Selling Water by the River

Question 1:

The world contains Vietnam, Attica, and things like that, because the peace of mind is missing. The root cause is that man is not silent. Hence violence, all kinds of violence. Because of Vietnam and because of Attica, much peace of mind is needed. They are symptoms of something like cancer inside human consciousness. They are not diseases themselves, they are simply symptoms. And they cannot be cured directly - until and unless the root cause is cut absolutely, destroyed absolutely.

Man has lived in war, down the ages, always. Out of three thousand years, only seven hundred years were not of war - and not in one stretch. Sometimes for one day there was no war on the earth, sometimes for a few days; otherwise the war has continued.

War is the greatest thing that man has remained involved with. Destruction seems to be very very attractive; killing and murder seems to be the goal of the human mind. In three thousand years, man has fought five thousand wars. Vietnam is nothing new, it is as ancient as man. It is not something that is happening today, it has been always there - because man is ill.

And you ask me, HOW MUCH INNER PEACE IS APPROPRIATE...? As much as you can manage - the more you have, the better. Because only pools of peace will destroy the compulsive attraction towards violence. Only pools of peace all over the world, many many Buddhas, will be able to create a new vibe, a new wave, a new consciousness, in which war becomes impossible - in which all energy moves in a creative way, all energy moves towards love.

So don't say... I understand the logic of it. The logic is, if man becomes very peaceful then he will not bother about Vietnam. I understand what you mean by your question. You mean, if people become very silent and very peaceful they won't care what is happening in the world around them, they will become indifferent. So how much peace is appropriate? - that's why you ask the question.

But try to understand. The war is not the disease itself. Peace is missing in the heart - hence the war exists. The war is a consequence: more peace, less war. If peace becomes predominant, war will disappear.

War cannot disappear by the efforts of people who call themselves pacifists. War cannot disappear because of Bertrand Russell. War cannot disappear because there are people who are against war - no. The people who are against war will create another war. You can see, if you have observed a pacifist-protest, you can see how war-like they are - shouting, screaming, protesting.... You can see in their faces they are dangerous people. They may call themselves pacifists, but they don't know what peace means. They are very argumentative, arrogant, ready to fight.

It almost always happens that a peace-protest becomes a battle-field between the police and the pacifists. The pacifist is not really the man of peace. He is against war. He is so much against war that he will be ready to go to war if that is needed. The cause changes, the war continues.

A man of peace is not a pacifist, a man of peace is simply a pool of silence. He pulsates a new kind of energy into the world, he sings a new song. He lives in a totally new way - his very way of life is that of grace, that of prayer, that of compassion. Whomsoever he touches, he creates more love-energy.

The man of peace is creative. He is not against war, because to be against anything is to be at war. He is not against war, he simply understands why war exists. And out of that understanding he becomes peaceful.

Only when there are many people who are pools of peace, silence, understanding, will the war disappear. But withdrawal is not the way to attain peace. You say, PEACE OF MIND CAN BE GAINED BY WITHDRAWAL... Never. Never has it been gained that way.

Withdrawal is escapist. Withdrawal can give you a kind of death, but not peace. Peace is very alive.

Peace is more alive than war - because war is in the service of death, peace is in the service of life.

Peace is very alive, vibrant, young, dancing.... Withdrawal? - that is the oldest way escapists have chosen. It is cheap. It gives a kind of peace - remember, I say 'a kind of peace' - the same kind as you see in a graveyard.

You can go to a Catholic monastery - there is a kind of peace, the same that exists in the graveyard.

You can go to the Jaina monks and you will see a kind of peace - the same that exists in a graveyard. These people are dead! They have renounced life. The day you renounce life you renounce responsibility, you renounce all kinds of commitments. You renounce all possibilities to live, to relate, to love. They may not be fighting, but they are no more loving either.

So withdrawal will bring a peace which is warless, loveless. But what is the point? You have thrown the baby with the bath-water.

Love has to grow. The whole energy that goes into violence, fighting, struggle, war, has to be transformed into love. Peace in itself cannot be the goal. Peace can only be a means to more life, to more abundant life. Peace cannot be the end - just to be peaceful is meaningless, it leads nowhere. It will not satisfy you just to be peaceful - then what is the difference between being dead and peaceful?

Withdrawal brings a peace that is suicide. Yes, you go to the Himalayas, you live in a cave, you are peaceful - because there is no possibility to fight with anybody. You have not changed at all, you have only changed the circumstances. You are the same person. If circumstances arise, you will go to war, you will fight. You will become angry if somebody comes and insults you.

You may have lived for thirty years in a cave in the Himalayas and somebody comes and insults you, and you will be surprised that anger comes back. Thirty years won't help; the anger was waiting there for the right season. Now somebody has insulted - the spring has come, and the anger blooms. And in a single moment all those thirty years of withdrawal have disappeared.

The real test is in life. If you are really peaceful, then be in the marketplace - there is the real test of your peace. Be peaceful there. I am not for withdrawal, I am for transformation. I am not for renunciation, I am all for life-affirmation. Live life as totally as possible. Find out ways how to live it more peacefully, how to live it more meditatively, how to live it in a more divine way. But don't escape.

