A second laugh - for the first!

Question 1

Its not a question of telling yourself that you are not the mind, you are not the body, because the one who is telling it is the mind. That way you are never going to get out of the mind. All telling is done by the mind itself, so you will be emphasizing the mind more and more. The mind is very subtle; you have to be very, very alert about it. Don't use it. If you use it you strengthen it. You cannot use your mind to destroy your mind itself. You have to understand that this mind cannot be used for its own suicide.

When you say, "I am not the body," it is the mind saying so. When you say, "I am not the mind," it is again the mind saying so. Look into the fact; don't try to say anything. Language, verbalization, is not needed. Just a deep look. Just look inside. Don't say anything. But I know your trouble. From the very beginning we are taught not to see but to say. The moment you see the rose flower you say, "How beautiful!" Finished. The rose flower is gone - you killed it. Now something has come between you and the rose. "How beautiful it is!" - these words now will function as a wall.

And one word leads to another, one thought to another. And they move in association, they never move alone. You will never find a single thought alone. They live in a herd; they are herd animals.

So when once you have said, "How beautiful is the rose!" you are on the track; the train has started moving. Now the word "beautiful" will remind you of some woman you once loved. Roses forgotten, the beautiful is forgotten, now the idea, a fantasy, imagination, memory, of a woman. And then the woman will lead to many other things. The woman you loved had a beautiful dog. Here you go! And now there is no end to it.

Just see the mechanism of the mind, how it functions, and don't use the mechanism. Resist that temptation. It is a great temptation because you are trained for it. You work almost like a robot; it is automatic.

Now the new revolution that is coming into the world of education has a few proposals. One proposal is that small children should not be taught language first. First they should be allowed time to crystallize their vision, to crystallize their experiencing. For example, there is an elephant, and you say to the child, "The elephant is the biggest animal." You think you are not saying anything nonsensical, you think it is absolutely reasonable and the child has to be told about the fact; but no facts need to be told. It has to be experienced. The moment you say, "The elephant is the biggest animal," you are bringing something which is not part of the elephant. Why do you say the animal is the biggest animal? Comparison has entered, which is not part of the fact.

An elephant is simply an elephant, neither big nor small. Of course, if you put it by the side of a horse, it is big, or by the side of an ant it is very big; but you are bringing the ant in the moment you say the elephant is the biggest animal. You are bringing something which is not part of the fact. You are falsifying the fact; comparison has come in.

Just let the child see. Don't say anything. Let him feel. When you take the child to the garden, don't say the trees are green. Let the child feel, let the child absorb. Simple thing, "The grass is green" - don't say it.

This is my observation, that many times when the grass is not green you go on seeing it as green - and there are a thousand and one shades of green. Don't say that the trees are green, because then the child will see just green - any tree and he will see green. Green is not one color; there are a thousand and one shades of green.

Let the child feel, let the child absorb the uniqueness of each tree, in fact of each leaf. Let him soak, let him become like a sponge who soaks reality, the facticity of it, the existential. And once he is well grounded and his experience is well-rooted, then tell him the words; then they will not disturb him. Then they will not destroy his vision, clarity. Then he will be able to use language without being distracted by it. Right now your language goes on distracting you.

So what is to be done? Start seeing things without naming them, without labeling them, without saying "good," "bad," without dividing them. Just see and allow the fact to be there in your presence without any judgement, condemnation, appreciation whatsoever. Let it be there in its total nudeness. You simply be present to it. Learn more and more how not to use language. Unlearn the conditioning, the constant chattering inside.

This you cannot do suddenly. You will have to do it by and by, slowly. Only then, at the very end of it, can you simply watch your mind. No need to say, "I am not this mind." If you are not, then what is the point of saying it? You are not. If you are the mind, then what is the point of repeating that you are not the mind? Just by repeating it, it is not going to become a realization.

Watch, don't say anything. The mind is there like a constant traffic noise. Watch it. Sit by the side and see. See this is mind. No need to create any antagonism. Just watch, and in watching, one day, suddenly the consciousness takes a shift, changes, a radical change - from the object suddenly it starts focusing on the subject, if you are a watcher. In that moment you know you are not the mind.

It is not a question of saying, it is not a theory. In that moment you know - not because Patanjali says so, not because your reason, intellect, says so. For no reason at all, simply it is so. The facticity explodes on you; the truth reveals itself to you.

Then suddenly you are so far away from the mind you will laugh how you could believe in the first place that you were the mind, how you could believe that you were the body. It will look simply ridiculous. You will laugh at the whole stupidity of it.

