You have come to me as somebody,
and if you allow me, if you give me the opportunity, this somebodiness can
disappear and you can become a nobody. This is the whole effort –to make you a
nobody. But why? Why this effort to become a nobody? Because unless you become
nobody you cannot be blissful; unless you become nobody you cannot be ecstatic;
unless you become nobody the benediction is not for you –you go on missing
life.
Really you are not alive, you
simply drag, you simply carry yourself like a burden. Much anguish happens,
much despair, much sorrow, but not a single ray of bliss –it cannot. If you are
somebody, you are like a solid block of stone, nothing can penetrate you. When
you are nobody you start to become porous. When you are nobody, really you are
an emptiness, transparent, everything can pass through you. There is no
hindrance, there is no barrier, no resistance. You become a passivity, a door.
Buddha attained this. Because of
language I say attained; otherwise the word is ugly, there is no attainment
–but you will understand. Buddha attained this emptiness, this nothingness. For
two weeks, for fourteen days continuously, he sat in silence, not moving, not
saying, not doing anything. It is said that the deities in heaven became
disturbed –rarely it happens that someone becomes such total emptiness. The
whole of existence felt a celebration, so deities came. They bowed down before
Buddha and they said, ”You must say something, you must say what you have
attained. Buddha is reported to have laughed and said, ”I have not attained
anything; rather, because of this mind, which always wants to attain something,
I was missing everything. I have not achieved anything, this is not an
achievement; rather, on the contrary, the achiever has disappeared. I am no
more, and, see the beauty of it –when I was, I was miserable, and when I am no
more, everything is blissful, the bliss is showering and showering continuously
on me, everywhere. Now there is no misery.” Buddha had said before: Life is
misery, birth is misery, death is misery –everything is miserable. It was
miserable because the ego was there. The boat had not been empty. Now the boat
was empty;
The whole effort is how to kill
you, the whole effort is how to destroy you. Once you are destroyed, the
indestructible will come up –it is there, hidden. Once all that which is
nonessential is eliminated, the essential will be like a flame –aliveness,
total glory.
The ordinary mind hankers to be
extraordinary, that is part of ordinariness; the ordinary mind desires to be
somebody in particular, that is part of ordinariness. You may become an
Alexander, but you remain ordinary –then who is the extraordinary one? The
extraordinariness starts only when you don’t hanker after extraordinariness.
Then the journey has started, then a new seed has sprouted.
Once a manasked a miser, a great
miser, ”How did you succeed in accumulating so much wealth?” The miser said, ”This
is my motto: whatsoever is to be done tomorrow should be done today, and
whatsoever is to be enjoyed today should be enjoyed tomorrow. This has been my
motto.” Hesucceeded in accumulating wealth –and this is how people succeed in
accumulating nonsense also!
It is not a question of whether
you behave or misbehave. This is not the question. Even a good man, even a very
saintly man, creates anger, because he is there. Sometimes a good man creates
more anger than a bad man, because a good man means a very subtle egoist. A bad
man feels guilty his boat may be filled, but he feels guilty. He is not really
so spread out on the boat, his guilt helps him to shrink. A good man feels
himself to be so good that he fills the boat completely, overfills it.
The moralists, the puritans, the
virtuous, they are all heavy, and they carry a burden around with them, and
dark shadows. Nobody likes them. They cannot be good companions, they cannot be
good friends. Friendship is impossible with a good man –almost impossible,
because his eyes are always condemning. The moment you come near him, he is
good and you are bad. Not that he is doing anything in particular –just his
very being creates something, and you will feel angry.
If you believe in God, Socrates
will ask something about God; you cannot answer, you have not yet seen. What is
the proof? God is a far off thing. You cannot prove even ordinary things. You
have left your wife at home –how can you prove, really, that you have left your
wife at home, or that you have even got a wife? It may be just in your memory.
You may have seen a dream, and when you go back there is neither house nor
wife.