The escapist is a coward; he has no courage. He is closing his eyes because he has become too much afraid of the world. His logic is that of the ostrich. That is not very human; that is very very below human. That is a little bit stupid. Just by closing your eyes nothing changes; the world remains the same. You can believe that everything has changed, because you cannot see anything any more. Your house is on fire, and you can sit with closed eyes and you can believe that the house is not on fire and everything is okay. You can create a kind of auto-hypnosis - and of course you will not be disturbed. But open your eyes, and the house is on fire.

A real man of peace lives with the world, in the world, and yet is not OF it. He will do everything that he can do - if the house is on fire then he will do everything that he can do to put the fire off - and yet he will remain undisturbed, undistracted. He will remain unwavering.

That integration is what I call real peace. PEACE OF MIND CAN BE GAINED BY WITHDRAWAL FROM THE WORLD... No, it has never been gained and it can never be gained... BY STILLING THE VORTICES OF THE MIND. No. By stilling the mind you can simply force the mind to be peaceful. It is a kind of repression.

The real peace does not come out of repression. The mind has not to be repressed, the mind has to be understood. Why is the mind so noisy? Why does it go on and on? Why? This whole phenomenon of the mind has to be understood with love, with compassion. Befriend your mind, don't be in a hurry to force peace on it. A forced peace is not a peace at all. And don't try to still it; stillness is not the real thing.

Silence is not stillness. Silence happens. Stillness is managed, stillness comes out of control. A man sits controlling his body in a yoga posture, forcing his attention somewhere - on Krishna, on Christ; repeating a mantra - aum, ram, anything - somehow managing, trying to manage to remain concentrated. This man is just creating a false substitute.

The real silence is not forced at all. The real silence comes out of understanding. You understand why the mind goes on making noise, you look into it, you watch it: Why? You go into its noises - they must have some message for you. You go into its dreams - even if they look absurd they must be conveying something from the unconscious to you. Just by cutting those messages you are not going to grow - because you are cutting your own unconscious. When you still your mind you are doing one thing: you are stilling your unconscious. You are saying, 'I don't want to hear.'

But the unconscious has something valuable to say to you. The whole of psychoanalysis is a proof for it, that the unconscious has something to convey. And the unconscious is more in tune with God than your so-called conscious. And the conscious tries to force the unconscious not to say anything.

No, no song will be born out of it. You can force a child to sit silently, out of fear. You can give him an electric shock, and you can tell him to sit silently otherwise more shocks will be given. And he will sit silently. But is this the silence you call peace? And he is boiling within, he is a volcano within, he is getting mad within. But he is sitting silently because of the electric shock.

That's what people do - they silence the mind by fasting. That is giving shocks to the mind. You say, 'Do this - otherwise I am going to fast. I will starve you. Do this - otherwise I am going to stand in the hot sun for twenty-four hours. Do this - otherwise I will stand in the freezing river the whole night.'

There have been sects - Christian, Hindu, Jaina, and a thousand others - sects of masochists.

Sects who have been torturing their bodies like anything; neurotic people. If you torture too much you make the mind very afraid. The afraid mind becomes still. It says, 'Okay. I will keep quiet.' But can a song be born out of this quietude? Can there be a dance, can there be a celebration out of this forced silence? There cannot be.

That's why your saints miss songs. Your saints look sad, dull, dead. You will find dust in their eyes, not radiance. You will not find flowers blooming in their heart, no. No white lotuses grow in your so-called saints' hearts. They are just deserts - dead, dry, no juice flows.

I am not for it. That is not my cup of tea, I don't purchase it. And I would like you to understand very deeply, because people who go on the path always fall into this trap. It seems easier. Without understanding the mind, just force it. To understand seems to be a longer way. But there are no shortcuts.

The spiritual growth comes the harder way, the longer way. One has to go with the mind with deep understanding. Go on, layer by layer - with great patience the work has to be done. And with great playfulness the work has to be done.

And then one day, when you have understood all the messages of the mind, the mind becomes silent. Because there is nothing more to say. It has been heard; it has reached to the master. Then the mind becomes silent on its own accord. It falls silent without any effort on your part, effortlessly falls into silence. Then silence has a beauty, then silence is a benediction.

Question 2:

Awareness necessarily is followed by action. Awareness flowers into action. Otherwise awareness will be impotent.

And that's what commitment is. When you are aware, it transforms your life. This awareness does not remain just inside you - it is not a treasure of a miser, who never uses it, who simply hoards it. It starts flowing into your life. It becomes part of your each move, it illuminates your actions.

Whatsoever you do will be totally different now, its quality will be different. If you love you will love in a totally new way, awareness will be there. Your love will no more be a fall. People fall in love. A man of awareness does not fall in love, a man of awareness rises in love. He goes higher, not lower.

Your so-called love is almost an illusion. The man of awareness has a different love arising in his heart which is not an illusion. Your so-called love is a bargain. You want to use the other person and the other wants to use you, so there is a mutual bargain - a contract. Neither you love him, nor he loves you. He loves himself, you love yourself. You use the other, he uses you.