"Not to be identified with mind and body - still I don't know how to do it." Who is asking this question, "How to do it?" See it immediately; who is asking this question, "How to do it?" It is the mind who wants to manipulate, it is the mind who wants to dominate. Now the mind wants to use even Patanjali. Now the mind says, "Perfectly true. I have understood that you are not the mind" - and once you realize that you are not the mind you will become a super mind. The greed arises in the mind; the mind says, "Good. I have to become a super mind."

The greed for the ultimate, for bliss, the greed to be in eternity, to be a god, has arisen in the mind.

The mind says, "Now I cannot rest unless I have achieved this ultimate, what it is." The mind asks, "How to do it?"

Remember, the mind always asks how to do a thing. The "how" is a mind question. Because "how" means the technique. The "how" means, "Show me the way so I can dominate, manipulate. Give me the technique." The mind is the technician. "Just give me the technique and I will be able to do it."

There is no technique of awareness. You have to be aware to be aware. There is no technique.

What is the technique of love? You have to love to know what love is. What is the technique of swimming? You have to swim. Of course in the beginning your swimming is a little haphazard. By and by you Learn... but you learn by swimming. There is no other way. If somebody asks you, "What is the technique of bicycling?" - and you do bicycle, you ride on the cycle - but if somebody asks, you will have to shrug your shoulders. You will say, "Difficult to say." What is the technique? How do you balance yourself on two wheels? You must be doing something. You are doing something, but not as a technique; rather as a knack. A technique is that which can be taught, and a knack is that which has to be known. A technique is that which can be transformed into a teaching, and a knack is something which you can learn but you cannot be taught. So Learn by and by.

And start from less complicated things. Don't suddenly jump to the very complicated. This is the last, the most complicated thing: to become aware of the mind, to see the mind and see that you are not the mind. To see so deeply that you are no longer the body and no longer the mind, that is the last thing. Don't jump. Start with small things.

You are feeling hungry. Just see the fact. Where is the hunger? In you, or somewhere outside you?

Close your eyes, grope in your inner darkness, try to feel and touch and figure out where the hunger is.

You have a headache. Before you take the aspirin do a little meditation. It may be that the aspirin is not needed then. Just close your eyes and feel where the headache is exactly, pin. point it, focus on it. And you will be amazed, that it is not such a big thing as you were imagining before, and it is not spread all over the head. It has a locus, and the closer you come to the locus, the more you become distant from it. The more diffused the headache, the more you are identified with it. The more clear, focused, defined, demarked, localized, the more distant you are.

Then there comes a point where it is just like a needle point, absolutely focused; then you will come to have a few glimpses. Sometimes the needle point will disappear; there will be no headache. You will be surprised, "Where has it gone?" Again it will come. Again focus; again it will disappear. At the perfect focusing, the headache disappears, because at the perfect focusing you are so far away from your head that you cannot feel the headache. Try it. Start with small things; don't jump to the last thing so immediately.

Patanjali also has travelled a long way to come to these sutras of viveka, discrimination, awareness.

He has been talking about so many things as preparatory, as basic requisites, very necessary.

Unless you have fulfilled all that, it will be difficult for you just to nonidentify yourself with the mind and body.

So never ask "how" about it. It has nothing to do with "how." It is a simple understanding. If you understand me, in that very understanding you will be able to see the point. I don't say you will be able to understand it. I say you will be able to see it. Because the moment we say "understand," intellect comes in, the mind starts functioning. "Seeing it" is something which has nothing to do with the mind.

Sometimes you are walking on a lonely path and the sun is setting and the darkness is descending, and suddenly you see a snake crossing the path. What do you do? You brood about it? You think about it, what to do, how to do it, whom to ask? You simply jump out of the way. That jumping is a seeing; it has nothing to do with mentation. It has nothing to do with thinking. You will think later on, but right now it is just a seeing. The very fact that the snake is there, the moment you become aware of the snake, you jump out of the way. It has to be so because mind takes time and the snake won't take time. You have to jump without asking the mind. The mind is a process; snakes are faster than your mind. The snake will not wait, will not give you time to think what to do. Suddenly the mind is put aside and you function out of the no-mind, you function out of your being. In deep dangers it always happens.

That is the reason why people are so attracted to danger. Moving in a speedy car, going one hundred miles per hour or even more, what is the thrill? The thrill is of no-mind. When you are driving a car one hundred miles per hour, there is no time to think. You have to act out of no-mind. If something happens and you start thinking about it, you are lost. You have to act immediately; not a single moment is to be wasted. So the greater the speed of the car, the more and more the mind is put aside, and you feel a deep thrill - a great sensation of being alive - as if you have been dead up to now and suddenly you have dropped all deadness and life has arisen in you.

