Osho: To React is to be a plaything in the hands of others. Response is Responsibility. Response is Authenticity. Response is Living in the Moment.

By Osho. From Nirvana: The Last Nightmare. Talks on Zen

CHAPTER 3.  PLAYERS OF A GAME

MUSO, THE NATIONAL TEACHER,

AND ONE OF THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS MASTERS OF HIS DAY,

LEFT THE CAPITAL IN THE COMPANY OF A DISCIPLE

FOR A DISTANT PROVINCE.

ON REACHING THE TENRYU RIVER

THEY HAD TO WAIT FOR AN HOUR

BEFORE THEY COULD BOARD THE FERRY.

JUST AS THE FERRY WAS ABOUT TO LEAVE THE SHORE

A DRUNKEN SAMURAI RAN UP

AND JUMPED INTO THE PACKED BOAT,

NEARLY SWAMPING IT.

HE TOTTERED WILDLY AS THE SMALL CRAFT

MADE ITS WAY ACROSS THE RIVER.

THE FERRYMAN,

FEARING FOR THE SAFETY OF HIS PASSENGERS,

BEGGED HIM TO STAND QUIETLY.

'WE'RE LIKE SARDINES IN HERE,'

SAID THE SAMURAI GRUFFLY.

THEN, POINTING TO MUSO,

'WHY NOT TOSS OUT THE BONZAE?'

'PLEASE BE PATIENT,' MUSO SAID,

'WE'LL REACH THE OTHER SIDE SOON.'

'WHAT!' BAWLED THE SAMURAI, 'ME BE PATIENT?

LISTEN HERE, IF YOU DON'T JUMP OFF THIS THING'

I SWEAR I'LL DROWN YOU.'

THE MASTER'S CALM SO INFURIATED THE SAMURAI

THAT HE STRUCK MUSO'S HEAD WITH HIS IRON FAN,

DRAWING BLOOD.

MUSO'S DISCIPLE HAD HAD ENOUGH BY THIS TIME,

AND AS HE WAS A POWERFUL MAN,

WANTED TO CHALLENGE THE SAMURAI.

'I CAN'T PERMIT HIM TO GO ON LIVING AFTER THIS,' HE SAID.

'WHY GET SO WORKED UP OVER A TRIFLE?'

MUSO SAID WITH A SMILE.

'IT'S EXACTLY IN MATTERS OF THIS KIND

THAT THE BONZAE'S TRAINING PROVES ITSELF.

PATIENCE, YOU MUST REMEMBER,

IS MORE THAN JUST A WORD.'

THEN HE RECITED AN EXTEMPORE WAKA:

THE BEATER AND THE BEATEN:

MERE PLAYERS OF A GAME

EPHEMERAL AS A DREAM.'

WHEN THE BOAT REACHED SHORE,

AND MUSO AND HIS DISCIPLE ALIGHTED,

THE SAMURAI RAN UP

AND PROSTRATED HIMSELF AT THE MASTER'S FEET.

THEN AND THERE HE BECAME A DISCIPLE.

SEEKING for something, desiring for something, is the basic disease of the mind. Not seeking, not desiring, is the basic health of your being.

It is very easy to go on changing the objects of desire, but that is not the way of transformation. You can desire money, you can desire power... you can change the objects of desire - you can start desiring god - but you remain the same because you go on desiring.

The basic change is to be brought not in the objects of desire, but in your subjectivity.

If desiring stops - and remember, I am not saying that it has to be stopped - if desiring stops, then you are for the first time at home, peaceful, patient, blissful, and for the first time life is available to you and you are available to life. In fact, the very division between you and life disappears, and this state of non division is the state of god.

People come to me from all over the world; they travel thousands of miles. When they come to me and I ask, 'Why have you come?' somebody says, 'I am a seeker of god.' Somebody says, 'I am a seeker of truth.'

They are not aware what they are asking. They are asking the impossible. God is not a thing. God is not an object. You cannot seek him. God is this whole. How can you seek the whole? You can dissolve in it, you can merge in it, but you cannot seek it. The seeking simply shows that you go on believing yourself separate from the whole - you the seeker and the whole the sought.

Sometimes you seek a woman, sometimes you seek a man. Sometimes, frustrated from the world, you start seeking the other world - but you are not yet frustrated with seeking itself.

A seeker is in trouble. A seeker is confused. He has not understood the basic problem itself. It is not that you have to seek god, then everything will be solved. Just the opposite - if everything is solved, suddenly there is god.

It happened once:

"A bookseller from south India wrote to a house in New Delhi asking that a dozen copies of the book 'Seekers After God' be shipped to him at once.

Within two days he received this reply by telegraph: NO SEEKERS AFTER GOD IN DELHI OR BOMBAY. TRY POONA."

Of course they are all here. The seeking is a disease. Don't make it an ego-trip... because when somebody comes and he says that he is a seeker after god, I can see the light of the ego that shows in his eyes; the condemnation of the world - that he is not a worldly man, he is a religious man. The way he says it, shows his pride - that he is not an ordinary man, not part of the ordinary run of humanity. He is special, extraordinary. He is not seeking money, he is seeking meditation. He is not seeking anything material, he is seeking something spiritual.

But to me, and to all those who have ever known, seeking is the world. There is no other-worldly seeking. Desiring is worldly. There is no other-worldly desiring. In the very desiring, the world exists. What you desire is irrelevant; that you desire is enough to make you worldly. Because all desires are from a basic fallacy - the basic fallacy that you are missing something, that something is needed. In the very first place, you are not missing anything. Nothing is needed.

The world is a nightmare because of desiring, and then nirvana becomes the last nightmare. Of course the last, because if you wake up seeking god and nirvana... if you wake up, then all nightmares disappear.

You have dropped the world. Now you seek god. Please drop god also. This will look a little irreligious; it is not.

I was reading one statement of Albert Einstein. I loved it. Somewhere he says, 'I am a deeply religious unbeliever.' In fact a religious person cannot be a believer. A religious person can trust, but cannot believe. Trust comes out of existential experience; belief is just a mind-trip. Belief is just of ideology, concepts, scriptures, philosophy. Trust is of life.

The moment you say 'god', you have used a belief. God is a belief. But life is not a belief, it is an experience. Let life be your only god. No other god is needed, because all other gods are human inventions. Einstein is true when he says, 'I am a deeply religious person, but unbelieving, not a believer.' What does he mean?

The quality of being religious has nothing to do with the quality of a believer. A believer believes because he desires. A believer believes because he wants to seek something. A believer believes because he cannot live life without the mind. He brings the mind always in between life and himself... as if your hand is hiding behind a glove - you touch your beloved, but not direct; your hand is hidden behind the glove. The glove touches the beloved; you touch your glove only.

A belief is like a glove; it surrounds you. You are never available to life directly, immediately.

A religious person is naked in this sense - he has no clothes of beliefs. He is simply direct, in touch with life.

In that touch, the melting. In that touch, the merging. In that touch, somewhere you are no more you. Somewhere you have become the whole and the whole has come to you. The ocean drops into the drop and the drop becomes the ocean.

Beliefs are dangerous. We go on changing beliefs. A hindu can become a mohammedan, a christian can become a hindu. Or a religious person, a so-called religious person, can become a communist; a theist can become an atheist - it makes no difference. You go on changing the glove, but the glove remains.

Can't you see life directly? Can't you love life directly? Is there really any need to believe in anything? Can't you trust life?

Let me say it in this way. People who cannot trust, believe. Belief is a substitute; a false coin, a deception. People who can trust need no beliefs. Life is enough. They don't overimpose any god, any nirvana, any moksha on top of it. There is no need. Life is more than enough. They live life.

Of course, if you have a belief, you can create a future around it. If you don't have any belief then you don't have any future, because life is herenow. There is no need to wait. But we go on postponing -to the very moment death comes and takes the gift back.

