and to heal
conceals a deep truth:
He who is whole is also healed,
and to be healed is to be whole.
This wholeness can only be achieved
by becoming totally conscious of oneself:
The darkness of the unconscious is to be penetrated
and transformed into light.
And meditation is the method.
191. Love.
The new world revealed in meditation
is not something added from the outside.
It has always been there – within,
is in being itself.
It is being itself.
One may know it or not, but it is there –
as a seed, of course, as a potentiality.
One has to make it actual, that is all.
That is why when it is revealed,
when it flowers,
one laughs uproariously
because it has always been there and one never knew it.
To work towards meditation is just like sculpturing
because as the sculptor chisels out a figure
deeply buried in a mass of inert matter,
so the meditator transforms his own inert potentialities
into living, dynamic and conscious creations.
Of course, here
the creator and the creation and the means of creation
are not different but one
because the meditator himself is all.
And that is why I call meditation the greatest art.
192. Love.
Do not think of others and waste your time;
really, that is a subtle and cunning way of the mind
to escape from itself.
Once a monk asked Ummon:
Sir, you always say that Buddhism helps us in
every possible way,
but how can it help the blind, the deaf or the dumb?
The blind cannot see the teacher’s staff
that is raised before them,
the deaf cannot hear the teacher’s words, no matter how wise,
the dumb cannot ask their questions or speak
their understanding:
so since we cannot help these people
how can we say that Buddhism helps in every possible way?
What good is it?
Ummon just remained silent for a while
and then abruptly poked at the questioner with his stick.
The monk of course jumped back.
Ah! said Ummon. I see you are not blind!
Then he told the monk to come forward, which he did.
Ah-ha! said Ummon. I see you are not deaf!
Then he asked the monk
if he understood what all this to-do was about.
The monk said he did not.
Ah-ha! said Ummon. I see you are not dumb!
193. Love.
Meditation does not require any application of the mind
or use of effort.
It descends upon you as effortlessly as sleep.
You cannot try to sleep,
nor can you try to meditate.
On the contrary,
every effort hinders its smooth and silent coming.
There is no place in it for action or aggression –
and action is always aggressive.
Meditation is passive receptivity.
Mind is aggressive,
meditation is passive.
Be passive
and receptive
and open
and vulnerable
and wait.
The real miracle happens through waiting.
The moment that waiting is total
there is a happening,
and – the explosion.
194. Love.
The problem of life is not philosophical,
it is existential.
You cannot solve it from the outside;
you cannot just be a spectator of it –
you are in it, you are it.
And moreover, what is philosophy?
At the worst a linguistic misunderstanding,
or at best a linguistic analysis.
And even at its best it leads nowhere
because the problem is existential
and it cannot be solved through
language analysis and grammar.
One dark night a dervish was passing a dry well
when he heard a cry for help from below.
What is the matter? he called down.
I am a grammarian,
and I have unfortunately fallen,
due to my ignorance of the path, into this deep well,
in which I am now all but immobilized,
responded the other.
Hold on, friend, and I’ll fetch a ladder and a rope, said the dervish.
One moment please! said the grammarian.
Your grammar and diction are faulty.
Be good enough to amend them. If that is so much more important
than the essentials, shouted the dervish, you had best stay where you are
until I have learned to speak properly.
And he went his way.
195. Love.
Don’t think about surrender at all
because that which thinks about it is the only barrier.
And therefore no one can surrender;
it is not a doing at all, it happens.
You cannot go to it,
it comes to you.
And any effort on your part will hinder its coming.
Be open and effortless, relaxed and passive,
and it will come – it always comes.
I am a witness of it.
196. Love.
Mulla Nasruddin was searching for something on the ground.
What have you lost, Mulla? someone who saw him searching, asked.
My key, said the Mulla. So they both went down on their knees
and looked for it.
After a time the other man asked: Where exactly did you drop it?
In my house, said the Mulla.
Then why are you looking here?
There is more light here than inside my house.
I ask you also – where are you looking for the key?
Inside the house?
Or out there, where there is more light?
197. Love.
There is no end to man’s self-deception, because whatsoever he is
going to do he can rationalize it.
One day one man boasted in the bar
that he was a man of iron will,
and now he would prove it
by not touching wine again in his life.
But not even that day could pass by.
In the evening he came to the bar
and said loudly for all to hear –
I am stronger than my willpower.
I fought the whole day and finally conquered
my damn willpower!
A double scotch, please!
198. Love.
The way of meditation is above the self;
its base is surrendering.
Surrender the self to your own no-self;
be as if you are not.
Oh, the benediction
when one just leaves everything to the no-self!
Buddha called this phenomenon anatma or anatta
(no-selfhood).
One must turn oneself into a puppet
in the hands of the no-self,
and then everything begins to flow naturally
and spontaneously
just like a river flowing to the sea
or like a cloud wandering in the sky.
Lao Tzu says this is doing by non-doing.
One ceases to be one’s own master
and becomes an instrument of the unknown –
and what nonsense it is to be one’s own master
because there is no one to be so!
Do not search and you will continue to believe in it.
Search and it is nowhere to be found.
The self exists only in ignorance.
It is ignorance.
In knowing there is no self
because there is no knower.
Then knowing is enough unto itself.
199. Love.
There is conflict in the mind – always,
because the mind cannot exist without the conflict.
It gets strengthened through conflict;
even warring against conflict is conflict
and struggling to go beyond the mind is mind.
See this deeply and immediately
without motive,
just as if you have come across a snake in the street
– and the jump.
Then it is not that you jump
but – the jump.
The jump happens spontaneously,
without effort and without conflict.
When this happens there is no-mind
and no-mind is the door to the divine.
200. Love.
In meditation, enjoy doing nothing.
Be in a state of perfectly quiet passivity –
then you are in harmony with the world.
The thought-forms dissolve automatically
because they cannot exist with total passivity:
they are forms of an activity-addicted mind,
and with them dissolves the ego –
because it cannot exist without thought-forms.
The ego is nothing but a whirlpool center
of constantly revolving thought-forms.
Remain in passivity,
that is, in the state of absolute doing-nothingness,
and meditation deepens to the depths where there is no meditator.
And remember that only when there is no meditator
has meditation really come into being.
If you are then there is no meditation,
and when there is meditation you are not.
201. Love.
It is tragic but true that few people ever
possess their souls.
They possess everything except themselves,
and then naturally they just become a thing
among their other things.
The possessor becomes the possessed.
Nothing is more rare in any man, says Emerson,
than an act of his own.
But this is just what can be expected
because no one is their own,
no one is themselves.
Most people are other people.
They are not living
but only acting roles given to them by others.
Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions
and their faces are just masks.
They are faceless.
They have no authentic being at all.
Their lives, a mimicry –
and their passions, a quotation.
Break this vicious circle otherwise you will never be.
Break this through meditation –
and it cannot be broken by anything else
because through mind it cannot be broken,
and except for meditation, all else is mind.
Mind is the prison,
meditation, the door.
And the only door.
202. Love.
Only God is –
that is why it is so difficult to find him.
And God is everywhere –
that is why he seems to be nowhere.