This is a kind of settlement, adjustment. You call it love. These adjustments don't go very far, they cannot go very far. Sooner or later you are fed-up with the person, and he or she is fed-up with you. You have looked into each other, you have explored each other, and now there seems to be nothing new any more. So interest has waned, love starts disappearing. Then you tolerate at the most, because of past promises, because of past commitments. You have to carry it somehow.

That's what happens to all kinds of so-called marriages. It is not love, it was not love ever, it was a kind of deception. And the deception is created by chemical changes in your body. It is as chemical as taking a drug. Certain hormones, certain chemicals, are released in the bloodstream and you feel an illusion arising and you start seeing things which are not there.

When you fall in love with a woman you start seeing things in that woman which are not there.

Nobody else is seeing them, only you. And the woman starts seeing things in you; your chemistries are helping each other. You are dreaming - dreaming with open eyes; it is a kind of daydream. Soon it will be shattered, soon the reality will assert.

The man of awareness does not fall in love, he rises in love. Only the man of awareness is capable of love, because he has found himself. Now love is no more a need, he can be happy alone.

Remember, this is one of the indications of a man of awareness: he can be happy alone. His happiness is as perfect alone as when he is together with somebody else. His happiness no more depends on anybody else, his happiness is autonomous. Now he can share, now he can give. And he has too much, and it goes on flowing, and it goes on coming... and what is he going to do with it? He has to share it.

The man of awareness shares his love, the man of unawareness has no love to share. He simply pretends to give love, because deep down he wants love to be given to him. The man of unawareness wants to be loved really - hence he has to pretend 'I love you'.

Both are doing the same thing to each other. Both need love, they both miss love - they both are not yet capable of being alone and happy. They need somebody to be happy; they need some-body to depend on, to lean upon. So their love is a kind of bait so the fish is caught. But they are not interested in giving food to the fish. The bait is not food for the fish, it is a trap.

The man of awareness loves - not because he needs love, but because he has so much that he has to give. And love is like flowers - if you don't give it, it dies. Love is like flowers - in the morning they bloom, by the evening they are gone. Go on giving. You cannot hoard flowers, that is one of the most beautiful things about flowers. And that is one of the most dirty things about gold and silver, that gold and silver can be hoarded and flowers cannot be hoarded. You cannot hoard flowers. If you hoard them, if you lock them in a box, they will be dead.

I have heard an ancient parable....

A great king had three sons, and he wanted to choose one to be his heir. And it was very difficult, because all three were very intelligent, very courageous. And they all were twins, of the same age, so there way no way to judge; Whom should he choose? So he asked a great sage, and the sage suggested an idea.

And the king went home and he asked all the three sons to come. And he gave them each one bag of flower seeds, and told them that he was going for a religious pilgrimage - for a teerthayatra. 'It will take a few years - one, two, three, maybe more. And this is a kind of test for you. These seeds you will have to give back to me when I return. And whosoever protects them best will become my heir.' And he left for the pilgrimage.

The first son thought, 'What should I do with these seeds?' He locked them in an iron safe - because when the father comes he has to return them as they are.

The second son thought, 'If I lock them up just as my brother has done, these seeds will die. And a dead seed is not a seed at all. And my father may argue that "I had given you live seeds, there was a possibility for them to grow - but these seeds are dead; they cannot grow. So you are not returning the same thing to me as I have given to you."'

So he went into the market and sold the seeds and kept the money. And he thought, 'When my father comes I will go to the market, purchase new seeds, and give him back better than the first.'

But the third was the best. He went back into the garden and threw the seeds all over the place.

After three years, when the father came back, the first son opened his safe. Those seeds were all dead, stinking. And the father said, 'What! These are the seeds I have given to you? They had the possibility to bloom into flowers and give great perfume - and these seeds are stinking. These are not my seeds!' And the son said, 'Father, they are the same seeds.' The father said, 'You are a materialist.'

He went to the second son. He rushed to the market, purchased seeds, came back home, and said, 'These are the seeds.' The father said, 'But these are not the same; these are not exactly the same.

You are better than the first, but yet not as capable as I would like you to be. You are a psychologist.'

Yes, a little better than the body is the mind - a little better than the materialist is the person who believes in the mind.

He went to the third. With great hope, and fear too: 'What has he done?' And the third took him back into the garden and there were millions of plants blooming, millions of flowers all around. And the son said, 'These are the seeds you had given to me. Soon I will collect the seeds and give them back to you. Right now they are getting ready to be collected.'

The father said, 'You are the spiritualist. You are my heir. This is how one should behave with seeds.'

The mind can hoard, the mind can calculate - but that won't do. The hoarder will not understand life, and the calculating mind will also miss it. Only a creative mind can understand it. That is the beauty of flowers - they cannot be hoarded. They represent God: God cannot be hoarded. They represent love: love cannot be hoarded.

It is not just an accident that the flower has remained a symbol for love, down the ages, in all the countries, for all kinds of societies. It is not just an accident. Love is like a flower - when it starts blooming in you, you have to distribute, you have to share, you have to give. You have to find people to enjoy it. And when somebody receives your love you feel tremendously grateful to him. Otherwise that flower would have died - unknown, unappreciated.

