There are times when you need the open sky

Question 1:

Jay, it is one of the most significant moments in the life of man, when he feels that he has run out of ambitions and is simply waiting, not knowing for what.

This is the moment when enlightenment is nearest.

Enlightenment is not a goal. It is not there, far away, that you have to reach to it. You cannot make an ambition of enlightenment: that is the sure way to miss it.

Enlightenment happens in this gap, when all your ambitions are finished, you don't know what to do, where to go. In this silence - because there is no turmoil of desire, no hankering for ambition - enlightenment happens of its own accord. It is a by-product, not a goal.

And that's why you are feeling sad, unfulfilled; although all the ambitions are finished... why should one feel unfulfilled? There must be something in life which is not part of the ambitious mind, without which one cannot feel fulfilled. You can fulfill all your desires, all your ambitions - still you will feel unfulfilled.

In fact you will feel unfulfilled more than those who are still running after desires, because at least for them there is hope that tomorrow they will reach the goal. Today may be empty, but the illusion, the hallucination of tomorrow keeps today in a certain way hidden from them. But now for you there is nothing which can hide your reality.

You are unfulfilled.

So one fundamental thing is very clear: that even if all the ambitions are fulfilled, man is not fulfilled.

There is something which is not an ambition, and unless you achieve it - and it is not an achievement - unless it happens to you, the unfulfillment will make you sad.

This situation happens to very fortunate people; otherwise everybody is running after desires, and there are so many things in life to do. There is no time to feel unfulfillment, there is no time to feel sadness. The hope for tomorrow dispels all sadness.

But now you don't have any hope for tomorrow. Only today is with you, and it is good that you are waiting, not knowing for what. If you are waiting knowingly for something, that is desire, then the mind is playing a game with you. If you are simply waiting, you have come to the end of the road.

There is nowhere to go, what can you do except wait? But wait for what?

If you can answer, "I am waiting for this or that," you will miss enlightenment. Then your waiting is not pure. Then it is not simply waiting. If you can be clear about it, that it is a pure waiting which is not addressed to anything, to any object, it is the right situation in which enlightenment happens.

So you are in a beautiful state, unaware of it, because pure waiting and sadness... one cannot see what is beautiful about it. Only the awakened ones can see what is beautiful about it. This is the situation in which, as a by-product, you wake up. Otherwise life remains a spiritual sleep. All desires and ambitions are nothing but dreams in this sleep.

So Chuang Tzu, one of the most absurd but one of the most significant mystics, has a beautiful parable. One morning he wakes up very sad. His disciples ask him what has happened. He said, "Something has happened, and I don't think any of you will be of any help - but still I will tell you; you can try to help me.

"In the night I dreamed that I have become a butterfly." They all laughed.

They said, "There is no need to worry about it. It was only a dream."

Chuang Tzu said, "First listen to the whole thing, that is only the half part. Now I am awake, and wondering perhaps if the butterfly has gone to sleep and is dreaming that he is Chuang Tzu. My problem is whether I am Chuang Tzu who dreamed to be a butterfly, or I am a butterfly who is dreaming to be Chuang Tzu."

They all fell silent. Logically there seems to be no way. Chuang Tzu's chief disciple, Lieh Tzu, was out. As he came in people were sitting sadly, the master was sitting sadly. He enquired of a disciple, "What is the matter? What has happened?" The disciple told him the story; he said, "Don't be worried, I will put him right."

And he went close to him and threw a bucket full of cold water into his eyes. And Chuang Tzu said, "That's perfectly right, that's the answer. But if you were not here.... Today I was lost. Now I know that I am Chuang Tzu; you need not bring another bucket, the water is too cold."

Lieh Tzu said, "When I am out you should not do any such thing. These people don't understand you. They were all puzzled, and they were all sad that their master is sad, and all that is needed is cold water so you wake up, whoever you are - a butterfly or Chuang Tzu does not matter - wake up! From any point, either from being a butterfly or from being a Chuang Tzu. All that is needed is WAKE UP! Who cares who you are? We care... your wakefulness, that is our concern."

A sadness, a deep unfulfillment, ordinarily will not look something glorious, not something to be proud of, but I say to you that it is something to be proud of. Just remain in your sadness. Don't try to change it into something else. Remain in your waiting - don't try to give it an object.

A pure waiting attracts the ultimate experience we call enlightenment to it. One has not to go to enlightenment as a goal.

Enlightenment comes to you when you are ripe, and this is the kind of ripeness which is necessary.

In the West it is happening to many people, but they do not know, because in the West Lieh Tzu has not entered yet. They are sad, in deep anguish; they are drowning themselves in alcohol, in drugs, in perverted sexualities - they are trying to forget their sadness in all kinds of things. They are trying to find ways somehow to make an object for their waiting.

