And the seeker is the sought –
that is why all seeking is so futile.
Stop and see.
But the mind is running constantly.
Do not be, and see.
But the mind is trying to be continuously.
Says Auden:
For the garden is the only place there is, but you will not find it,
until you have looked for it everywhere
and found nowhere that is not a desert.
The miracle is the only thing that happens,
but to you it will not be apparent,
until all events have been studied
and nothing happens that you cannot explain.
And life is the destiny you are bound to refuse
until you have consented to die.
Stop and see.
Do not be, and see.
203. Love.
Live in the body intimately and deeply.
Feel the body more and let the body feel more.
It is astonishing how many people
are almost completely unaware of themselves physically.
The body is suppressed and denied life too much,
that is why it is just a dead weight and not a living joy.
That is why I insist: go back into the body
and regain the wonderful joy in its movements,
sheer movements.
Make it a meditation and you will be enriched
beyond comprehension.
204. Love.
John Burroughs remembers:
One day my boy killed what an old hunter told him
was a mock duck.
It looked like a duck,
it acted like a duck,
but when it was placed on the table –
it mocked us!
Remember to make a clear-cut distinction
between your self and your mock-selves – the masks,
otherwise in the end they will all mock you!
205. Love.
Man is strange, very strange,
because he begins by deceiving others
and ends with deceiving himself.
A fakir was walking down the village street
deep in thought
when some urchins began to throw stones at him.
He was taken by surprise,
and besides he was not a big man.
Don’t do that, he said, and I will tell you
something of interest to you.
All right, what is it? But no philosophy.
The king is giving a free banquet to all comers –
he simply lied to them.
The children ran off towards the king’s palace
as the fakir warmed to his theme –
the delicacies and delights of the entertainment…
He looked up and saw them
disappearing into the distance,
and then suddenly he tucked up his robes
and started to sprint after them.
I had better go and see, he panted to himself,
because it might be true after all.
206. Love.
To be religious is to be a yea-sayer:
yes to everything –
yes to life and yes to death,
yes to light and yes to darkness.
Total acceptance is religion.
Says Nicolas De Cusa: Yes God! Yes God!
Yes, yes and always yes.
Say yes – and feel it,
and you have entered the temple of the divine.
Say no and you yourself have closed the doors –
or closed yourself to the divine.
No is suicidal, no is poisonous –
know this and be a yea-sayer.
Let your heart say yes with every beat.
Breathe yes in and out
and you will feel the divine all around you
within and without.
He is always present but he cannot enter through a no sign.
He cannot trespass on you.
With a no you are an ego
but with a yes you are just egolessness.
Ego is a Leibnizian monad without any doors or windows,
and egolessness is the gate.
Be a gate – the divine is waiting to enter you from eternity.
207. Love.
Begin to live positively – that is,
with positive emotions.
To be negative is to be self-destructive
and ultimately suicidal.
But ordinarily the mind works that way
because it is only an instrument for safety and security;
it detects only death and not life.
So to be completely positive is to transcend mind.
Some fakir was asked to talk to a group
about the negative nature of the mind.
He tacked up on the wall a large sheet of
perfectly white paper.
He made a black spot in the paper with a pencil.
Then he asked each man to say what he saw.
Each man replied: A black spot.
The fakir then said: Yes, there is a little black spot.
But not one of you saw the big expanse of white paper –
and that is the point of my speech.
208. Love.
The forms of existence are finite – all forms.
Really, to have a form means to be finite.
But existence is infinite
because only the formless can be infinite,
and existence is formlessness,
that is why it can take all forms.
But to take form in any way is to allow death in
because form is a death sentence,
whilst existence itself is eternal life.
Do not be identified with the form:
this identification creates the fear of death
– in fact, all fear.
Remember the formless
and you will know immortality
because you will be that – then.
209. Love.
One’s attitude is everything.
Negative attitudes negate life –
they are good for dying but not good for living.
Life needs positive attitudes;
life feeds on them
because they make you
not only happy but creative also.
Once there lived an old woman,
but the older she became the younger she felt –
because youthfulness has nothing to do with age,
it is an attitude,
and with age and its richness
one can really be younger than the young.
The old woman was so cheerful and creative
that everyone wondered at her.
But you must have some clouds in your life,
said a visitor.
Clouds? she replied. Why, of course:
if there were no clouds
where would the blessed showers come from?
In the presence of trouble –
and there are troubles in life –
the positive mind grows wings
but others buy crutches.
Grow wings, and do not buy crutches.
210. Love.
There is no security in life
because life cannot exist except as insecurity –
that is why the more secure one is
the less alive one becomes.
Death is complete security.
So never be in search of security
because you are searching for death.
To live totally and in ecstasy never demands security.
Accept insecurity blissfully
and when you accept it
then you will know that it has a beauty of its own.
Mulla Nasruddin’s tomb
was fronted by an immense wooden door,
barred and padlocked.
Nobody could get into it – at least through the door.
As his last joke
the Mulla decreed that the tomb
should have no walls around it…
What the Mulla did with his tomb
everybody is doing with his life –
and unknowingly!
If you also want to do it –
at least do it knowingly,
because I know that you cannot do it knowingly!
Not only you cannot, but no one can do it,
because no one can knowingly be stupid.
211. Love.
The universe cares for little but play.
But man in his life does hardly anything but work,
and because of this everything has become upside down.
Hence the agony.
The law, the tao of the universe, is play – leela –
and the law of human reason is work
because reason cannot think beyond utility.
But existence exists beyond utility.
Meditate on this gap and you will find the bridge –
and the bridge is necessary
because you cannot exist without work,
and to exist only for work is unbearable and unlivable.
The meditative man works
so that he can play more intensely –
the reason for his work is play.
And the unmeditative man plays so that he can work more efficiently –
the reason for his play is work.
212. Love.
Life does not need comfort when it can be offered meaning
nor pleasure when it can be shown purpose,
because in the total intensity of intentional living
is the fruition of the seed of consciousness.
And consciousness without the self is the goal.
Consciousness without the center –
and you have reached.
Consciousness without ego is nirvana:
or you may call it God or whatsoever you like.
Know that everyone is seeking this state of being,
but unless the seeker is lost, this state of being cannot be found –
and the seeker can only be lost
in the fire of total intensity of living.
So live totally.
And live in the moment
and moment to moment,
because there is no other way to live totally,
and no other way to dissolve the center, the self, the ego.
213. Love.
The secret of meditation is the art of unlearning.
Mind is learning;
meditation is unlearning.
That is – die constantly to your experience.
Don’t let it imprison you.
Experience becomes a dead weight
in the living and flowing, riverlike consciousness.
Live in the moment unburdened of the past,
flow in the moment unblocked by the mind,
and you will be in meditation.
Know well that it is innocence that is full
and experience that is empty –
although the surface appearance is quite the contrary.
It is innocence that knows
and experience that knows not –
though innocence never claims
and experience is nothing but claims and claims and claims!
And that is why I say:
innocence is meditation because it opens the doors of the unknown.
So learn how to unlearn.
So learn how to be beyond the mind.
Do not cling to the known