Chapter 3. Love is a Resurrection - Osho

Osho - Walk Without Feet, Fly Without Wings and Think Without Mind

Chapter 3. Love is a Resurrection

Question 1:

What is herenow? Does 'thought' form part of it? If so, then all-time and all-things are now. Or... Is herenow only in no-mind?

Divya, thought is the capacity of not being here - so thought cannot exist in the herenow, it cannot be part of it. That is impossible. Thought can only be either of the past or of the future. Thought can never be of the present. In the very process of thinking, that is implied; it is intrinsic to it.

The moment you think, either you think of the past or you think of the future. It may be the immediate past, but it is still past - it is never the present, it cannot be the present.

Thought needs space. And the present moment has no space in it. Thought creates the past and the future to live in. The bigger the past, the more easily thought can move; the bigger the future, again, the more easily thought can move. The present is not capable of giving that space for thought to move.

The present moment is a moment of no-mind. Whenever you are in the present you don't function as a mind. Your body is in the present but your mind is never. Your body is always in the present - that's why the body is so beautiful and mind is so ugly.

And, down the ages, you have been taught to be with the mind and against the body. That has been the greatest calamity humanity has suffered up to now. If a new humanity is to be, we will have to put things right - you have to be with the body and not with the mind.

Use the mind, but never get identified with it. The mind is a good slave, but a very bad master. The body is wiser.

When you are hungry, you are hungry herenow; you cannot be hungry in the future and you cannot be hungry in the past. When you are feeling thirsty, your throat is feeling it right now - it is immediate, it has a presence. But your mind is running in all directions... so your body and mind never meet.

That's how you have become split, that's how schizophrenia has entered into the very being of man.

Get out of the mind and get into the body. The more you are in your body, the more natural you will be. The more you are in the body, the closer to God you will be.

Mind is just a device. Good! Helpful! Can be used in a thousand and one ways! But it is from there that the problem arises - because it can be used in so many ways, you start becoming dependent on it and by and by you lose consciousness of the present and you become focussed with the mind.

Then your life will be dry, a wasteland.

And suddenly questions will arise: What is the meaning of life? - because mind cannot supply any meaning. Mind cannot give you any end. Mind cannot help you to live. It cannot give you life! It can give you technology, it can give you bigger machines, it can give you more affluence - but it cannot give you more life, more being.

So riches go on growing. Technology goes on becoming more and more sophisticated... and man becomes more and more poor. This is strange! that outside riches go on accumulating and inside man becomes a beggar. Never before in the history of man was there such inner emptiness, such inner meaninglessness, such inner poverty.

The reason is: significance comes from the body - the body is the body of God. Mind is man- created: body is still in God, it still exists in God, it still breathes God.

You ask: what is herenow?

Now, if any mind answer is given to you, that won't be the right answer - because anything that the mind can say as a definition of herenow will be wrong; anything whatsoever, it will be wrong. Mind knows nothing of herenow! How can it define it? Just be silent; for a moment, just be... and it is there.

This is herenow! I will not give you a definition, because definitions come from the mind, and definitions will be taken by the mind, and herenow is an existential experience... these trees, this bird calling, and the traffic noise, and the train, and the sun and the trees... and you, and me... and this silence, this presence...

When not even a single thought is stirring in you, when the screen is utterly empty, not even a single picture moves... this is... and this cannot be defined. You can experience it; it is available. It is everybody's right to experience it, but how to define it? If you try to define it you will have to bring past and future. Go to the dictionaries, go to the Encyclopedia Britannica - what will they say? They will say the present is a moment between the past and the future - that's the only way to define it!

Now can there be a more wrong way to define the present? If you have to bring past and future into the definition, if you cannot define the present without bringing past and future into it, how are you going to define it?

The present is neither past nor future - and it is not between the two! It cannot be between the two, because the past is no more and the future is not yet. How can the present be between two non-existentials? The present is existential; how can existence be defined by something which is not? That is utter absurdity! But that's where logic moves. Logic appears very logical, but remains rooted in absurdity.

The present is not between the past and the future: the present is beyond past and future. The present is eternity. The present is not even part of time! And it is not that the time passes: we pass, time remains; we come and go, time remains. It is not that the moment that was here just a moment before has become past, no. It is a single moment, utterly one. It is eternity. It is not passing, it is not going anywhere.

Have you not observed some time, sitting in a train, waiting on a station, and your train starts moving and you feel the other train has started moving which is just on the other track? Or, the other train starts moving and you feel your train has started moving, and then you look closely and you find that, no, your train is not moving, the other train is moving.