I was reading:

"Three men were engaged in one of those profitless conversations which involve all of us at one time or another. They were considering the problem of what each would do if the doctor told him he had only six months to live.

Said Robinson, 'If my doctor said I had only six months to live, the first thing I would do would be to liquidate my business, withdraw my savings, and have the biggest fling on the French Riviera you ever saw. I would play roulette, I would eat like a king, and most of all I would have girls, girls, and more girls."'

This man must have been postponing - postponing for death. When a doctor says you have only six months to live, then.... But that too seems to be just a wish, he may not be able - because when the death knocks at the door, one is so shocked and shattered.... When death has come near you, how can you enjoy? You could not enjoy when life was close. When life is receding farther away each moment, how can you enjoy? This is again just a way of believing that if it happens, then 'immediately I will start living'. Who is preventing you from living right now?

"The second man said, 'If my doctor said I had only six months to live, the first thing I would do would be to visit a travel agency and plot out a world tour. There are thousands of places on earth I have not seen and I would like to see them before I die - the Grand Canyon, the Taj Mahal, Angkor Wat - all of them.'"

Who is preventing you? Why are you waiting for death to come and then you will go and see the Taj Mahal? Will you be able to see the Taj Mahal then? Your eyes will be so filled with darkness that the Taj Mahal won't look like a Taj Mahal. It will be impossible to see when death has come into the mind. It will make you blind. An inner trembling will overpower you. You will not be able to hear, you will not be able to see, you will not be able even to breathe. But why do people go on postponing?

"Said the third man, 'If my doctor said I had only six months to live, the first thing I would do would be to consult another doctor.'"

This seems to be the most representative of all men. This is what you are also going to do. You are not going to live even then. You will try another doctor who can again give you hope, who can again give you future, who can again tell you, 'No need to be worried - you can still postpone. No need to be in a hurry - death is far away' You will find, you will seek someone, who can still give you hope.

Hope is a way of postponing life.

All desiring is a way of postponing life, and all beliefs are tricks how to avoid that which is and how to go on thinking about that which is not.

God is not. Life is. Please don't be seekers of god.

Nirvana is not. Life is. Please don't be seekers of nirvana.

And if you stop seeking nirvana, you will find nirvana hidden in life itself. If you stop seeking god, you will find god everywhere... in each particle, in each moment of life. God is another name of life. Nirvana is another name of life lived. You have just heard the word 'life'; it is not a lived experience.

Drop all beliefs, they are hindrances. Don't be a christian, don't be a hindu, don't be a mohammedan. Just be alive. Let that be your only religion.

Life - the only religion. Life - the only temple. Life - the only prayer.

I have heard, a disciple came to a zen master, bowed down, touched his feet and said, 'How long do I have to wait for my enlightenment?'

The master looked at him long, long enough. The disciple started getting restless. He repeated his question and he said, 'Why are you looking at me so long? Why don't you answer me?'

And the master answered a really zen answer. He said, 'Kill me.'

The disciple could not believe that this is the answer for his enlightenment. He went to ask the chief disciple. The chief disciple laughed and he said, The same he did to me also.' And he is right. He is saying, 'Why do you go on asking me? Drop this master. Drop this asking. Kill me. Drop all ideology. Who am I? I am not preventing you. Life is available. Why don't you start livig? Why do you go on preparing, when and how?

This seems to be the most difficult thing for the human mind - just to live, naked; just to live without any arrangements; just to live the raw and the wild life; just to live the moment.

And this is the whole teaching of all the great teachers, but you go on making philosophies out of them. Then you create a doctrine, and then you start believing in the doctrine.

There are many zen people who believe in zen - and zen teaches trust, not belief. There are many people around me who believe in me - and I teach you trust, not belief. If you trust your life, you have trusted me. No intellectual belief is needed.

Let this truth go as deep In you as possible: that life is already here, arrived. You are standing on the goal. Don't ask about the path.

In Franz Kafka there is a parable; It looks like zen, almost zen. Kafka says, 'I was staying in a strange town. I was a new arrival there, and I had to catch a train early in the morning. But when I got up and looked at my watch, I was already late so I started running. When I came to the tower and looked at the tower-clock I became even more afraid that I would miss my train, because my watch was itself late. So I started running... not knowing the path, not knowing the way... and the streets were clean and deserted. It was early in the morning, a cold winter morning, and I couldn't see anybody.

Then suddenly I saw a policeman. Hope came into me. I went to the policeman and I asked about the way, and the policeman said, "The way? Why are you asking me?"

And I said to him, "I am a stranger in this town and I don't know the way, that's why. Please show me the way, and don't waste time - I am already late and I will miss the train, and it is important to catch the train.

The policeman laughed and he said, "Who can show the way to anybody else?"

The policeman said this, and he waved a hand and moved away smiling.'

Here ends the parable. It looks exactly zen. In the West they think this is surrealistic, absurd. It is not. Of course from a policeman it looks more absurd than from a zen master, but sometimes policemen can be zen masters.

Who can show you the way? - because basically the way does not exist.

You are always on the goal. Wherever you are is the goal. The way does not exist.

If you go on asking about the way, you are trying to create future again and again - and future is the nightmare.

Look. This very moment life is pouring from everywhere. A single moment of witnessing - and you will laugh at the very absurdity of asking for a path or a way or a method. Nothing is to be done.

"A woman came up to a policeman and said, 'Oh officer, there is a man following me, and I think he must be crazy'

The officer took a good look at her. 'Yes,' he answered, 'he must be."'

 'Whenever you come to me asking for a way, I say within myself, 'Here comes a crazy man again.' If I don't show you the path, I look hard, unkind. If I show you the path, I mislead you.

The only thing that can be done is - you should be thrown to yourself. So I have to devise ways which are not ways, which only appear to be ways. They don't lead anywhere, because there is nowhere to go. Everybody is already there. There is nowhere to go.

I devise paths and methods just to tire you, exhaust you, so one day, in deep exhaustion, you simply drop all seeking, exhausted, you fall down on the ground... tired - tired of all ways and all methods, tired of the very seeking and the search... and suddenly a peace descends on you - the peace which is beyond understanding. And you will laugh, because it was always possible. It was because of you that it was not descending. You were running away.

All paths lead where; truth is here. All paths lead somewhere, and truth is always here. No paths can bring you to yourself.

That's why I say try hard, so that you can be tired soon. Don't go slow. Lukewarm you can go for lives and lives, hoping and hoping. Try hard. Try absolutely, totally, so that you can be tired -so much so that the sheer tiredness drops the whole effort, and suddenly lying on the ground you become aware of the reality that is here.

God is not a thing. God is the whole performance. You cannot catch hold of it. Nirvana is not somewhere. It is the whole performance of life.

I was reading a little story:

'It was springtime, and a teacher said to his little pupils, 'I saw something the other day, and I wonder if any of you have seen it. If you know it, don't say what it is. I went out and saw it coming up from the ground about ten inches high, and on top of it was a little round ball of fluff, and if you went WOOF, a whole galaxy of stars flew out. Now what was it like before the little ball of stars appeared?'

One said, 'It was a little yellow flower, like a sunflower, only very small.'

'And what was it like before that?'

A little girl said, 'It was like a tiny, green umbrella, half closed, with a yellow lining showing.'

'Yes, but what was it like before that?'

One of them said, 'It was a little rosette of green leaves coming out of the ground.'

'Now, do you all know what it is?'

They roared back, 'Dandelion!'

'And did you ever pick dandelions?' Most of them said yes, but the teacher said, 'No, you cannot pick a dandelion. That is impossible. A dandelion is all these things you mentioned, and more, so whatever you picked, you got only a fragment of something or other. You can't pick a dandelion because a dandelion is not a thing. It is a process and a performance. And, you know, everything is a process and a performance - even you.'"