Chuang Tzu says: To all
appearances the wise man will be like a fool
This is what happened to
Socrates, and it had to happen there because the Greek mind is the most
rational mind in the world, and a rational mind always tries not to be foolish.
Socrates angered everybody. People had to kill him really, because he would ask
awkward questions and he would make everybody feel foolish. He put everybody in
a corner –because one cannot answer even ordinary questions if somebody
insists.
Socrates asked questions,
penetrating, analyzing everything, and everyone in Athens became angry. This
man was trying to prove that they were all fools. They killed him. Had he met
Chuang Tzu –and at that time Chuang Tzu was alive in China, they were
contemporaries –then Chuang Tzu would have told him the secret: Don’t try to
prove that anybody is foolish because fools don’t like it. Don’t try to prove
to a madman that he is mad, because no madman likes it. He will get angry,
arrogant, aggressive. He will kill you if you prove too much. If you come to
the point where it can be proved, he will take revenge.
Chuang Tzu would have said: It is
better to be foolish yourself, then people enjoy you, and then by a very subtle
methodology you can help them change. Then they are not against you.
The last thing and the first
thing is to be empty: once you are empty you will be filled. The all will
descend on you when you are empty –only emptiness can receive the all, nothing
less will do, because to receive all you have to be empty, boundlessly empty.
Only then can the all be received. Your minds are so small they cannot receive
the divine. Your rooms are so small you cannot invite the divine. Destroy this
house completely because only the sky, space, total space, can receive.
Meditation is nothing but
emptying, becoming nobody
The second thing to be understood
about mind is that the mind always longs for the distant, never for the near.
The near gives you boredom, you are fed up with it; the distant gives you
dreams, hopes, possibility of pleasure. So the mind always thinks of the
distant. It is always somebody else’s wife who is attractive, beautiful; it is
always somebody else’s house which obsesses you; it is always somebody else’s
car which fascinates you. It is always the distant. You are blind to the near.
The mind cannot see that which is very near. It can only see that which is very
far
If you really want not to be
angry again don’t decide against anger. Just look into the anger and just look
at the shadow of the anger which you think is non-anger. Look into sex, and at
the shadow of sex, which you think is brahmacharya, celibacy. It is just
negativity, absence. Look at overeating, and the shadow of it –fasting. Fasting
always follows overeating; overindulgence is always followed by vows of
celibacy; tension is always followed by some techniques of meditation. Look at
them together, feel how they are related; they are part of one process.
If you can understand this,
meditation will happen to you. Really, it is not something to be done, it is a
point of understanding. It is not an effort, it is nothing to be cultivated. It
is something to be deeply understood. Understanding gives freedom. Knowledge of
the whole mechanism of the mind is transformation. Then suddenly the clock
stops, time disappears: and with the stopping of the clock, there is no mind.
With the stopping of time, where are you? The boat is empty.
When the whole moves without any
impediment the very movement is bliss. Bliss is not something that comes from
outside –it is the feeling that comes when your whole being moves, the very
movement of the whole is bliss. It is not something happening to you, it arises
out of you, it is a harmony in your being. If you are divided –and you are
always divided: half-moving, half-withholding, half saying yes, half saying no,
half in love, half in hate, you are a divided kingdom –there is constant
conflict in you. You say something but you never mean it, because the opposite
is there impeding, creating a hindrance.
You can see if a man has newly
acquired wealth –he will be showing it. A real aristocrat is one who has
forgotten that he is rich. A man of Tao is the aristocrat of the inner world
Self-knowledge is not possible.
If your innocence comes out of your inner source you cannot know it. If you
have imposed it from the outside you can know it; if it is just like a dress
you have put on you know it, but it is not the very breath of your life. That
innocence is cultivated, and a cultivated innocence is an ugly thing.