Perhaps they may become religious, and they may start looking for God; but remember, all those who are waiting for God are waiting for Godot.

I used to think that Godot must be a German word - it sounds German. It hits like a German word.

I used to think it must be German for God and that was exactly the message in the book WAITING FOR GODOT. Nobody has seen Godot, nobody knows about him. Two persons are waiting, but just to wait for nothing is the most difficult thing in the world.

So they have imagined themselves... and they have helped each other, and one says to the other, "I think he must be coming."

He says, "I also think. It is already late." And nobody knows about whom they are talking, but nobody wants to bring up the question, "About whom you are talking?" - because they are both afraid that if the question is raised then their wound will be opened, that there is only waiting and it is for no one, and it will be very sad.

So it is good. And they go on talking...

"This is not right, this is not gentlemanly - promising and then not coming."

And finally one gets up and says, "I am fed up with this waiting. I am going to look for him - where is he? What is preventing him from coming?"

The other says, "Where are you going, leaving me alone here? I am also coming with you."

The whole dialogue starts with no base, but they both get engaged in it.

So I thought it can only be God. I asked my German sannyasin, the oldest German sannyasin, Haridas, "Is 'Godot' the German word for God?"

He said, "No! the German word for God is 'Gott'."

I said, "Even better - already got! No question of waiting. In Godot there is some possibility to wait.

God is a faraway goal, but Gott...?" Only Germans have got it. Nobody else has the guts to say that.

A few will become religious and start waiting for Gott. A few may start philosophizing, that life is meaningless, that life is nothing but anguish, that it is nausea. And the beauty is that Jean-Paul Sartre, who was continuously saying, "Life is meaningless, just anxiety, anguish, nausea" - he also wrote a book titled NAUSEA - he lived long. Then why go on living if life is just nausea - to write a book about it? If it is meaningless, to argue about it? To get a Nobel Prize for it?

That reminds me of Zeno, one Greek philosopher, a very sharp logician. He has left puzzles which have not been solved in two thousand years. And I don't think there is any way to solve them. The man has a tremendous mind for looking at things in such a way that he will find puzzles everywhere.

And he preached before Jean-Paul Sartre, two thousand years before him, that life is meaningless, but he was more logical. He said, "Suicide is the only logical conclusion."

Many of his disciples committed suicide, and he himself lived for ninety years! And when he was dying, somebody asked, "This is strange. You preach suicide and many of your closest followers have committed suicide when they were young, and you have lived to ninety." And in those days to live to ninety was very rare. "What is your answer?"

He said, "I had to live, to preach my philosophy, to teach people that life is nothing, and the only way out is to commit suicide. It was such a burden, but a duty has to be fulfilled. I could not commit suicide, because that would have been destructive to my philosophy and its propagation."

He is saying he lived just to teach people that they should commit suicide.

Many intelligent people are committing suicide. Those who cannot gather courage to commit suicide go mad. Either there are drugs or madness or suicide or a superstitious religion and creating a bogus idea of God far away, just to give you something to wait for; otherwise it seems like an open wound, and there is no way for it to be healed.

Jay, what I am saying is totally different from what is happening in the West. What I am saying is what has happened in the East in the past ten thousand years, whenever a man has come to such a point that all ambitions are useless - he has lived them, and found that it was not worth it; he reached the goal that he wanted and then found that there was nothing to be found, that it was only a hallucination, an oasis that looked to be real from far away - but as he came closer and closer, it disappeared, and there was only desert.

The East has used it in a different way. Not a single philosopher has preached for suicide. Not a single man in this state has gone mad, or has turned towards drugs. But for centuries it has been accepted as the most potential moment in life. If you can just wait, without waiting for anything; just wait - pure waiting.... Let the sadness be there, let the unfulfillment be there - they cannot stop your enlightenment.

Only one thing can stop your enlightenment, and that is if you make some object for your waiting.

If the waiting is pure, enlightenment is going to happen, and with its happening there is fulfillment, and there is great rejoicing and life has come to its flowering.

That's why I say this is a tremendously beautiful moment. Don't miss it.

As far as your love for sailing is concerned, that is not a distraction. In fact it can be a beautiful meditation. Being alone in the ocean, no crowd, no society. You can be silent, you can be relaxed, you can be yourself more easily.

And perhaps you are also fortunate, because all the mad politicians of the world may not allow me and my people to live on the earth. Then the only alternative for us is the ocean. And you, Jay, are the only one knowledgeable enough to help in creating the first ocean city of the world.

I have already asked Hasya to go and see some ocean liners. Jay is finding where ocean liners are available, and what kind will be right for us. And I am thinking more and more that it will be the right thing to do.