You cannot pick even a dandelion, even a small flower, in its totality because the totality is tremendous. How can you pick god? You cannot pick a small flower. God is this whole performance. All that is today is god; all that has ever been is god; all that is ever going to be is god. God is not a thing; it is a process. And so infinite and so vast - how can you seek god? It is impossible.

You can live, you can drop into this infinite ocean of godliness. And that door opens right now. There is no need to wait.

The whole zen attitude is to bring to your notice the fact that there is no effort to be made. The zen attitude is that of effortlessness. That is where it differs from yoga. Yoga is effort; zen is effortlessness.

And of course, effort can lead somewhere, but it cannot lead to the ultimate. Effort can give you a better ego, more polished, more crystalized, but it cannot give you nirvana, it cannot give you god. That is beyond effort.

When all efforts cease, in that silence, in that beautiful emptiness, in that void, whatsoever is found is god.

Then what is to be done? The question naturally arises - then what to do? Understanding, more awareness, more witnessing. Watch yourself moving, living, being. Try to understand each moment that passes by you. Become a witness.

Remember, the witnessing does not mean judgement. You are not to judge that this is good and this is bad. The moment you judge, you lose the witness. If you say this is bad, you are already identified. If you say this is good, you have already slipped out of witnessing - you have become a judge.

A witness is a simple witness. You just watch as you watch the traffic on the road, or someday you lie down on the ground and you watch the clouds in the sky. You don't say this is good, that is bad; you simply don't make any judgements. You watch. You are unconcerned with what is good, what is bad. You are not trying to be moral. You are not trying any concepts... a pure witnessing. And out of that, more and more understanding arises and by and by you start feeling that the ordinary life is the only life; there is no other life.

And to be ordinary is the only way to be religious. All other extra-ordinary things are ego-trips.

Just to be ordinary is the most extraordinary thing in the world, because everybody wants to be extraordinary. Nobody wants to be ordinary. To be ordinary is the only extraordinary thing. Very rarely somebody relaxes and becomes ordinary. If you ask zen masters, 'What do you do?' they will say, 'We fetch wood from the forest, we carry water from the well. We eat when we feel hungry, we drink when we feel thirsty, we go to sleep when we feel tired. This is all.'

It does not look very appealing - fetching wood, carrying water, sleeping, sitting, eating. You will say, These are ordinary things. Everybody is doing them.'

These are not ordinary things, and nobody is doing them. When you are fetching wood, you are condemning it - you would like to be the president of some country. You don't want to be a woodcutter. You go on condemning the present for some imaginary future.

Carrying water from the well, you feel you are wasting your life. You are angry. You were not made for such ordinary things. You had come with a great destiny - to lead the whole world towards a paradise, some Utopia.

These are all ego-trips. These are all in states of consciousness.

Just to be ordinary... and then suddenly what you call trivia is no more trivia, what you call profane is no more profane. Everything becomes sacred. Carrying wood becomes sacred. Fetching water from the well becomes sacred.

And when every act becomes sacred, when every act becomes meditative and prayerful, only then are you moving deeper into life - and then life opens all the mysteries to you. Then you are becoming capable. Then you are becoming receptive. The more receptive you become, the more life becomes available.

This is my whole teaching: to be ordinary... to be so ordinary that the very desire to be extraordinary disappears. Only then can you be in the present; otherwise you cannot be in the present.

Montaigne has written: 'We seek other conditions because we know not how to enjoy our own, and go outside of ourselves for want of knowing what it is like inside of us. So it is no use raising ourselves on stilts, for even on stilts we have to walk on our own legs, and sitting on the loftiest throne in the world we are still sitting on our behind.' Wherever you are - fetching water or sitting on the throne as a king or as a president or a prime minister - makes no difference. Wherever you are, you are yourself.

If you are miserable in carrying wood, you will be miserable in being a president, because outside things can change nothing. If you are happy being a beggar, only then can you be happy being an emperor; there is no other way.

Your happiness has something to do with your quality of consciousness. It has nothing to do with outside things.

Unless you become awake, everything is going to make you more and more miserable. Once you are awake, everything brings tremendous happiness, tremendous benediction. It does not depend on anything else; it simply depends on the depth of your being, on your receptivity.

Carry wood, and when carrying wood just carry wood - and enjoy the beauty of it. Don't go on thinking of something else. Don't compare it. This moment is tremendously beautiful. This moment can become a satori. This moment can become the moment of samadhi.

Fetching water, be so totally in it that nothing is left outside. Fetching water, you are not there; only the process of fetching water is there. This is what nirvana is, enlightenment is.

I am talking to you; I am not there... just enjoying a chitchat with you, gossiping with you.

Listening to me, if you are also not there, then everything is fulfilled perfectly. If you are there listening to me, watching by the corner, standing there... watching if something valuable is being said so that you can hoard it for future use, watching if something meaningful is said so that you can make it part of your knowledge - 'it will be helpful to seek something, to be something'... then you will miss me.

I am not saying anything meaningful. I am not saying anything for any purpose in view. I am not giving you some knowledge. I am not here to make you more knowledgeable.

If you can listen to me the way I am talking to you... this moment is total, you are not moving outside it, the future has disappeared... then you will have a glimpse of satori. Remember that we are engaging here In a certain activity. This activity has to be so prayerful, so meditative, that in this activity, past is no more a burden and future does not corrupt it and this moment remains pure. This moment simply remains this moment.

Then I am not here and you are not there. Then this crowd disappears. Then we become waves of one ocean - that ocean is life, that ocean is god, that ocean is nirvana.

Nirvana is such a deep relaxation of your being that you disappear in that relaxation. Tense, you are; relaxed, you are not. Your ego can only exist if you are tense. If you are relaxed, god is, you are not.

Now the story, a very simple story. All zen stories are very simple. If you understand them, they show something. If you don't understand them then they say nothing.

All the great masters of the world have used the parable as a medium for their message, because the parable creates a picture. It is less conceptual; it brings things more to the heart. It reveals more, says less. There is no need for the mind to intellectualize about it. The parable is there, completely clear.

MUSO, THE NATIONAL TEACHER,

AND ONE OF THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS MASTERS OF HIS DAY,

LEFT THE CAPITAL IN THE COMPANY OF A DISCIPLE

FOR A DISTANT PROVINCE.

ON REACHING THE TENRYU RIVER

THEY HAD TO WAIT FOR AN HOUR

BEFORE THEY COULD BOARD THE FERRY.

JUST AS THE FERRY WAS ABOUT TO LEAVE THE SHORE

A DRUNKEN SAMURAI RAN UP

AND JUMPED INTO THE PACKED BOAT,

NEARLY SWAMPING IT.

A DRUNKEN SAMURAI... He may not be ordinarily drunk, but a samurai is always drunk. A samurai is a man who is after power. A samurai is a warrior. A samurai is drunk with the ego. He may not be drunk ordinarily - that is not the point. He may have been drunk, but all people who are after power are drunk.

The more you are after power, the more you are unconscious, because only unconsciousness can seek power. Consciousness lives life. Consciousness does not bother about power, because what is the use of power?

The use of power is that you can live someday through it. First you collect power... maybe it is hidden in the money, or in the sword. First you prepare - power is a preparation - and then someday you will live.

... A DRUNKEN SAMURAI RAN UP

AND JUMPED INTO, THE PACKED BOAT

NEARLY SWAMPING IT.

HE TOTTERED WILDLY AS THE SMALL CRAFT

MADE ITS WAY ACROSS THE RIVER.

THE FERRYMAN,

FEARING FOR THE SAFETY OF HIS PASSENGERS,

BEGGED HIM TO STAND QUIETLY.

'WE'RE LIKE SARDINES IN HERE,'

SAID THE SAMURAI GRUFFLY.

THEN, POINTING TO, MUSO,

'WHY NOT TOSS OUT THE BONZAE?'

Bonzae means a zen priest, a zen monk.

The story is beautiful. If politicians were allowed, then they would not like religious people on the earth at all. They would kill them, they would toss them out of the boat - because the only danger for the politician is the religious consciousness. The more people become religious, the more politics loses lustre.

