The Weight of a Flower

There are two ways of living. One is the way of conflict, the other is the way of surrender. In conflict you feel that your will is different from the will of the whole. In surrender you feel that you are a part of the whole, with no question of your will being different or apart. If you are aloof and apart, conflict is natural and inevitable. If you are one with the whole, surrender is natural. Conflict brings tension, restlessness, worry, and anxiety. Surrender brings emptiness, peace, joy and finally the supreme knowledge.

The ego thrives on conflict and is destroyed in surrender. The worldly man is always in conflict; the religious man has given up all struggles and surrendered himself. Religion has nothing to do with your going to a church or a mosque or a Sikh temple. If your tendency is to fight, if you are struggling even with God, if you are trying to enforce your own will - albeit through prayer or worship - you are irreligious.

When you have no desire of your own, then His wish is your wish; if you have no separate goal of your own, wherever He takes you is your destination. When you are ready to move as He pleases, when you have no expectations of your own, when you make no decisions, then you cease swimming and begin to float.

Have you watched a hawk soaring high in the sky? When it has flown to a sufficient height, it stretches its wings wide and floats in the air. When your mind reaches that stage it is in a state of surrender. You need no longer flap your wings, you merely float, weightless in His atmosphere.

For all weight is caused by conflict; it is born through resistance. The more you fight the lower you fall. The more you abandon the fight, the lighter you become; and the lighter you are, the higher you soar. If you leave all conflict completely, you reach God's heights, which signifies being free of all burden, weightless. Ego is like a stone tied round your neck; the more you fight, the heavier it becomes.

Once Nanak happened to camp by the side of a well outside a village inhabited by Sufi fakirs. Early the next morning when the head of the Sufis came to know of Nanak's arrival, he sent Nanak a cup of milk filled to the brim. It was so full that not a drop could be added. Nanak broke a flower from a nearby shrub, put it in the cup and sent it back to the Sufi guru. The flower floated on the milk, because what weight has a flower? Nanak's disciple, Mardana, was puzzled and asked Nanak what all this meant.

Nanak explained: "The Sufi's message said there was no room, that the village is so full of sages that it can accommodate no more. My reply let him know that I shall ask for no extra space, because I am as light as the flower and shall float at the top!"

He who is unburdened is a sage. He who has weight is still ignorant and his weight can harm others until he is completely free of all burdens. Nonviolence occurs on its own. Love flowers on its own. No one can bring about love or implant compassion; if you become free of all burdens, it all happens on its own. As a shadow follows a man, so hatred, anger, malice and violence follow the man weighted down with anxiety. Love, compassion, pity, prayer follow in the wake of a weightless person. So the primary issue is to annihilate the ego within.

There is only one way to annihilate the ego. The Vedas have referred to it as rit; Lao Tzu calls it tao; Buddha has called it dhamma; Mahavira's word is dharma; Nanak refers to it as hukum - divine order. He who conducts himself according to His command without making a single movement on his own, with no desires or feelings of his own, or need to introduce his own self, is alone the religious man.

And he who puts himself under His command attains all; there is nothing left to be attained. To obey His command is the gateway to His heart. To believe in oneself is to turn your back on God; obey His will, and you face Him again. You may lead your life with your back to the sun and you will never be able to shake off the darkness; no sooner do you turn your face towards the sun than the darkness of innumerable lives vanishes. The only way to stand before God is to leave your own will. To float is enough. There is no need to swim and carry a load unnecessarily. All defeats and all victories are diseases of your own ego.

Your condition is like that of the fly who sat on the hub of a huge chariot's wheel which raised an immense cloud of dust as it moved. The fly looked around and saw nothing but dust. It said to itself, "I am raising so much dust that I must be very big myself!" Whether you are successful or suffer defeat, it is all because of this dust. You are nothing more than the fly on the chariot wheel, so don't bring in your puny self by thinking it is you who is raising the dust. The dust is of His chariot, as is the journey.

You must have heard the story of the lizard. Once his friends invited him for a walk in the jungle.

"I am sorry, I can't go," he answered, "because if I were to leave, who will support the ceiling of the king's palace? If the ceiling falls, the responsibility will be mine." The poor thing thinks so much depends on it! And if it is possible for a lizard to think so....

Then there was the old lady who owned a rooster that crowed every morning as the sun came out.

The old woman became haughty and arrogant. She told the villagers to be careful of their manners towards her because if she went away to another place with her rooster, the sun would rise no more for them.

Now it was a fact that every day when the cock crowed the sun came out, but the villagers laughed and made fun of her. They told her she was out of her senses. Finally in anger the old woman left and went to another village. There also the cock crowed and the sun came out. She thought, "Now they will beat their breasts and cry. The rooster is no longer there to make the sun rise!"