And the more you give, the more love grows. If you go on giving, a day comes, you become a constant infinite source of love.

A man of awareness will love, but his quality of love will be totally different. It will be a different reality, it will move in a different dimension. He will act, because each awareness has to become an act.

Awareness is a seed, and an act is the flowering of it.

You ask, DOES HEALTHY SELF-AWARENESS NECESSARILY INVOLVE A RELIGIOUS COMMITMENT? It necessarily becomes an act, hence it becomes commitment. A real religious man is a very committed man. But he is not committed to any ideology, remember. A Christian is committed to Christianity, a Hindu is committed to Hinduism. A nationalist is committed to his nation, a politician is committed to his party. No, a religious person has no such commitments. He is not committed to any nation, because a religious man knows there are no nations. He belongs to no nation.

The religious man is not committed to any party; he has none. The religious man is not committed to any ideology, creed, dogma; he has none. He is committed to God, he is committed to consciousness, he is committed to existence itself. He lives in God, he moves in God, he breathes in God, he loves in God, he dies in God. His commitment is God, his commitment is religiousness.

Yes, necessarily it involves commitment. The question arises because in the past the so-called religious people have proved very escapist. Once they become religious they escape, they run away, they are no more here. This escapism is not really a sign of authentic religiousness, it simply says they have not yet become aware. Otherwise they will bloom into actions.

And that's how it happens. When Mahavira was in search for truth he went to the forest. But when he found it he came back to the society. When Buddha was in search he went to the forest. When he found it he came back to the society. One has to come back. Maybe when you are searching for it you may need a special situation, just to help you search. But when you have found it, necessarily you come back to human society. Then you have to share. You can search alone, but how can you share if there is nobody else to share with?

Question 3:

I am not a saint. Drop that nonsense about me - I am not a saint! And I am happy that I am not.

And beware: Never become a saint. Just to be plain ordinary human is enough.

The human mind is such, it lives in hierarchies. It has not only divided man into higher and lower, it has even divided words into higher and lower - BRAHMIN words and SUDRA words, good words and bad words, respectable words and disrespectable words. This is sheer foolishness. All words are alike. The function of the word is to express something. All words that express something are good - only words that don't express anything are meaningless. And sometimes it happens, the words that you would not like are most expressive, because they come from the common man. And the common man is more expressive, down-to-earth. He does not know abstractions.

Now, 'bastard' goes directly, hits directly. Yes, I can move in a little more roundabout way - listen to this:

And today's story has a vicar alone on the first tee. He sees a fellow standing there and suggests they play together. After a couple of holes, the stranger tells the minister what he's doing wrong.

As they play along, the vicar gets more advice - all of it good. The man of the cloth finishes the round, six strokes under his usual score. He thanks his golf partner, and the fellow says, 'That will be twenty-five dollars. I'm the pro here.' The vicar argues but to no avail. So he tells the pro to drop over to the rectory that evening to collect his fee. 'And when you come,' suggests the vicar, 'bring your mother and father. I'll marry them at the same time.'

Now, this is very roundabout - religious, but very round-about. I don't like that way. It has to be direct.

It happened, Aldous Huxley relates...

'At the time of the great Irish potato famine a century ago, a special prayer was composed for the recitation in all the churches of Ireland. The purpose of this prayer was to entreat the Almighty to check the ravages of the blight which was destroying the Irish potato crop. But from the outset the word "potato" presented a difficulty. Quite obviously, in the eyes of the Divine, it was too low, common and proletarian to be pronounced in a sacred place, and in front of God..."potato". The horribly vulgar part of potatoes had to be concealed in the decent obscurities of paraphrases, and consequently God was requested to do something about an abstraction, sonorously called the "succulent tuber".

'The sublime has soared up into the empyrean of the ludicrous.'

They could not use the word 'potato' in the church - it is so vulgar, common, proletarian, SUDRA, untouchable.

In similar circumstances, says Aldous Huxley, a Zen master might also have avoided the word 'potato' - not because it was too low, but because it was too conventional and respectable. Not 'succulent tuber' but plain monosyllabic 'spud' would have been his idea of a suitable alternative.

I trust Zen. My approach is Zen. I love all kinds of words which are expressive. And I don't make a hierarchy.

You will be surprised: The lower the word in the hierarchy. the better - because it hits directly. The common people are not roundabout; they don't deal in abstractions. They say what they want to say, they don't go into theories.

Now what nonsense! If there is some God he must have laughed. Succulent tuber? Can you eat a succulent tuber? What will you do with a succulent tuber? A potato is perfect. And a potato is so innocent.

But this has been the case. That's why, for centuries, people have been praying in languages they don't understand. In India people pray in Sanskrit, which is a dead language. Even the person who is praying does not understand what he is saying. For centuries in the West, people were praying in Greek and Latin, or Hebrew, Aramaic - languages which have disappeared. And this is still happening. Jainas go on praying in Prakrit, and Buddhists go on praying in Pali. Those languages no more exist, they are no more living languages. Nobody understands them - even the person who is using them does not understand them.