Danger has a deep, hypnotic attraction, but the attraction is of no-mind. If you can do it sitting just by the side of a tree or a river or just in your room, there is no need to take such risk. It can be done anywhere. You have just to put the mind aside - wherever you can put the mind aside - and just see things without the mind interfering.

I have heard:

An anthropologist in Java came across a little-known tribe with a strange funeral rite. When a man died, they buried him for sixty days and then dug him up. He was placed in a dark room on a cool slab, and twenty of the tribe's most beautiful maidens danced erotic dances entirely in the nude around the corpse for three hours.

"Why do you do this?" the anthropologist asked the chief of the tribe who replied, "If he does not get up we are sure he is dead!"

That may be the attraction of forbidden things. If sex is forbidden it becomes attractive. Because all that is allowed becomes part of the mind. Try to understand this.

All that is allowed becomes part of the mind; it is already programmed. You are expected to love your wife or your husband; it is part of the mind. But the moment you start becoming interested in somebody else's wife, it is not part of the mind; it is not programmed. It gives you a certain freedom, certain freedom to move off the social track, where everything is convenient, where everything is comfortable - but every. thing is also dead. You become deeply interested in somebody else's woman. He may be fed up with that woman, he may be just trying to find out some other way to become alive again - he may even get interested in your wife.

The question is not of a particular woman or man. The question is of the forbidden, the not allowed, the immoral, the repressed - that it is not part of your accepted mind. It has not been fed into your mind.

Unless man is completely capable of becoming a no-mind, these attractions continue.

And this is the absurdity of the whole thing: that these attractions were created by the people who think themselves moral, puritan, religious. The more they reject something, the more attractive it becomes, more inviting; because it gives you a chance to get out of the rut, it gives you a chance to escape somewhere which is not social. Otherwise the society goes on and on, crowding you everywhere. Even when you are loving your wife the society stands there watching.

Even in your privacy the society is there, as much as anywhere else, because the society is in your mind, in the program that it has given to your mind. From there it goes on functioning. It is a very cunning device.

Once in a while everybody feels just to do something which is not allowed, just to say yes to something for which always one has been forced to say no - just to go against oneself. Because that "oneself" is nothing but the program that the society has given to you.

The more strict a society, the more possibility of rebels. The more free a society, the less possibility for rebels. I will call a society revolutionary where rebels disappear because they are no longer needed. I will call a society free when nothing is rejected, so there is no morbid attraction in it. If the society is against the drugs, drugs will attract you, because they give you an opportunity to put the mind aside. You are burdened with it too much.

Remember, this can be done without being suicidal. The thrill that comes to you when you are doing something which the society does not allow is coming from a state of no mind, but at a very great cost. Just look at small children hiding some. where behind a wall smoking. Watch their faces - so glad. They will be coughing and tears will be coming to them because taking smoke in and throwing it out is just foolish. I don't say it is a sin. Once you say it is a sin it becomes attractive. I simply say it is stupid, it is unintelligent. But watch a small child puffing a cigarette - his face. Maybe he is in deep trouble, his whole breathing system is feeling troubled, nauseous, tears are coming, and he is feeling tense - but still glad he can do something which is not allowed. He can do something which is not part of his mind, which is not expected. He feels free.

This can be attained very easily through meditation. There is no need to move on such suicidal paths. If you can learn how to put the mind aside....

When you were born you had no mind; you were born without any mind. That's why you cannot remember a few years of your life, just the beginning years, three, four, five years. You don't remember them. Why? You were there, why don't you remember? The mind was not yet crystallized.

You go backwards, you can remember something that happened near the age of four, and then suddenly there is a blank, then you cannot go more deeply. What happened? You were there, very alive. In fact more alive than you will ever be again, because scientists say that at the age of four a child has learned, known, seen, seventy-five percent of all his knowledge that is going to be there in his whole life. Seventy-five percent at the age of four! You have lived seventy five percent of your life already, but no memory? Because the mind was not yet crystallized. The language was to be learned, things were to be categorized, labeled. Unless you can label a thing you cannot remember it. How to remember it? You cannot file it in your mind somewhere. You don't have a name for it. So first the name has to be learned; then you can remember.

A child comes without mind. Why am I insisting on this? To tell you that your being can exist without the mind; there is no necessity for the mind to be there. It is just a structure that is useful in the society, but don't get too fixated with the structure. Remain loose so you can slip out of it. It is difficult, but if you start doing it by and by you will be able to.