We can have our own ocean liner - one, two, three big ocean liners; as many sannyasins who want to come can be there for a few months and work and go back again. And we can stay twelve miles away from land, so no problem arises from anybody. And we can be totally ourselves: no disturbance from anybody.

Whatever methods we want to use, whatever techniques we want to practice, we have our own world.

So there is going to be some big responsibility on Jay, to manage at least five thousand people, and slowly we will arrange two, three more ocean liners, so when our festival time comes, twenty thousand, twenty-five thousand people can be there, and a big oil platform, on which twenty-five thousand people can sit and dance and sing - out of the world. And that will be our total no to all kinds of superstitions and to all kinds of stupidities, for which we have to make compromises unnecessarily just to live on the earth.

And it may be the beginning. Many other groups may start thinking in the same way, "Why bother with the earth. Why not move into the ocean?"

So our city will be the first ocean city in the whole of history, and I am certain other cities will follow.

So your love for sailing has come handy in time. You have come here right on time.

Question 2:

DON'T see the problem: if it is too hot one has to hide somewhere or other, behind someone or other - and when it is cool, come out!

There is no question of deciding that you will always be out, even if it becomes ice cold, or you will always remain behind, whether there is any need to hide or not. There is no reason at all to decide.

Just move and remain flexible. When it is hot it is perfectly good to open your umbrella. Are you against the umbrella or what? There are all kinds of umbrellas. And when it is not hot, close the umbrella.

Life should be taken very lightly, but we are brought up in such a way that everything becomes a serious problem. Now what is the problem in it? I don't see any problem. It is simply intelligent.

There are times when you need a shelter, and there are times when you need the open sky.

So live according to the moment, without any predecision. In fact predecisions create trouble.

I was staying in Calcutta in one of my friends' houses. He believed in Jainism, and he could not eat after sunset, so he told me, "We will discuss later on. The sun is setting, and I have to eat." The sun had already set - he knew it, I knew it, but there was no point.... So rather than eating on the dining table inside, because there it was becoming darker, we had to eat on the terrace, where it was light.

After eating I told him, "You are even deceiving your gods."

He said, "What do you mean?"

I said, "Whether you ate inside on the dining table or outside on the terrace, the time was the same, and the sun had already set. Yes, inside it was a little darker, outside it was a little more light, but the sun was not there. You have seen it setting, I have seen it setting, but I did not want to disturb you."

"But," he said, "one has to make compromises."

I said, "You have to make compromises, because you have already accepted certain formulas of life; otherwise there was no problem. If you had not decided that it was religious to eat before sunset, there was no question at all. And this formula was made almost five thousand years before when there was no electricity. Now you live in an air-conditioned palace. It is better lighted inside. The formula was made so that you don't eat in darkness, and some insect falls in it...."

And it happens in India in villages, where people eat in the night: they don't have even a small lamp... utter darkness. You can eat any insect falling, any fly falling - and it was perfectly right at the time. But those people were not aware of electricity.

Now in an air-conditioned house, where there are no flies, no insects, nothing, and you have light at your hand - as much light as you want - it is simply stupid... the very idea of sun or no sun.

Whenever you decide beforehand, there is going to be trouble, because life goes on its own way.

It has no awareness of your prejudices, your disciplines - and it has no obligation to follow them.

And you get into trouble, and then life becomes more and more serious, because you have to make compromises, you feel guilty - that you are weak. If you don't make compromises you will be broken, you may hurt yourself.

In my understanding life is a very simple, playful, light-hearted thing. Don't disturb it by your seriousness. Move with it.

So when it is hot, don't eat hot-dogs; have a cold drink. When it is cold then change; there is no need to follow the same principle every day forever. That is making people so miserable, because they won't change. They think to remain unchanging in their principles gives them certain strength.

They are wrong. It simply sucks all their strength, they are the weakest people on the earth.

They are like small children who have grown up and are still using the pajamas which were made when they were babies. Now they are looking awkward. They are feeling difficulty, they are holding the pajamas all the time, because they are slipping again and again. People are laughing. No, as you grow, your pajamas also should grow; but because pajamas do not grow, you have to change them.

So I don't see any problem in it, but I can see this is not only one person's situation. Millions of people are living this way. They make a strict discipline and then get into trouble. Nobody is putting them into trouble but their own principles. If they leave them they feel bad, if they follow them they suffer.

Don't be too hard on yourself. Be a little more compassionate, a little more loving. So I don't teach a principled life; I teach you clearly an unprincipled life, a life of intelligence which changes with every change around you. You don't have a principle that creates a difficulty in changing. Be absolutely unprincipled and just follow life. And there will be no misery in your life.