It happened once that Henry Ford
came to England. At the airport inquiry office he asked for the cheapest hotel
in town. The clerk in the office looked –the face was famous. Henry Ford was
known all over the world. Just the day before there were big pictures of him in
the newspapers saying that he was coming. And here he was, asking for the
cheapest hotel, wearing a coat that looked as old as he himself. So the clerk
said, ”If I am not mistaken, you are Mr. Henry Ford. I remember well, I have
seen your picture.” The man said, ”Yes.” This puzzled the clerk very much, and
he said, ”You are asking for the cheapest hotel, wearing a coat that looks as
old as you yourself. I have also seen your son coming here, and he always
inquires about the best hotel, and he comes in the best of clothes.” Henry Ford
is reported to have said, ”Yes, my son’s behavior is exhibitionist, he is not
yet attuned. There is no need for me to stay in a costly hotel; wherever I stay
I am Henry Ford. Even in the cheapest hotel I am Henry Ford, it makes no
difference. My son is still new, afraid of what people will think if he stays
in a cheap hotel. And this coat, yes, this belonged to my father –but it makes
no difference, I don’t need new clothes. I am Henry Ford, whatsoever the dress;
even if I am standing naked, I am Henry Ford. It makes no difference at all.”
Have you observed yourself? You
are always trying to exhibit your wisdom, always in search of a victim to whom
you can show your knowledge, just searching, hunting for somebody weaker than
you –then you will jump in and you will show your wisdom.
A wise man need not be an
exhibitionist. Whatsoever is, is. He is not aware of it, he is not in any hurry
to show it. If you want to find it, you will have to make efforts. If you have
to know whether he is gentle or not, that is going to be your discovery.
Remember this. It is very easy to
make money and it is also very easy to make a virtue of poverty. But these two
types are not different. A man keeps on making money, and then suddenly he gets
frustrated. He has achieved, and nothing is gained –so he renounces. Then
poverty becomes the virtue, then he lives the life of a poor man and then he
says: This is the only real life, this is religiouslife. This man is the same,
nothing has changed. The pendulum moved to the left but now has gone to the
other extreme.
No, a perfect man, a man who is
really a sage, the man of Tao, goes his way without relying on others. If you
rely on others you will suffer, if you rely on others, you will always be in
bondage, you will become dependent and weak. But that doesn’t mean that you
should pride yourself that you walk alone. Walk alone, but don’t take pride in
it. Then you can move in the world without being a part of it. Then you can be
a husband without being a husband. Then you can possess without being possessed
by your possessions. Then the world is there outside, but not within. Then you
are there, but not corrupted by it.
This is true loneliness –moving
in the world without being touched by it. But if you are proud, you have
missed. If you think, ”I have become somebody,” the boat is not empty, and
again you have fallen victim of the ego.
Buddha says there is nobody to
claim, there is no self within you. Buddha says you are like the onion: you
peel, you go on peeling the layers, and finally nothing remains. Your mind is
like an onion, go on peeling. This is what meditation is –go on peeling, go on
peeling, and a moment comes when nothing is left. That nothingness is your true
self. NO SELF IS TRUE SELF. When the boat is empty then only for the first time
you are in the boat.
ANDTHEGREATESTMANISNOBODY. It
happened that Buddha renounced the kingdom. Then he went searching from one
forest to another, from one ashram to another, from one master to another,
walking. He had never walked before without shoes but now he was just a beggar.
He was passing along the bank of a river, walking on the sand, and his
footprints were left. While resting in the shade of a tree an astrologer saw
him. The astrologer was returning from Kashi, from the seat of learning. He had
become proficient in astrology, had become perfect, and now thathe had become a
great doctor of astrology he was coming back to his home town to practice. He
looked at the footprint on the wet sand and he became disturbed: These
footprints could not belong to an ordinary man walking on the sand without
shoes during such a hot summer, at noontime! These feet belong to a great
emperor, a CHAKRAVARTIN. A chakravartin is the emperor who rules the whole
world. All the symbols were there showing that this man was a chakravartin, an
emperor of the whole world of the six continents. And why should a chakravartin
walk barefoot on the sand on such a hot summer afternoon? It was impossible!