When you come home from the office, on the way try to drop the office completely. Remember again and again that you are going home, no need to carry the office there. Try not to remember the office.

If you catch yourself red handed remembering something of the office again, drop it immediately.

get out of it, slip out of it. Make it a point that at home you will be at home. And in the office forget all about the home, the wife, the children, and everything. By and by learn to use the mind and not to be used by it.

You go to sleep and the mind continues. You again and again say, "Stop!" but it doesn't listen because you have never trained it to listen to you. Otherwise the moment you say, "Stop!" it has to stop. It is a mechanism. The mechanism cannot say, "No!" You put the fan on, it has to function; you put it off, it has to stop. When you stop a fan, the fan cannot say, "No! I would like to continue a little longer."

It is a biocomputer, your mind. It is a very subtle mechanism, very useful; a very good slave but a very bad master.

So just be more alert, try to see things more. Live a few moments every day, or a few hours if you can manage, without the mind. Sometimes swimming in the river, when you put your clothes on the bank, then and there put the mind also. In fact make a gesture of also putting the mind there and go into the river alert, radiant with alertness, remembering continuously. But I am not saying verbalizing, I am not saying that you go on saying to yourself, "No, I am not the mind," because then this is the mind. Just nonverbal, tacit under. standing.

Sitting in your garden, Lying down on the lawn, forget it. There is no need. Playing with your children, forget it. There is no need. Loving your wife, forget it. There is no need. Eating your food, what is the point of carrying the mind? Or taking a shower, what is the point of taking the mind in the bathroom?

Just by and by, slowly... and don't try to overdo, because then you will be a failure. If you try to overdo, it will be difficult and you will say, "It is impossible." No, try it in bits.

Let me tell you one anecdote: Cohen had three daughters and was desperately looking around for sons-in-law. One such young man came on the horizon and Cohen grabbed him. The three daughters were paraded in front of him after a lavish meal. There was Rachel, the eldest, who was decidedly plain - in fact she was downright ugly. The second daughter, Esther, was not really bad looking but was decidedly plump - in fact she was disgustingly fat. The third Sonia, was a gorgeous, lovely beauty by any standards.

Cohen pulled the young man aside and said, "Well, what do you think of them? I have got dowries for them - do not worry. Five hundred pounds for Rachel, two hundred fifty pounds for Esther, and three thousand pounds for Sonia."

The young man was dumbfounded: "But why, why have you got so much more dowry for the most beautiful one?"

Cohen explained, "Well, it is like this. She is just a teeny-weeny itsy-bitsy little bit pregnant."

So start getting a little bit pregnant every day - with awareness. Don't just become pregnant in a wholesale way. A little bit, by and by. Don't try to overdo, because that too is again a trick of the mind. Whenever you see a point, the mind tries to overdo it. Of course you fail. When you fail the mind says, "See, I was all the time saying to you this is impossible." Make very small targets. Move one foot at a time, inch by inch even. There is no hurry. Life is eternal.

But this is a trick of the mind. The mind says, "Now you have seen the point. Do it immediately - become nonidentified with the mind." And of course the mind laughs at your foolishness. For lives together you have been training the mind, training yourself, getting identified; then in the sudden flash of a moment you want to get out of it. It is not so easy. Bit by bit, inch by inch, slowly, feeling your way, move. And don't ask too much; otherwise you will lose all confidence in yourself. And once that is lost, the mind becomes a permanent master.

People try to do this many times. For thirty years a person has been smoking, and then suddenly one day, in a crazy moment, he decides not to smoke at all. For one hour, two hours he carries on, but a great desire arises, a tremendous desire arises. His whole being seems to be upset, in a chaos. Then by and by he feels this is too much. All his work stops; he cannot work in the factory, he cannot work in the once. He is almost always clouded by the urge to smoke. It seems too disturbing, at such a great cost. Then again in another crazy moment he takes the cigarette out of the pocket, starts smoking, and feels relaxed; but he has done a very dangerous experiment.

In those three hours when he didn't smoke, he has learned one thing about himself: that he is impotent, that he cannot do anything, that he cannot follow a decision, that he has no will, that he is powerless. Once this settles, and this settles in everyone by and by.... You try once with smoking, another time with dieting, and another time with something else, and again and again you fail. The failure becomes a permanent thing in you. By and by you start becoming a driftwood; you say, "I cannot do anything." And if you feel you cannot do, then who can do?

