Meditation Times April 2012

MEDITATION TIMES
A Downloadable Monthly E-Magazine

Click on image for website
A PRODUCTION OF www.taoshobuddhameditations.com Published by: www.taoshobuddhameditations.com Country of Origin: Trinidad & Tobago, West Indies. Chief Editor/Graphics Layout & Design: Swami Anand Neelambar
Editorial Team: Taoshobuddha, Swami Anand Neelambar International Contributors: Hadhrat Maulawi Jalaluddin Ahmad Ar-Rowi, Lars Jensen
For Queries, Comments, and Suggestions and to submit Contributions, you can email the following persons:
In This Issue
Editorial Thus Spake Swami Vivekananda
Taoshobuddha: mailtaoshobuddha@gmail.com Swami Anand Neelambaravatar411@gmail.com
You can also visit our website:
Thus Spake Zarathustra

http://dhyan-samadhi.webs.com/
Thus Spake Buddha Thus Spake Ramana Maharishi Sayings of Ramakrishna Bhaja Govindam of Shankara Sayings from the Ramayana The Pinnacle of Meditation Meditation of the Month Taoshobuddha responds
www.youtube.com\taoshobuddha9 www.scribd.com\taoshobuddhacyberlibrary www.scribd.com\avatar411

http://bodhidharmameditation.blogspot.com/ http://www.taoshobuddhameditations.myeweb.net/ http://meditationtimes.myeweb.net/
Masters Grace
Sayings & Quotations
Taoshobudhha Meditations
Meditation Times
MEDITATION TIMES
Published by Taoshobuddha Meditations Trinidad, West indies
EDITORIAL
Our journey into various Maters and paths continue. We are exploring the sayings of the Masters. These sayings are signposts along the pathless path. It is journey yet not a journey. It begins nowhere and ends nowhere. It is more like an uncovering of that which was forgotten. We have merely forgotten and this sojourn is the see that which IS. The obvious is the most hidden and the present moment is the most missed. We are seeking that which cannot be sought and wanting that which cannot be had. We are THAT. Only realization is needed. And realization is not a method or path. Realization is a pathless path. It is a journey from self to self - from the outer seeking self to the inner witnessing self. Yet there are not two selvesbut only a perception. Self is only one. The utterance of the masters and mute gestures are only to indicate this truth. Do not try to take these sayings to lead a moral and righteous life. Morality and righteousness is neither spirituality nor realization. These sayings are not to be emulated...but to be seen where they emanate from and the dimension of their origins. It is from this level we can truly understand what they indicate. The true message is contained in the wordless silence.
Swami Anand Neelambar
ii
Taoshobudhha Meditations
Meditation Times
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations
Thus Spake Swami Vivekananda

Invocation I bow to Vivekananda, a mere glance of whose eyes is enough to impart both enjoyment and liberation, who tramples down with ease the myriad hordes of vice, who is the veritable Siva with the crescent moon on the forehead, and who is worshipped by Indu.
A Brief Life-Sketch We cannot think of Sri Rama without thinking of Hanuman, or remember Sri Krishna without remembering Arjuna. In the same way do Buddha and Ananda go together, as do Christ and St. Paul. Even such is the link between Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda. For, the one was the spring and the other was the stream conveying the spring's waters. God to Ramakrishna was a Fact and a Reality. He did not have to argue about God. He could affirm God. He was the peak of Indian Spiritual Culture. His vision was cosmic and realisation was all-embracing. Swami Vivekananda was his chief disciple, his most beloved pupil, his greatest heir, his right interpreter and his most efficient executive. Swami Vivekananda was born in Calcutta on January 12, 1863 on the holy day of Makara Sankaranthi. His father was Viswanatha Datta, a prominent lawyer of Calcutta and his mother was Bhuvaneswari Devi, a very cultured woman of aristocratic upbringing. The Dattas named the child Narendranath and the mother believed that he had come to her in answer to her ardent prayers to Lord Siva. The child was the darling of everybody in and near the home, and was boisterous and vivacious. There was in him, an exuberance of energy and it was hard for his people to tackle and control hi. He grew into an athlete and was proficient in all kinds of games in sports. He was as good as studies as at play. He was a student with superlative talents both innate and acquired. His range of reading was wide; his powers of understanding were keen. He had a very retentive memory and in discriminative faculty he was very much above his age. Even as a boy he was highly soulful and deeply meditative; there were deeper powers in his young being than are usually found in youth. He was challenging and knew no fear. A hundred graces and excellences marked him out as a genius even at school and college. Narendranath was a thinker and the question of God troubled him. His intellect was too robust to take things on feeble faith and customary belief. He demanded verification, asked for proof, before he believed. The doubting youth went here and there in quest of God for long but in vain. And when he almost despaired of discovering God and almost concluded that God was a mad man's idea, Destiny, wise and benevolent Destiny, took him to Sri Ramakrishna. He asked the Saint if he had seen God. Sri Ramakrishna replied with a smile that not only had he seen God, but he could show God to Naren also. April 2012 Page 1
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations Thus in the simple rustic temple-priest did the college-educated rationalist find his Master and Saviour. For nearly five years Narendranath stayed with Sri Ramakrishna and was taught and trained by him. At the end of this period of utmost intensity, Narendranath had imbibed all the superhuman wisdom of the Paramahamsa and had become his alter ego. Sri Ramakrishna passed away in 1886, when Narendranath was not twenty-three. On Naren's very young shoulders fell the gigantic burden of executing Sri Ramakrishna's mission. It was not an easy task, but if anyone was capable of performing it, it was Narendranath, who had the brain and brawn for it. He renounced home he became Swami Vivekananda; he established a Math (a monastery) where he and his co-disciples could carry on austerities. He then wandered over India as a parivrajaka sadhu. From the northern Himalayan extremity to the southern land's end of Cape Comorin did he travel, studying the Motherland, understanding her problems at first hand and forming solutions for her regeneration. This pilgrimage was one of the landmarks of his life and the very many occurrences and incidents relating to his wanderings are fascinating peeps into the rich variety and compelling charm of his personality. In 1893 in the month of May, the Swami left by steamer for America to attend the Parliament of Religions to be held there at Chicago in September. He had not been formally invited and enrolled as a delegate. With some difficulty he managed to get into the Parliament; he was too luminous not to be let in. But then it was a case of conquest at first speech. When his turn to address the august assembly came, he rose like the morning sun and spoke to the 'Sisters and Brothers of America'. That hearty call fascinated the Parliament and the western world. Rising above cramping creeds and dwarfing dogmas he spoke of harmony and universalism; his message came like the breath of life to a suffocated people. He stayed many months in America lecturing and teaching and helping Westerners to study Indian philosophy. Then he went to England and Europe. He had become a bridge of understanding between the Orient and the Occident. In 1897 the Swami returned to India. The nation rose like one man to honour him. The people saw in him a new Sankara who had risen to bring life and vigour to the motherland. The Swami reminded his countrymen of the Indian national ideal of renunciation, roused them to a sense of privilege in being Indians and showed them how spiritual culture was the secret of India's immortal existence. He made Bharatha a Prabuddha Bharatha. But he did not stop with advising and preaching. He was a capable organiser and desired to set up an organisation which could ensure the continuance of his Master's mission. So he founded the Ramakrishna Math and Mission ( with its Headquarters at Belur Math near Calcutta) which is a body dedicated to self-realisation and to the service of humanity. This Sangha is his lasting legacy to manking. Swami Vivekananda was not forty, when he entered into Mahasamadhi. But his age is not to be calculated in solar years. For, in just one decade of public work he had implanted into human consciousness ideas which may need one thousand and five hundred years to get worked out in April 2012 Page 2
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations full. There is an Indian side to his life-work and there is an international aspect to it. In both the fields, his contribution has been unique.