The politician is after power, and the religious man is not after anything. The religious man wants to live herenow, and the politician is always preparing for some future - future which never comes. The politician is always after some Utopia, chasing it... after some dream. It never comes. All political revolutions have failed - failed utterly - because you go on sacrificing for the future, sacrificing the present for the future. And if the present is destroyed, from where is the future to come? It is going to be born out of the present.

You go on murdering the present in the hope that someday a beautiful future will be born out of it.

A beautiful future can be born only if the present is lived beautifully.

Politicians are always against religious people. If they are not, that simply means religious people are not religious people. Then religious people are also playing politics - in the name of religion. Christianity, islam, hinduism - all politics in the name of religion.

A really religious person wants to live herenow. He is not worried about the future and he is not trying to bring any revolution in the world, because he knows there is only one life and there is only one revolution and there is only one radical transformation - and that is one's own being.

He wants to love, he wants to live, he wants to pray, he wants to meditate. He wants to be left alone; nobody should disturb. He does not want to interfere in anybody's life and he does not want that anybody should be allowed to interfere in his life. And the whole politics is nothing but this -interfering in others' lives. Maybe you pretend that you are interfering for their sake... but you are interfering in people's lives.

The story is beautiful. Out of all persons the samurai said; 'Why not throw this bonzae out of the boat? It is much too crowded.'

'WE'RE LIKE SARDINES IN HERE,'

SAID THE SAMURAI GRUFFLY.

THEN, POINTING TO MUSO,

'WHY NOT TOSS OUT THE BONZAE?'

'PLEASE BE PATIENT,'

MUSO SAID, WE'LL REACH THE OTHER SIDE SOON.'

Ordinarily we should expect him to become angry, but he simply says. Please be patient. The other shore is not very far away.

It is a very symbolic sentence. A religious person remains patent, because he sees, he continuously understands, that this life is not worth being impatient about - the other shore is continuously coming close. Nothing is worth being impatient. Patience is more paying, gives you more of life. Becoming impatient means you will miss this moment. You will become restless.

He said, Don't be worried. It is a question of a few moments. No need to throw me or anybody else; no need to create any conflict. The other shore is coming close by. We will reach the other side soon.

This is the whole attitude of a religious person. He is not worried about trivia. Somebody has stolen his money. He is not worried about it; it doesn't matter. Somebody has insulted him - it does not matter.

It matters only to people who are not living life. Then ordinary, useless things, meaningless things, become very meaningful. A person who is living his life totally is so happy with it he is not disturbed. Whatsoever happens on the periphery makes no difference to the center. He remains the center of the cyclone.

'WHAT!' BAWLED THE SAMURAI, 'ME BE PATIENT?

LISTEN HERE, IF YOU DON'T JUMP OFF THIS THING

I SWEAR I'LL DROWN YOU.'

A politician, a power-oriented person, cannot be patient. The more impatient he is, the more possibility of succeeding in the world of power and politics. He cannot be patient, because time is running fast. Only a religious person can be patient, because he has come to know the quality of eternity. Paradoxically, the religious person knows that this life is going to end, but underneath this life there is a life which never ends. Paradoxically he knows this time is going to end in death but hidden beneath this time is eternity.

If you enter life you enter eternity. If you remain on the surface you remain in time. Time is impatience.

Look. In the West people are more time-conscious and of course more impatient. In the East people are not so time-conscious; naturally they are not so impatient.

Time brings impatience.

Christians are more impatient than hindus because hindus have an idea of rebirth and christians don't have any idea of rebirth. Only this life... such a small life seventy years - almost one-third is lost in sleep. By the time one becomes a little aware half of the life is gone and then in small things -earning the bread making a house working for the children the wife - the life is gone. One becomes impatient.

How to live more in such a small time? The only way the West has found is to go on increasing speed - the only way. If it used to take one day to travel travel in five minutes so that you can save time. This too great a hankering for speed is part of impatience. You can save time but then you don't know what to do with that time. You use it in saving more time... and this goes on and on.

Impatience is a feverish way of living. One should relax. Once you relax the time disappears and eternity reveals to you its own nature.

'WHAT! ME BE PATIENT? LISTEN HERE, IF YOU DON'T JUMP OFF THIS THING I SWEAR I WILL DROWN YOU.'

A politician cant be patient. You cannot think of Lenin or Hitler meditating. It would be a sheer wastage of time.

When you come to me from the West and you start meditating it is really a miracle. It is against all the conditioning that you have gone through. When you go back nobody will be able to understand what has happened to you... just wasting time - because time has to be used. It is already too short. Life is short and so many desires to be fulfilled. Why waste it in sitting with closed eyes and watching the navel? Do something before life is gone. If you live on the surface, you will remain impatient. If you enter deeper into the stream, you will come to feel that this life is not all, and the periphery is not the total. And the waves belong to the ocean, but the ocean itself is not only the waves - hidden just underneath the waves of time is the ocean of eternity.

A religious person can be patient, can be infinitely patient, because he knows nothing begins and nothing ends.

THE MASTER'S CALM SO INFURIATED THE SAMURAI

THAT HE STRUCK MUSO'S HEAD WITH HIS IRON FAN,

DRAWING BLOOD.

And it happens. If the master had been angry, the samurai could have understood the language -his own language - but because the master remained silent... not only silent, absolutely patient... this infuriated him very much.

If somebody insults you and you remain silent, as if nothing has happened, the person will get more angry; he will get angrier. If you had been angry he could have understood it, but he cannot understand the silence. In fact, in your silence he feels very much insulted. In your silence you become a tower, a height. In your silence he becomes like a worm, a very small thing. That hurts.

Jesus has said, 'if somebody slaps your right cheek, give him the left also.'

Nietzsche commented on this, saying, 'Never do this, because this will insult the other person more. Rather, hit him hard. He will respect that more. At least you accept him as your equal.'

And Nietzsche is also right. He has a very penetrating eye.

A religious person... his very presence infuriates the politician. And when he is insulted and he takes it easily, as if nothing has happened, that drives the other person almost mad.

That's how they crucified Jesus. The priests, the politicians, the power-addicted people, they could not tolerate this humble and simple man.   He was not doing any harm to them.   In fact he was teaching people harmless things. He was teaching them to become innocent like children. He was teaching them 'blessed are the meek'. But they became infuriated. They had to kill him, because his very presence became very humiliating to them. Such a tower, such a peak, a pinnacle of love, compassion, humbleness - they could not tolerate him.

MUSO'S DISCIPLE HAD HAD ENOUGH BY THIS TIME,

AND AS HE WAS A POWERFUL MAN,

WANTED TO CHALLENGE THE SAMURAI.

'I CAN'T PERMIT HIM TO GO ON LIVING AFTER THIS,' HE SAID.

A disciple is a disciple. He has yet not understood. He is still in the same ego. Maybe he has become religious, but the ego continues.

If somebody says something against me, you will feel angry. Now your ego is attached to me. If somebody says that this man is nothing, you become angry. Not because you are too much concerned with this man, but because if this man is nothing and you are following this man, you are even worse than nothing. It hits the ego. If you follow me I must be the greatest master in the world. You are following me - how can you follow me if I am not the greatest master in the world?

Remember, that is again a game of the ego. You will try to prove that 'my master is the greatest master in the world'. It is not a question of the master. How can you be a follower of a lesser master? Impossible. You - and a follower of a lesser master? That's not possible.

'I CAN'T PERMIT HIM,' said the disciple, TO GO ON LIVING AFTER THIS.'

'WHY GET SO WORKED UP OVER A TRIFLE?'

MUSO SAID WITH A SMILE.

'IT'S EXACTLY IN MATTERS OF THIS KIND

THAT THE BONZAE'S TRAINING PROVES ITSELF.