Your arguments and the old woman's logic are very similar. It has never happened that the cock has crowed and the sun did not come out, yet you have it all backwards. But who can explain this to the old woman and make you understand too? When the old woman saw the sun come out in the new village she was certain that if it had risen there, it could be nowhere else.

Your intelligence and capacity to think is also so limited. God is not because of you; you are because of Him. Your breath flows from Him; not because of you. It is not you who prays; it is He who prays through you.

If this feeling penetrates your understanding, Nanak's priceless words will become clear. Each word is a jewel.

Nanak uses the word hukum, which means the divine order or the cosmic law which governs all of existence. All life is born out of the divine order, and it is hukum that gives you greatness.

When you are successful, do not consider yourself the victor. Then you will not consider defeat as your defeat. It is He who is victorious, it is He who is defeated. All is His play. In fact the Hindus look upon the whole world as play. This signifies that it is He who wins and He who loses. He wins with one hand and loses with the other; however, the apparent winners and the losers, who are no more than a means, an implement, mistakenly consider themselves doers.

Krishna says to Arjuna in the Gita, "Don't bring yourself into things. It is He who does, and He who gets things done. It is He who has brought this battle about. He will kill those He wants to kill, He will save those He wants to save. Do not imagine that you are the killer or the savior." What Krishna has expressed in the whole Gita, Nanak has said in this sutra: It is He who has created the great and the small.

Let us ponder over this: if it is He who has created all things great and small, then no one is big, no one is small, because all are His creations. You make a small idol, you make a big idol, but you are the sculptor of both. When there is but one maker, what issue can there be which is big or small?

Our trouble throughout life is that we think in terms of great and small. No matter how hard we try, we cannot become great enough to satisfy our ego.

As soon as you begin to see the hand of the formless within yourself, you immediately become great.

The maker is one. He who makes the lowliest flower also creates the majestic pine tree that seems to touch the skies! If the hand behind both is one and the same, who is great and who is small? The victory is His, the defeat is His. We are just pawns in the chess game.

You must have heard many a devotee saying: "All that is good in me is Yours; all that is bad is mine."

On the surface the devotee attributes all his virtues to God while holding himself responsible for all his shortcomings. This apparent humility is not genuine. Because if all the goodness is His, how can all the badness be yours? Genuine egolessness would give way completely at the feet of the Lord, keeping nothing for itself - not even the bad. It is the ego in the garb of humility that holds back this little support for itself. However much you may insist, how can success be His and failure yours; goodness be His and evil yours? This talk is hollow; it holds no substance. Either both are His or both are yours.

There is a difference between true humility and false humility. False humility says: "I am only dust at your feet." When a person says that to you, look into his eyes and you will see that he expects you to say: "Oh, no! How can you say that? It is I who am dust at your feet." If however you accept his statement and say, "Yes, you are quite right. That is exactly what I think," then you have earned an enemy for life. He will never forgive you.

All praise is His, all blame His. We have no part in it. We are but the bamboo flute; let Him play on it as He will. It is still arrogance that says: "If there is any fault it is mine," because then the ego is still preserved. The I is such a disease: guard even a speck of it and the whole is saved. Either you let go of it completely or it remains completely, hidden safely within you.

Nanak says: all forms have arisen out of the divine order. It cannot be expressed in words. All that is most significant in life cannot be put into words. Divine order is the most significant. There is nothing beyond it. Words are adequate only for the purpose they ordinarily serve, to carry on our day-to-day life. But there is no way of expressing the extraordinary in words. There are many reasons for this.

Knowledge of the supernatural occurs only in silence. And what is experienced in silence, how can that be expressed in speech? Silence and speech are antithetical. When He is experienced within there are no words, only complete silence. How can you find in words what you have known in emptiness? The medium has changed. Emptiness is a different medium altogether - the formless - whereas words have shape and form. How can you give form to what is formless? This has been a problem for all who have known. How can it be expressed? Imagine hearing a beautiful song and trying to explain it to a deaf person.

There is an old Sufi story: A deaf shepherd was grazing his sheep near a mountain. It was afternoon, long past the usual hour his wife brought his lunch and he was very hungry. As she had never been late before he began to worry whether she was taken ill or had met with an accident. The shepherd looked around and saw a woodcutter perched high on a tree. He reached up to him and said, "Brother, would you keep an eye on my lambs? I would like to run home and get my food."

Now, as it happened, the woodcutter also was deaf. He said, "On your way! I have no time to waste in idle gossip." The shepherd understood from his gestures that he had agreed to his request. He ran home as fast as he could and returned with his food. He counted his sheep and all was in order.