What kind of prayer is this? But there is a point in it: Because those languages have disappeared, they have become very far away, unearthly, abstract - you can deal easily with them. They don't look common, they look special. If you are talking to God in the language you understand, it looks too common. It looks too ordinary, irreligious. This is the language you use with other human beings - how can you use the same language with God? It is difficult; then you pull God down to your own level. But what is wrong in that?

God has to be pulled down - only then can there be a communication. Either he has to pull you up, or you have to pull him down - but communication is possible only when you both exist on the same plane.

This continues because a subtle ego is involved in it. You need not get shocked. And if you love being shocked, wait a little more. I will be giving you more shocks.

You say, I AM A NEWCOMER... obviously... AND I WAS SHOCKED WHEN I HEARD YOU USING WORDS LIKE 'BASTARD' ETCETERA. Good. That shows that you are alive: you can be shocked.

There are a few people who cannot even be shocked, they are so dead. Then something is possible; then something can be stirred in you. Then at least while I am talking you remain alert, you don't fall asleep.

... AND I CANNOT BELIEVE A SAINT USING SUCH WORDS. You must be having a certain idea about what a saint is. If you have any kind of ideas about a saint, they are going to be destroyed.

Here, at least, you will not be allowed to carry those ideas. I am an iconoclast. My whole effort here is to destroy ideals, ideas, ideologies.

And that is the whole Zen standpoint. Why? Because these ideas are the barriers. If you have a certain idea how a saint should be, then you don't know that a saint is unpredictable and you cannot have any ideas about him. All ideas will become a confinement - and a saint worth the name would not like to be confined in any idea. He is freedom. Nobody can draw a line around him - 'This is the place you should be, and don't go out of it.' If somebody allows that - allows that you draw a line around him and make a definition and he will remain there - then he is not a saint at all. Beware of him: he is there to deceive you. If he follows your ideas he is going to deceive you.

Look for a saint who will not bother what your opinion is about him. Find out somebody who does not care what your definition of a saint is, and you will be benefitted. A saint who follows you and your ideas is worthless. He is your follower. No saint - no Christ, no Buddha, no Mahavira - has ever been according to you. That's why they got into trouble. Jesus would not have been crucified if he was according to you. Neither would Mahavir have been stoned, thrown out of villages, whipped, beaten, if he was just following your idea of a saint. No, he was not following you.

No saint can follow your ideas. The moment somebody starts following your ideas, he is not a saint.

He does not know freedom - he has not stumbled upon his inner freedom, he does not know who he is. He gets his ego from you and your ideas. This is the criterion to judge: if you see a man who goes on following a certain kind of ideology in his behaviour.... There is a Jaina monk, he follows the ideas of the Jainas. And there is a Catholic monk, he follows the ideas of Catholic Christians, he behaves accordingly. These are slaves, these are not real men.

A real man cannot be confined, cannot be imprisoned. I am not a saint in that way, that you can have some ideas about me. Forget about sainthood. Just look into me, just be here and have a taste of me. Don't carry any ideas - I am not going to be bothered by them. If you are shocked, that is your problem.

And I am not in any way in any need to get any identity from you. So what you say does not matter. If you are here to learn something, learn it. And meanwhile you will have to go through many shocks.

Those shocks are really processes of understanding; those shocks are processes of learning.

If you are courageous, only then can you be here. Otherwise go and find some dummy-saint somewhere.

And why have a few words become condemned? Words in themselves are just sounds - how have certain words become condemned? what will be the reason? The reason is that you have certain ideas about certain things. For example, if you are against sex, then all words connected with sex will be condemned. If you are against anything, then all words connected with it will be condemned.

Words are not really condemned - the condemnation shows that you are condemning something else. If you are against sex, then even the word 'sex' is shocking. Then you cannot use that word - then you have to use euphemisms, you have to go roundabout.

For centuries man has not talked about sex. This is the first century in human history when people have become courageous enough to talk about it directly - to think about it, to research into it, to explore the idea. And thousands of things have been explored in these twenty, thirty years which were never known - because nobody would even dare to think about it. The man who would like to go into it scientifically would be thought mad, would have been killed, Lynched, murdered.

That's why one of the most potential energies has remained unexplored. We know much more about the moon than we know about sex. We know much more about electrons than we know about sex.

This seems to be stupid - because sex is our energy. We are born out of it. You happened through it, your children will happen through it - the whole existence is sexual and sensuous.

If you miss understanding this energy called sex, you will miss understanding life itself. And how can you understand God if you miss understanding life itself? But man does not know much. Don't think that because you have three children you know much about sex - having children is nothing.

Having children has nothing to do with knowing about sex. Even animals have children - they don't know anything about sex.

In Africa, for centuries a tribe has believed that the birth of a child has nothing to do with intercourse; the birth of a child is a gift of God. And the reason was that they cannot calculate much ahead and they cannot count much; they don't have any arithmetic. So to count nine months was so much. Because the child will come after nine months - and not always; sometimes it will come and sometimes it will not come. So how to connect that the child has something to do with intercourse?

Each intercourse is not followed by a child - so how to connect? And there is a gap of nine months; it is a long gap. For a primitive society which has no arithmetic, to count nine months is impossible.