Time remains there - we go on moving, we change. The ocean of time is there - the fish goes on moving. The movement is in our minds. Mind is movement. Truth is unmoving; it is always the same.

Just see: when you were born... have you changed since then? Yes, on one level you have changed, certainly - your body has grown, you are young or old, and so many things you have lived through, and experiences, and frustrations, and ex-citements, and ecstasies, and all that life gives... But go deep down: have you really changed on that plane? at the very core of your being? Are you not the same? There nothing has changed. It is where you were, and it is where you will ever be - it is always the same there, it is one climate.

On the surface things go on changing. The wheel of the cart goes on moving, but it moves on something which remains unmoving: the axle. You are both the circumference and the axle, the centre. Even the cyclone is not there at the centre - there is silence. Nothing ever moves there.

That is your being! What name you give to it matters not. That centre of the cyclone... that centre of the cyclone is herenow; it is not part of time. It is eternity.

You ask me: what is herenow?

Feel it! Experience it! That's what we are doing here! What is meditation? - getting into here... now.

What is love? - getting into herenow. What is celebration? - getting into herenow. But no definition is possible.

Getting-into is possible, because in fact you have never got out of it. It is there! You can again turn and face it.

While making love to a woman or to a man, have you not felt the herenow? If you have not felt it then you have not loved. Making love to a woman, have you not forgotten the past? has not the past utterly disappeared in that moment? In that moment do you have a past, a history, an autobiography? If you have, then you don't know how to love. Then you have been just playing the game of love not knowing exactly what it is - you have not loved.

While making love, your autobiography simply disappears. There is no more any past - as if you had never existed. You are not old - in that moment you are virgin newness; in that moment you are born for the first time; in that moment there is rebirth. Love is resurrection. And there is no future. Is there tomorrow? While making love to your woman, are you thinking of the tomorrow? what you are going to do tomorrow? Then you are not with the woman and you are not in love either. All thinking stops - that's the joy of love!

That's why I say that sex and samadhi are joined together. Sex is the lowest rung, samadhi is the highest rung, of the same ladder. They belong to the same ladder - sex the lowest rung, samadhi the highest rung. But the ladder is the same. There is an affinity.

Man got the idea of samadhi from two things: sex and sleep. Deep sleep is also on the same ladder.

Man became alert to the phenomenon of samadhi, became excited, intrigued, by the phenomena of love and sleep - because in both these moments, time disappears, time stops, mind stops, thinking no longer functions - and because thinking no longer functions and time stops, there is such ecstasy and such joy. Then man became intrigued: Is it possible to attain this joy without falling into sleep? - because in sleep it happens, but you are not aware of it; it is very uncon-scious. Only in the morning do you hear the distant sound of it, or the later effects. If you slept deeply in the night, in the morning you feel renewed, rejuvenated - but you had not been there exactly while it was happening. What was it?

In sex, you are more aware, but then the sex moment is so small that rather than satisfying you it leaves you very much frustrated. The greater the experience of love, the greater will be the frustration that comes in its wake. Remember: only great lovers are frustrated with love; ordinary lovers are not frustrated with love - because the higher the peak, the greater will be the fall. And the peak exists only for a single moment. It comes and it is gone... it is like lightning.

And when the peak is gone, you have known the taste of it and now nothing will taste better and everything will look ordinary compared to it, and everything will look mundane. You have experienced something of the sacred. You have experienced something of God - God flashed like lightning, but you could not catch hold of His face, you could not figure it out, how He looks, and He was gone. It was so fast and so sudden.

Man became interested: Is it possible to prolong that experience? Is it possible to remain in that ex-perience a little longer? Is it possible to go into it a little deeper? Is it possible to have that experience without moving into sex? - because sex by its very nature depends on the other. It is a kind of dependence, and all kinds of dependence destroy your freedom. That's the eternal fight between the lovers.

They are giving something to each other which is immensely valuable, but mixed with poison. They cannot live separately and they cannot live together. If they are separate they start missing the joy that was happening through the other; if they are together, the poison is too much - and one starts thinking: Is the joy worth it? Because you have to depend on the other! When you depend on the other, your freedom is destroyed, your freedom becomes defined, confined, limited. You cannot open yourself as you would like to open. You have always to look to the other and the other's feelings. You feel prevented, hindered. And the other starts possessing you, the other starts becoming powerful over you - because the other knows that it is through him or her that you feel joy.

Man started looking for the same experience without becoming dependent on the other. Then, if it depends only on sexual experience, it cannot last forever. You can have sex once in a while - and what about the other times? All other times you will remain dull and dead. Is it possible to have that joy continuously, as a continuum, like a river flowing always?