The astrologer was carrying his most valuable books. He thought, ”If this is
possible I should throw these books in the river and forget astrology forever,
because this is absurd. It is very, very difficult to find a man who has the
feet of a chakravartin. Once in millions of years a man becomes a chakravartin,
and what is this chakravartin doing here?” Sohefollowed the footprints to their
source and he looked at Buddha who was sitting resting under a tree with closed
eyes, and he became more disturbed. This astrologer became absolutely disturbed
because the face was also the face of a chakravartin. But the man looked like a
beggar, with his begging bowl just there by his side, with torn clothes. But
the face looked like that of a chakravartin, so what should he do? He said, ”I
am very disturbed, put me at ease. There is only one question I have to ask. I
have seen and studied your footprints. They should belong to a chakravartin, to
a great emperor who rules over all the world, the whole earth is his kingdom
–and you are a beggar. So what should I do? Should I throw away all my
astrology books? My twelve years of effort in Kashi have been wasted and those
people there are fools. I have wasted the most important part of my life, so
put me at ease. Tell me, what should I do?” Buddha said, ”You need not worry.
This will not happen again. You take your books, go to the town, start your
practice and don’t bother about me. I was born to be a chakravartin. These
footprints carry my past.” All footprints carry your past –the lines on your
hand, your palm, carry your past. That is why astrology, palmistry, is always
true about the past, never so true about the future, and absolutely untrue
about a buddha, because one who throws off his whole past moves into the
unknown –you cannot predict his future. Buddha said, ”You will not come to such
a troublesome man again. Don’t you worry, this will not happen again, take it
as an exception.” But the astrologer said, ”A few more questions. I would like
to know who you are: am I really seeing a dream? A chakravartin sitting like a
beggar? Who are you? Are you an emperor in disguise?” Buddha said, ”No.” Then
the astrologer asked, ”But your face looks so beautiful, so calm, so filled
with inner silence. Who are you? Are you an angel from paradise?” Buddha said,
”No.”
The astrologer asked one more
question, saying, ”It seems impolite to ask, but you have created the desire
and the urge. Are you a human being? If you are not an emperor, a chakravartin,
if you are not a DEVA from paradise, are you a human being?” And Buddha said,
”No, I am nobody. I don’t belong to any form, to any name.” The astrologer
said, ”You have disturbed me even more now. What do you mean?” This is what
Buddha meant: ANDTHEGREATESTMANISNOBODY. You canbesomebody,
butyoucannotbethegreatest. There is always someone greater somewhere in the
world. And who is somebody? You are the measure. You say that this man is great
–but who is the measure? You. The spoon is the measure of the ocean. You say,
”This man is great.” You say, and many like you say, ”This man is great” –and
he becomes great because of you! No. In this world, whoever is somebody cannot
be the greatest, because the ocean cannot be measured by spoons. And you are
all teaspoons measuring the ocean. No, it is not possible. Sothe really
greatest will be nobody amongst you. What does it mean when Chuang Tzu says,
”The greatest will be nobody”? It means: it will be immeasurable. You cannot
measure, you cannot label, you cannot categorize, you cannot say, ”Who is
this?” He simply escapes measurement. He simply goes beyond and beyond and
beyond and the teaspoon falls to the ground. Enough for today.
How do you deceive? There are two
ways. One is to go mad. Then you can declare that you are Alexander, Hitler,
Nixon. Then it comes easily because then you are not bothered by what others
say. Go to the madhouses all over the world and there you will find all the
great characters of history, still living! While Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was
alive, at least one dozen people in India believed that they were Pandit
Jawaharlal Nehru. Once he went to a madhouse to inaugurate a new department.
