Really nothing is
because everything is only a process,
so as soon as one tries to possess anything it slips away.
The possessor himself is slipping away constantly!
Then there is frustration
and then there is suffering.
Know this well,
realize this well and there will be no suffering
because then you have unearthed the root.
246. Love.
The self can never be free –
because the self itself is the bondage.
This is the meaning of the penetrating saying of Jesus:
He that saveth his life shall lose it
and he that loseth his life shall know life abundant.
Or that of Lao Tzu in Tao-te-Ching:
He who humbles himself shall be saved,
he who bends shall be made straight,
and he who empties himself shall be filled.
One is not to make the self free;
rather on the contrary, one has to be free from the self.
The self is nothing but the husk of the seed.
Do not cling to it.
Sings Wu Ming Fu:
The seed that has to grow must lose itself as a seed,
and they that creep may be transformed
through the chrysalis to wings.
Wilt thou then, O mortal, cling to husks
which wrongly seem to you to be the self?
247. Love.
The gates of the temple are wide open
and it is only after thousands of years
that such opportunity comes to this earth.
Know well that they will not remain open forever.
The opportunity can be lost very easily,
and you are still wavering,
and you are still hesitating –
to enter or not to enter,
to be or not to be.
I know that the challenge is great, but I know also
that your being is completely ready to take the jump.
Hence my insistent call for you to come and enter.
And this is not for the first time that I have called you,
nor the first life;
I know you, Bhakti, through so many births!
And soon you will also remember many things.
But not before the jump.
Only your superficial persona is resisting, not you –
and it is expected to resist always
because the moment one takes the plunge
into the unknown
it has to die naturally.
So please do not identify yourself with it;
be a witness to it, and you will be in the jump.
It is time now to die to the old ego
and be reborn to the supreme self!
248. Love.
Logic is not all;
nor is consistency;
because even madness has its own methods,
rationalizations and inner consistencies.
A madman was throwing handfuls
of crumbs around his house.
What are you doing? someone asked him.
Keeping the elephants away, he answered.
But there are no elephants in these parts,
said the inquirer.
That’s right – my method is effective, isn’t it?
declared the madman.
249. Love.
Total acceptance of existence is impossible for the mind
because the mind exists as denial.
It exists with the no,
and with a total yes it dies.
So it continues to find reasons to say no
even if there are no reasons.
Walking with a disciple one day
Mulla Nasruddin saw for the first time in his life
a beautiful lakeland scene.
What a delight! he exclaimed. But if only,
if only…
If only what, master? asked the disciple.
If only they had not put water in it! said the Mulla.
250. Love.
Meditation is like the sea:
receiving the dirty river and yet remaining pure.
You need not be purified before it,
but you will come out of it purified.
Meditation is unconditional,
purity is not a prerequisite but a consequence.
251. Love.
Be as if dead,
and then dualisms will not contaminate you
and you will reach the state
of the non-arising of thought.
The brightness of self-nature will appear in full –
and when this happens you are no more.
This disappearance is the appearance of the divine,
so please – disappear!
252. Love.
Existence exists in order to exist –
and likewise life.
There is no meaning to it beyond itself
so never posit any meaning,
otherwise you will feel its meaninglessness.
It is not meaningless and it cannot be so
because there is no meaning in it all!
The very search for meaning is mean and ugly
because it comes from the utilitarian mind of man.
Existence simply is
and likewise life:
there is no purpose in it
and there is no end to it.
Feel it here and now!
Please do not practice it
because that is the way of the utilitarian mind.
Be playful
and only then will you know the playfulness
of the universe.
And to know that is to be religious.
253. Love.
Do not continue moving in the old rut –
and the way out is just by your hand.
The mind is the past, the dead past;
one has to break it somewhere and jump out of it
The mind is the prison, the slavery.
Be free of it.
And the moment is ripe.
Of course I know that you are still not clearly aware of it
but you are not unaware either.
Gather courage and jump into the unknown.
Just one step is enough
because the next follows it automatically.
But do not go on thinking and thinking and thinking.
Thinking promises to lead you somewhere
but the promise remains always a promise,
because thinking is just impotent
as far as life is concerned.
So please, be existential.
Do not hesitate.
And you have nothing to lose – because you
have nothing!
Realize this and be nothing – no-one.
254. Love.
Life is movement,
process,
fluidity;
but ideas become fixed,
so they become also anti-life.
They become dead blocks.
Do not remain with them.
Move.
And do not fear inconsistency
because life is not a syllogism,
life is not a theory
but a mystery.
Someone asked Mulla Nasruddin: How old are you, Mulla?
Forty.
But you said the same last time I asked you, five years ago!
Yes, I am always consistent and always stand by
what I have said.
255. Love.
Mind means consciousness somewhere –
centered,
focused and tense.
Meditation means consciousness nowhere,
and when it is nowhere it is everywhere –
decentralized.
Unfocused and non-tense.
Mind is agony by its very nature,
meditation – ecstasy.
Do not treat consciousness like a cat tied to a string.
This very treatment –
or mistreatment –
creates the mind.
The consciousness must be left
to itself, utterly free
to move and be
according to its nature.
Do not localize it.
Do not be partial.
This is the essence of my discipline of no-discipline.
Preserve the absolute fluidity of your consciousness
and then you will not be,
and when you are not and only consciousness is
then for the first time the doors of the divine
are open to you.
256. Love.
Yes, man learns by experience!
Two old drunkards
were in the habit of coming together twice a week
to the wine-seller to get drunk.
After years of this one of them died.
His old friend came in on the Saturday
and they told him his pal had died –
that the whisky had been taken into blood circulation
and so saturated his blood and his breath
that one night before going to bed
the old man went to blow out the candle
and his breath caught fire and he was burned to death.
The other man promptly called for a Bible
and took an oath that from that time forward
he would never blow out another candle in his life!
Yes, man learns by experience!
257. Love.
Do not imitate anyone,
do not follow anyone,
otherwise you will be just a pseudo existence –
and that is worse than suicide.
Be yourself –
and only then
can you be responsible
and authentic and real.
But ordinarily everyone is just secondhand and borrowed,
and that makes everything ugly.
Mulla Nasruddin went to a mosque and sat down.
His shirt was rather short
and the man behind him pulled it lower,
thinking it looked unseemly.
Nasruddin immediately pulled the shirt of the man
in front of him.
What are you doing? asked the man in front.
Don’t ask me, ask the man behind – he started it,
said Nasruddin.
258. Love.
The real religious experience
cannot be organized, taught or transmitted.
To systematize it is to kill it.
It is so living and moving and dynamic
that to impose a pattern on it is impossible;
and the experience is always so unique and individual
that it cannot be put into any category –
although it happens when the individual is not.
It cannot be followed,
for everyone has to find it for himself,
and that is the beauty of it,
and also its freedom and virginity.
It is not new in the sense of any opposition to the old,
it is new in the sense of timelessness –
that is, eternally fresh and innocent –
as every flower is new
and every sunrise is new
and every love is new.
It is not borrowed from the past,
it is not based on any tradition,
it is not derived from without,
it happens within,
without any causality.
It happens unconditionally.
It is not continuous with the mind,
it is a discontinuous explosion.