He thought it would be nice to offer a gift to the woodcutter as a gesture of his gratitude and good will. Having a lame sheep which he would have to kill some day, he took it with him to where the woodcutter was.

Now when the woodcutter saw the shepherd with the lame lamb, he cried out in anger, "What? Do you mean to say I made her lame?"

The more the shepherd offered the lamb to him, the louder shouted the woodcutter. Now it happened that a horseback rider who had lost his way came upon the two. He meant to ask them the way but immediately the two of them caught hold of him. As luck would have it, the rider, who also was stone-deaf, had just stolen the horse and was riding away with it. When these two caught hold of him he thought they must be the owners of the horse. Meanwhile the shepherd asked him earnestly to explain to the woodcutter that he was presenting the lamb as a gift to him.

The woodcutter said, "Please tell this man I did not so much as look at his sheep, much less make this one lame!"

The horseman said, "You may take back the horse. I admit my guilt, please forgive me."

While all this confusion was going on a Sufi fakir happened to pass by. All three rushed at him, caught hold of his clothing and begged him to clear things up for them. The fakir had taken a lifelong vow of silence, and although he understood each of their problems, what was he to do? He looked deep and long into the eyes of the rider, who began to get restless. He thought this man was hypnotizing him. He became so frightened that he jumped on the horse and rode away.

Now the fakir turned and looked piercingly at the shepherd who also felt he was losing consciousness. He quickly gathered his sheep and went on his way. When the fakir turned to the third man, he was equally frightened.

The fakir's eyes were very powerful. Those who observe prolonged silence develop a unique luster in their eyes. All the energy accumulates and the eyes become the channel for expression. When the fakir looked at him deeply, he quickly tied his bundle of sticks and went off. The Sufi laughed and continued on his way. He had solved their problem without saying a word.

This is the difficulty that holy men experience, and there are not only three who are deaf; there are three billion deaf in this world! And each one makes his point but nobody listens; nobody hears anybody else. There is no dialogue in life, only debates and disputes. What is the saint to do then?

He has developed the art of silence so there is no way to speak. Besides, however much he speaks, as in the case of the Sufi fakir, deaf men are never able to follow. He would only have added to the confusion. So he merely looked deep into their eyes.

The saint has always tried to solve your problems by looking deep into your eyes. He tries to pour into your eyes what is contained within himself. Therefore Nanak talks a great deal of the company of saints. He says, "Associate with holy men if you want to know what they have known. Keep the company of saints, because mere hearing and talking will not take you far." You will be told one thing, you will interpret it in another way p eoplearedeaf.Y ouwillbeshownsomethingandyouwillseesomethingelsep Nanak says the divine order cannot be expressed, yet hints can be given. These hints are not mere words, because the divine order cannot be contained in the words. These words are like milestones telling you that you are on the right path, that the destination lies ahead. Many cling to the milestones and go no further.

You can also do this. If you get up each morning and merely repeat the Japuji you will know the Japuji by heart and no more. You will be clinging to the milestone! Instead, travel the way the Japuji directs you to go. Understand it; don't cling to it. Travel you must, because religion is a journey, but to hold on to Japuji or the Koran or the Bible or the Gita is clinging to the milestones. Understand them, go forward and the mystery will unravel itself!

Think a little: when you are unhappy, you hold the other responsible for your sufferings. If you must do this, hold the divine order responsible. When the husband is unhappy he blames his wife, when the wife is unhappy she lays the blame on her husband. The father holds the son responsible, the son rebukes the father. If you must hold someone responsible, let it be the divine order. You cannot settle for less.

It is most ironic that when you are in trouble you blame another, but when you are happy you take the credit entirely for yourself. What logic is this? - happiness is on your own account, but your unhappiness you put on another's account! This is why you can neither overcome your sufferings nor unravel the secret of happiness, because you are wrong on both counts: neither is the other responsible for your sufferings nor are you responsible for your happiness. God alone is responsible for both. And if joy and sorrow come to you from the same hand, why make a difference between the two?

There was a Mohammedan king. He was very fond of a particular slave, and the slave worshipped his master. One day as they were going through a forest the king saw one lone fruit hanging from a tree. The king picked it and as was his habit, he gave some of it to the slave. When the slave tasted it he said, "Master, give me a little more."

The slave asked for more and more till there was hardly any left for the king. Yet he kept insisting and even tried to snatch what remained from the king's hands. The king quickly put the remaining bit in his mouth but spat it out immediately.

"Have you gone mad?" he shouted at the slave. "This fruit is poisonous and you stand there smiling at me! Why didn't you tell me?"