PATIENCE, YOU MUST REMEMBER,

IS MORE THAN JUST A WORD'

It is a great experience. Now this is the moment to be patient and to enjoy it. This fellow has given a beautiful opportunity to be patient. Be thankful to him. He has given a challenge. But don't let that challenge become a challenge for your ego. Let that be a challenge for your patience. The same situation - but you can use it or you can be used by it.

If you are used by it you are an unconscious man. Then you react. All reaction is unconscious.

If you are conscious you never react. You act. Action is conscious reaction is unconscious.

Reaction means that that man became the master of the situation: he pushed the button and you became angry. You became a puppet in his hands. But if you remain patient, if you smile, suddenly you are out of the vicious circle of unconsciousness.

Use situations and then you will come to see that even enemies are friends and even darkest nights will bring beautiful dawns. And when there was anger thrown at you you will see compassion arising in you. These are the rarest moments. And you will feel thankful and grateful to the person who created the situation.

'WHY GET SO WORKED UP OVER A TRIFLE?

IT'S EXACTLY IN MATTERS OF THIS KIND

THAT THE BONZAE'S TRAINING PROVES ITSELF.

PATIENCE YOU MUST REMEMBER

IS MORE THAN JUST A WORD'

Patience is a great experience a great existential experience.

THEN HE RECITED AN EXTEMPORE WAKA:

THE BEATER AND THE BEATEN:

MERE PLAYERS OF A GAME

EPHEMERAL AS A DREAM.'

This is what witnessing is all about.

If you can become a witness in a situation, suddenly you are out of it, no more part of It. If you lose your witnessing, even in a dream you become part of It.

You go to the movie, you watch the movie. You are just a watcher there, but sooner or later you forget all about your being a watcher - you become part of the story. You smile, you cry, you weep, you become angry, you become agitated - and there Is nothing on the screen, just shadows passing, but you have lost the witnessing. You are almost identified now. You are part of the story now. Then even shadows passing on the screen become realities.

Just the opposite happens: if you stand by the side of the road and simply watch people passing, suddenly you will see real persons have become ephemeral, shadows on the screen.

The whole thing depends on you. If you are identified, an unreal thing becomes real. If you are unidentified, even a real thing becomes unreal.

A man who comes to know what witnessing is, for him this whole life is nothing but a big dream, a big drama.

THE BEATER AND THE BEATEN:

MERE PLAYERS OF A GAME

EPHEMERAL AS A DREAM.'

This is one of the greatest insights the East has achieved - that life, life that you know as life, is ephemeral, illusory, maya. It is not real.

There is another life. If you become aware, then you enter the temple of reality. Unawareness allows you only to live in a dream.

WHEN THE BOAT REACHED SHORE,

AND MUSO AND HIS DISCIPLE ALIGHTED,

THE SAMURAI RAN UP

AND PROSTRATED HIMSELF AT THE MASTER'S FEET.

THEN AND THERE HE BECAME A DISCIPLE.

First, if you remain silent when the situation was ordinarily demanding anger, if you remain patient when the other was expecting impatience and trouble, he will be infuriated, he will be hurt, humiliated. He would like to take revenge - you are playing god to him.

But if you continue, if you are not tempted and you remain in your silence, in your tranquility, you remain centered and rooted in your being, sooner or later the other is going to relax. Because silence is such a power, silence is such a transforming force, silence is so alchemical... it is the only magic in the world... the other is bound to be transformed.

Just wait a little. Don't be in a hurry. The other will take a little time. Give him opportunity.

The samurai ran, fell at the feet of the master.

THEN AND THERE HE BECAME A DISCIPLE.

Whenever you come against something like this - a real patience, a real substantial silence - deep down something is touched in your heart also. Deep down you are no more the same. Something real has penetrated like a ray of light into your darkness.

The world is transformed by people who live in this world as if this world is just a dream. People are changed, transfigured, by those who live in this world unconcerned, indifferent to trivia... who live a life of inner centering, who live in the world but don't allow the world to enter them, who live in the world but the world does not live in them, who remain untouched, who carry their silence everywhere - in the marketplace they remain in their inner temple... nothing distracts them from their being.

These people become catalytic agents. These people bring a totally new quality to human consciousness. A buddha, a jesus, a krishna, a mohammed - they bring another world into this world.

That is the meaning of the hindu word 'avatar'. It means they bring god into the world; the god descends through them. A vision... they become windows. Through them you can have a vision, a glimpse of something that is beyond.

One of the most influential writers, authors and thinkers, of the West was Aldous Huxley. He was very much in tune with the eastern idea of inner centering. He was one of the western minds who penetrated very deeply into the eastern attitude towards life. It is said that when a californian brushfire destroyed a lifetime's possessions, Aldous Huxley felt only an unexpected freedom.'l feel clean,' he said.

He had a really beautiful collection of rare antiques, rare books, rare paintings - the whole life's possession - and the whole possession was destroyed in a fire. Looking at the flames, he could not believe it himself that he simply felt unburdened, a sense of freedom. Disturbed not at all; on the contrary, a sense of freedom - as if the fire had been a friend. And later on he said, 'I feel clean.' This is the eastern attitude.

If you are centered, nothing can be destroyed. No fire can destroy your centering. Not even death is capable of distracting you.

And this centering is possible only if you start living each moment meditatively, fully alert, aware. Don't move like an automaton. Don't react like a mechanism. Become conscious. Collect yourself more and more so that a crystallized consiousness continuously illuminates your inner being, a flame goes on burning there and it lights wherever you move. The path, the way, whatsoever you do, it lights it.

This inner flame, this inner light is there, potentially there... like a seed. Once you start using it, it sprouts. Soon you will see - the spring has come and it is blossoming and you are full of the fragrance of the unknown and the unknowable. God has descended in you.

CHAPTER 4

The Drunken Dancer

14 February 1976 am in Buddha Hall

Question 1

I DON'T UNDERSTAND - WHAT DOES THE WORD GOD MEAN? I REALLY DON'T UNDERSTAND. GOD, WHAT IS THAT? YOU SAY LIFE IS EVERYTHING. LIFE IS WHAT IS, WHAT COUNTS, HERE AND NOW - NO PLANNING, NO WISHING, NO WANTING, NO HOPING, NO SEARCHING. LIVE NOW, SPONTANEOUSLY. JUST BE.

YES. I UNDERSTAND THAT, BUT WHAT IS GOD? IS GOD THE SAME WORD FOR LIFE. FOR WHAT IS? BUT WHY DO WE USE THE WORD 'GOD' AND NOT JUST LIFE?

THEY SAY GOD IS THE ONE WHO CREATED THE WORLD. IS THAT WHAT GOD IS?

THE question is of course from somebody who is very new here. Many things will have to be understood.

First: there is no need to understand what god is, because whatsoever god is cannot be understood. Understanding is not the right direction towards god. Understanding means you are trying intellectually - through logic, reason, concepts - and that's the sure way to miss god.

It is as if somebody is trying to see through the ears. He will not be able to see. Or somebody is trying to hear with the eyes. He will not be able to hear. The ears are to hear and the eyes are to see.

The intellect is utilitarian. It helps while you are moving outside of your being. It is helpful as a guide in the world of the without. The moment you turn inwards it becomes useless; it is no more a guide. Then it misguides. There is a limit to the intellect... and god can be felt only, not understood.

When you are moving inwards, you come closer to the source of your own being - and that is the source of all being. If I can come to my own self, I have come to the supreme self, because at the center I am no more I AM; I am the whole.

But the movement has to be inwards, the movement has to be somewhere deep in the depth.

Intellect is superficial - so if you are trying to understand god, you will go on missing. The first thing to be understood is that understanding is not the right direction. Feeling....

"Once a christian missionary asked a very primitive man, an aboriginal, 'Who told you what you know of god?'

The primitive laughed and replied, Told? Whoever is so stupid that they have got to be told about god? Never did any man know god by tolds. You get god by feels. All the told there is to it is his name. You call him god, I call him gallah. I english gallah's name so you can understand me, but whoever has got anything by tolds?'"