Viveka Sutras Each soul is potentially divine. The goal is to manifest this divinity within by controlling nature, external and internal. Do this either by work or worship or psychic control, or philosophy - by one or more, or all of these - and be free. This is the whole of religion. Doctrines or dogmas, or rituals or books or temples or forms, are but secondary details.
Strength Strength, strength is what the Upanishads speak to me from every page. This is the one great thing to remember, it has been the one great lesson I have been taught in my life; strength, it says, strength, O man, be not weak. Everything that can weaken us as a race we have had for the past thousand years. It seems as if during that period the national life had this one end in view, viz., how to make us weaker and weaker, till we have become real earthworms crawling at the feet of everyone who dares to put his foot on us. Therefore, my friends, as one of your blood, as the one that lives and dies with you, let me tell you that we want strength, strength and every time strength. And the Upanishads are the great mine of strength. Therein lies the strength enough to invigorate the whole world; the whole world can be vivified, made strong, energised through them. They will call with trumpet voice upon the weak, the miserable, and the downtrodden of all races, all creeds and all sects to stand on their feet and be free. Freedom, physical freedom, mental freedom and spiritual freedom are the watchwords of the Upanishads. What I want is muscles of iron and nerves of steel, inside which dwells the mind of the same material as that of which, the thunderbolt is made. Strength, manhood, Kshatravirya, Brahmateja. All power is within you; you can do anything and everything. Believe in that; do not believe that you are weak; do not believe that you are half-crazed lunatics, as most of us believe now-adays. You can do anything and everything, without even the guidance of any one. All power is there. Stand up and express the divinity within you. Your country requires heroes; be heroes. Stand firm like a rock. Truth always triumphs. What India wants is a new electric fire to stir up a fresh vigour in the national veins. Be brave, be brave; man dies but once. My disciples must not be cowards. I hate cowardice. Keep up the deepest mental poise; take not even the slightest notice of what puerile creatures may be saying April 2012 Page 3
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations against you. Indifference! Indifference! Indifference! Bear in mind the eyes are two in number, and so the ears, but the mouth is but one. All great undertakings are achieved through mighty obstacles. Put forth your manly effort. Wretched people under the grip of lust and gold deserve to be looked upon with indifference. What makes you weep, my friend? In you is all power. Summon up your all-powerful nature, oh, mighty one! and this whole universe will lie at your feet. It is the Self alone that predominates and not matter. It is those foolish people who identify themselves with their bodies that piteously cry, 'Weak,weak, we are weak'. What the nation wants is pluck and scientific genius. We want great spirit, tremendous energy and boundless enthusiasm; no womanishness will do. It is the man of action, the lionhearted that the goddess of wealth resorts to. No need of looking behind. Forward! We want infinite energy, infinite zeal, infinite courage, and infinite patience; then only will great things will be achieved. Vedanta recognizes no sin, it only recognizes error; and the greatest error, says the Vedanta, is to say that you are weak, that you are a sinner, a miserable creature and that you have no power and you cannot do this or that. Strength is life, weakness is death; strength is felicity, life eternal, immortal! Weakness is constant strain and misery. Weakness is death. Let positive, strong, helpful thoughts enter into your brains from very childhood. Weakness is the one cause of suffering. We become miserable, because we are weak. We lie, steal, kill and commit other crimes, because we are weak. We suffer, because we are weak. We die, because we are weak. Where there is nothing to weaken us, there is no death, no sorrow. Strength is the one thing needful. Strength is the medicine for the world's disease. Strength is the medicine which the poor must have when tyrannized over by the rich. Strength is the medicine which the ignorant must have when oppressed by the learned. And it is the medicine that sinners must have when tyrannized over by other sinners. Stand up, be bold, be strong. Take the whole responsibility on your own shoulders, and know that you are the creator of your own destiny. All the strength and succor you want is within yourselves. Therefore make your own future. Thinking all the time that we are diseased, will not cure us; medicine is necessary. Being reminded of weakness does not help much. Give strength; and strength does not come by thinking of weakness all the time. The remedy for weakness is not brooding over weakness, but thinking of strength. Either in this world or in the world of religion, it is true that fear is the sure cause of degradation and sin. It is fear that brings misery, fear that brings death, fear that breeds evil. And what causes fear? Ignorance of our own nature. Each of us is heir apparent to the Emperor of Emperors.