The slave fell at his master's feet as he said, "The hands that gave me the sweetest of fruits - should I complain against those hands if they gave me but one bitter fruit?"

Notice that he ignored the fruits, but only took account of the hands.

The day this wisdom dawns on you, that it is through His hands alone that sorrow comes to you, then would you still look upon it as pain? You only know suffering as suffering because you do not see His hand behind it. The day you realize that both joy and sorrow are given by Him, they lose their impact. Then happiness will no longer raise you up nor sorrow produce pain. When joy and sorrow become equal to you, bliss appears to take their place. When the duality of joy and sorrow ceases, the indivisible descends and you are filled with bliss!

Do not hold anyone around you to blame - neither husband nor wife, neither son nor daughter, neither friend nor foe. Let God be the owner of all responsibility. When joy comes or success, don't fill your ego. He is master of all success, the owner of any rewards, of all sweet fruits! If you leave everything to Him, joy and sorrow disappear and only bliss will remain.

Once you understand the essential, that all is His, what remains of the I? There is no one left to say I. Understand that you desire to get rid of the ego when it causes you pain; yet the trouble is, it is the same ego through which you can experience happiness. That ego gives you pain is well known:

when a person abuses you, your ego feels hurt and you want to be free of it.

People come and ask me how they can be freed from sorrow. They also say they know that it is the ego that is the cause of all suffering. Then they ask how to get rid of the ego. I tell them: "How is not the question. If you really felt that the ego was the cause of all your ills, you would have abandoned it long ago. There is no need then to ask!"

But it is not so simple; you want to rid yourself of the ego half of the time; you want a fifty-fifty arrangement. The same you that is hurt by accusation and wants to get rid of the ego is delighted when praise comes and the ego feels nourished. Make a mistake and you suffer, perform well and you are delighted; when people abuse you it hurts, when they sing your praises you are all smiles.

Both alternatives take place on the plane of the ego.

The trouble is that if you let go of the ego your joys will end along with your sorrows. You want to preserve your happiness and be rid of unhappiness. This has never happened, nor can it ever happen. If they stay, they remain together; if they go, they depart together. They are the two sides of the same coin. You want to throw away one side and keep the other. Since that is impossible, you alternate: one minute you throw the coin aside and the next you pick it up again. You can't keep - or abandon - one side without the other.

Understand the plight of the ego: if you leave both sorrow and joy to God, who is the authentic source of all life, your ego has no place to stand. Then how will you say, "I am"? I is nothing but a collection of all your actions. It is not an object, and has no independent existence. If you let go of the doership and say, "You are the doer, I am only an instrument," then where is the ego? Then whatever He directs, you do; whatever He does not direct, you do not do. If He makes you a sinner, you are a sinner; if He makes you a saint, you are a saint.

Try to understand the uniqueness of Nanak's statement. He says that only through divine order does a person attain knowledge, and it is through divine order alone that a man wanders through countless cycles of life and death. What Nanak means to convey is that if you are a sinner do not brand yourself a sinner. Rather, say "His will."

You might think there is the danger of a person gaily committing crimes blaming His will. The crux of the matter is that once a person knows it is all His will, whatever he does is a worthy deed. As long as you do not know, there is a continuous conflict between you and Him, which by definition, gives rise to sin. Sin is the result of the struggle between you and God. This conflict brings about the state of inflicting suffering on oneself as well as on others. The day you leave everything to Him ,all sins flee.

Nanak says that too is happening through Him. If you are a sinner, it is He; if you are a saint, it is He. Don't think it is you who has done the good deed nor that it is you who has committed the sin.

The very concept 'I have done' is an error, a mistake.

There is only one ignorance; it lies in the belief that "I have done..." There is only one knowledge; it consists in recognizing the ultimate creator. The creator does everything; I am only the means, the instrument. There is no one and nothing outside of the divine order. Everything resides within it.

His definitions are countless, and still incomplete. How can man who is himself incomplete define the complete? Whatever he says will be incomplete. How can the part bear witness to the whole?

Whatever the part utters will relate only to itself. Can the atom know the absolute? Whatever it understands cannot transcend itself.

So those who can sing, sing of His attributes, and yet the unknown remains unknown. The Upanishads sang His praises till they were tired, as did the Gita, the Koran, the Bible. His is indescribable, undefinable - He is made that way. It has been impossible to define Him completely.

All scriptures are incomplete and they are bound to be, because they are limited man's effort to manifest the infinite.

The sun comes out, and the artist paints a picture of it. However well he paints, the picture will give off no light. You cannot keep the painting in a dark room and expect the room to be lit by it. If a poet witnesses the sunrise and writes a beautiful song about it, no matter how earnest and profound the feelings he conveys, his song cannot light the darkened room.