Whatsoever you know about god is through tolds - the parents, the society, the culture. It is your conditioning. And now you have got a concept about god and you are trying to understand that word. God is not a word. The word 'god' is not god. The word is simply a word; in itself empty and meaningless.

If you really want to know what god is, you will have to drop the word and move into feeling. You will have to drop the mind and move into no-mind. Love will bring you closer to it than thinking.

And when I say life is god, I am saying that if you want, you can experience god but you cannot understand. Life cannot be understood. You can live it - that is the only understanding there is. But you are worried. You say that you understand that - but what is god? If you understand that, if you understand what life is, you will never ask what god is. In that very understanding, the problem of god is solved.

A man who has lived life in its totality has understood all that is there to understand. He will be full of god. He has given enough of god to himself and there will be no problem of understanding.

You have not given anything of life to yourself. Empty you live. Hiding in a cocoon you live. Blind, deaf, you live. Dead you live. You have not given any life at all to your being - and there is the flavour, there is the taste of what god is.

You have to eat out of life. You have to drink out of life. You have to live, merge into it.

But the mind is cunning; it goes on thinking about god. Thinking is a very secure situation. You never go out of yourself. You go on playing with words. If you are too interested in the word, if you want to know what the word 'god' means... it doesn't mean god. If you are only interested in the linguistic symbol 'god', then you can ask the linguists; don't come to me. They say that 'god' is derived from a word 'ghu-to'. That 'ghu-to' means 'the called one', nothing else.

If you call life, it becomes god - the called one. If you provoke life, it becomes god.

God is a certain situation in life when you provoke it, when you pray to it, when you are in a deep dialogue with it. When you look at the sky and you say, 'Father, who art in heaven...' you have called life. Now life is no more just life - it has become the called one, the provoked one. The word 'god' simply means that.

In deep love, someday one cries, one starts uttering words... a dialogue arises. Life is no more 'it'; it becomes a 'thou'. That is the meaning of the word god. If life becomes your beloved, if life becomes a thou and you are in deep relationship with it, suddenly life has become god.

God is a deep communion with life.

If you are just trying to understand the word.... Yes, there is a need to use a different word - 'god' -rather than just calling it life. Life provoked, called. Life in deep relationship.

An ordinary woman passes by. She is a woman - but if love calls in your heart she is no more a woman; she is a beloved. We can say all beloveds are women. To become a beloved is a certain function in the being of a woman - when she is called, when she is no more just a she... becomes thou, becomes related.

Have you watched this transfiguration? The woman may have passed you many times, you may have seen her many times, yet she was just a woman, as there are millions of women. Then suddenly one day something changes. The woman is no more an ordinary woman; she has become divine. She is a beloved. Now suddenly she has come close to you; your heart has called.

Or a man. You know him, as one of so many men - just a statistic, just a number in millions of men; he has no particular face for you, is unrelated to you... if that man disappears and is replaced by another, you will not even notice the difference; he is only a number, is not yet a person to you; unprovoked, uncalled, he remains anonymous, he has no name.... Then suddenly one day love arises. He is no more an ordinary man; he has become a god.

Provoked, called, related, you have become... a communion has happened. And not only that the man has changed; you are also changed simultaneously. Something of the beyond has entered.

Yes, there is a function of the word 'god' - life provoked, life become a thou, life become a person. You are no more indifferent to it. You feel for it - a communion has happened. Then life becomes god. Then life is no more with a lower case T; now it is with a capital 'L - Life.

But there is no way to understand god through intellect, because there is no way to understand love through intellect.

God is love provoked. And in that light of love, everything is transformed. It is alchemical, magical.

Give a little of god to you. That's my whole effort. When I say life is god, I am meaning to say don't see god in the temples and the mosques and the churches. There you will find the god of the philosophers, theologians - which is a bogus god, a false coin, a counterfeit. Look in the trees, in the flowers, in the stars, in humanity, in animals, in birds. Wherever there is life, look deep down there. Provoke god there. Pray there. Pray before a tree. Pray before an animal. Pray before the stars. Provoke god there. There is the real temple.

When I say life is god, I mean this - don't be confined in temples and don't be confined in churches and don't be confined by bibles and gitas and korans. Don't be confined at all. Life is infinite. Meet life as it is. Meet the infinite. Don't be afraid of the infinite.

Where is the fear of the infinite? The fear is that with the infinite you will disappear. In a church you cannot disappear. You can manage. A church is your construction. It is arbitrary. It is artificial. It is a plastic flower. You can control it, manipulate it. Behind the curtain are your hands. The god in the church is your creation.

The real god is totally different. If you come to the real god - the life - then you are god's creation. Then god is behind everything. In the church you are behind everything. The church is a deception.

So when I say life is god, I simply mean don't create substitute gods, don't create substitute temples. This vast space is the temple and this infinitely moving life is the god. Give a little of god to you and then you will understand. And that understanding will not be of the intellect; that will be more of your total being. It will be more of the blood and the guts.

I was-reading an anecdote:

"A man was brooding over his beer at the bar-room, and said to his friend, 'I tell you, Mulligan, I don't know what I am going to do about my wife.'

'What is it now?'

The same old thing - money. She is always asking for money. Only last Thursday she wanted ten dollars, yesterday she was around asking for twenty, and this morning, if you please, she demanded fifty dollars!'

'What does she do with all the money, for heaven's sake?' asked the friend.

There is no way of finding out. I never give her any'

Give a little of god to you, then you will stop asking what god is. You don't give yourself a little of god and then you go on asking.

Nobody else can give you god, remember. You will have to come to terms with god on your own.

I cannot give god to you. God is not a commodity, it is not a thing. It is such an experience that only you can have it.

You will have to move alone. You will have to go totally alone, naked of all thoughts, totally naked, naked of all philosophies, naked of all scriptures. And once you have tasted a little, you will understand.

Love life, and by and by a light will arise in your being. Through deep love of life one comes to understand what god is.

The last part of the question is: THEY SAY GOD IS THE ONE WHO CREATED THE WORLD.

God is the world. The mind goes on creating dualisms. It says god is the one who created the world. Then the world is separate and god is separate. God is not separate. He cannot be separate from his world. If he is separate, the world cannot exist for a single moment without him. He is the very life of life.

So don't imagine god as a painter who paints on a canvas and then the canvas is separate and god is separate. The painter can die but the painting can continue.

Because of this duality, Nietzsche could say, 'God is dead.' What is the need of him? He created the world - finished! Why go on carrying the load? What is the need of god? Once he created the world then what is the need? The world is there, you are there. This god can only be a hindrance. He will come between you and your life - be finished with him!

And Nietzsche was right in a way: that is the logical conclusion of duality. The world is perfectly right without him. Why bring him in? In fact, the more you bring him in, the more trouble arises. Look at the religions. How many wars, murders, violence?... What has not happened in the name of religion? The world has suffered tremendously.

Be finished with the god. He created the world; give him a last thank you and be finished. Now he is no more needed. Already too old, almost a ruin....

Nietzsche said, 'God is dead, and man is free now.' This is the logical conclusion of dualistic thinking.

In the East we have never thought of god as a painter. We have thought of god as a dancer. The dance cannot be separated from the dancer; the painting can be separated. That's why dance is alive and painting is dead. Howsoever beautiful a painting, it is dead. It is separate from the creator. The moment it is separate it is dead. It may have lived a life in the mind of the painter, it may have been alive when it was not painted. The moment it is painted it is finished; it is already a dead product. But a dance....

In India we call god 'nataraj' - the god of dancers. You must have seen Shiva dancing. That is the eastern concept about god - a non-dual concept. When the dancer stops, the dancing stops. You cannot separate the dancing from the dancer. And dancing comes to a culmination, to a crescendo, when the dancer is completely lost in it - when there is neither a dancer nor a dancing; both are one... one movement of sheer energy and delight.