April 2012
Page 4
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations Know that all sins and all evils can be summed up in that one word - weakness. It is weakness that is the motive power in all evil-doing. It is weakness that is the source of all selfishness. It is weakness that makes men injure others. It is weakness that makes them manifest what they are not in reality. What our country now wants are muscles of iron and nerves of steel - gigantic wills which nothing can resist, which can penetrate into the mysteries and secrets of the universe and will accomplish their purpose even if it meant going to the bottom of the ocean and meeting Death face to face. We have wept long enough; no more weeping, but stand on your feet and be men. It is a manmaking religion that we want. It is man-making theories that we want. It is man-making education all round that we want. And here is the test of truth - anything that makes you weak physically, intellectually and spiritually, reject as poison; there is no life in it, it cannot be true. Truth is strengthening. Truth is purity, Truth is all knowledge. Truth must be strengthening, must be enlightening, must be invigorating. We speak of many things parrot-like, but never do them; speaking and not doing has become a habit with us. What is the cause of that? Physical weakness. This sort of weak brain is not able to do anything. We must strengthen it. First of all our young men must be strong. Religion will come afterwards. You will be nearer to Heaven through football than through a study of the Gita. You will understand Gita better with your biceps, your muscles, a little stronger. You will understand the mighty strength of Krishna better with a little of strong blood in you. You will understand the Upanishads better and the glory of the Atman when your body stands firm upon your feet and you feel yourselves as men. What we want is vigour in the blood, strength in the nerves, iron muscles and nerves of steel, not softening namby-pamby ideas. Be moral, be brave, be a whole-hearted man - strictly moral, brave unto desperation. Don't bother your head with religious theories; cowards only sin, brave men never. Try to love anybody and everybody. I have never spoken of revenge; I have always spoken of strength. Do we dream of revenging ourselves on this drop of sea spray? But it is a great thing to a mosquito! Get up, and set your shoulder to the wheel - how long is this life for? As you have come into this world, leave some mark behind. Otherwise where is the difference between you and the trees and stones? - they too come into existence, decay and die. Be bold! My children should be brave, above all. Not the least compromise on any account. Preach the highest truth broadcast. Do not fear of losing your respect or of causing unhappy friction. Rest assured that if you serve truth in spite of temptations to forsake it, you will attain, a heavenly strength, in the face of which men will quail to speak before you things which you do not believe to be true. People would be convinced of what you would say to them, if you can strictly serve truth for fourteen years continually, without swerving from it. April 2012 Page 5
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations It is only in our scriptures that this adjective is given to The Lord - Abhih, Abhih. We have to become Abhih, fearless and our task will be done.
Sraddha (Faith) He is an atheist who does not believe in himself. Those of you who have studied the most beautiful of all the Upanishads, the Katha, will remember how Vajasravas was going to make a great sacrifice, and instead of giving away things that were of any worth, he was giving away cows and horses that were not of any use, and the book says that at that time Sraddha entered into the heart of his son Nachiketa. I would not translate this word Sraddha to you, it would be a mistake; it is a wonderful word to understand, and much depends on it; we will see how it works, for immidiately we find Nachiketa telling himself, "I am superior to many, I am inferior to a few, but nowhere am I the last, I can also do something." And this boldness increased and the boy wanted to solve the problem which was in his mind, the problem of death. The solution could only be got by going to the house of Death, and the boy went. there he was, brave Nachiketa, waiting at the house of Death for three days, and you know how he obtained what he desired. This Sraddha must enter into you. Whatever of material power you see manifested by the Western races is the outcome of this Sraddha, because they believe in their muscles, and if you believe in your spirit, how much more will it work! This Sraddha is what I want, and what all of us here want, this faith in ourselves; and before you is the great task to get that faith. Give up the awful disease that is creeping into our national blood - that idea of ridiculing everything, that loss of seriousness. Give that up. Be strong and have this Sraddha, and everything else is bound to follow. Faith, sympathy, fiery faith and fiery sympathy! Faith, faith in ourselves, faith, faith in God - this is the secret of greatness. I remember that grand word of the Katha Upanishad - Sraddha, or marvellous faith. To preach the doctrine of Sraddha or genuine faith is the mission of my life. Let me repeat to you that this faith is one of the potent factors of humanity, and of all religions. First, have faith in yourselves. Do not look up to the rich and great men who have money. The poor did all the great and gigantic works of the world. Be steady, and above all be pure and sincere to the backbone. Have faith in your destiny. We are the children of the Almighty; we are sparks of the infinite, divine fire. How can we be nothing? We are everything, do everything and man must do everything. Therefore, my brethren, teach this life-saving, great, ennobling, grand doctrine, to your children, even from their very birth. This marvellous doctrine of the soul, the perfection of the soul, is commonly believed in by all sects.
April 2012
Page 6
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations This faith in themselves was in the hearts of our ancestors, this faith in themselves was the motive power that pushed them forward and forward in the march of civilisation; and if there has been degeneration and if there has been defect, mark my words, you will find degradation to have started on the day our people lost this faith in themselves. Losing faith in one's self means losing faith in God. What did I learn in the West and what did I see behind those frothy sayings of the Christian sects repeating that man was a fallen and hopelessly fallen sinner? There I saw that inside the national hearts of both Europe and America resides the tremendous power of the men's faith in themselves. An English boy will tell you, "I am an Englishman, and I can do anything". The American boy will tell you the same thing, and so will any European boy. Can our boys say the same thing, here? No, nor even the boys' fathers. We have lost faith in ourselves. There is not one system in India which does not hold the doctrine that God is within, that Divinity resides within all things. Every one of our Vedantic systems admits that all purity and perfection and strength are in the soul already. The ideal of faith in ourselves is of the greatest help to us. If faith in ourselves had been more extensively taught and practised, I am sure a very large portion of the evils and miseries that we have, would have vanished. Throughout the history of mankind, if any motive power has been more potent than another in the lives of all great men and women, it is that of faith in themselves. Born with the consciousness that they were to be great, they become great. Never quarrel about religion. All quarrels and disputations concerning religion simply show that spirituality is not present. Religious quarrels are always over hate husks. When purity, when spirituality goes, leaving the soul dry, quarrels begin, and not before. Do not care for doctrines, do not care for dogmas, or sects, or churches or temples; they count for little compared with the essence of existence in each man which is spirituality and the more this is developed in a man, the more powerful is he for good. Earn that first, acquire that and criticise no one. Show by your lives that religion does not mean words or names, or sects, but that it means spiritual realization. Sincerity of conviction and purity of motive will surely gain the day, and even a small minority, armed with these is surely destined to prevail against all odds. Truth, purity and unselfishness - wherever these are present, there is no power below or above the sun to crush the possessor thereof. Equipped with these, one individual is able to face the whole universe in opposition. Arise! Awake! And stop not till the goal is reached!