All songs sung in praise of God, all pictures representing His attributes, are incomplete. No song can tell of Him completely, because we cannot bring His being down into them. Words are hollow and must remain hollow. If you are thirsty, the word water will not quench your thirst. If you are hungry, the word fireis not going to cook your food. And if the desire of God has arisen within you, the word god is not enough. It is enough only for those with no desire.

Understand well: if you are not thirsty, the word water or H2O is enough to name it. But if you are thirsty, the difficulty begins. Then neither the word water nor the symbol H2O works. You may gather together all the words for water - there may be three thousand languages in the world - and tie them round your neck, they will not yield a single drop of water. If you are not thirsty, you may play with the words.

Philosophy is a game for people who are not thirsty. Religion is the journey of those who are thirsty.

Therefore philosophy plays with words; not so religion. Religion takes cognizance of the hints the words give and follows them. When the quest is for the lake, what can the word lake do? When the search is for life, the word life alone sounds hollow.

Let us understand a little about a profound question facing the philosopher. A tourist comes to India and he is given a map of India. What is the relationship between India and the map? If the map is the same as India then it must be as vast. If it is exactly like India, it would be useless, because you couldn't carry it in your car, much less put it in your pocket. If it is not like India, how can it still be useful?

The map is a symbol. It is not like India and yet by means of its lines, it conveys useful information about India. You may roam the whole of India without ever seeing a map of India. Wherever you go you will find India; the map is nowhere to be seen. But if you have the map with you and understand it and use it, the journey will be made easier. By either keeping the map in your pocket, or by looking at the map and never leaving your room, you will not learn a great deal. Both together make for the fullest understanding of the experience.

Religious people the world over hold the maps to their chests as if the maps were the actuality, the totality. Scriptures, holy books, images, temples - all contain hidden pointers that keep the maps from being just a burden. The Hindu is carrying his load of maps, the Mohammedan his, the Christian his. The maps have become so numerous that the journey is now almost impossible, so weighted down are you by maps. The maps should be short, abridged, and they are not to be worshipped in themselves, but to be utilized on the journey.

Nanak drew his essentials from both the Hindu and the Mohammedan religions. He cannot be called Hindu nor Mohammedan; he is both or neither. It was very difficult for people to understand Nanak.

There was a saying: "Baba Nanak is the king of the fakirs. He is the guru of the Hindus and the saint of the Mohammedans."

He is both. Of his two special disciples, Mardana and Bala, one was Hindu and the other a Mohammedan. Yet Nanak has no place in the Hindu temple or in the Mohammedan mosque. Both doubt his position and do not know where to place him. Nanak is the confluence of the two rivers, of Hinduism and Islam. He harvested the essence from both. Therefore the Sikh is neither Hindu nor Mohammedan; they must be both or none since their religion arises out of their junction.

Now it is difficult to understand this confluence; when there is a river on the map it is clear-cut, but here two rivers have become one. Some words relate to Islam while others reflect Hinduism, and together they became hazy, but gradually the fog clears when you enter into the experience. If you keep Nanak's words on your chest as you do other scriptures, it becomes like any other holy book - and we do find the Sikh worshipping his words as if they were the guru. Is it not astonishing how we repeat our mistakes?

Nanak went to Mecca. The priests there told him to be careful not to point his feet toward Kaaba while he slept. As the story goes, Nanak's reply was that they should turn his feet where God was not, and, it is said, the holy stone of Mecca turned wherever they turned his feet. The symbolism means only this: wherever you turn your feet, there God is. Where will you put your feet if He is omnipresent?

I was invited to the Golden Temple at Amritsar. When I went they stopped me at the entrance saying I must cover my head before entering the place of God. I reminded them of the incident with Nanak at Kaaba and asked them, "Does it mean that right here where I stand with my head uncovered, there is no God, no temple?" We keep on repeating our mistakes. I further asked, "Then please show me a place where I can be without a head-covering. And don't you remove your turbans while bathing, and while sleeping? Then isn't that also an affront to the Lord?"

Man's foolishness is the same everywhere. Whatever Buddha says, his followers paint with their own brush to suit them. And so also with Nanak. The same web is woven once a master has pronounced his words, because man's foolishness has not changed, nor has his deafness improved. He hears, but he draws his own individual conclusions which he then follows accordingly, never putting into practice what he actually hears.

Nanak says, no matter how many songs are sung about the lord, nobody has covered it completely.

Different people sing different songs because there are many paths to reach Him. However antithetical their songs may seem there is no contradiction anywhere because they all contain the same message. The Vedas say exactly what the Koran says, but the method by which Mohammed reached is different from Patanjali's approach. Buddha also says the same thing but his method is entirely different.