And the madhouse authorities had arranged for a few people to be released by
him, because now they had become healthy and normal. The first person was
brought to him and introduced, so Nehru introduced himself to the madman who
had become more normal and said, ”I am Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, prime minister
of India. ” The madmanlaughedandsaid, ”Don’t worry. Be here for three years and
you will become as normal as I have become. Three years ago when I first came
to this madhouse that is who I believed I was–Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, prime
minister of India. But they have cured me completely, so don’t worry.”
There are two types of
superiority. In one you have just hidden the inferiority, covered it, you are
using a mask –behind the mask the inferiority is there. Your superiority is
just superficial, deep down you remain inferior, and because you go on feeling
it you have to carry this mask of superiority, of beauty. Because you are aware
that you are ugly you have to contrive to be beautiful, you have to exhibit,
you have to show a false face. This is one type of superiority; it is not real.
There is another type of superiority, and that superiority is the absence of
inferiority, not the opposite to it. You simply don’t compare. When you don’t
compare, how can you be inferior? Look: if you are the only one on earth and
there is nobody else, will you be inferior? With whom will you compare
yourself? Relative to what? If you are alone what will you be, inferior or
superior? You will be neither. You cannot be inferior because no one is above
you; you cannot declare yourself superior because there is no one beneath you.
You will be neither superior nor inferior –and I say to you that this is the
superiority of the soul. It never compares. Compare, and the inferiority
arises. Don’t compare, and you simply are –unique. A religious man is superior
in the sense that the inferiority has disappeared. A politician is superior in
the sense that he has overcome his inferiority. It is hidden there, it is still
inside. He is just using the garb, the face, the mask of a superior
man.Whenyoucompare, you miss; then you will always be looking at others. And no
two persons are the same, they cannot be. Every individual is unique and every
individual is superior, but this superiorityis not comparable. You are superior
because you cannot be anything else. Superiority is just your nature. That tree
is superior, that rock is also superior. The whole of existence is divine, so
how can anything here be inferior? It is God, overflowing in millions of ways.
Somewhere God has become a tree, somewhere God has become a rock, somewhere God
has become a bird, somewhere God has become you. And only God exists, so there
can be no comparison. God is superior, but not to anything –because only God
is, and there cannot be any inferiority. A religious man comes to experience
his uniqueness, comes to experience his divineness, and through his experience
of divineness comes to realize the divineness of all. This is nonpolitical
because now there is no ambition, you have nothing to prove, you are already
proved; you have nothing to declare, you are already declared. Your very being
is the proof. You are...it is enough. Nothing else is needed.
Buddha says: Don’t be ambitious,
because through ambition you will remain inferior always. Be nonambitious and
attain to your intrinsic superiority. It is intrinsic. It doesn’t have to be
proved, or achieved, you already have it, you have got it. It is already there
–it has always been with you and it will always remain with you. Your very
being is sup-erior but you don’t know what being is there. You don’t know who
you are. Hence so much effort in seeking your identity, in searching, in
proving that you are superior to others. You don’t know who you are. Once you
know, then there is no problem. You are already superior. And it is not only
you that is superior –everything is superior. The whole of existence is
superior without anything being inferior, because God is one, existence is one.
Neither the inferior nor the superior can exist. The nonambitious mind comes to
realize this.
The first thing to be understood
is that what you are is what you think of others. Your desires, your own
ambitions give you the pattern. If you are after money you think that everyone
is after money. If you are a thief you keep checking your pocket: that is how
you show that you are a thief. Your inner desire is the language of your
understanding
You can find only that which you
are. You always find yourself in others, because others are just mirrors. To
catch Chuang Tzu, a Lao Tzu was needed. Nobody else could catch him, for who
could understand him? A Buddha was needed; Buddha would have guessed where he
was. But a policeman? –impossible! Only if he were a thief would it be
possible. Look at the policeman, the way he is, the way he talks, the dirty
language he uses; it is even more vulgar than thieves’ language. The policeman
has to be more vulgar than the thief, otherwise thieves would win.