These were the speculations of man, but they came from sleep and love. In love sometimes it happens, and that is the moment which is called orgasm. If time stops, if thinking stops, and you are utterly herenow, it is orgasmic.

This orgasmic experience will give you the taste. I cannot define it, but I can indicate ways how to feel it.

If you have some aesthetic sense, then some aesthetic experience will give you the taste.

Seeing a sunset, if you have the heart of a painter, the heart stops; you start missing beats. The sun is setting, just falling and falling... and a moment more and it will be gone. And all that colour in the clouds, and all that sublime beauty! And the birds returning back to their homes, and the silence settling on the earth, and the trees getting ready to go to bed, and the whole of nature saying goodbye to the sun... If you have the aesthetic heart, if you are a poet or a painter or a musician, if you know what beauty is, if you are affected by beauty, not so-so but tremendously, if beauty gives you awe - then you will know what herenow is.

Or listening to music it happens sometimes. There is nothing more meditational than music. Or if you can play some instrument yourself, then it is far better - because Listening you remain on the periphery; playing you are at the centre. If playing some instrument - playing a flute or sitar or guitar - and you are lost into it, absolutely lost into it, time stops, mind is no more there, a Buddha moment arrives, and you know what herenow is.

Or if you can dance - which seems to me the most profound experience - if you can dance and dance so deeply that the dancer disappears, only the dance remains, then again you will be herenow.

I cannot define it, but I can indicate a few things. You will have to experience it. It is a taste! If you ask me how sugar tastes, how can I define it? I can say it is sweet, but that will not make much sense - it will be a tautology. You were asking what sweet is; I have simply substituted another word for it. If I say to be herenow means to be in the present, I am not saying anything - I am simply substituting another word for it. That's what dictionaries go on doing.

All dictionaries live on tautologies. And if you look into the dictionary you will be surprised: ask the philosopher or the philologist 'What is mind?' and he says 'Not matter'; and then ask him 'What is matter?' and he says 'Not mind' - but what is the point of it? You don't know either. When it comes to defining matter you use 'mind' as if you know mind, and you say 'Not mind'; and when it comes to defining the mind you start using 'matter' as if you know matter, and you say 'Not matter' - but you don't know either. Now, two things themselves undefined, how can they define each other? - that is not possible.

Ask the philologist who knows words and languages - what does he go on saying? You ask one word, he substitutes another word for it - but the real problem remains.

A Zen Master was dying and the disciples had gathered. And his whole life he had been talking about herenow - that's what Masters have been doing down through the ages. The disciples asked again, 'Master, you are leaving us and we will be left in darkness. Is there any last message so that we can cherish it and remember it forever? We will keep it as a sacred memory in our hearts.'

The Master opened his eyes... at that moment on the roof of his hut, a squirrel ran making noise - tit tit, teevee, tit tit - and the Master raised his hand and said, 'this is it!' and died.

What is he saying 'This is it'? He is simply indicating. He-is simply saying there is nothing to say - there is much to see, but there is nothing to say.

You ask: does thought for my part of it?

No, thought cannot form part of it. It is asking: Does darkness form part of light? Just like that.

Darkness cannot form part of light. When light is present, dark-ness is absent; when light is absent, darkness is present - they never meet. So is the state of mind and herenow - they never meet.

Herenow means no-mind. No-mind means no thought. And you know it! Many times it happens to you: there are moments, small, but they ARE there, when you suddenly see no thought stirring in you, no ripple arising - those are Buddha moments! You just have to get more in tune with them, you just have to get deeper into them, you just have to change your emphasis.

For example, you read a book. Naturally, you read the words printed on the paper; you don't see the paper. The paper remains in the background. The words written with the black ink, they are the figure, and the white paper is the background. You may not even see the white paper while you are reading - although it is there! Without it, those words -cannot exist; they exist because of it, against it, in contrast to it.

It happened: a psychologist did a small experiment. He fixed a big piece of white paper over the whole blackboard, and the students watched. Then he brought his pen and on that big sheet of white paper he made just a small dot, a black dot - just a small one, barely visible. The students had to look very very closely, only then could they see it. And then he asked, 'What do you see?'

They all said, 'A small dot.' And nobody had seen the white paper - nobody, not a single student out of the fifty, said 'We see a big white sheet of paper over the whole blackboard.' Not a single student said! They all said, 'A black dot.' And he had simply asked, 'What do you see?'

What happened?! Emphasis. Continuously reading, you emphasize the dots, the black marks on the paper; you don't see the white paper.

Just change the emphasis. Start looking at the white paper rather than at the black dot - and that brings great revolution.