April 2012
Page 7
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations The Call to India OH! INDIA! Forget not - that your ideal of the womanhood is Sita, Savitri, Damayanti; forget not - that the God thou worshippest is the great Ascetic of ascetics, the all-renouncing Sankara, the Lord of Uma; forget not - that thy marriage, thy wealth, thy life are not for the sense-pleasure, are not for thy individual personal happiness; forget not - that though art born as a sacrifice to the Mother's altar; forget not - that the social order is but the reflex of the Infinite Universal Motherhood; forget not - that the lower class, the ignorant, the poor, the illiterate, the cobbler, the sweeper, are thy flesh and blood, are thy brothers. Thou brave one, be bold, take courage, be proud that thou are an Indian - and proudly proclaim, - "I am an Indian - every Indian is my brother". Say, - "The ignorant India, the poor and destitute Indian, the Brahmin Indian, the Pariah Indian, is my brother." Thou, too, clad with but a rag round thy loins, proudly proclaim at the top of thy voice, - "The Indian is my brother, - the Indian is my life. India's gods and goddesses are my God. India's society is the cradle of my infancy, the pleasure-garden of my youth, the sacred heaven, the Varanasi of my old age." Say, brother: "The soil of India is my highest heaven, the good of India is my good," and repeat and pray, day and night, 'O Thou Lord of Guri, O Thou Mother of the Universe, vouchsafe manliness unto me; O Thou, Mother of Strength, take away my weakness, take away unmanliness, and - Make me a Man!" Oh, India, this is your terrible danger. The spell of imitating the West getting such a hold upon you, that what is good or what is bad, is no longer decided by reason, judgement, discrimination or reference to the Sastras. Whatever ideas, whatever manners the white men praise or like, are good; whatever things they dislike or censure, are bad! Alas! What can be a more tangible proof of foolishness than this? With this mere echoing of others, with this base imitation of others, with this dependence on others, wouldst thou, with these provisions only, scale the highest pinnacle of civilisation and greatness? Wouldst thou attain by means of thy disgraceful cowardice, that freedom deserved only by the brave and the heroic? Remember always, that there is not in the world any other country whose institutions are really better in their aims and objects than the institutions of this land. I have seen castes in almost every country in the world, but nowhere is their plan purpose so glorious as here. If caste is thus unavoidable, I would rather have a caste of purity and culture and self-sacrifice than a caste of dollars. Therefore, our solution of the caste question is not degrading those who are already high up, is not running amuck through food and drink, is not jumping out of our own limits in order to have more enjoyment, but it comes to every one of us fulfilling the dictates of our Vedantic religion, by our attaining spirituality, and by our becoming the ideal Brahmin. There is a law laid on each one of you in this land by your ancestors, whether you are Aryans, or non-Aryans, Rishis, or Brahmins, or the very lowest outcastes. The command is the same to you all, that you must make progress without stopping and that, from the highest man to the lowest Pariah, every one in this country has to try and become the ideal Brahmin. April 2012 Page 8
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations Our ideal is the Brahmin of spiritual culture and renunciation. By the Brahmin ideal what do I mean? I mean the ideal Brahmin-ness in which worldliness is altogether absent and true wisdom is abundantly present. That is the ideal of the Hindu race. It has become a trite saying that idolatry is wrong, and every man swallows it at the present time without questioning. I once thought so, and to pay the penalty of that, I had to learn my lesson sitting at the feet of a man who realised everything through idols; I allude to Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. If such Ramakrishna Paramahamsas are produced by idol-worship, what will you have - the reformer's creed or any number of idols? I want an answer. Take a thousand idols more if you can produce Ramakrishna Paramahamsas through Then from the world all idol-worship, and may God speed you! Produce such spirituality will be extinct; noble natures by any means you can. Yet idolatry is condemned! Why? Nobody knows. Because some hundreds of years ago some man of Jewish blood happened to condemn it! That is , he happened to condemn everybody else's idols except his own. If God is represented in any form, said the Jew, it is awfully bad; it is sin. But if He is represented in the form of a chest, with two angels sitting on each side, and a cloud hanging over it, it is holy of holies. If God comes in the form of a dove, it is holy. But if He comes in the form of cow, it is heathen superstition; condemn it! That is how the world goes. Shall India die? Then from the world all spirituality will be extinct; all moral perfection will be extinct; all sweetsouled sympathy for religion will be extinct; all ideality will be extinct; and in its place will reign the duality of lust and luxury as the male and female deities, with money as its priest, fraud, force and competition its ceremonies and the human soul its sacrifice. Such a thing can never be. The power of suffering is infinitely greater than the power of doing; the power of love is infinitely of greater potency than the power of hatred.
India will be raised, not with the power of flesh, but with the power of the spirit; not with the flag of destruction but with the flag of peace and love, the garb of Sannyasin. Call up the divinity within you, which will enable you to bear hunger and thirst, heat and cold. Sitting in luxurious homes, surrounded with all the comforts of life doling out a little amateur religion may be good for other lands, but India
all moral perfection will be extinct; all sweet-souled sympathy for religion will be extinct; all ideality will be extinct; and in its place will reign the duality of lust and luxury as the male and female deities, with money as its priest, fraud, force and competition its ceremonies and the human soul its sacrifice. Such a thing can never be. The power of suffering is infinitely greater than the power of doing; the power of love is infinitely of greater potency than the power of hatred.
April 2012
Page 9
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations has a truer instinct. It intuitively detects the mask. You must give up. Be great. No great work can be done without sacrifice. Lay down your comforts, your pleasures, your name, fame or position, nay even your lives, and make a bridge of human chains over which millions will cross this ocean of life. Bring all forces of good together. Do not care under what banner you march. Do not care what be your colour green, blue, or red - but mix all colours up produce that intense glow of white, the colour of love. Ours is to work. The results will take care of themselves. I do not see into the future; nor do I care to see. But one vision I see clear as life before me that the ancient Mother has awakened once more, sitting on her throne rejuvenated, more glorious than ever. Proclaim her to all the world with the voice of peace and benediction. Feel, therefore my would-be reformers, my would-be patriots! Do you feel? Do you feel that millions and millions of the descendants of gods and of sages have become next-door neighbours to brutes? Do you feel that millions are starving today, and millions have been starving for ages? Do you feel that ignorance has come over the land as a dark cloud? Does it make you restless? Does it make you sleepless? Has it gone into your blood, coursing through your veins, becoming consonant with your heart-beats? Has it made you almost mad? Are you seized with that one idea of th misery of ruin, and have you forgotten all about your name, your fame, your wives, your children, your property, even your own bodies? Have you done that? That is the first step to become a patriot, the very first step.
