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of Mulla Nasruddin giving the rope to his companion
without any interpretation whatsoever?
Remain with the fact, and you will be in meditation.
167. Love.
The ego is necessary
for both the sensation of pain and the feeling of pleasure
and vice versa also –
the sensation of pain and the feeling of pleasure,
are necessary for the existence of the ego.
In fact these are two sides of the same coin.
The name of the coin is ignorance.
Understand this
and do not fight with the ego
or with pain and pleasure,
because unless ignorance is gone
they will not go, they cannot go.
And you cannot fight with ignorance
because ignorance is just absence of something –
absence of yourself.
So be present to your ignorance,
be aware of it,
and then you will be and there will be no ignorance
because you and ignorance cannot exist simultaneously,
as with light and darkness.
168. Love.
A small boy with a penny
clutched tightly in his hot little hand
entered the toy shop
and drove the proprietor to distraction
asking him to show this and that
and everything
without ever making up his mind.
Look here, my boy, said the storekeeper finally.
What do you want to buy for a penny –
the whole world with a fence around it?
The boy thought for a moment
and then replied: Let me see it.
And I say to you that ordinarily
no one in this world is different from that small boy.
But unless one is different, one is not mature.
And maturity does not come with age alone,
maturity comes through understanding the distinction
between that which is possible
and that which is not possible.
169. Love.
Things go on changing without.
You must mirror them,
you must reflect them,
but remember always that the mirror remains the same.
Mirroring does not change the mirror.
Do not be identified with mirroring.
Remember yourself as the mirror –
that is what is meant by witnessing.
And witnessing is meditation.
Lieh-Tzu exhibited his skill in archery to Po-Hun Wu-Jen.
When the bow was drawn to its full length
a cup of water was placed on his elbow
and he began to shoot.
As soon as the first arrow was let fly
a second one was already on the string
and a third followed.
In the meantime he stood unmoved like a statue.
Po-Hun Wu-Jen said: The technique of your shooting is fine,
but it is still a technique.
You look just like a statue from without.
Now let us go up to a high mountain
and stand on a rock projecting over a precipice
and then you try to shoot.
They climbed up a mountain.
Standing on a rock projecting over a precipice
ten thousand feet high
Po-Hun Wu-Jen stepped backward
until one third of his feet was hanging over the rock.
He then motioned to Lieh-Tzu to come forward.
Lieh-Tzu fell to the ground
with perspiration running down to his heels.
Po-Hun Wu-Jen said:
The perfect man soars up above the blue sky
or dives down to the yellow springs,
or wanders about all over the eight limits of the world,
yet shows no signs of change in his spirit.
But you betray a sign of trepidation
and your eyes are dazed.
How can you expect to hit the target?
170. Love.
Do you want to ask questions?
Or do you want to get answers?
Because if you want to ask questions
then you will not get answers,
and if you want to get answers
then you cannot be allowed to ask questions –
because the answer is in that consciousness
where the questions have not yet been raised,
or have been uprooted and thrown out.
171. Love.
I hope you will be moving in deep meditation.
Breathe in it
sleep in it
live in it –
let meditation be your very existence.
Only then is the happening.
Don’t do it, but be it.
And my blessings are always with you.
If you need any help from me just ask when
you are thoughtless,
and it will be given to you.
172. Love.
A madman entered the bazaar and declaimed:
The moon is more useful than the sun.
But why? asked someone.
We need the light more
during the night than during the day, he said.
And I say to you that
all our metaphysical theories and explanations
are not of more worth than the explanation of that madman.
173. Love.
Ask for nothing and you will never be frustrated.
Anticipate darkness with light and sorrow with happiness
because such is the nature of things.
Then you will never be frustrated.
Say to life: What can you do to me? I want nothing!
And say to death: What can you do to me? I have already died!
Then you will be truly free,
because unless one is free of life one can never be free of death.
And when one is free of both
one knows that life which is eternity itself.
174. Love.
Man is always lacking,
because he desires without knowing himself,
because he desires to become something
without knowing his being,
and this is absurd.
First one must know his being
otherwise there will be anguish.
Becoming is anguish
because it is a constant tension
between that which is and that which should be –
and it is an impossible longing also
because only that can be which is.
So know yourself as you are
without any ideals,
without any judgment
and without any condemnation.
Go deep within yourself without any desires to become
because only then can you know yourself.
Discover yourself,
not according to anybody else,
but as you are.
Discover the fact,
discover the real
in its total nakedness.
In this total authenticity
just be a witness,
and then there is an altogether different quality to life,
the quality of let go.
Then one is relaxed totally.
And all flowering is in relaxation,
and all benediction.
175. Love.
Fear cripples consciousness,
and fear is the source of unconsciousness,
that is why without transcending fear
no one can attain to full consciousness.
But what is fear?
Fear is awareness of death without knowing what death is.
Fear exists in the gap between you and your death,
and if there is no gap, no space,
then there is no fear.
Do not think of death as something outside you
because it is not.
And do not think of death as something in the future
because it is not.
Death is within you,
because death is the other side of life.
Life cannot exist without death;
they both belong to the same energy
as positive and negative poles.
So do not identify yourself with life –
because you are both.
The identification with life creates the gap.
And death has nothing to do with the future,
it is always here and now.