When two thoughts are moving in you, between the two thoughts there is a gap, an interval, a pause. When two-words move-in you, between these two words there is a gap again. Just look-into the gaps more; become negligent of the words - look at the gaps.

Just standing on the road, try one experiment: you are standing on the road and cars are passing; maybe it is an international car rally and cars are passing. One car has gone, another car has gone, another car, but between two cars there are gaps... the road remains empty. Just change the emphasis! Just change the gestalt, as the Germans would like to say - change the gestalt, change the pattern.

Start looking between one gap and another gap. Rather than thinking one car has passed, another car has passed, another car has passed, start looking at the one gap that has passed, another gap, another gap - forget about the cars, start counting the gaps, how many gaps are passing. And you will be surprised - so many gaps are passing and you had never seen them before!

Just a change of emphasis: move from the figure to the background. Thoughts are figures, conscious-ness is the background. Mind consists of figures and no-mind is the background. Just start looking into the gaps. Fall in love with the intervals! Go deeper into them, search more into them - they have real secrets in them. The mystery is hidden there. It is not in the words that pass in your mind; those words are trivia, impressions from the outside. But see on what they pass, those ripples; look into that conscious-ness. And it is infinite. It is your being.

That consciousness is called no-mind.

That is the meaning of the English expression 'reading between the lines'. Read between the lines and you will become a wise man. Read the lines and you will become an ugly scholar, a pundit, a parrot, a computer, a memory - a mind. Read between the lines and you will become a no-mind.

And no-mind is herenow.

Question 2:

You often say sannyas is to live in the utmost insecurity, but my experience has been different. I have felt more secure in my heart only since taking sannyas. What should I listen to? I am confused.

Yoga Bharti, both things are true - life is very paradoxical. I say to you: Sannyas is to live in utmost insecurity... but the moment you start living in ut-most insecurity, all insecurity disappears.

Then you are secure for the first time.

Why does it happen?

The moment you accept insecurity, you stop asking for security. The moment you understand that insecurity is the nature of life, the moment you see that asking for security is asking for death... a secure person is a dead person. If you are alive you will have to live in insecurity.

Life is insecure, rooted in insecurity. One day you will have to die - how can you be secure? And you love a woman, and the woman is still alive - she can fall in love with somebody else. Nobody knows the ways of life - they are mysterious. And she is still alive; she is not dead. You can trust only a dead woman or a dead man.

That's why, the moment people fall in love they start killing each other - to create security. If you have killed the woman she becomes a wife; if you have killed the man he becomes a husband. Now you can be secure. There is security with a husband, but no life; and there is security with a wife, but no life. You have killed her so much that she cannot fall in love again. But remember: she cannot fall in love with anybody else - she cannot fall in love with you either. You have destroyed love.

You catch hold of a bird, and you had loved see-ing it flying in the sky, it was so beautiful - it was freedom on wings. Now you are afraid: the bird may fly again. So you cut the wings and put him in a beautiful cage. Do you think it is the same bird that you had seen in the sky on the wing, whispering with the clouds? Do you think it is the same bird? It is a corpse, although it breathes. And it will never give you that joy.

That joy was not only because of the bird - many many things were involved in it... the open sky, the clouds, the sun, the wind. The freedom was implied there! Now you have destroyed freedom, you have taken the sky away; you have taken the bird out of the whole context. Now it has no meaning any more.

You see a beautiful flower on the rosebush and you cut it and you bring it home, and you put it on your table in a flowerpot - but it is no more the same flower. You have kiLled it! It is dying. And you will never see that beauty - because the juice was flowing, the flower was rooted in the earth.

The earth was nourishing it and the sun was nourishing it and the wind was playing with it, and the fragrance was there... and all! You have taken it out of context. Now, in your plastic flowerpot you have encaged this beautiful flower, but it is dead.

That's what we go on doing... You love a woman, and she was so alive - that's why! She was pure life. She was joy, she was dance, a song, and you had fallen in love with all those things together. Then you make a prisoner of her. You go to the court, you make legal conditions on her - you reduce her from the woman to a wife. This is an ugly pheno-menon: to reduce any woman to a wife, to reduce any man to a husband. You have taken away all that was beautiful and glorious, all that was divine.

And now you are stuck with the woman and you wonder what has happened. Now you don't feel so much joy in her being. Now being with her is a tedium, a boredom. Have you not seen husbands and wives sitting together, how bored they look - utterly bored? If a friend comes or a neighbour, they start becoming a little alive; otherwise, they are utterly bored... looking into each other and finding nothing. They both have killed each other! And, naturally, they are angry too, because how can you forgive your murderer? You cannot.