But the whole foolishness arises because the mind tricked you. It always told you to immediately do something for which a great training and discipline is needed; and then it made you feel impotent. If you are impotent the mind becomes very potent. This is always in proportion: if you are potent, the mind becomes impotent. If you are potent, then the mind cannot be potent; if you are impotent, the mind becomes potent. It lives on your energy, it lives on your failure, it lives on your defeated self, defeated will.

So never overdo.

I have heard about one Chinese mystic, Mencius, a great disciple of Confucius. A man came to him who was an opium taker, and the man said, "It is very, very impossible. I have tried every way, every method. Everything fails finally. I am a complete failure. Can you help me"' Mencius tried to understand his whole story, listened to it, came to understand what had happened:

he has been overdoing. He gave him a piece of chalk and told him, "Weigh your opium against this chalk, and whenever you weigh, write "one," next time write "two," again write "three," and go on writing on the wall how many times you have taken opium. And I will come after one month."

The man tried. Each time he took opium he had to weigh it against the chalk, and the chalk was disappearing by and by, very slowly, because each time he had to write "one," then with the same chalk "two," "three".... It started disappearing. It was almost invisible in the beginning; each time the quantity was reduced, but in a very subtle way. After one month when Mencius went to see the man, the man laughed; he said, "You tricked me! And... it is working. It is so invisible - that I cannot feel the change, but the change is happening. Half the chalk has disappeared - and with half the chalk, half the opium has disappeared."

Mencius said to him, "If you want to reach the goal never run. Go slowly." One of the most famous sentences of Mencius is: "If you want to reach, never run." If you really want to reach, there is no need even to walk. If you really want to reach, you are already there. Go so slow! If the world had listened to Mencius, Confucius, Lao Tzu, and Chuang Tzu there would be a totally different world. If you ask them how to manage our olympics, they will say, "Give the prize

to the one who gets defeated fast. Give the first prize to one who is the slowest walker, not for the fastest runner. Let there be a competition, but the prize goes to one who is the slowest." If you move slowly in life, you will attain much, and with grace and grandeur and dignity. Don't be violent; life cannot be changed by any violence. Be artful. Buddha has a special word for it; he calls it UPAYA, "Be skillful." It is a complex phenomenon. Watch every step and move very cautiously. You are moving in a very, very dangerous place, as if moving between two peaks on a tightrope, like a tightrope walker. Balance each moment, and don't try to run; otherwise failure is certain.

"Not to be identified with mind and body - still I don't know how to do it. I tell myself: you are not the mind, don't listen to your fear, love yourself, be content...." Stop all this nonsense. Don't say anything to the mind, because the sayer is the mind. You rather be silent and listen. In silence there is no mind. In small gaps when there is no word there is no mind. Mind is absolutely linguistic, it is language. So start slipping into the gaps. Sometime just see, as if you are an idiot, not thinking just seeing. Sometimes go and watch people who are known as idiots. They are simply sitting there - looking but not looking at anything. Relaxed, perfectly relaxed, their face has a beauty. No tension, nothing to do, completely at ease, at home. Just watch them.

If you can sit for one hour like an idiot every day, you will attain.

Lao Tzu has said, "Everybody seems to be so clever except me. I look like an idiot." One of the most famous novelists, Fyodor Dostoevski, has written in his diary that when he was young he had an epileptic fit, and after the fit, for the first time he could understand what reality is. Immediately after the fit everything became absolutely silent. Thoughts stopped. Others were trying to find medicine and the doctor, and he was so tremendously glad. The epileptic fit had given him a glimpse into no-mind.

You may be surprised to know that many epileptics have become mystics and many mystics used to have epileptic fits - Ramakrishna even. Ramakrishna will go into a fit. In India we don't call it a fit.

We call it samadhi. Indians are clever people. When one is going to name a thing, why not name it beautifully? If we call it "no-mind" it looks perfectly good. If I say, "Be an idiot," you feel disturbed, uneasy. If I say, "Become a no mind," everything is okay. But it is exactly the same state.

The idiot is below mind, the meditator is above mind, but both are without any minds. I am not saying that the idiot is exactly the same, but something similar. The idiot is not aware that he has a no-mind, and the no-mind man is aware that he has a no-mind. A great difference, but a similarity also. There is a certain similarity between mad people and the realized ones. In Sufism they are called "the mad ones"; the realized ones are known as the mad people. They are mad in a way: they have dropped out of mind.