How to count it? And who will keep the count? They had no idea. And they have been giving birth to children - but they had no idea.

To give birth to a child is mechanical. It does not presuppose any knowledge of sex, it NEED not presuppose any knowledge. The energy called sex is still mysterious - we know more about electricity than about sexuality. This is foolish, because electricity is not such an important phenomenon as sexuality. We are more close to sexuality, more involved in it. We can live without electricity but we cannot live without sexuality. But why did the very word become condemned?

Because the idea was a sin.

I have heard...

Bride-to-be: 'And when we're married, I'm going to cook for him, sew for him, shine his shoes, darn his socks - what more could any man want?'

Mother: 'Nothing - unless he's evil-minded.'

Sex is thought to be something evil-minded. Such a natural phenomenon, such an innocent phenomenon, is thought evil-minded. Then all words connected with sex will become disrespectable - they cannot be pronounced in a civilized world, in a cultured society. We dropped the whole idea of sex, so with it disappeared all words connected with it. Exactly the same is the case with death too - we don't talk about death much. Even to talk about death looks a little obscene. Looks a little embarrassing - people don't talk about it.

Just a few days before, one English publisher - Sheldon Press - offered to publish one of my books, UNTIL YOU DIE. They wrote a letter: 'The book is beautiful, but we cannot have the title, because the very idea of death - UNTIL YOU DIE - will put people off. We will have to change the title,' they said.

The very title! Such a beautiful title - UNTIL YOU DIE. A part of a saying of Jesus! And in a Christian country! They think the title is not right, the title has to be changed - 'the very idea puts people off.'

Nobody wants to think about death, nobody wants to look into death. So words connected with death will fall out of circulation.

To me, the whole of life is holy. All that exists is holy, unconditionally holy. I don't have any condemnation for anything. Then suddenly the whole language becomes available to me.

Question 4:

First: We don't do any work here. The very word is inapplicable to the thing that goes on here. It is play, it is not work. To call it work makes it serious, to call it work is to bring ego in, to call it work is to create conflict. Work means conflict - that's why Gurdjieff people used the word 'work'. The whole system of Gurdjieff is known as 'the work', because Gurdjieff believes in friction, conflict: man has to fight hard.

With me, it is not work at all. When I am gone, if you want to call my work anything, call it 'the play'.

It is playing. It is not conflict, it is not friction, it is relaxation. It is not in fact DOING something - rather, allowing God to happen. This is diametrically opposite to work.

It is not that you have to do something to grow. In fact all your doing is undoing. All that you do will create more hindrances, obstacles, fear you - because the more you do, the more ego grows. No, you have to stop doing. You have to start floating, flowing. Go with the stream, relax. 'Let go' is my mantra. And when you are in an utter let-go, things start happening. Not that you do - God does them, the whole does them. You simply allow.

It is as if in the morning you are in your room with closed doors. The sun is at the door, silently standing there waiting for you. It will not even knock, it will not ring the bell, it will simply wait. You open the door and it enters. Exactly like that, God is always at the door. But it will not call you, and it will not knock, and it will not shout - it will not even whisper. It will stand there. And I am calling God 'it' just to be in tune with the Zen people - they call it IT.

It will go on standing there: if you open the door it comes in. Just all that is needed is you should not create a hindrance, you should not block the way. Don't stand in the way, that's all. That's all my work is - to teach you how to play around, how to he in Love with existence, how to be more sensuous, available, sensitive. How to see the trees, how to listen to the birds, and how to look at the stars... so by and by, God starts showering on you from everywhere.

You ask, WHAT ABOUT THE WORK? It has started. But all great things start very silently; they don't start with a bang. They start very silently, in tremendous silence - just like a child gets conceived in the mother's womb... so silently. Just as a seed disappears into the earth, so silently... and arises a sprout. Yes, like that.

It has started. The question is from Prashantam: The day you looked into my eyes and the day I looked into your eyes, it started. It is not a formal thing - initiation with me is not a formal thing.

Sometimes it starts even before you have ever seen me, sometimes it starts when you are thousands of miles away from me.

Just the other night, one beautiful woman took sannyas - I have given her the name 'Paraveeta'. For months she has been writing - she wants to come, she wants to come. And she wanted assurance that I will be here when she comes, and she was feeling she is getting late and I may be gone, and she was much worried. Now she has come. The work on her had started already before she came here. Before she came here she had fallen in love with me. Her heart came before her body came here - she became connected; she was thousands of miles away.

The work that goes on here - which I don't call work - is a love affair. The initiation that happens here is not something formal. The initiation is in the depth of the heart, in your very being. Prashantam, it has started.

And you say, WHAT ABOUT THE WORK? YES, THE REAL THING! The real thing has started, and you are now asking for the unreal thing. You want some visible indication of it, you want something very physical with it. No, that I am not going to give to you. It is something spiritual, and you will have to look within yourself. It has started. The seed has broken, the sprouts are coming. Maybe it will take a little longer time for you to recognize them, because they are underground yet. Soon they will come above the ground: get ready to take care of them.