Every moment, it is.
And when one ceases to regard it
as something outside oneself
and, so to speak, draws it into his consciousness
and assimilates the idea of it,
one is completely changed.
He is in all truth born again.
And then there is no fear
because then there is no gap.
176. Love.
Thinking is necessary but not enough,
one must know living also,
otherwise one becomes like the philosopher
mentioned by Soren Kierkegaard
who builds a fine palace
but is doomed not to live in it.
He has a shed for himself next door to what
he has constructed for others,
including himself, to look at!
Meditation is not thinking, but living.
Live it daily, moment to moment;
that is, live in it or let it live in you.
It is not something other-worldly either,
because all such distinctions are from the mind:
they are speculative and not existential,
and meditation is existential.
It is no more than one’s everyday life lived totally.
When Mencius says: The truth is near
and people seek it far away,
he means this.
When Tokusan is asked about it he replies:
When you are hungry you eat,
when you are thirsty you drink,
and when you meet a friend you greet him.
He means this.
Ho Koji sings: How wondrous this, how mysterious!
I carry fuel, I draw water.
He also means this.
And when you are near me
whatsoever I may say I always mean this.
Or I may not say anything –
but then too I always mean this.
177. Love.
Religion is so much an experience
that it cannot be handed over by one to another.
But there are traditions of religious experience –
which are bound to be false
because of the very nature of the religious experience.
One has to travel the path alone
with no footprints of other travelers even to guide one.
Hassan of Basra was asked: What is Islam and who
are the Muslims?
He is reported to have said:
Islam is in the books
and Muslims? Muslims are in the tombs.
178. Love.
The world itself is a punishment enough,
so really there is no need for hell at all.
Once a man who had three wives
was brought before the king of the country for punishment.
The king called in his counselors and asked them to devise
the worst possible punishment for the offender,
even death itself.
But they did not order his execution,
ruling instead that it would be still worse for him
to live with all three wives at the same time.
Two weeks later the man committed suicide.
179. Love.
I have no special doctrine or philosophy,
no set of concepts or intellectual formulas,
but only certain irrational devices
through which I can push you into the unknown.
I do not believe in any theories
or any systems of thought,
but I have faith in certain existential situations
through which I can throw you into the unknown.
Intellectual understanding is not understanding at all
but only a deception.
Understanding is always of the total,
of the whole being.
Intellect is only a part, and that too a minor one,
but it acts as the whole
and thereby creates all sorts of stupidities.
Do not be identified with your intellect.
Dissolve it into the whole of your being,
and then you will know what understanding is –
and the bliss and the ecstasy that follow it inevitably.
180. Love.
Meditation is a mirror –
and the most faithful one.
Whoever goes into meditation
risks a confrontation with himself.
The mirror of meditation never lies,
and it does not flatter.
It is impartial and innocent
and it never projects anything.
It only faithfully shows your real, original face,
the face we never show to the world,
the face that we ourselves have forgotten.
So it is possible
that you yourself
may not be able to recognize it the first time!
But do not escape from it.
Face it and you will come to know it and recognize it.
This confrontation is the first test of courage
on the inner way.
So when it comes about –
rejoice and feel blessed.
181. Love.
Yes, there is tension.
To be consciously conscious is to be tense,
but it is not because of consciousness
but because of partial consciousness.
The unconscious is always
behind the so-called consciousness.
This situation creates tension
because this creates a dichotomy, a duality;
hence the tension.
The being, which cannot be divided,
is divided,
hence the tension.
The unnaturalness of the situation
is the root cause of this tension,
and for that matter of all tensions,
because then one is not individual,
that is, indivisible;
therefore there is tension,
and one cannot really relax unless one is one.
Either be totally unconscious as in deep and
dreamless sleep –
and then there is no tension,
or be totally conscious –
and then you are in the state of no-tension
because the total can never be tense.
That is why the whole is the holy.
But falling into a deep sleep-like trance
is just escaping the problem,
and that too only for the time being,
because you will be back soon –
and worse off,
because by such escapes
the gap between
the conscious and the unconscious
is not bridged
but, on the contrary, widened even more.
One becomes split and schizophrenic.
So always be aware of the mind
because it tries to find solace in unconscious states
in so many ways –
through chemical drugs,
through auto-hypnotic means, and otherwise.
Begin to be aware of anything
which ordinarily happens unconsciously,
for example – anger, jealousy, pride –
and your consciousness will be deepened.
Act consciously,
even in day-to-day acts be conscious,
for example walking, eating, talking,
and your consciousness will be expanded.
Be alert when thinking.
No thought should be allowed to pass unwitnessed.
And then, in the end, there is an explosion
in which you become totally conscious,
with no unconsciousness behind.
When this happens one is one,
and to be one is to be silent.
This silence is beyond time and space,
because it is beyond duality.
182. Love.
God is when you are not.
When you are it is not
because you are nothing but a blindness.
The ego cannot see,
the ego cannot be aware,
the ego exists only as a by-product of unconscious living.
One goes on living as if in sleep.
In this sleep the part begins to dream that it is the whole,
and this dreaming becomes a barrier to knowing the whole.
Begin to be aware,
aware of your actions, thoughts and emotions,
just aware.
Because if you condemn or appreciate
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