By and by, learn it slowly. Even if you can have a few seconds of this superb idiocy, when you are not thinking any. thing, when you don't know who you are, when you don't know why you are, when you don't know anything at all and you are deep in a nonknowledge state, in deep ignorance, in the deep silence of the ignorance; in that silence the vision will start coming to you, that you are not the body, you are not the mind. Not that you will verbalize it! It will be a fact, just as the sun is shining there. You need not say that there is the sun and the shine. As the birds are singing - there is no need to say that they are singing. You can just listen and be aware and know that they are singing, without saying it.

Exactly the same way, prepare yourself slowly, and one day you will realize you are neither the body nor the mind - nor even the self, the soul! You are a tremendous emptiness, a nothingness - a no-thingness. You are, but without any boundary, with no limitation, with no demarcation, with no definition. In that utter silence one comes to the perfection, to the very peak of life, of existence.

Question 2

Again? Again you will be in the mud! You ask for encouragement? I cannot encourage you.

I am going to discourage you totally, so you are never again in the mud. Who is asking for encouragement? The same ego.

You go on changing your question, but it remains in a subtle way the same - as if you have decided not to see the fact. Now you have seen the fact; still you want to falsify it.

"Each time I feel one with myself and in communion with you, my mind creates an enormous ego trip about how well I am progressing. Soon I am back in the mud." Whenever the ego arises, sooner or later you will be in the mud. You cannot avoid the mud if you cannot avoid the ego.

See. Scientists say that even to say, "Tomorrow again in the morning the sun will rise," is just an assumption. It may not be so; there is no certainty about it. It has been so up to now, but what is the certainty that tomorrow again the sun is going to rise in the morning? There is no absolute certainty about it. It is just an inference based on the past experience that every day it has been so, so it is going to be so. But it cannot be made a scientific assertion. It may be so, it may not be so.

But as far as you are concerned, the moment you have taken birth, your death is absolutely certain - more certain than the sunrise tomorrow. Why? Even scientists cannot say, "Maybe you will die or maybe you won't die." No, you will die. It is certain! because in the very birth the death has already happened. Birth is already death, one side of the same coin. So if you are born, you are going to die.

Scientists say that if you want to make a guarded statement you can say this much: that if every circumstance remains the same, then the sun will rise tomorrow again. With this condition: that if everything remains the same. But the same is not applicable to death. Whether everything remains the same or not, a man who is born is going to die. Death seems to be the only certainty in life - the only. Everything else seems to be just a perhaps, a maybe.

The same is true about the ego and the mud. Once the ego has arisen, you will be in the mud.

Because the ego and the mud are two aspects of the same coin. You cannot avoid falling in the mud once you have risen with the wave of the ego. You can avoid rising with the wave of the ego - that you can avoid. Then mud is also avoided. So beware at the very beginning.

"Please, will you encourage me?" you ask me. If I encourage you will again be flying high, you will again start thinking you are doing well. No, I am here to discourage you. I am here to destroy you, to annihilate you, so that the whole ego trip disappears. Otherwise again and again you will be asking the same question, from one corner, from another comer.

And my answer remains the same. You seem to ask different questions; you are not asking different questions. And I may be appearing to answer you different answers, that too is not true. You ask the same question, you formulate in a different way; I answer the same answer, I have to formulate in a different way because of you.

Let me tell you one anecdote: A visitor to Ulster found himself approached by a menacing gang of toughs.

"Are ye Catholic or Protestant?" said the leader, swinging his cosh significantly.

The visitor, unable to ascertain which answer was the desired one, resorted to subterfuge.

"Actually, I am a Jew," he said.

His subterfuge was of little avail.

"A Catholic Jew or a Protestant Jew?" was the next question.

You cannot avoid; the question has to be faced. And the question has to be answered not by me but you. Because it is your question.

If you can see that the moment the idea arises that "I am going perfectly well, doing well," the ego arises; then when the idea next arises that you are doing well, have a good laugh, a belly laugh.

Laugh immediately, don't waste a single moment. Laughter is tremendously helpful in destroying the ego. Laugh at yourself. See the point of it: Again? Have a good laugh, and suddenly you will see you have not been in the right, and there will be no mud. The mud is created by the ego; it is a by-product.

Go on watching. It is arduous, but once you get the knack of it, it becomes very simple.

And never ask for encouragement from me. Just ask for understanding. Ask for awareness, but not for encouragement. The language of encouragement is the language of the ego. You want encouragement, somebody to clap, appreciate, and say that you are doing perfectly well. You want the whole world to garland you, to say that you are great. But why does this need arise? This need arises because deep down you are not certain, deep down you are not certain whether you are really doing well. If you are really doing well, no encouragement is needed. If you are really doing well, you don't hanker for people to clap and to appreciate and garland you. There is no need.