EVERY MASTER SAYS IT: FIND YOUR PATH, AND WORK ON THE SELF. I say: Find your path - that's enough. Then play on the path. Then there is no question of work; all work is before you have found the path. Yes, then there is work - you have to search for the path. Once the path is found - what Buddha calls SROTAAPANNA - once you have entered the stream, then the stream will do.

Now you relax! Now even swimming is sheer wastage. Don't waste your energy. Now the river is going already to the ocean... I am going already to the ocean. If you have become a sannyasin, you have become a srotaapanna - you have entered the stream. I am going: you need not swim in me, you simply relax, you become one with me... and you will reach to the ocean. You relax - that is the meaning of surrender.

Question 5

Desire, desiring, becoming. Always hankering for something - money, God, NIRVANA. Always hankering for something - power, prestige, pull. Always hankering for something. Never being here, always being somewhere else: that is the fundamental disease, the disease called 'becoming'. You are a being. You are already that which you can become - there is no need for you to become anything else. You are already that which you are now trying to become.

That's why, if you go to a Zen master and you ask: 'I want to become a Buddha,' he will beat you.

And he will say, 'If I don't beat you, the world will laugh at me. You are a Buddha - and you ask how to become a Buddha?'

You are gods and goddesses: that is the most fundamental here. All that is needed is a recognition - nothing else is needed. You are not to become. How can you become if you are not already? One only becomes that which one is. You cannot become something else, it is impossible! How can the rose become a lotus? The lotus becomes the lotus, the rose becomes the rose.

If somebody becomes a buddha, that simply means he was a Buddha already. If somebody becomes a god, that simply means he was God already - it took time for him to recognize it. Dull people take a longer time to recognize, that's all. Intelligent people don't take that much time. Fully intelligent people, totally intelligent people, don't take a single moment. Just the moment it is uttered, it is recognized. Just a nod of the head, and the work is finished.

This desiring creates a drunkenness in man. It creates unawareness, it creates unconsciousness, you become alcoholic. Because you are not here - so how can you be rooted? how can you be grounded? how can you be centered? You are roaming all around the world, all over the world - to be this, to be that, to be there, to be somewhere else.... Except THIS place where you find yourself, you want to be everywhere else. Except this moment that you are in, you want to be in every other moment.

You think of life beyond death - but you never live the life that is before death.

One man came to me some day and asked, 'What do you say about life after death?' I said, 'I don't talk about it. I talk about life BEFORE death.' After death? You have not even lived the life that is before death, and you are talking about life after death? Live this! and the other will take care of itself.

Desire, ambition, creates a drunkenness. One's eyes become dull, one starts feeling very very shaky, one becomes unconscious. The desire becomes a curtain on the consciousness - that is the fundamental disease. And if you are in desire, you cannot see what truth is. Truth can be known only when the drunkenness called desire disappears. Then your eyes are clear and clean. Then whatsoever is, appears as it is - you become a mirror.

A drunk is standing in a restaurant in front of a cigarette machine. He puts in one coin after another and takes out one packet of cigarettes after another.

Another customer comes along. He watches for a while and then asks, 'Can't you let me have a go?'

'You must be cuckoo!' replies the drunk. 'Can't you see I'm on a winning streak?'

Or this....

Two soldiers were drinking in a small-town joint. Before them were bottles in a great variety, and at intervals they took time out to stare at an old crone who sat at a nearby table. One or the other of the fellows would murmur, 'Not yet.'

An onlooker, intrigued, finally asked the reason for their strange behaviour. To which one replied, 'As soon as she begins to look beautiful we are going to call it a night.'

Yes, if you become too drunk then things start appearing in a different way. Then an ugly woman can look beautiful, then an old woman can look young. Then things are no more as they are. When you are drunk you live in a totally private world.

A man stayed out late, drinking, and crept into bed in the dark. When he awoke at daybreak, he saw three pairs of feet sticking out at the bottom of the bed - and one was a black pair. He woke his wife up and said, 'Hey, Mary, look at that - three pairs!'

She said, 'Don't talk bloody daft, you're drinking yourself stupid. Go down and count them!'

So the husband got out, carefully counted and examined the objects, and said, 'You're quite right - only two pairs. And ain't mine dirty!'

This is the situation. You can't see what is happening to you. You can't see what is the case, you can't see what is here right now. Because you can't SEE! You can't see at all - you have lost your eyesight, you are blind. Desire is too heavy on your eyes, it is a layer of dust.

According to Zen, desire is the most fundamental disease of mankind. Once you understand this, this desire disappears. Zen does not say: Fight desire. Zen does not say: Struggle against desire - because if you struggle, you will create another desire. That is the way of desire - all struggle is the way of desire. If you want to struggle with the desire, you will have to create another desire. So you will get out of one trap and you will fall immediately into another trap.

That's how it happens to so-called religious people. They get bored with the world and they start desiring God, or NIRVANA - again the desire has come in. And the desire is the world. You cannot desire God; whatsoever you desire remains the world. Desire is the world. Desirelessness is godliness, desirelessness is nirvana.