The idea of security brings death in life. Afraid you may catch cold, you don't go into the rains. Afraid you may harm your body, you don't go to the playground. Afraid that you may fall from the tree, you don't climb. Afraid that death may happen, you don't go to the mountains. Afraid, afraid, afraid... you go on withdrawing yourself from life.

A moment comes - you are there but all life has disappeared. Then you are secure, but at what cost? And the more you make yourself secure, the more fear arises.

Have you not seen it? Poor people are less afraid than rich people - naturally, because they have much to lose, so more fear of insecurity. A rich man feels more insecure, because communism can come. What does a beggar bother about communism? He says, 'Okay, let communism be! It doesn't matter.' The rich man is always afraid the bank may fail, the business may fail... this may happen, that may happen. He is continuously worried.

It is not accidental that the rich man cannot sleep; the rich man suffers from insomnia. It is very rare to find a beggar suffering from insomnia; I have not found. I have been searching for a beggar who suffers from insomnia - I have not found. That is the rich man's disease. The beggar has nothing to worry about! He has nothing to lose! The rich man has a thousand and one things to worry about.

He goes to bed, but the mind goes on spinning, weaving; it goes on working - a thousand and one things have to be settled, arranged, planned. Something may go wrong - how can he sleep? How can he afford sleep? A rich man is so poor, he cannot afford sleep; only a poor man is so rich that he can afford sleep.

Just watch how life functions: the more secure you become, the more afraid, frightened. And when you are more afraid, you want more security. When you have more security, you become more afraid... it is a vicious circle.

That's why I say sannyas is to live in utmost in-security.

What do I mean by saying it? I mean that insecurity is life. There is no life without insecurity. That is the beauty of life! that all can be lost. Hence the joy of the game. If it is certain that you will win, what will be the joy of it? If winning is certain, abso-lutely certain there cannot be any joy in it. The more uncertain the victory is, the more joy, the more search for it.

Life is insecure. This, when understood deeply, brings a kind of security - then you are no more afraid. Life is insecure! You know perfectly well you have fallen in love with this woman and this woman can still fall in love, because she will still breathe, she will still be alive. Who knows about tomorrow? You are not the only man in the world. What foolish-ness to think that this woman cannot fall in love with anybody else! She can fall! And because she can fall, love her intensely - because who knows about tomorrow? Tomorrow she may go and may not turn again and may not see you again. This may be your last time - make as much of it as you can.

This is the understanding of sannyas, that tomorrow is not certain, only this moment is my moment - I have to live it in totality.

And I am not saying that she will leave you, or she has to leave you. In fact, if you love her totally in this moment, how can she leave you? If you have loved her so much, how can she leave you?

Out of today will come tomorrow. Out of this moment will follow the next. If this moment has been of such ecstasy, how can she leave you? Out of insecurity, security is born - she cannot leave you. It is impossible to leave you - not because of the law and the court and the marriage and the society, but just because you loved her so much.

You have given her the first insight into no-time, no-mind. You have been a door to the divine - -how can she leave you? She has already become part of you; you have become part of her. But this is happening of its own; it is unmanaged. Out of insecurity you loved her totally, and out of total love life becomes secure.

So, Bharti, you are right - what I say is true, what you feel is true too. Sannyas is uttermost inse- curity, and once you are a sannyasin you start having a new vision of life. And that new vision knows nothing of insecurity.

Because it is such a paradox, the problem arises: what should i listen to? I am confused.

You need not be confused. Always remember: anything, to be true, has to be paradoxical. Truth is paradoxical. Only lies are not paradoxical. Whenever you see that something is not paradoxical, beware! - there must be some lie.

Truth is paradox. That is an absolute quality of truth.

Question 3:

What is desirelessness? Is it to be totally without desire or to be totally free to have or not have desire?

To be totally free of desire will make you dead - you will not be alive any more.

That's what has been taught: Be desireless! But what can you do? You can go on cutting desires; the more desires are cut, the poorer your life becomes. If all desires are destroyed, then you have committed suicide, spiritual suicide.

No, desire is the energy of life, desire is life. Then what do I mean when I say be free of desire?

The second is my meaning: to be free, totally free, to have or not have desire. Desire should not be an obsession - that is the meaning. You should be capable... for example, you see somebody's beautiful house, newly built, and a desire arises in you to have such a house. Now, are you free to have this desire or not? If you are free, I will say you are desireless. If you say, 'I am not free.