That's why nothing can be compared with dancing - poetry, painting, sculpture; nothing comes close to it. Dancing remains the supreme art. And that is the first art that was born and that will remain the last art also, because dancing has some quality in it of life itself.

God is a dancer. He is not a creator in the sense of a painter; he is a creator in the sense of a dancer.

Then let me say it in another way. God is not a creator but creativity... a dynamic energy. The moment you say creator, he is dead. The very word 'creator' has a full-stop in it. Creativity with an open end, tremendously moving and moving and reaching to higher and higher peaks....

The animals are a dance of god. The trees are also a dance of god. Humanity is also a dance of god, reaching higher and higher. God is moving faster and faster - more mad, more fast, getting dissolved into his dance.

A buddha or a jesus is the ultimate of his dance... where the dancer is so completely drunk and mad that he has become the dance.

That's why I say that if you live life in its dynamism you will come closer to god - because he is still dancing. Don't say that he created the world - he is still creating. Otherwise how do the trees go on growing? How do the flowers go on blooming? Every moment the world is being renewed. Every morning fresh life is released.

No, the christian god is false - the god who created the world in six days and then rested on the seventh. It doesn't seem true - a holiday for a god will be a death. Just think of it. A holiday for a god will be a death to his creation. The dancer cannot go for a holiday otherwise the dance will disappear. And the very idea that god got tired is stupid. He is still creating. He is nothing but creativity.

Think in terms of energy; don't think in terms of things. Think in terms of energy. The wild ocean.... God is a wild ocean of energy - goes on and on, waves upon waves, nonending. There has never been a beginning. The very idea of a beginning is of the mind. How can the world begin?

Before Darwin, christians used to believe that god created the world on a particular date. One foolish theologian even decided the date and the day - four thousand and four years before Jesus, exactly on a Monday he started... it must have been the first of January.

Then the question arises - what was he doing before that? Don't ask christians; they will get angry. Even a man like Saint Augustine became very very angry. One man asked - the question seems to be relevant and innocent - he asked, 'I can understand that god created the world four thousand and four years before Jesus Christ was born, but what was he doing before that?'

Of course there is no answer to it in christian theology. Saint Augustine became very angry and he said, 'He was brooding and thinking about punishments for people like you who ask such questions.'

This is not very saintly. The question was very innocent; this anger is irrelevant. But the man raised a question which topples down the whole christian theology. No, there has never been a beginning. There cannot be, because then the question will always arise - what was there before the beginning? And there is never going to be any end, because the. question will arise - then what will be after the end? If you can conceive anything before the beginning, then that was not the beginning. If you can conceive anything after the end, then that is not the end.

The world is an ongoing process. God is creativity - creating and creating and creating. In fact the moment I say creating, I don't feel very happy. Language is not exactly capable of expressing it. The moment I say 'creating', again it seems that he is separate.

No, he is the creator and he is the created. He is the same energy which becomes a rock, becomes a tree, becomes a man... the same energy which becomes a sinner and becomes a saint... the same energy which weeps and cries and laughs... the same energy which becomes the day and the night, life and death, summer and winter - non-dual.

Existence is god called through love, provoked through love. The moment you become capable of prayer, existence becomes god. The moment you become capable of deep love, life becomes god. It is a transfiguration of the same energy.

So, god is not something which exists there like an object. If I have experienced him, I cannot show him to you. Unless you provoke him, unless you. come to terms with him, unless you kneel down in prayer, unless you call him, you cannot know him.

And the dilemma is that first you want to be perfectly certain whether he is, then you can pray. And only through prayer he is; only through trust he is. And you want first to be certain about the very hypothesis that god is, then you can trust.

Now this the dilemma. If you choose that first you need certainty, then you will never be able to know what god is.

It is only for gamblers to know god... who are not worried about certainty, who are ready to move in danger, who are ready to move in insecurity, who are ready to move into the unknown, who are ready to leave the comfortable past, the convenient past, who are like small children - always wondering and always wandering.

God is only for those who are courageous. It is the greatest courage there is.

Because it is the most difficult thing - almost impossible for the mind to do. First comes trust and then arises god. You create god through your trust. Here you open the eyes of trust and suddenly life takes a change, is transformed - it becomes godly, it becomes divine.

God is your subjectivity, your innermost rest, coming at home.

God has nothing to do with theology; it has something to do with the way you live your life - whether you live through the mind or you live through the heart.

If you live through the heart, forget all about god; he will take care himself. He will come, he will knock at your heart. Sooner or later you will hear the sound of his footsteps coming closer and closer. Your very heartbeats will become the footsteps... the sound of his footsteps. Your very breathing will be his coming in and his going out.

Question 2

CHAPTER 4. THE DRUNKEN DANCER

IF ONE IS IN THE SITUATION OF MUSO'S DISCIPLE - WISHING TO TERMINATE A SAMURAI FOR DARING TO ASSAULT THE MASTER - SHOULD ONE DO IT WITH CONCRETE TOTALITY, AND MEDITATE AFTERWARDS, OR SUPPRESS THE EGO-BASED IMPULSE, OR IS THERE A THIRD ALTERNATIVE?

The first thing, and the most basic to be understood, is that whatsoever you do, it should not be a reaction. If it is an act then there is no problem.

If Muso's disciple had acted out of his spontaneity, Muso would have certainly blessed him, but he started saying, that he would like to do this, he cannot allow this man to live any more, he has insulted his master.... If he had acted rather than brooding about it, rather than bringing the mind in; if he had acted with no-mind, the master would have certainly blessed him.

Action is always good; reaction always bad.

So try first to understand this term 'reaction'. It means you are acting unconsciously. Somebody is manipulating you. Somebody says something, does something, and you react. The real master of the situation is somebody else. Somebody comes and insults you and you react, you become angry. Somebody comes and praises you and you smile and you become happy. Both are the same. You are a slave and the other knows how to push your buttons. You are behaving like a mechanism. You are an automaton, not a man yet.

Act, don't react. Don't be a plaything in the hands of others.

And you cannot predict a man who acts out of no-mind; only mind is predictable. If the disciple was a realized man, a man alert, nobody can say what turn the story would have taken - nobody can say. Nobody can say; a thousand and one alternatives open for consciousness.

The story would have been totally different, that much is certain. He may have thrown the samurai out of the boat, or he himself may have jumped out of the boat, or he may have even thrown Muso, his master, out of the boat. Nobody knows.

Consciousness is total freedom. But one thing is certain: whatsoever would have happened, the master would have blessed it - if it was out of no-mind, spontaneous, an act totally in the present, not controlled by anybody else, coming out of his own being....

We react according to our conditionings. If you have been born in a vegetarian family and non-vegetarian food is placed on your table, you will feel nausea, vomiting, sickness. Not because of the non-vegetarian food, but because of your conditioning. Somebody else who has been conditioned for non-vegetarian food will relish the very sight of it, will feel appetite not nausea, will feel happy, will be thrilled. That too is a conditioning.

We react because we have been conditioned in a certain way. You can be conditioned to be very polite. You can be conditioned to be always in control. You can be conditioned to be silent. You can be conditioned to remain still in situations where people ordinarily become disturbed and distracted. But if it is a conditioning then it has nothing to do with religion; then it has something to do with psychology. And Buddha or Jesus are not masters there - B.F Skinner and Pavlov, they are the masters there. It is a conditioned reflex.

I have heard a story. In B. F. Skinner's lab, a new mouse was introduced.

They go on working with mice because they don't give any more credit to man. They think that if they can understand the mind of a mouse, they have understood humanity.

The old mouse, who had been there with Skinner for a very long time, initiated the new and said, 'Look. This professor B. F. Skinner is a very good man, but you have to condition him first. Push this button and immediately breakfast comes in. I have conditioned him perfectly'

B. F. Skinner thinks he has conditioned his lab mice, and they think they have conditioned him.

Conditioning is a murder; the spontaneity is killed. The mind is fed with certain ideas and you are not allowed to respond; you are only allowed to react. In small things or great things, it is the same.

