You were so interested, Cicero,
that I am sure you want to ask some questions.
Yes’m, drawled Cicero, I got one to ask.
Where do those figures go when you rub them off?
333. Love.
Do not cling to anything,
to any idea,
because clinging is the bondage.
Even if one is clinging to the idea of liberation –
moksha or nirvana –
one will be in bondage.
With clinging meditation is impossible
because clinging is mind, the bondage;
and no-clinging is meditation –
the freedom.
In the Book of Amu Daria there is an old Sufi tale:
Once upon a time there was a monkey
who was very fond of cherries.
One day he saw a delicious looking cherry
and came down from his tree to get it,
but the fruit turned out to be in a clear glass bottle,
so he had to put his hand into the bottle to get it out.
As soon as he had done so
he closed his hand over the cherry
but then he found that he could not
withdraw his fist holding the cherry
because it was larger than the bottle’s neck.
Now all this was deliberate
because the cherry in the bottle was a trap laid
by a monkey hunter
who knew how monkeys think.
The hunter, hearing
the monkey’s whimperings, came along.
The monkey tried to run away,
but because his hand was, as he thought,
stuck in the bottle,
he could not move fast enough to escape.
But as he thought he still had hold of the cherry,
he consoled himself.
The hunter picked him up
and tapped the monkey sharply on the elbow
making him suddenly relax his hold on the fruit.
The monkey was now free –
but he was captured.
The hunter had used the cherry and the bottle
and he still had them.
This monkey-way of thinking is the mind-way also!
And in the end when death, the hunter, comes,
everyone is found caught in his own bottle.
Remember, before the hunter comes
make sure your hand is out of the bottle!
334. Love.
A life without meditation
is like a winter landscape with the sun hidden,
the flowers frozen and the wind whispering
through the withered leaves.
And everyone knows it
because everyone lives it that way,
though no one needs to live it that way.
But why is this so?
This is so because life’s needs require an occupied mind
and meditation means being unoccupied.
We train ourselves to be occupied
and then forget that one needs to be unoccupied sometimes
to know the ecstasy of sheer existence.
One is to be totally vacant inside
because only then is one a host to the divine guest.
335. Love.
Meditation is beyond knowledge.
You can be it but you cannot know it.
All knowledge is superficial.
It is never anything else
but an acquaintance from outside.
It is always about
but never the thing itself;
When the Chinese emperor Wu
came to meet Bodhidharma
he asked the master:
What is the holy, ultimate truth?
Bodhidharma laughed and replied:
Nothing holy, sir,
and it is emptiness itself.
Of course Wu was taken aback, but he asked again:
Then who is the one who at present
stands confronting me?
Bodhidharma simply said:
I don’t know.
Do you see the beauty of it?
And the truth?
And the innocence?
And the holiness?
And the fullness?
And how absolutely ultimate it is?
336. Love.
It is very easy to progress from one illusion to another
because no foundational transformation is needed.
There is no shaking of the foundations
because you remain the same.
So the real problem is not to change the objects of desire
from the worldly to the other-worldly
but to transform oneself;
not to change the seeking
but to change the seeker –
otherwise the problem remains as it is,
it just takes new shapes.
But how to change the seeker?
First find out where it is and what it is,
and then you will come to know a hidden secret:
the seeker exists only while it is not sought,
and when someone goes out to search for it –
it is never found.
It exists only in ignorance and in darkness;
in awareness it is not.
This realization of no-self is the jump.
Jump into the unknown.
Jump into the truth.
337. Love.
Whatever I say is nothing new,
nor is it anything old.
Or it is both –
the oldest and the newest.
And to know it you need not listen to me.
Listen to the birds in the morning
or to the flowers and grass blades in the sun
and you will hear it,
and if you do not know how to listen to them
then you will not know from me either.
So the real thing is not what you listen to
but how you listen,
because the message is everywhere, everywhere, everywhere.
Now I will tell you the art of listening:
walk about until exhausted or dance or
do vigorous breathing
and then, dropping to the ground, listen;
or repeat your own name loudly until exhausted
and then suddenly stop and listen;
or at the point of sleep
when sleep has not yet come
and external wakefulness vanishes,
suddenly be alert and listen.
And then you will hear me.
338. Love.
That which is never lost cannot be found,
and to search for it is absurd.
But the moment this absurdity is understood
all seeking stops by itself
and that which is never lost is found!
That is why I say:
Seek and you will not find,
because the very seeking is the barrier.
The search itself is the hindrance
because it creates the seeker, the ego,
the illusion that I am.
And I am not.
Do not seek and you will find it:
the I-am-not-ness.
This nothingness is the gate.
The Gateless gate.
Riko once asked Nansen
to explain to him the old problem of the goose
in the bottle.
If a man puts a gosling into the bottle, he said,
and feeds the gosling through the bottle’s neck
until it grows and grows and becomes a goose –
and then there is simply no more room inside the bottle,
how can the man get it out without killing the goose
or breaking the bottle?
Riko! shouted Nansen, and gave a great clap
with his hands.
Yes master! said Riko with a start.
See! said Nansen.
The goose is out!
339. Love.
Meditation requires understanding and not effort,
understanding is essential, not effort,
and remember always that you cannot
substitute understanding with any effort whatsoever.
But what do I mean by understanding?
By understanding I mean – living a natural life.
Of course, you cannot try to be natural,
that is self-contradictory!
You can be natural but you cannot try to be natural.
Do you understand this?
Suzuki tells a story:
A monk once asked one of the old Chinese masters:
What is the way?
The master replied: The natural one, the ordinary one,
is the way.
How, continued the monk, am I to be in accord with it?
When you try to be in accord with it, said the master,
then you deviate from it.
Does this mean that one should not try?
No, because that too is a way of trying.
Of course, indirect, but still intentional;
that too will not help.
But just see the dilemma clearly and you are out of it.
Are you not?
340. Love and blessings.
I received your letter.
I was waiting for it daily since you left.
I know that you have gone far away from here
but I also know that now you cannot go away from me –
and that nearness is all that counts.
You have come near me in a non-spatial and
non-temporal sense.
The meeting has taken place in the nowhere
or in the everywhere –
because they mean the same thing.
And the real meeting takes place only in this way.
All else is illusion.
Remember me whenever you need
and you will find me then and there.
Ask anything and wait – and you will be answered.
The barriers have fallen from your mind
and you have entered the meditative state.
Now the doors of the divine are open.
Do not hesitate, and take the plunge.
You are completely ready,
just be courageous enough to enter the uncharted
and the unknown.
The call from beyond has come –
now accept the challenge and be fulfilled.
Now close your eyes
and feel me and see me and let my blessings
be showered on you.
341. Love.
Don’t take life so seriously,
because seriousness is a great dis-ease,
and not only a disease but a suicide also.
Be playful – totally,
because that is the only way to be living.
Life is a play, a leela, and to know it as such is religion,
and to live it as such is sannyas – renunciation.
If you can act and live as if acting and living in a dream
and still be a witness to it
then you will be in the cosmic flow, the tao.
And to be in the cosmic flow is to be free –
free from oneself, the ego.
The ego is the seriousness, the disease,
and the tao, the egoless existence, is the bliss, the ecstasy.
That is why I have given you such an absurd name!