Chuang Tzu could not be found
because the police were searching for his past and he lived in the present. He
was a being, not a mind. Mind can be caught but being cannot be caught. There
are no nets. Mind can be caught very easily, and you are all caught in some way
or other. Because you have a mind, a wife, a husband will catch you; a shop, a
treasure, a post, anything will catch you. There are nets, millions of nets.
And you cannot be free unless you are free of the mind. You will be caught
again and again. If you leave this wife, another woman will catch you
immediately. You cannot escape. You can escape this woman, but you cannot
escape women. You can escape this man but where will you go? No sooner have you
left one than another has come into your life. You can leave this town, but
where will you go? Another town will catch you. You can leave this desire but
another will become the bondage. Mind is always in bondage, it is already
caught. When you drop the mind then the police cannot catch you.
Puranas, no Itihas, no history.
Rama is not an historical person. He may or may not have been, it cannot be
proved. Krishna is a myth, not an historical fact. Maybe he was, maybe he was
not. But India is not bothered whether Krishna and Rama are historical. They
are meaningful, they are great epic poems. And history is meaningless for India
because history contains only bare facts, it never reveals the innermost core.
We are concerned with the innermost core, the center of the wheel. The wheel keeps
on moving, that is history, but the center of the wheel, which never moves, is
the myth..
Rama is never born and never
dies. Krishna is never born and never dies. They are always there. Myth is not
concerned with time, it is concerned with eternity. History changes with the
times, myth is always relevant. No, myth can never be out of date. Newspaper is
history, and yesterday’s newspaper is already out of date. Rama is not part of
the newspaper, he is not news, and he will never be out of date. He is always
in the present, always meaningful, relevant. History keeps changing; Rama
remains in the center of the wheel, un-moving.
Have you ever seen a picture of
Rama or Krishna which belongs to their old age? They are always young, without
even a beard or mustache. Have you ever seen a picture of Rama bearded? Unless
he had some hormonal defect it must have grown; if he was really a man –and he
was –then the beard must have grown. If Rama was historical, then the beard
would have been there; but we have pictured him beardless, because the moment
the beard grows you have started becoming old. Sooner or later it will turn
white. Death is coming near and we cannot bear to think of Rama dead, so we
have washed his face completely clean of any sign of death. And this is not
only so with Rama; the twenty-four TIRTHANKARAS of the Jainas are all
beardless, no mustaches. Buddha and all the AVATARS of the Hindus had no
beards, no mustaches. It is just to indicate their eternal youth, the eternity,
the timelessness, the far-awayness.
There is time –in time everything
changes –and there is eternity. In eternity nothing changes. History belongs to
time, myth belongs to eternity. Science belongs to time, religion belongs to
the non-temporal, the eternal.
All that is great, all that is
beautiful, all that is true and real, is always spontaneous. You cannot plan
it. The moment you plan it, everything goes wrong. The moment planning enters,
everything becomes unreal. But this has happened to humanity. Your love, your
sincerity, your truth, everything, has gone wrong because you have planned it,
be-cause you have been taught not to be spontaneous. You have been taught to
manipulate yourself, to control, to manage, and not to be a natural flow. You
have become rigid, frozen, dead. Life knows no planning. It is itself enough.
Do the trees plan how to grow, how to mature, how to come to flower? They
simply grow without even being conscious of the growth. There is no
self-consciousness, there is no separation. Whenever you start planning you
have divided yourself, you have become two; the one who is controlling and the
one who is controlled. A conflict has arisen, now you will never be at peace.
You may succeed in controlling but there will be no peace; you may not succeed
in controlling, then too there will be no peace. Whether you succeed or fail,
ultimately you will come to realize that you have failed. Your failure will be
a failure, your success will also be a failure. Whatsoever you do, your life
will be miserable. This division creates ugliness, you are not one, and beauty
belongs to oneness, beauty belongs to a harmonious whole. All culture, all
civilization, all societies, make you ugly. All morality makes you ugly because
it is based on division, on control.