The need arises because of an inner ambiguity, an inner confusion, an inner vagueness, an inner uncertainty.

And remember, you can gather a crowd to appreciate you, but that is not going to help you. That won't be able to deceive you. You may be able to deceive yourself, but that is not going to help you. That's what politics is. The whole of politics is nothing but seeking encouragement from others.

You become a president of a country - you feel very good, very high - but in the first place, that you wanted the encouragement of the people, you wanted their applause, shows that you feel deep down very inferior, that you don't value your being. You want. ed it to be auctioned in the market to know.

I have heard, once Mulla Nasruddin went to the marketplace with his donkey. He wanted to sell it because he was fed up with it. It was the worst donkey possible. He will not go where Mulla would like him to go; he will go only where he wants to go. And he will kick and he will create much fuss - anywhere. And wherever there will be a crowd he will create trouble for Mulla. So, fed up one day, he went to the market. Many customers asked, and he told the whole story, the true story, of what type of donkey this is. So nobody was ready to purchase it. Who will purchase such a donkey? And it was evening time, and the whole day many people had come and he would tell the whole story truthfully... and people will laugh.

Then one man came, and he said, "You are a fool. You will never be able to sell this donkey; this is no way. You give me a little commission and I will auction it. Just see how it is done." So Mulla said, "Okay," because he was also tired.

The man stood on a chair, shouted loudly, "The greatest donkey there has ever been, the most beautiful animal, the most loving animal, obedient - almost religious!"

The crowd gathered and they started bidding, and the price started getting higher and higher; and even Mulla got excited. He said, "Wait! I don't want to sell such a beautiful animal! I cannot sell. I never knew these qualities about him. You take your commission; I don't want him sold."

This is what politics is. You don't know your value, you go in the marketplace, you allow yourself to be auctioned, and when people come and they start valuing you - you advertise - when they start valuing you, you feel good. You start feeling that you have a certain value; otherwise why are so many people mad after you?

A man who has felt his being is not in any need of any encouragement. Try to feel yourself. All encouragement, all inspiration, is dangerous - it puffs you up. The ego enjoys it very much, but ego is your illness, your disease. You don't need encouragement; you need understanding. You need clarity to see.

And I am not here creating soldiers, to encourage you and inspire you and tell you go and fight for the country or for the religion. I am not creating soldiers, I am not creating an army. I am trying to create individuals. I am trying to help you to become so uniquely in tune with yourself that you know where you are, who you are, what you are doing... and you enjoy it, because that is the only thing you are meant for. You feel your destiny and you are glad.

I am not here to make you Hindus, Christians, Mohammedans - they need encouragement, they need armies, they need slogans, they need politics, they need some type of maniac obsession, crusade, murder. They need some type of violence so they can become convinced that they are doing great things.

No, I am not here to teach you to do great things. I am here to tell you just one thing, a very simple thing, ordinary: to know who you are. Because I know you are already great. And when I say you are already great, don't get any encouragement from it, because everybody is as great as you are - not a bit less, not a bit more. As I see the world, every individual is unique, incomparably unique.

There is no need to compete with anybody; there is no need to prove anything. You are already proved! You are there; the existence has accepted you, given you birth. God has already made an abode in you. What more do you need?

Question 3

No, because they laugh again - a second laugh - for the first, that "How foolish we are! Why are we laughing?"

If you laugh only once, it can be serious. So always re. member to laugh twice. First just laugh, and then laugh at the laughter. Then you will not get serious.

And Zen people are in a way not what you mean by religious people. They are not. Zen is not a religion; it is a vision. It has no scripture. It has nothing to abide with. It has nowhere to go, it has no goal. Zen is not a means or a method towards some goal and some end. It is the end.

It is very difficult to understand Zen because if you want to understand it, you will have to drop all that you have carried up to now - being a Christian, a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Jain. You will have to drop all that nonsense. It is rot. To understand Zen is very, very difficult not because of its intrinsic quality but because of your conditioned mind. If you look as a Christian or as a Hindu you will not be able to see what Zen is. Zen is very pure. Eyes filled with doctrines miss it. Zen is so pure that even a single word arises in your mind and you miss it. Zen is an indication.

Just the other night I was reading. A great Zen Master Chau-chou was asked, "What is the essential religion?" He waited in silence, as if he had not heard the disciple. The disciple repeated again, "What is the essential religion, sir?" The Master continued to look where he was looking; he would not even turn his face towards the disciple. The disciple asked again, "Have you heard me or not?