Our Women There is no chance for the welfare of the world unless the condition of women is improved. It is not possible for a bird to fly on only one wing. The Hindu women are very religious, perhaps more so than any other women in the world. The idea of perfect womanhood is perfect independence. First Mother and her daughters, then Father and his sons - Can you understand this? To me Mother's grace is a hundred thousand times more valuable than Father's. Mother's grace, Mother's blessings are all paramount to me. I know that the race that produced Sita - even if it only dreamt of her - has a reverence for woman that is unmatched on earth. Sita is the name in India for everything that is good, pure and holy - everything that in women we call womanly. Sita never returned injury. Try to be Sita. Our woman are not learned, but they are more pure. To every woman every man, save her husband, should be her son. To every man every woman, save his own wife, should be as his mother.
April 2012
Page 10
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations Just as centres have to be started for men, so also centres have to be started for teaching women. The uplift of the women, the awakening of the masses, must come first, and then only can any real good about for the country, for India. Women must be put in a position to solve their problems in their own way. No one can or ought to do this for them. And our Indian women are as capable of doing it as any in the world. Along with other things, our women should acquire the spirit of valour and heroism. In the present day, it has become necessary for them also to learn self-defence. See, how grand was the Queen of Jhansi! Who are you to solve women's problems? Are you the Lord God, that you should rule over every widow and every woman? Hands off! They will solve their own problems. In the Vedas and Upanishads, women taught the highest truths and received the same veneration as men. If I can raise a thousand Madonnas - Incarnations of the Divine Mother - in our country before I die, I shall die in peace. Then only will our countrymen will become worthy of their name. Mother (Sri Sarada Devi) has been born to revive that wonderful Sakti in India; and making her the nucleus, once more Gargis and Maitreyis will be born in the world. Without the grace Sakti nothing can be accomplished.
Service and Sacrifice Look upon every man, woman and everyone as God. You cannot help any one; you can only serve; serve the children of the Lord, serve the Lord Himself, if you have the privilege. If the Lord grants that you can help any one of His children, blessed you are; do not think too much of yourselves. Blessed you are that that privilege was given to you when others had it not. Do it only as a worship. The poor and the miserable are for our salvation, so that we may serve the Lord coming in the shape of the diseased, coming in the shape of the lunatic, the leper and the sinner. The only God to worship is the human sould in the human body. Of course, all animals are temples too, but man is the highest, the Taj Mahal of temples. If I cannot worship in that, no other temple will be of any advantage. Vow then to devote your whole lives to the cause of the redemption of the 300 millions going down and down every day. Him I call a Mahatman whose heart bleeds for the poor; otherwise he is a Duratman. So long as the millions live in hunger and ignorance, I hold every man a traitor who, having been educated at their expense, pays not the least heed to them. April 2012 Page 11
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations Do you love your fellowmen? Where should you go to seek for God? Are not all the poor, the miserable, the weak, Gods? Why not worship them first? Why go to dig a well on the shores of the Ganges? Believe in the omnipotent power of love. Who cares for these tinsel puffs of name? Have you love? - You are omnipotent. Are you perfectly unselfish? If so, you are irresistible. It is character that pays everywhere. Give up jealousy and conceit. Learn to work united for others. That is the great need of our country. Have patience and be faithful unto death. Do not fight among yourselves. Be perfectly pure in money dealings. So long as you have faith and honesty and devotion, everything will prosper. So long as there is no feeling of disunion amongst you, through grace of the Lord, I assure, there is no danger for you. Do not open your mind, unless you feel it will be positively beneficial. Use agreeable and wholesome language towards even the greatest enemy. Any expansion is life, all contraction is death. All love is expansion, all selfishness is contraction. Love is therefore the only law of live. He who loves, lives; he who is selfish is dying. Therefore, love for love's sake. Because, it is the only law of life. All the work you do, is done for your own salvation, is done for your own benefit. God has not fallen into a ditch for you and me to help Him out by building a hospital, or something of that sort! He allows you to work... not in order to help Him, but that you may help yourself. Do you think even an ant will die for want of your help? Most arrogant blasphemy! The world does not need you at all. Cut out the word help from your mind. You cannot help; it is blasphemy! You worship. When you give a morsel of food to a dog, you worship the dog as God. He is all and is in all. Be thankful that you are allowed to exercise your power of benevolence and mercy in the world and thus, become pure and perfect. Be grateful to the man you help, think of him as God. Is it not a great privilege to be allowed to worship God by helping our fellowmen? I should see God in the poor and it is for my salvation that I go and worship them. The poor and the miserable are for our salvation, so that we may serve the Lord, coming in the shape of the distressed, coming in the shape of the lunatic, the leper, the sinner. Bold are my words and let me repeat that it is the greatest privilege in our lives that we are allowed to serve the Lord in all these shapes. A hundred thousand men and women, fired with the zeal of holiness, fortified with eternal faith in the Lord, and nerved to lion's courage by their sympathy for the poor and the fallen and the downtrodden, will go over the length and breadth of the land, preaching the gospel of salvation, the gospel of help, the gospel of social raising-up, the gospel of equality. Have vairagya. Your ancestors gave up the world for doing great things. At the present times there are men who give up the world to help their own salvation. Throw away everything, even your own salvation, and go and help others. Let all other vain gods disappear for the time from our minds. This is the only god that is awake, our own race, everywhere his hands, everywhere his feet, everywhere his ears; he covers April 2012 Page 12
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations everything. All other gods are sleeping. What vain gods, shall we go after and yet cannot worship the god we see all round us, the Virat? When we have worshipped this, we shall be able to worship all other gods. Liberation is only for him who gives up everything for other, whereas others who tax their brain day and night harping on "my salvation", "my salvation", wander about with their true wellbeing ruined, both present and prospective. After so much austerity, I have understood this as the real truth; God is present in every Jiva, there is no other God besides that. Who serves Jiva serves God indeed. The national ideals of India are renunciation and service. Intensify her in these channels and the rest will take care of itself. The banner of the spirituality cannot be raised too high in this country. In it alone is salvation. Those who want to help mankind must take their own pleasure and pain, name and fame, and all sorts of interests, and make a bundle of them and throw them into the sea and then come to the Lord. This is what all the masters said and did. Let me help my fellowmen - that is all I seek. If you want any good to come, just throw your ceremonials overboard and worship the