This desire persists. Even if I want to drop it, I cannot drop it - it haunts me. I see dreams of that house, I think about it. I am afraid to go on that road, because that house creates jealousy in me, that house creates disturbance in me.' If you say, 'I am not capable of either having or not having the desire,' then you are not in a healthy shape - then desires are your masters, you are a victim.

And you will suffer much because there are millions of things going around, and if so many desires take possession of you, you will be torn apart.

That's how it is happening: somebody has become the prime minister, now you want to become the prime minister; somebody has become very rich, now you want to become very rich; somebody has become a famous writer, now you want to become a famous writer. And somebody is something else... and somebody is something else... and all around there are millions of people doing millions of things. And from every nook and corner a desire arises and jumps on you and takes possession of you, and you are not capable of saying yes or no you will go mad.

That's how the whole of humanity is mad. All those desires are pulling you into so many directions.

You have become fragmentary, because many desires have possessed parts of your being.

And those desires are contradictory too. Then it is not only that you are fragmentary: you become a contradiction. One part of you wants to become very rich, another part of you wants to become a poet - now, this is difficult. It is very difficult to become rich and remain a poet. A poet cannot be that cruel; it will be very difficult for him to become rich.

Money is not poetry: money is blood, money is exploitation. A poet worth the name cannot exploit.

And a poet worth the name will have some vision of beauty. He cannot be so ugly himself as to deprive so many people just for his desire to hoard money.

Now, you want to become a politician, and you also want to meditate; you want to become a medita- tor too. This is not possible. Politicians cannot be religious. They can pretend to be religious, but they cannot be religious. How can a politician be religious? - because religion means non-ambitiousness and politics is nothing but pure ambition.

Religiousness means: I am happy as I am. Politics means: I will be happy only when I am at the top - I am not happy as I am. I have to run and rush, and I will destroy if it is needed. If by right means, okay; if not, then by wrong means - but I have to be at the top, I have to prove myself.

A politician naturally suffers from an inferiority complex. A religious man has no complex - inferi-ority or superiority.

Politicians pretend to be religious because that pays in politics. Morarji Desai pretends to be religious - that pays in politics. Now, look at the disgusting thing Jimmy Carter has done: he came to India and he asked, first thing in India, three hours for prayer. He knows India is a religious country - three hours for prayer?! Prayer is nothing to be bragged about. You can do it in your bedroom - three minutes are enough - three seconds are enough - just a single moment is enough - because prayer has nothing to do with time: it needs intensity. Now, a three-hour prayer! think of God also a little bit: listening to Jimmy Carter for three hours... poor old man! Nobody thinks of God. And what will you be saying for three hours? You will bore Him to death! But he knows that India is a religious country, people will be impressed by the idea.

And what can Jimmy Carter do for three hours, what will he pray for three hours? A politician can-not pray even for three minutes; he will be thinking all the time about politics.

To be religious means to be non-ambitious, to have no ambitions of being somewhere else, somebody else - to be herenow!

Now, if you have these two ideas together, that you want to be a politician and you also want to be a meditator, you will be in difficulty - you will drive yourself crazy. If you are honest, you will go mad; if you are dishonest, then you will not go mad - then you will become a hypocrite. That's what your politicians are.

And I am not saying that all those who are in reli-gion are not politicians: out of a hundred there are also ninety-nine who are politicians. They are there in a different kind of politics: the religious politics. They have their hierarchy and the priest wants to become the Pope - again it is politics.

Or, the sinner wants to become the saint - again it is politics, again it is inferiority complex; again, once you have started doing something holy, religious, saintly, you will carry around yourself that ego of 'holier than thou'. Then you will have a condemnation of others in your eyes; then everybody is doomed and only you are going to be saved. Then you can look at others with pity: These people are going to hell.

This is again politics.

A religious man knows no ego. He is not even humble - remember - he is so egoless he is not even humble. Humbleness is also a pretension of ego; the humble person is also TRYING to be humble and trying to prove that 'I am humble'; or even may have ideas deep inside his heart that 'I am the MOST humble man in the world.' Again it is the ego!

Many desires will take possession of you and many will be contradictory and you will be pulled apart and you will start falling into pieces, you will lose integrity, you will no more be an individual.

You ask: what is desirelessness?

Now, these are the two things: you know desireless-ness, then you have to cut your life completely, then everything has to be cut. Then you become a Jain monk - just an empty shell utterly discontented with everything, with yourself; uncreative, no celebration, no flowers ever bloom. Or you know desirefulness: then you become torn apart. Both are ugly states.

The right thing to do is to be so totally free from desire that you can choose, that you are always able to choose: to have or not to have. Then you are really free. And then you will have both the creativity, the celebration, the joy of desires, and the silence and the peace and the calmness of desirelessness.