If you have been brought up in a religious family, the word 'god' is so beautiful, so holy. But if you have been brought up in a communist family in Soviet Russia, then the very word is ugly, nauseating. One feels as if it would leave a bad taste in the mouth to utter the word.

Small or big is not the question. If you go on behaving the way you have been conditioned, you are functioning as a machine; the man has not been born yet.

"It is said that when you tell an englishman a joke, he will laugh three times. He will laugh the first time - when you tell it - to be polite. He will laugh a second time - when you explain it - again to be polite. (That is the training of the englishman - continuously being polite.) Finally he will laugh a third time in the middle of the night when he wakes from a sound sleep and suddenly gets it.

When you tell a german the same joke, he will laugh twice. He will laugh first - when you tell it - to he polite. He will laugh a second time - when you explain it - to be polite. He will never laugh a third time, because he will never get it.

When you tell an american the same joke, he will laugh once - when you tell it - for he will get it.

And when you tell a jew the same joke, he won't laugh at all. Instead he will say, 'It's an old joke, and besides, you are telling it all wrong.'

It may be a joke, or it may be a great philosophy. It may be trivia or god himself - it makes no difference. People behave the way they are conditioned to behave, the way they are brought up to behave, the way they are expected to behave. Nature is not allowed to function; only nurture is allowed to function. This is the man whom we call a slave.

When you become free, when you drop all conditioning and for the first time you look at life with fresh eyes, with no clouds of conditioning in between, then you become unpredictable. Then nobody knows, then nobody can imagine what is going to happen. Because then you are no more there; god acts through you. Right now only society goes on acting through you.

Once you are simply alert, ready to respond, with no fixed idea, with no prejudice, with no plan, whatsoever happens in the moment, you become true and authentic.

Remember two words - authority and authenticity. Ordinarily you behave according to the authority that has conditioned you - the priest, the politician, the parents. You behave according to the authority.

A religious man behaves not according to the authority; he behaves through his own authenticity. He responds. A situation arises there, a challenge is there - he responds with his total being. Even he himself cannot predict it.

When you ask a question, even I don't know what answer I am going to give to you. When I give it, only then I also know; only then I say, so, this was the answer. Your question is there, I am here - a response is bound to happen.

Response is responsibility. Response is authenticity. Response is living in the moment.

So, if the disciple was a little more aware, I don't know what would have happened. What would have happened I don't know; nobody can say.

You can always predict for unconscious people. I can say that if you were there instead of that disciple, the same would have happened - the same. Only two possibilities are there: either you would have been a coward or you would have been a brave man. If you were strong, you would have behaved in the same way the disciple behaved. If you were a weakling, you would have found some rationalizations to hide behind. These are the two alternatives.

But for a real man of understanding there are no alternatives - all possibilities are always open; no door is closed. And each moment decides. He does not carry a decision beforehand; he has no ready-made decisions. Fresh, virgin, he moves. That is the virginity of an enlightened man... uncorrupted by the past.

Listening to this story, you can do two things. One: you can try to be patient, as the master said to his disciple. If you try to be patient, that will be a suppression. It is not going to help. That patience is not going to be true; deep down there will be turmoil, a crowd, impatience, and on the surface you will pretend that you are patient.

The second possibility is that you understand that the reaction was just a reaction, a mechanical reaction, and you become more alert. Not that you suppress your impatience; you become more alert, you become more aware, and patience follows like a shadow.

Awareness is the key. If you become aware, everything follows.

Don't try to become anything - patient, loving, non-violent, peaceful. Don't try. If you try, you will force yourself and you will become a hypocrite. That's how the whole religion has turned into hypocrisy. Inside you are different; on the outside painted. You smile, and inside you would have liked to kill. Inside you car;y on all rubbish and on the outside you go on sprinkling perfume. Inside you stink; on the outside you create an illusion as if you are a roseflower.

Never repress. Repression is the greatest calamity that has happened to man. And it has happened for very beautiful reasons. You look at a buddha or a muso - so silent, undisturbed. A greed arises:

you would also like to be like them. What to do? You start trying to be a stone statue. Whenever there is a situation and you can be disturbed, you hold yourself. You control yourself.

Control is a dirty word. It has not four letters in it, but it is a four-letter word.

Freedom.... And when I say freedom I don't mean licence. You may understand... when I say freedom you may understand licence, because that's how things go. A controlled mind, whenever it hears about freedom immediately understands it as licence. Licence is the opposite pole of control. Freedom is just in between, just exactly in the middle, where there is no control and no licence.

Freedom has its own discipline, but it is not forced by any authority. It comes out of your awareness, out of authenticity. Freedom should never be misunderstood as licence, otherwise you will again miss.

Awareness brings freedom. In freedom there is no need for control, because there is no possibility for licence. It is because of licence that you have been forced to control, and if you remain licentious the society will go on controlling you.

It is because of your licentiousness that the policeman exists and the judge and the politician and the courts, and they go on forcing you to control yourself. And in controlling yourself you miss the whole point of being alive, because you miss celebration. How can you celebrate if you are too controlled?

It happens almost every day. When people come to see me who are very much controlled and disciplined, it is almost impossible to penetrate their skull; they are too thick... walls of stone around them. They have become stoney, they have become ice-cold, the warmth is lost. Because if you are warm, there is fear - you may do something. So they have killed themselves, completely poisoned themselves. To remain in control, they have found only one solution and that is not to live at all. So be a stone buddha. Then you will be able to pretend that you are patient, silent, disciplined.

But that is not what I am teaching here. Control has to be dropped as much as licence. Now you will be puzzled. You can choose either control or licence. You say, 'If I drop control, I will become licentious. If I drop licence then I have to become controlled.' But I tell you, if you become aware, control and licence both go down the same drain. They are two aspects of the same coin, and in awareness they are not needed.

It happened:

"An eighteen year-old boy, who had always been somewhat shy and retiring, one evening decided to change himself. He came down from his bedroom, all slicked up, and snapped at his father, 'Look, I'm going out on the town - I'm going to find some beautiful girls. I'm going to get blind drunk and have a great time. I'm going to do all the things a fellow of my age should be doing in the prime of life and get a bit of adventure and excitement, so just don't try and stop me!'

His old man said, Try and stop you? Hold on, my son, I'm coming with you.'

All controlled people are in that state - bubbling inside to explode into licentiousness.

Go and see your monks in the monasteries. In India we have that type of neurosis very much. They are all neurotics. This is something to be understood - either you become erotic or you become neurotic. If you repress your eras, eroticness, you become neurotic. If you drop your neurosis, you become erotic.

And both are sorts of madnesses. One should be simply oneself - neither neurotic nor erotic, available to all situations, ready to face whatsoever life brings, ready to accept and live - but always alert, conscious, aware, mindful.

So the only thing to be constantly remembered is selfremembrance. You should not forget yourself. And always move from the innermost core of your being. Let actions flow from there, from your very center of being, and whatsoever you do will be virtuous.

Virtue is a function of awareness.

If you do something from the periphery, it may not look like a sin, but it is sin. The society may be happy with you, but you cannot be happy with yourself. The society may praise you, but you deep down will go on condemning yourself because you will know you have missed life - and missed for nothing.

What is it - the praise of the society? If people call you a saint, what is it? Nothing but gossip. How does it matter? You have missed god for gossip. You have missed life for these foolish people who are all around, for their good opinion.

Live life from your very center. This is all that meditation is about. And by and by you will come to feel a discipline that is not forced, not cultivated, which arises spontaneously, arises naturally like a flower blooms. Then you will have the whole life available, and you will have your whole being available. And when your whole being and the whole life meet, between the two arises that which is god, between the two arises that which is nirvana.