living God, the Man-God - every being that wears a human form - God in His universal as well as individual aspect. Doing good to others out of compassion is good, but the Seva (service) of all beings in the spirit of the Lord is better. Calm and silent and steady work and no newspaper humbug, no name-making, you must always remember this. Go, all of you, wherever there is an outbreak of plague or famine, or wherever the people are in distress, and mitigate their sufferings. At the most, you may die in the attempt. What of that? How many like you are taking birth and dying like worms, every day? What difference does that make to the world at large? Die you must, but have a great ideal to die for and, it is better to die with a great ideal in life. Preach this ideal from door to door and you will yourselves be benefited and at the same time, be doing good to your country. On you lies the future hope of our country. I feel extreme pain to see your leading a life of inaction. Set yourselves to work - to work! Do not tarry - the time of death is approaching day by day! Do not sit idle, thinking that everything will be done in time, later. Mind - nothing will be done that way. Even the least work done for others awakens the power within; even thinking of the least good of others gradually instils into the heart the strength of a lion. I love you all ever so much, but I would wish you all to die working for others - I should be rather glad to see you do that! Leave aside your thoughts of poverty! In what respects are you poor? Do you feel regret because you have not a coach and a pair, or a retinue of servants at your beck and call? What of April 2012 Page 13
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations that? You little know how you can leave nothing undone in life, if you labour day and night for others with your heart's blood. Work unto death - I am with you, and when I am gone, my spirit will work with you. This life comes and goes - wealth, fame, enjoyments are only for a few days. It is better, far better, to dies on the field of duty, preaching the truth, than to die like a worldly worm. Advance! Give up jealously and conceit. Learn to work united for others. This is the great need of our country. I bequeath to you, young men, this sympathy, this struggle for the poor, the ignorant, the oppressed. Go now this minute to the temple of Parthasarathi, and before Him who was friend of the poor and lowly cowherds of Gokula, who never shrank to embrace the pariah Guhaka, who accepted the invitation of a prostitute in preference to that of the nobles and saver her in His incarnation as Buddha - yea, down on your faces before Him and make a great sacrifice, the sacrifice of a whole life for them, for whom He comes from time to time, whom He loves above all, the poor, the lowly and the oppressed. Let us all work hard, my brethren; this is no time for sleep. On our work depends the coming of the India of the future. She is there ready, waiting. She is only sleeping. Arise, and awake, and see her seated here, on her eternal throne, rejuvenated, more glorious than she ever was - this motherland of ours. He who wants to serve Siva must serve His children - must serve all creatures in this world first. It is said in the Sastras that those who serve the servants of God are His greatest servants. Unselfishness is the test of religion. He who has more of this unselfishness is more spiritual and nearer to Siva. And if a man is selfish, even though he has visited all the temples, seen all the places of pilgrimage, and painted himself like a leopard, he is still further off from Siva. This is the gist of all worship - to be pure and to do good to others. He who sees Siva in the poor, in the weak, and in the diseased, really worships Siva; and if he sees Siva only in the image, his worship is but preliminary. He who has served and helped one poor man seeing Siva in him without thinking of his caste, creed or race, or anything, with him Siva is more pleased than with the man who sees Him only in temples. What good is it, if we acknowledge in our prayers that God is the Father of us all, and in our daily lives do not treat every man as other brother? You have now to make the character of Mahavira your ideal. See how at the command of Ramachandra he crossed the ocean. He had no care for life or death. He was a perfect master of his senses and wonderfully sagacious. You have now to build your life on this great ideal of personal service. Through that, all the other ideals will gradually manifest in life. Obedience to the Guru without questioning, and strict observance of Brahmacharya - this is the secret of success. As on the one hand Hanuman represents the ideal of service, so on the other, he represents leonine courage, striking the whole world with awe. April 2012 Page 14
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations From highest Brahman to the yonder worm And to the very minutest atom Everywhere is the same God, the All-Love Friend, offer mind, soul, body at their feet, These are His manifold forms before thee, Rejecting them where seekest thou for God? Who loves all beings without distinction, He indeed is worshipping best his God. This life is short, the vanities of the world are transient, but they alone live who live for others, the rest are more dead than alive. Great things can be done by great sacrifices only. Everything must be sacrificed, if necessary, for that one sentiment, universality. Go to hell yourself to buy salvation for others. There is no Mukti on earth to call my own. Ask nothing; want nothing in return. Give what you have to give; it will come back to you - but do not think of that now. It will come back multiplied - a thousand-fold - but the attention must not be on that. You have the power to give. Give, and there it ends. There is no higher virtue than charity. The lowest man is he whose hand draws in receiving; and he is the highest man whose hand goes out in giving. The hand was made to give always. Give the last bit of bread you have, even if you are starving. You will be perfect, you will become God. Who cares for name? Off with it! If in the attempt to carry morsels of food to starving mouths, name and possession and all be doomed even - thrice blessed art thou! It is the heart that conquers, not the brain. Books and learning, yoga, meditation and illumination - all are but dust compared to love. India wants the sacrifice of at least a thousand of her young men - men and not brutes. The essential thing is renunciation - without renunciation none can pour out his whole heart in working for others. The man of renunciation sees all with an equal eye - why then do you cherish the idea that the wife and children are your own more than others? At your very threshold, Narayana Himself in the form of a poor beggar is dying of starvation! Instead of giving him anything, would you only satisfy the appetites of your wife and children with delicacies? Why, that is beastly!
April 2012
Page 15
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations We have to bear in mind that we are all debtors to the world and the world does not owe us anything. It is a great privilege for all of us to be allowed to do anything for the world. In helping the world we really help ourselves. Do not stand on a high pedestal and take five cents in your hand and say, "Here, my poor man," but be grateful that the poor man is there so that by making a gift to him, you are able to help yourself. It is not the receiver that is blessed, but it is the giver. In the world take always the position of the giver. Give everything and look for no return. Give love, give help, give service, give any little thing you can, but keep out barter. Make no conditions and none will be imposed. Let us give out of our own bounty, just as God gives to us. Love never fails, my son; today or tomorrow or ages after, truth will conquer! Love shall win the victory. Do you love your fellowmen? I do not care for liberation, I would rather go to a hundred thousand hells, "doing good to others (silently) like the spring" - this is my religion.