Question 4:

Beloved Master, I know we are not the body, or the 'cloud' as you called it... But when I open my eyes I can't help noticing that your toes ere turning blue from the cold! Why won't you wear a wrap or a shawl, or why won't you let us put a quilt or something over your legs?!

This question is from divya - but there are four other questions similar, all from women sannyasins: Pradeepa, Gyan Bhakti, Krishna Priya.

Thank you, but you don't know anything about my toes - they enjoy cold like anything. I under-stand your sympathy, but from my very childhood I have enjoyed cold like anything. Just as you enjoy ice-cream my toes enjoy cold. Don't feel sorry for them - they are very happy.

Question 5:

You always speak so beautifully of creativity and aesthetics...! Will there be work for poets, painters, sculptors, designers, musicians, craftsmen, etc. At the new commune?

Yes, Katyayani - art is going to be the religion of the new commune.

Question 6:

I do not trust your words. At first I could grab on to a phrase or a theme and hug it to my bosom - paste it on my wall - repeat it as a mantram - aha! Now I have a key - but the next day or the next week you say the opposite. Now I am afraid to listen to you.

That is the whole purpose of listening to me: so that you don't become a hoarder, so that no thought becomes so important to you that it takes possession of you.

I would like you to become a no-mind. And those phrases, howsoever beautiful they are, if you hug them to the bosom and paste them on the wall and repeat them as a mantram, they will create mind.

That's why I have to go on destroying myself. I say one thing, and before you can hoard it, I destroy it. I will do it so continuously, so consistently, that sooner or later you will not hug any phrase to your heart, and you will not paste any phrase on your wall, and you will not take anything as a mantram!

That day, Amida, will be a great day of liberation for you. Then you will simply listen as you listen to music. Why can't you listen to me as you listen to music? Why listen to me with a business mind, with some purpose in it? Why jump upon things and start collecting them? Why not listen simply, innocently, without catching hold of anything? Listen just as you listen to music, and that will be far more enriching. Then mind will not be nourished.

And my work here is to destroy your mind, so that your no-mind becomes available to you.

Question 7:

What is a question? And is there an answer to every question? And why do you answer our questions?

A question is a misunderstanding. You have misunderstood life as a problem - hence questions arise. Life is not a problem: life is a mystery.

But the misunderstanding is possible because a mystery looks like a problem, a mystery looks like a riddle - and the ego starts trying to solve it. Hence the question. But a mystery means a mystery - it is a riddle which cannot be solved. A mystery is by its very definition insoluble. So all questions are irrelevant.

And when questions are irrelevant, naturally answers are also irrelevant. A question is a misunderstanding about life: you think it can be solved - this is the misunderstanding. Nobody has ever solved anything. Great philosophies have been evolved, but not a single question has been answered ever.

One can believe that one has got the answer, but that is just a belief. Just look a little bit more and you will find that your answer was just a make-believe.

There are no answers.

All questions are meaningless.

But then the question arises: and is there an answer to every question?

There is not a single question which can be answered. Small questions: What is yellow? - cannot be answered. All your science and all your philosophy and all your religions cannot answer a simple, silly question: What is yellow? How can you answer it?!

A great philosopher, G. E. Moore, has written a Book Principia Ethica. In two hundred pages he goes on asking one question only: What is good? And he was one of the most important philosophers of this century and one of the most logical minds. You cannot improve upon Moore.

And he asks a simple question: What is good? And he asks in a thousand ways, and answers and answers and answers... and finally, in the end, he says: The good is indefinable.

It is like yellow - what is yellow?

All philosophies have failed.

So it is not that there are questions which can be answered and there are a few questions which cannot be answered - not a single question can be answered. Questioning is a wrong approach towards reality. You question: you go wrong.

Then, naturally, you ask: and why do you answer our questions? - if no question can be answered, then why do I go on answering you?

Just to help you know that no questions can be answered. Just to destroy your questions - not to answer but to destroy.

Watch my answers! They are not really answers to your questions - they are just like hammers. I try to destroy your questions - sometimes politely and sometimes not so politely. But the whole effort is to destroy the question.

Naturally, I destroy one, you produce another - -then I have to destroy that. This is the fight between a Master and a disciple. It goes on and on. But the disciple has always been defeated.

How long can you go on asking? Many of you have stopped asking, but neW people go on coming so the story continues. One day, all of you will have stopped - stopping, not out of defeat, not out of des-peration, but out of understanding. Seeing the point, that life is a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved - that is metanoia. You are converted. You have moved from mind to no-mind.

