of lives. I would like to give them my hand. Please close the door. When everybody has come I myself will knock, then you can receive me."

A beautiful story... This is called the state of bodhisattva: one who is ready to disappear but still is holding - in body, in mind, in the world, in time and space - to help others.

Buddha says: Meditation is enough to solve your problems, but something is missing in it - compassion. If compassion is also there, then you can help others solve their problems. He says: Meditation is pure gold; it has a perfection of its own. But if there is compassion then the gold has a fragrance too - then a higher perfection, then a new kind of perfection, gold with fragrance. Gold is enough unto itself - very valuable - but with compassion, meditation has a fragrance.

Compassion keeps a Buddha remaining a bodhisattva, just on the borderline. Yes, for a few days, a few years, one can hold, but not for long - because by and by things start disappearing on their own. When you are not attached with the body you become dislocated from there. You can come sometimes, with effort. You can use the body, with effort, but you are no longer settled there. When you are no longer in the mind you can use it sometimes, but it no longer functions as well as it used to function before. You are no longer flowing in it.

When you are not using it, it is lying there: it is a mechanism, it starts gathering rust.

When a man has reached to the seventh, for a few days, for a few years, he can use the six rungs. He can go back and use them, but by and by they start breaking. By and by, they start dying. A bodhisattva can be here only for one life, at the most. Then he has to disappear, because the mechanism disappears.

But all those who have attained have tried, as far as they can, to use the body-mind to help those who are in body and mind, to help those who can understand only the language of the body and the mind, to help the disciples.

When you look from that point... For example, I was just telling you that I salute the Buddha in you. That is one vision from the beyond: that I see you as potential Buddhas. And another vision is just that I see you as empty shells.

What you think you are is nothing but an empty shell. Somebody thinks he is a man; that is an empty idea. Consciousness is neither male nor female. Somebody thinks he has a very beautiful body, he is beautiful, strong, this and that - that is an empty idea, just ego deceiving you. Somebody thinks he knows much - that is just meaningless. His mechanism has accumulated memories and he is deceived by the memories. These are all empty things.

So when seen from the transcendental, on the one side I see you as budding Buddhas, on another side I see you just as empty shells.

Buddha has said that man consists of five elements, five skandhas, which are all empty.

And because of the combination of the five, a by-product arises called the ego, the self. It is just like a clock functioning: it goes on ticking. You can listen and the tick is there; you can open the clock, you can separate all the parts to find where the tick is coming from. Where is the tick? You will not find it anywhere. The tick is a by-product. It is just a combination of a few things. A few things functioning together were creating a tick.

That's what your 'I' is - five elements functioning together creating the tick called 'I'. But it is empty, it has nothing in it. If you go and search for anything substantial in it you will not find.

This is one of the Buddha's deepest intuitions, insights: that life is empty, that life as we know it is empty. And life is full too, but we don't know anything about it. From this emptiness you have to move towards a fullness, but that fullness is inconceivable right now - because that fullness from this state will look only empty. From that state your fullness looks empty - a king looks like a beggar; a man of knowledge, a knowledgeable man, looks stupid, ignorant.

A small story:

A certain holy man accepted a pupil and said to him, "It would be a good thing if you tried to write down all you understand about the religious life and what has brought you to it."

The pupil went away and began to write. A year later he came back to the master and said, "I have worked very hard on this, and though it is far from complete, these are the main reasons for my struggle."

The master read the work, which was many thousands of words, and then said to the young man, "It is admirably reasoned and clearly stated, but it is somewhat long. Try to shorten it a little." So the novice went away and after five years he came back with a mere hundred pages.

The master smiled, and after he had read it he said, "Now you are truly approaching the heart of the matter. Your thoughts have clarity and strength. But it is still a little long; try to condense it, my son."

The novice went away sadly, for he had labored hard to reach the essence. But after ten years he came back, and bowing low before the master offered him just five pages and said, "This is the kernel of my faith, the core of my life, and I ask your blessings for having brought me to it."

The master read it slowly and carefully: "It is truly marvelous," he said, "in its simplicity and beauty, but it is not yet perfect. Try to reach a final clarification."

And when the master had reached the time appointed and was preparing for his end, his pupil returned to him again, and kneeling before him to receive his blessings handed him a single sheet of paper on which was written nothing.

Then the master placed his hands on the head of his friend and said, "Now... now you have understood."

From that transcendental vision, what you have is empty. From your vision, your neurotic vision, what I have is empty.

Buddha looks empty - just pure emptiness - to you. Because of your ideas, because of your clingings, because of your possessiveness about things, Buddha looks empty. Buddha is full: you are empty. And his vision is absolute; your vision is very relative.

The sutra says:

AVOLOKITA, THE HOLY LORD AND BODHISATTVA, WAS MOVING IN THE DEEP COURSE OF THE WISDOM WHICH HAS GONE BEYOND.

HE LOOKED DOWN FROM ON HIGH, HE BEHELD BUT FIVE HEAPS, AND HE SAW THAT IN THEIR OWN BEING THEY WERE EMPTY.

Emptiness is the key to Buddhism - shunyata. We will be going into it more and more as we enter into the deeper realms of The Heart Sutra.

Meditate over these sutras - meditate with love, with sympathy, not with logic and reasoning. If you go to these sutras with logic and reasoning you will kill their spirit. Don't dissect them. Try to understand them as they are, and don't bring your mind - your mind will be an interference.

If you can look at these sutras without your mind, great clarity is going to happen to you.

Enough for today.