Self-Control Know that talking ill of others in private is a sin. You must wholly avoid it. Many things may occur to the mind, but it gradually makes a mountain of a mole-hill, if you try to express them. Everything ends, if you forgive and forget. If anybody comes to you for vain dispute, politely withdraw yourself. You must express your sympathy with people of all sects. When these cardinal virtues will be manifested in you, then only you will be able to work with great energy. Despondency is not religion, whatever else it may be. By being pleasant always and smiling, it takes you nearer to God, nearer than any prayer. The dwelling place of the Jivatman, this body, is a veritable means of work, and he who converts this into an infernal den is guilty, and he who neglects it is also to blame. See not, touch not with your toes even, anything that is uncanny. If anybody comes to you to speak ill of any of his brothers, refuse to listen to him in toto. It is a great sin to listen even. In that lies the germ of future troubles. Moreover, bear with everyone's shortcomings. Forgive offences by the million. If I do not find bliss in the life of the spirit, shall I seek satisfaction in the life of the senses? If I cannot get nectar, shall I fall back upon ditch water? Happiness presents itself before man, wearing the crown of sorrow on its head. He who welcomes it must also welcome sorrow. April 2012 Page 16
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations One may gain political and social independence, but if he is a slave to his passions and desires, he cannot feel the pure joy of freedom. Even the greatest fool can accomplish a task, if it be after his heart. But the intelligent man is he who can convert every work into one that suits his taste. No work is petty. It is struggle against nature and not conformity to nature that makes man what he is. Never talk about the faults of others, no matter how bad they may be. Nothing is ever gained by that. You never help one by telling about his faults, but you do him an injury, and injure yourself as well. He who can properly prepare a chillum of tobacco can also meditate properly. The man that has practised control over himself cannot be acted upon by anything outside; there is no more slavery for him. His mind has become free; such a man alone is fit to live well in the world. The calmer we are and the less disturbed our nerves, the more shall we love and the better will our work be. You should work like a master and not as a slave; work incessantly, but do not do a slave's work. Be 'unattached'; let things work; let brain-centres work; work incessantly, but let not a ripple conquer the mind. Work as if you were a stranger in this land, a sojourner; work incessantly, but do not bind yourselves; bondage is terrible. Inactivity should be avoided by all means. Activity always means resistance. Resist all evils mental and physical; and when you have succeeded in resisting, then will calmness come. To the man who has begun to hate himself, the gate to degeneration has already opened; and the same is true of a nation. Our first duty is not to hate ourselves; because, to advance we must have faith in ourselves first and then in God. If there is any crying sin in India at this time, it is this slavery. Every one wants to command and no one wants to obey; and this is owing to the absence of that wonderful Brahmacharya system of yore. First learn to obey. The command will come by itself. Always first learn to be a servant, and then you will be fit to be a master.
April 2012
Page 17
Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
(October 15, 1844 August 25, 1900) 19th century German philosopher and classical philologist You great star, what would your happiness be had you not those for whom you shine?
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885). Prologue 1
You have evolved from worm to man, but much within you is still worm. Once you were apes, yet even now man is more of an ape than any of the apes.
Verily, a polluted stream is man. One must be a sea to be able to receive a polluted stream without becoming unclean.
One must have chaos within oneself, to give birth to a dancing star.
No shepherd, and one herd! Everyone wants the same, everyone is the same: whoever feels different goes willingly into the madhouse.
Who is the great dragon whom the spirit will no longer call lord and god? "Thou shalt" is the name of the great dragon. But the spirit of the lion says, "I will." "Thou shalt" lies in his way, sparkling like gold, an animal covered with scales; and on every scale shines a golden "thou shalt." Values, thousands of years old, shine on these scales; and thus speaks the mightiest of all the dragons: "All value of all things shines on me. All value has Page 18
April 2012
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations long been created, and I am all created value. Verily, there shall be no more 'I will.'" Thus speaks the dragon. Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885). Part I, Chapter 1
There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885). Part I, Chapter 4, "On the despisers of the Body"
And nothing evil grows in you any longer, unless it is the evil that grows out of the conflict of your virtues. My brother, if you are fortunate, then you will have only one virtue and no more: thus you will go more easily over the bridge.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885). Part I, Chapter 5, "On Enjoying and Suffering the Passions"
Of all that is written, I love only what a man has written with his own blood.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885). Part I, Chapter 7, "On Reading and Writing"
There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
Brave, unconcerned, mocking, violent-thus wisdom wants us: she is a woman, and loves only a warrior.
He who cannot command himself should obey. And many can command themselves, but much is still lacking before they can obey themselves.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885)
He who has always spared himself much will in the end become sickly of so much consideration. Praised be what hardens!
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885) April 2012 Page 19
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations It is true: we love life not because we are used to living, but because we are used to loving.
I teach you the Overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him? ... The time has come for man to set himself a goal. The time has come to plant the seed to his highest hope.
This is the manner of noble souls: they do not want to have anything for nothing; least of all, life. Whoever is of the mob wants to live for nothing; we others, however, to whom life gave itself, we always think about what we might best give in return...One should not wish to enjoy where one does not give joy."
This is my way; where is yours? - Thus I answered those who asked me "the way." For the way - that does not exist.
Society tames the wolf into a dog. And man is the most domesticated animal of all.
That is mediocrity though it be called moderation.
Every tradition grows ever more venerable - the more remote its origin, the more confused that origin is. The reverence due to it increases from generation to generation. The tradition finally becomes holy and inspires awe.
April 2012
Page 20
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations I would only believe in a God that knows how to dance.
Not by wrath does one kill, but by laughter.
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.
You look up when you wish to be exalted. And I look down because I am exalted.
In the mountains, the shortest way is from peak to peak: but for that, you need long legs. Aphorisms should be peaks: and those to whom they are spoken, big and tall.
God is a thought which makes crooked all that is straight.
The more one seeks to rise into height and light, the more vigorously do ones roots struggle earthward, downward, into the dark, the deep - into evil.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885). Part I, Chapter 8, "On the Tree on the Mountain"
Their (the preachers of death) wisdom speaks thus: "Only a fool remains alive, but such fools are we! And that is surely the most foolish thing about life!"
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885). Part I, Chapter 9, "On the Preachers of Death"
April 2012
Page 21
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations You look up when you wish to be exalted. And I look down because I am exalted.
Part I, Chapter 7, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
I know of the hatred and envy of your hearts. You are not great enough not to know hatred and envy. Then be great enough not to be ashamed of them!
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885). Part I, Chapter 10, "On War and Warriors"
But thus I counsel you, my friends: Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful. They are people of a low sort and stock; the hangman and the bloodhound look out of their faces. Mistrust all who talk much of their justice! Verily, their souls lack more than honey. And when they call themselves the good and the just, do not forget that they would be pharisees, if only they had - power.