Question 8:

This crazy, sweet, totally demanding and physically exhausting, delightful marathon called motherhood... Since this fireball came to us - almost two years now - not one uninterrupted night's sleep, not one day of rest. And feeling nothing so important as simply being present for him - and so very often inadequate and tense and tired in that.

Where is laughter in this?

Help! Help! Yuck, yuck, yuck.

Yet another 'Jewish mother'

Ma prem punita

Punita, just to give birth to a child is one thing - to be a mother is totally different.

Any woman can give birth to a child; that's a very simple phenomenon. But to be a mother needs great art, needs great under-standing.

You are creating a human being - that is the greatest creation! A painter paints a picture; we call it great art. Picasso - we call him a great artist. But what about the mother who created Picasso? A poet writes beautiful poems, but what about the mother who created Shakespeare? We don't think about mothers as the greatest creative people on the earth.

That is one of the reasons why women are not great painters and great poets - they need not be:

they can be great mothers. Why does man try to become a great scientist, poet, painter, this and that? - he is jealous of women: he cannot create children. He feels impotent.

Sigmund Freud has talked much about phallic Jealousy - that women suffer from a jealousy because they don't have penises. Now this is utterly meaning-less, absurd. It is as if a woman Sigmund Freud is born and starts talking about men suffering from breast-jealousy because they don't have breasts.

But, one thing is certain: deep down man always feels jealous that he cannot mother, that he cannot carry an alive life in him, that he cannot reproduce life. To substitute it he paints, he sculpts, he writes poetry, he composes music; he goes to the moon, he goes to Everest. He wants to prove at least to his woman that 'I can also do something,' otherwise he feels impotent. Compared to woman's capacity, he looks like a child, looks almost accidental. His work is not much: giving birth to a child, he simply triggers the process. A small injection can do that; that is not much of a work.

The woman passes through those nine months of agony and ecstasy. And then the work is not finished! In fact, then the work, the real work, starts - when the child is born. And the child brings again a fresh quality to life. Every child is primitive, a barbarian; now the mother has to civilize.

Every child is a barbarian, remember; he is animal, wild. And the mother has to give him culture, has to teach him the ways of life, the ways of man. It is a great work.

Punita, you have to remember that - that your work has not finished, it has started. Take it joyously!

You are creating something immensely valuable - you are carving a life, you are protecting a life.

The work is such that no sacrifice is great enough for it - any sacrifice can and should be made.

One thing.

Second thing: don't take it too seriously, otherwise you will destroy the child. Your seriousness will become destructive. Take it playfully. The responsibility is there! but it has to be taken very playfully.

Play upon the child as one plays upon a musical instrument - and she knows how to play on musical instruments. Let the child be your instrument now. Play carefully but play playfully. If you become serious, then the child will start feeling your seriousness and the child will be crushed and crippled.

Don't burden the child; don't start feeling that you are doing something great to the child. When I say you are doing something great, you are doing something great to yourself. By helping this child to grow into a beautiful human being, into a Buddha, you will be becoming the mother of a Buddha.

You will not be obliging the child: you will be simply enjoying your own life; your own life will become a fragrance through the child.

This is an opportunity, a God-given opportunity.

And these are the two pitfalls: either you neglect the child, you are tired of it; or you become too serious about the child, and you start burdening him, obliging him. Both are wrong. Help the child - but for the sheer joy of it. And never feel that he owes any debt to you. On the contrary, feel thankful that he has chosen you to be his mother. Let your motherhood bloom through him.

If you can bloom into your motherhood, you will feel thankful to the child forever.

And, naturally, there will be sacrifices, but they have to be made... joyously. Only then is it a sacrifice!

If you do it without joy it is not sacrifice. Sacrifice comes from the word 'sacred'. When you do it joyfully, it is sacred. When you don't do it joyfully, then you are just fulfilling a duty - and all duties are ugly, they are not sacred.

This is a great opportunity. Meditate over it, go into it deeply. You will never find such a deep involvement - in fact, there is none as it is between a child and the mother. Not even between the husband and the wife, the lover and the beloved - the involvement is not so deep as it is between the mother and the child. It cannot be so deep with anybody ever - because the child has lived in you for nine months as you; nobody else can live in you for nine months as you.

And the child will become a separate individual sooner or later, but somewhere deep down in the un-conscious the mother and the child remain linked.

If your child can become a Buddha, you will be benefited by it; if your child grows and becomes a beautiful human being, you will be benefited by it - because the child will always remain connected with you. Only the physical connection has been disconnected; the spiritual connection is never disconnected.

Thank God! Motherhood is a blessing.

Mây Trắng

Walk Without Feet

Sunday, August 27, 2017

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