You can live this whole life with so many songs and so many dances, and out of those songs and dances will arise your gratitude. And I call that gratitude your religiousness - gratitude towards existence.

But you don't give a chance for your own life to flower. Your principles are your prisons, and they go on becoming bigger and bigger.

You will be surprised to know that for a Buddhist monk there are thirty-three thousand principles to be followed. Now even to remember them is impossible. To follow them means crippling yourself completely. On each step, at each moment you have to consult your holy book: what to do, what not to do.

Just do whatsoever is pleasant - pleasant to you and pleasant to your surroundings. Just do something which brings a song to you and creates a rhythm around you, of celebration.

This life I call a religious life: it has no principles, it has no discipline, it has no laws, it has only one single approach, and that is to live intelligently.

Question 3:

YES Kaveesha, you are doing very well. Continue.

Question 4:

TILOPA is one of my most loved ones. His sutras are very small, but have the capacity of an atomic explosion. The first sutra is: as far as the body is concerned, remember only one thing, only one word - relaxation. If your body can remain relaxed, more and more, you will be coming closer and closer to home.

Just whenever you have time simply watch whether your body is relaxed or whether there are some tensions somewhere. Close your eyes and start from your feet, watching inside upwards, and you will find that the knees are tense or the back is tense - whichever part feels tense, just suggest to it, "Please relax."

It is something very fundamental to understand, that the body is always ready to listen to you - you have never talked with it, you have never made any communication with it. You have been in it, you have used it, but you have never thanked it. It serves you, and serves you as intelligently as possible.

Nature knows that it is more intelligent than you are, because all the important things in the body have not been left to you, they have been given to the body. For example, breathing, or heartbeat, or the blood circulating, or the digestion of the food - they have not been left to you; otherwise you would have been in a mess long before.

If breathing was left to you, you would have died. There is no possibility of your living, you can forget any moment. Fighting with someone, you can forget breathing. Sleeping in the night, you can forget your heartbeats. How will you remember? And do you know how much work your digestive system is doing? You go on swallowing things and you think you are doing a great job. That swallowing can be done by anybody.

In the second world war it happened, one man got a bullet through his throat. He didn't die, but he could not eat or drink from the throat, the whole passage had to be closed. And the doctors made a small passage by the side of his stomach, with a pipe coming out, and he has to put the food in the pipe, but there was no joy. Even when he was putting in ice-cream... he was very angry.

He said, "This is... I don't taste anything."

Then one doctor suggested, "You do one thing. First you taste, then you throw it into the pipe." And that he did for forty years. He would first chew and enjoy and then throw it in the pipe. The pipe is just as good, because in your body too it is just a pipe and nothing else, it is just hidden behind skin. This poor man's was just open. And it was better than yours because it could be cleaned and everything.

The whole digestive system is doing miracles. The scientists say that if we had to do everything that your small digestive system is doing - a single man's - we would need a big factory to turn food into blood, to sort out all elements, to send those elements which are needed at certain places. A few elements are needed in the brain, and they have to be sent through the blood stream to the brain.

Others are needed somewhere else, to the eyes. Others are needed somewhere else, to the ears, or to the bones, or to the skin, and the body is doing it so perfectly for seventy years, eighty years, ninety years - and you don't see its wisdom.

Tilopa is saying that with the body, the only thing that people are not doing is relaxation, particularly while meditating. Do not do anything else with body, but just relax; put the whole body's wisdom into relaxation. Relaxation should become the basement of the temple that you are creating; and the mind should be emptied of all thoughts.

And just by being aware, thoughts start disappearing. There is no need to fight. Your awareness is enough to destroy them. And when the mind is empty, the temple is ready. And inside the temple the only god worth placing is silence.

So those three words you have to remember: relaxation, thoughtlessness, silence. And if these three words are no more words to you but become experiences, your life will be transformed.

People like Tilopa are always simple, direct. These are like maxims of physics or chemistry. Not a single word can be added to these sutras, and not a single word can be taken out. He has put exactly the right words in the right proportion in the right sequence. The body is relaxed, the mind is empty, the heart is silent; and then what happens is the knowing, the experiencing of the ultimate reality, of the immortal life of eternity.

Without this knowing, we will remain always in fear of death; we will remain always in the clutches of desire; we will remain always in tensions, miseries.

Knowing oneself, one is freed from everything; not only one is freed from everything, one is freed from oneself too. Only freedom remains. This freedom is the cherished idea of all the awakened ones.

Tilopa comes into the same category as Gautam Buddha, Mahakashyap, Bodhidharma, Chuang Tzu.

If one is going to get the essence of all the awakened ones, just to understand Tilopa is enough. His sutras will give you all the secrets possible. You need not wander here and there.

Question 5:

JUST a little bit more!