Infinite are the gates to His abode. Whichever way you go leads to His gate. Once arrived you can begin to define the gate through which you entered, and describe the path you have trodden.

Another person will likewise describe his own door and his road. Besides, it is not only the path that differs, but your understanding, your perception, your emotional attitude all play a significant part.

When a poet enters a garden, he sings in ecstasy; an artist would paint a picture; if a flower- merchant comes along, he will think in terms of sale and profit; a scientist will analyze the flowers or soil to find out their chemical composition and why they grow; a drunk will be oblivious to the beauty around him, he will not even know that he went through a garden. Whatever you see passes through the windows of your own eyes which impose their own color on everything.

Says Nanak: Some sing the praise of His power - He is all powerful, omnipotent. Some sing of His benefaction and munificence - He is the supreme giver. Some sing of the glory of His attributes, His beauty - He is the most beautiful. Some cll Him truth, some call Him Shiva, some call Him the beautiful."

Rabindranath has written: "I found Him in beauty." This says nothing of God; rather, it tells of Rabindranath. Gandhi says: "For me, He is truth - truth is God." This speaks of Gandhi rather than of God. Rabindranath is a poet; for a poet God resides in beauty, supreme beauty. Gandhi was no poet, he is practical, and it is natural that such a mind sees God as truth. From the point of a lover - He is the beloved.

How we see Him reflects our insight. He is everything simultaneously and also - none of these.

In this context Mahavira's reflection is wonderful. He says, "Unless and until your sense of vision drops, you cannot know Him." For whatever you will know, you will know through your own seeing; it will be your view of knowing. Mahavira calls his method no-view. Seeing only occurs when all vision drops.

But then you will lapse into silence, because how will you speak without a viewpoint? When you are freed of your vision, you will become like Him; because you will be so extensive, so comprehensive, you will be one with the open skies. How will you speak? You will no longer be separate unto yourself, but one with the absolute. A viewpoint means that you stand apart from what you see; to have a viewpoint means that you are separate from Him.

Therefore Nanak says that all the viewpoints are correct but none is complete; when the partial is proclaimed as complete and perfect, the illusions begin. Any sect or organization claims one particular incomplete vision as perfect. One sect stands against another, whereas all sects are different aspects of religion, and no one sect is a religion. If we were to amalgamate all possible sects that have been, that are and that will be, then religion would be born. No sect on its own can be called religion.

The word for sect in Hindi, sampradaya, also means the path, that which takes you to the goal; whereas religion, dharma, means the destination. The destination is one, the paths, many.

In spite of saying it millions of times, there is much more left unsung. The benefactor gives and gives and gives, while the receiver drops with exhaustion.

These are very significant words. It is He who gives life. It is He who breathes your breath. It is He who pulsates in every heartbeat. He keeps on giving... giving. There is no end to His giving, and He asks for nothing in return.

As a result you mistakenly feel life to be a cheap commodity and other things appear expensive.

You are always ready to abandon life and aliveness but not wealth; because wealth is acquired with great difficulty and life is given you without any effort on your part - it comes free! Whatever He has given you, He has given freely and you have given nothing in return.

When this begins to occur to you, you begin to question your own worthiness for all that you have received: "Would it have mattered one bit if I were not?" The life potential, the flowering of consciousness that has bloomed within you - if it had not, to whom would you have complained?

And what is your worth that makes you eligible for life? How have you earned it?

For every small thing in life you need proof of worthiness. To be a clerk in an office or a schoolteacher, you have to be qualified for the post; you have to earn your place in life. How have you earned your life itself? It is a gift freely given and not because of some special qualification of yours. The day you begin to realize this, prayer will arise within you. You will say, "What shall I do to express my gratitude? How shall I repay Thee?"

Prayer is not begging but an expression of gratitude for what is already received. Prayer of another kind, when you go to the temple to ask for something, is false prayer.

Nanak also goes to the temple, but only to express his thanks and gratitude: "I cannot believe all that You have given me! I see no reason why You should cover me with so many gifts, because I am not worthy. If You do not give I have no complaints, but You are such that You give and give... and give."

And we? It would be difficult to find more thankless people than us. We offer no thanks, show no gratitude. His gifts are unending and our ungratefulness knows no bounds! We cannot so much as thank Him; we find it so difficult our throats seem to choke.

You are ready to say thank you if you drop your handkerchief and someone picks it up for you, but you have no word of thanks for the one who has given you life. If you ever go to pray, it is always a complaint. You tell Him of all the wrong He is doing, "My son is ill, my wife does not treat me well, my business is failing." And you exaggerate your complaints so! You manage to convey: "You aren't there. And if You are, why don't You satisfy all my desires!"