So the question is not of creating another desire. That's what happens to millions of people. Once they are fed-up with the world - and everybody gets fed-up one day or other - they start creating a new desire, a fresh desire: How to reach heaven? How to go to God? How to live in paradise? The desire has changed direction, but it remains the same. Now they desire SAMADHI, now they desire SIDDHIS, powers, now they desire this and that - but desiring continues. The content has changed, the object has changed, but the situation is the same.

Zen says: Try to understand desire. Try to understand desiring - the mechanism of it. Just see how desiring leads you astray. In that seeing is transformation. One day, when it has been seen utterly, totally, to its very core... a sudden realization, a sudden enlightenment. You are back home: you start laughing.

That's why the monk says, 'When my master kicked me, since that time I have not stopped laughing.'

That kick became a sudden enlightenment; that kick opened a door. In that kick, desire disappeared and he could see himself as he is.

So remember this. Otherwise one problem is replaced by another problem, and you remain in the same trouble. The trouble never changes.

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful young girl taking a stroll through the woods. All at once, she saw an extremely ugly bullfrog seated on a log. And to her amazement, the bullfrog spoke to her.

'Maiden,' croaked the frog, 'would you do me a big favour? This will be hard for you to believe, but I was once a handsome, charming prince; and then a mean, ugly old witch cast a spell over me and turned me into a frog.'

'Oh, what a pity!' exclaimed the pretty girl. 'I'll do anything I can to help you break such a spell.'

'Well, Miss,' replied the frog, 'the only way that this spell can be taken off and I can be returned to a handsome young man again is for some lovely and pretty young girl to take me home and let me spend the night under her pillow.'

The young girl took the ugly frog home and placed him beneath her pillow that night when she retired. When she awoke the next morning, sure enough, there beside her in the bed was a very young, handsome man, and plainly of royal blood.

And so they lived happily ever after, except that to this day her father and mother still do not believe her story.

And all your life is nothing but such stories, because all desiring creates only fantasies. All desiring is fabulous, all desiring creates illusions. You go on changing - you change one illusion to another, you go from one illusion to another, but you go on changing illusions. Always from one illusion to another illusion is your movement.

When you understand the very mechanism of illusions as such, there is a break, a breakthrough.

An insight dawns on you. In that moment, not only this world becomes meaningless, ALL worlds become meaningless. In that moment, there is nothing to be desired. You don't desire even desirelessness; there is nothing to be desired. Suddenly desire is not there, that smoke is not there, and the flame burns bright.

Remember not to change problems, from one illusion to another. It does not help much.

A little girl was deeply impressed by the clergyman's sermon as to the separation of the sheep and the goats. That night after she had gone to bed she was heard sobbing, and the mother went to her to ask what was the matter.

'It's about the goats!' Jenny confessed at last. 'I'm so afraid I am a goat, and so I'll never go to heaven. Oh, I'm so afraid I'm a goat.'

'My dear,' the mother assured her weeping child, 'you're a sweet little lamb. If you were to die tonight, you would go straight to heaven.' Her words were successful in quieting the little girl, and she slept.

But the following night Jenny was found crying again in her bed, and when the mother appeared she wailed, 'I'm afraid about the goats.'

'But Mother has told you that you are a little lamb, and that you must never worry over being a goat.'

Jenny, however, was by no means comforted, and continued her sobs.

'Yes, Mamma,' she declared softly, 'I know that. But I'm afraid - awfully afraid you're a goat.'

From one problem to another... but the basic problem remains This is not the way to solve problems - one has to look at the very root from where the problems arise.

So Zen does not call anger the problem, Zen does not call sex the problem, Zen does not call greed the problem, Zen does not call aggression, violence, the problem. Zen calls the root problem desiring - and all other problems arise out of desiring. Cut the root, and the whole tree disappears.

Question 6:

Selling water by the river.

Master Sogaku Harada died at the age of ninety-one. At his funeral service hung a piece of calligraphy written by himself:

That can be said only by a Zen master. First he says 'Selling water by the river' - where there is no need really. The river is flowing: you can simply jump into the river and drink your fill. But people are so foolish, they need somebody to sell water even by the river.

Secondly he says 'Ho, ho! My labours have been wholly without merit.' That is a great statement.

Zen masters say that if you do good, it is useless. Because basically everything is good - how can you do any more good? If you make people enlightened, what is the point of it? because they were already enlightened - you are not doing anything new! 'Ho, ho! My labours have been wholly without merit.'

First we go on selling water by the side of the river. Mm? If you are a little intelligent you can jump yourself. And finally we know all effort is meaningless, in vain. Because even if you become enlightened, nothing is gained. You were always enlightened.

But this can be said only by a Zen master - the insight is so deep. Both things are profound. Nobody needs to be enlightened, because everybody is already enlightened. It is such a ridiculous thing for people to keep trying to enlighten you.

It is so ridiculous for me to go on enlightening you every day. And you are stubborn... and you will not become enlightened. And I go on selling the water by the river.... And you PAY for the water!

And you won't look at the rivet, and the river is flowing by the side. It has always been there - before the thirst is created, the river is there. Before the desire, the fulfillment.

So you ask, WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE EXACTLY? Selling water by the river. Ho, ho!