Where are you?"

The Master said, "Look at the cypress tree in the courtyard."

Finished. This is his answer: "Look at the cypress tree in the courtyard." It is exactly the same as when Buddha inaugurated the world of Zen with a flower. He looked at the flower, and thousands who had gathered to listen to him could not understand what was happening.

Then one monk, Mahakashyap, smiled, laughed. Buddha called him and gave him the flower and said to those who had gathered, "Whatsoever can be said, I have told you, and whatsoever cannot be said, I give to Mahakashyap." He did well by giving a flower because Mahakashyap flowered in that moment of smile; his being flowered.

What was Buddha saying? Looking at the flower, he was saying, "Be here-now. Look at the flower." They were expect. ing something else, they were thinking about something else, they were imagining about something else. When Chau-chou said, "Look at the cypress tree in the courtyard," he said, "Drop all nonsense about religion and what is essential and nonessential - Be here-now. Look. In that look which is here. now is revealed all that is essential religion."

Zen is totally different. It is something tremendously unique. You cannot understand it if you are caught in dogmas, in creeds.

Let me tell you one anecdote: A young Catholic girl of fifteen was asked by the Mother Superior what she wanted to be in life.

"A prostitute," replied the girl.

"A what?" shrieked the aged nun.

"A prostitute," repeated the girl calmly. "Oh, the saints be praised," said the pious old lady. "I thought you said a Protestant!"

This type of mind will not be able to understand what Zen is; it will be completely beyond its grasp - divided in creeds and cults....

Zen people are not serious, but they are very sincere. And these two things are totally different.

Never misunderstand them, never be confused between them. A sincere man is not serious. He is sincere. If he laughs, he means it. If he loves, he means it. If he is angry, he is angry and he will not pretend otherwise. He is authentic, true. Whatsoever he is, he reveals himself to you. He is vulnerable. He never hides behind masks; he is sincere, true. Sometimes he will be sad, then he will be sad. And sometimes he will like crying, then he will cry and he will not hide and he will not try to be something else which he is not. He remains himself. He never deviates from his being and he never allows anybody to distract him.

But a serious person is somebody else, who is not true, who is not authentic but is posing that he is authentic, that he is true. A serious man is an impostor; he is just trying to show that he is authentic, very authentic. He cannot laugh, because he is afraid if he laughs, in the laughter maybe his true face will come to be seen by others. Because many times your laughter shows many things that you have been hiding.

If you laugh, your laughter can show who you are because in a moment of laughter you relax; otherwise you cannot laugh. A laughter is a relaxing. You c;m remain tight, but then you cannot laugh. If you laugh, the tightness goes. You can remain somber, long-faced, and you can persist in that, but if you laugh suddenly you will see the whole body is relaxed, and in that relaxed moment something may bubble up, may surface, which you have been hiding for long and don't want others to see. That's why serious people don't laugh. Sincere people laugh - only sincere people laugh.

Their laughter is childlike, innocent.

Serious people will not cry, will not weep, because that will again show their weakness - and they want to prove they are strong, very strong. But a sincere person allows himself to be seen as he is.

He invites you into his innermost core of being.

Zen people are sincere but not serious. Sometimes so sincere that they almost look profane. You cannot conceive of it. So sincere that they almost look irreligious, but they are not irreligious.

Because sincerity is the only religion there is.

My whole effort is also in the same dimension: to help you to become sincere - but not serious. I want you to laugh, I want you to weep. I want you to be sad sometimes, to be happy. But whatsoever you are, you are. Whatsoever you are inside, that's your outside also. You are of one piece; then you will be alive, flowing, moving, growing, reaching to your destiny, revealing, flowering, unfolding.

Question 4

Let me tell you an anecdote. And the last words of the anecdote are my answer to your question, so listen well.

A jazz musician who had never entered a church in his life found himself passing a little country church just as a service was about to begin. Out of curiosity he decided to go in and see what it was all about.

After the service, he approached the rector and said, "Say, Rev, you just about knocked me out with the good words - like I really dug it the most, man. Jeez, baby, I really blew my mind - it was wild, ya dig?"

The rector was flattered, but said, "Well, thank you - most gratifying, I am sure. However, I wish you would not use these common expressions at the portals of the holy edifice."

But the musician went on, "And I will tell you something else, Rev. When the cat came around with the bread plate, I was so high with the whole scene that I came across with a fiver!"

"Crazy, baby, crazy!" said the rector.