Atheism means that your complaints have reached such a pitch that you can no longer believe there is a God. Your complaints kill God.

And what is the meaning of theism? You are so filled with gratitude and thanksgiving that you see Him all around you. Everywhere you see His hand, everywhere His reflection; everywhere you feel His presence. Theism is the peak of thanksgiving; atheism, the nadir of complaints.

Enjoy Him as much as you will, you cannot exhaust Him. To empty an ocean with a teaspoon is more possible, because whereas the scope of the spoon is limited, so also is the ocean limited. But you can never drain God because He is boundless. For aeons upon aeons you have been enjoying His bounty but never has a word of thankfulness risen from your heart to proclaim how grateful you are that all He has given is boundless. Whenever you have spoken, it has always been to express your dissatisfaction, emphasizing your worthiness and minimizing what you received.

A high official came to visit me from Delhi. The higher the post the greater is the number of complaints. He felt he was treated very unjustly and should have become a minister, preferably prime minister. He said, "Show me how to bear up under this injustice I have suffered."

Every person lives with this pain that he has not been awarded what he deserved. He who was worthy of becoming a vice-chancellor, lands up an ordinary schoolmaster; another feels he should be the master, but becomes a peon. And it goes on and on. Even the prime minister aims at becoming an international figure, having attained the highest position in his own country. You cannot satisfy an Alexander the Great - and everyone is an Alexander in his own right - big or small.

Desires always go ahead of you, as you think yourself worthy of more and more. These are the characteristics of an irreligious person. A religious person believes: Whatever I am given is beyond my worth.

Think it over for yourself. Whatever life has given you - is it more or less than what you deserve?

It is always more - much more. For we have done nothing to earn this vast existence that we have attained unasked and undeserved, and yet there is no sign of gratefulness within us!

Nanak says we cannot exhaust Him even by partaking of Him for infinite ages. The divine order shows the way through His command.

Here is a very deep clue, a critical part of Nanak's thoughts: He governs the world through His commands and is forever ordering you. Had you the slightest ability to listen, you could understand His command and flow accordingly. But you never listen!

You go to steal. He tells you inside, "Don't, don't!", twice, a thousand times. But you do as you please. The voice gradually becomes weaker and weaker until you become deaf towards it. Then you don't hear Him at all though He keeps calling.

There is not a single sinner who has lost his internal voice, the voice of the divine order. You cannot find the most evil person whom He has stopped calling. He never tires of you; He is never disappointed; He never considers you beyond redemption. However deep your illness, He has a cure. God has infinite hope, infinite potential. He is never disappointed in you.

There was a Sufi fakir by the name of Bayazid. His neighbor was a total rogue, a cheat, a criminal.

He had committed every sin under the sun and the whole village was terrified of him. One day Bayazid prayed to God: "Oh Lord, I have never asked anything from You. But this man is now going beyond all limits. Please remove him from our midst."

At once the inner voice spoke to Bayazid: "I am not as yet tired of him, then why are you? And if I still have faith in him, why don't you?"

You cannot make Him tired of you, no matter how much you sin for unnumbered lives. You cannot outlive Him. He keeps on calling. He never gives up on you.

And if you become silent for a moment and listen, you will surely hear His voice within you. Whatever you do, the internal voice ordains how you should do it.

This is why Nanak calls Him the ordainer - for it is His order that comes. The consciousness that is within your heart is the instrument that brings His voice to you. He speaks through your consciousness. Before doing anything, close your eyes and listen to Him. If you obey His command, bliss will shower on your existence. To go against it is to create your own hell, by your own hands.

Turn your back to the voice, and you are taking a dangerous step. Before deciding on anything, before taking any step, close your eyes and ask Him. This is the thread in all meditation, that first we shall ask - seek the voice, then proceed. We should not take a single step without His permission.

We should close our eyes and hear His voice, and follow His voice, not ours.

Once you acquire this key, it will open infinite doors for you. The key is within you; each child is born with it. We develop the child's intellect but do nothing to develop its consciousness. It remains undeveloped, incomplete. We heap so many layers of thoughts over the voice, it gets hidden so deep that we no longer can hear it, though it calls all the same.

That art of hearing the inner voice is called meditation. It is imperative to know His command. We must know what He wishes, what is His will.

He keeps on giving but expects nothing in return - not even an answer. He keeps calling out to you whether you hear or not. He does not care, He does not worry that you do not listen. He never feels He should stop since you have turned a deaf ear to Him, much less would He cast you aside as a lost cause.

You cannot make God anxious. And for this very reason, a man who has begun to see the reflection of God within himself has no anxiety. He will be simultaneously concerned and unconcerned. He will care for you and at the same time he will be carefree. You cannot make him anxious or worried.

Here I am! God knows how many people I am concerned about and yet I am carefree. You come to me with your woes and though I am concerned you do not cause me worry or anxiety. I do not become sad with your sorrow or I would not be able to help you. Though I need to sympathize with your troubles and find ways and means to lighten your distress, I cannot be so concerned that your worry grips me too.

And I should not be displeased with you if you come the next day without acting on my advice - which will surely happen. I don't feel: "I took so much trouble and you disregarded my advice." I still care, and through it all I remain carefree.

God is concerned about the whole world. He is forever ready to raise you up but He is not in a hurry. And if you wish to wander a little longer in fleeting pleasures, you are welcome to do so, by all means, but then He is carefree.

His concern is boundless and unaffected by you. He is always full of bliss - or you can imagine what state Hewould have been in by now! He would surely have gone mad with all the people there like you, and what trouble they are creating all around. God is one - and you are so many. You would have pushed Him into madness long ago; but existence is carefree, which is why it is saved from going berserk.

Carefree does not mean indifferent. Note the subtlety. His endeavors for you remain unchanged - His desire to raise you, to change you, to transform you. But His desire is nonaggressive. He will wait. Every morning the sun and his beams knock at your door and your door is closed. The sun will not force his way in. He will wait. It never happens that he will be angry and turn back. Whenever the door opens, he will come in.

God is concerned about you; existence cares about you. This is bound to be true for existence creates you, has developed you; it has great expectations of you. Existence is endeavoring to become conscious within you, to attain buddhahood from within you. God is endeavoring to bring forth flowers within you. But if you delay, He will not be troubled, He will not be anxious; He remains unaffected if you do not listen to Him, or refuse to heed Him. If you can understand both these things together, then you will understand why existence is filled with bliss. God is bliss.

Nanak says, He gives commands, and shows the way, and yet He has not a care! He keeps evolving in supreme bliss. His flower keeps blooming - always and always.

For us there are only two possibilities: either we care and that gives rise to worry, or we are unconcerned and there is no anxiety. This is why tradition has separated the sannyasin from the everyday world. If you stay at home you are bound to be involved with the family, then how could you be unconcerned and carefree? If your wife is ill you will worry; if your child has some disorder you will worry about his treatment and be filled with pain if he does not improve. But if wife and children are not before our eyes, we shall forget them - out of sight, out of mind! So we run away to the mountains and turn our backs to the world, so that by and by we shall forget.

We see only two alternatives: if we stay in the world we cannot remain unconcerned, and if we are concerned we are bound to worry, then there is no way of being blissful. The other choice is to run away and become carefree and unconcerned, so without worry the prospects of bliss increase.

But this is not the way of God. Therefore Nanak remained a householder as well as a sannyasin.

He was concerned and also unconcerned. And this is the art, the spiritual course - to be concerned and yet free from anxiety. Outwardly you do everything required of you but nothing attaches to you inside. You educate your son, and take great care of his upbringing; but if he turns out useless, or does not study, or fails in life, you are not worried.

Until you combine the two, and be a sannyasin within the household, you cannot reach God, because that is God's way. He is in the world and yet not of it. His way should be yours, on a lesser scale, in order to reach Him.

If the child is ill, take care of him with all the medical care he requires but what is the need to be worried? What value is there in disturbing or destroying your internal carefreeness?

Outwardly be in the world, inwardly be in God. Let the outer physical boundary be in contact with the world but let the center remain untouched. This is the essence.

And this is what troubled people about Nanak - that he was a householder but he wore the robes of a sannyasin. People could not categorize him. The Hindus would ask: "Are you a householder or are you a sannyasin? You talk like a sannyasin, your way and manners are those of a sannyasin and yet... this wife and child? If you plow the fields and look after your family, what sort of a sannyasin can you be?"

The Mohammedans questioned him in the same manner. They would say, "You dress like a fakir then why haven't you left your house and family?" At many places many gurus told him to leave everything and become their disciple. But Nanak did not budge from his path. He was constantly practicing the art of remaining outside of everything while remaining within everything, and that alone is the way of God; and that alone should be the way of the seeker.

People ask me: "What are you doing giving sannyasins' robes to householders!" But that is the way of God; He is in the world and yet not in it. And this should be your path too.

He is cheerful, filled with bliss, blooming like a flower and yet He has not a care! He is concerned about you - but He does not worry.

Put this experiment into practice in your life: work, mind your shop, but let there be a distance between your work and your being. Let your work be a play, a leela, and do not be the doer, that is all. Be an actor, let the art of acting become your life's thread; because that is the way of God and that should be your way, your practice.