Part II, Chapter 29, Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
Watch them clamber, these swift monkeys! They clamber over one another and thus drag one another into the mud and the depth. They all want to get to the throne: that is their madness - as if happiness sat on the throne. Often, mud sits on the throne - and often the throne also on mud. Mad they all appear to me, clambering monkeys and overardent. Foul smells their idol, the cold monster: foul, they smell to me altogether, these idolators.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885). Part I, Chapter 11, "On the New Idol"
When power becomes gracious and descends into the visible - such descent I call beauty. And there is nobody from whom I want beauty as much as from you who are powerful: let your kindness be your final self-conquest.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885). Part II, Chapter 13, "Those Who Are Sublime"
The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous toy.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885). Ch.18, "Old and Young Women"
April 2012
Page 22
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! They are people of bad race and lineage; out of their countenances peer the hangman and the sleuth-hound. Distrust all those who talk much of their justice! Verily, in their souls not only honey is lacking. And when they call themselves 'the good and just,' forget not, that for them to be Pharisees, nothing is lacking but - power!
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885). Ch.29, The Tarantulas (Similar statements are attributed to Goethe, and to Dostoevsky) And who among us poets has not adulterated his wine? Many a poisonous hodgepodge has been contrived in our cellars; much that is indescribable was accomplished there.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885). Part II, Chapter 39, On Poets
Alas, there are so many things between heaven and earth of which only the poets have dreamed. And especially above the heavens: for all gods are poets' parables, poets' prevarications. Verily, it always lifts us higher - specifically, to the realm of the clouds: upon these we place our motley bastards and call them gods and overmen. For they are just light enough for these chairs - all these gods and overmen. Ah, how weary I am of all the imperfection which must at all costs become event! Ah, how weary I am of poets!
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885). Part II, Chapter 39, On Poets
Higher than all reconciliation must the Will, which the will to power is.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885). Part II, Ch.42 "Redemption"
And whoever does not want to die of thirst among men must learn to drink out of all cups; and whoever would stay clean among men must know how to wash even with dirty water. And thus I often comforted myself, "Well then, old heart! One misfortune failed you; enjoy this as your good fortune."
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885). Part II, Ch.43, "On Human Prudence"
It is the stillest words that bring on the storm. Thoughts that come on doves' feet guide the world.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885). Part II, Ch.44, "The Stillest Hour"
April 2012
Page 23
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations Whence come the highest mountains? I once asked. Then I learned that they came out of the sea. The evidence is written in their rocks and in the walls of their peaks. It is out of the deepest depth that the highest must come to its height.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885). Part III, Chapter 45, The Wanderer
One does not kill by anger but by laughter.
Thus Spake Zarathustra (1885)
O my brothers, I dedicate and direct you to a new nobility: you shall become procreators and cultivators and sowers of the future - verily, not to a nobility that you might buy like shopkeepers and with shopkeepers' gold: for whatever has its price has little value. Not whence you came shall henceforth constitute your honor, but whither you are going! Your will and your foot which has a will to go over and beyond yourselves - that shall constitute your new honor.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885). Part III, Ch.56, "On Old and New Tablets"
O my brothers, your nobility should not look backward but ahead! Exiles shall you be from all father- and forefather-lands! Your children's land shall you love: this love shall be your new nobility - the undiscovered land in the most distant sea. For that I bid your sails search and search. In your children you shall make up for being the children of your fathers: thus shall you redeem all that is past. This new tablet I place over you.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885). Part III, Ch.56, "On Old and New Tablets"
Free from what? As if that mattered to Zarathustra! But your eyes should tell me brightly: free for what?
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885). Part I, "On the Way of the Creator"
Behold, I am weary of my wisdom, like a bee that has gathered too much honey; I need hands outstretched to receive it.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra: First Part; Zarathustra's Prologue (1883)
April 2012
Page 24
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations They have something of which they are proud. What do they call that which makes them proud? Education they call it; it distinguishes them from goatherds.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra: First Part; Zarathustra's Prologue (5) (1883)
Mankind is a rope tied between beast and superman -- a rope over an abyss.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, First Part, "Prologue," section 4 (1883).
We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.
Also sprach Zarathustra
I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him? All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment... Behold, I teach you the overman. The overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the overman shall be the meaning of the earth!
Companions the creator seeks, not corpses, not herds and believers. Fellow creators the creator seeks--those who write new values on new tablets. Companions the creator seeks, and fellow harvesters; for everything about him is ripe for the harvest.
It is no small art to sleep: for that purpose you must keep awake all day.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885). Part I, Chapter 2
"Body am I, and soul" - so says the child. And why should one not speak like children?
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885). Part I, Chapter 4, "On the despisers of the Body" April 2012 Page 25
Thus spake Buddha

One of the Great Teachers of mankind was Siddhartha Gautama, known also as Shakyamuni or Gautama Buddha. Siddhartha Gautama was born into a royal family in ancient India about five centuries B.C. During the celebration of His birth, a sage prophesized that the boy will become either a great king of a great holy man. His father desiring to make Siddhartha a king, shielded Him from religious education and from the knowledge about human suffering. For a long time, prince Siddhartha lived a luxury life in the royal palace, until one day, during a trip outside the palace, He learned about the poverty and suffering of people. After this discovery, He decided to leave the royal palace and dedicate Himself to seeking the cause of human suffering and the way to liberation from it. After many years of spiritual search and meditation, He achieved the state of Nirvana (full Selfrealization). Since that time He began to preach His Teachings to people. As all other Great Teachers, Gautama Buddha preached first of all LOVE, which one can achieve in calm and lowliness of mind by developing oneself as a spiritual heart. He taught also the true simplicity in life (including abandonment of material attachments), loving and compassionate attitude toward other living beings, and attainment of the highest Selfrealization in Mergence with the Primordial Consciousness. First, let us consider some important quotations from the homilies of the Founder of Buddhism, and then sayings of some Teachers of Buddhism, Who attained the Perfection in the past and are willing now to provide Their spiritual help to everyone who wants to walk Their Path.
Selection of quotations from the book Thus Spoke Buddha* 1. Take the precept to abstain from killing. 2. Take the precept to abstain from stealing. 3. Take the precept to abstain from adultery. 4. Take the precept to abstain from lying. 5. Take the precept to abstain from liquor.
April 2012
Page 26
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations And did the thought never occur to you that you also are subject to decay, that you also cannot escape it? And did the thought never occur to you that you also are subject to disease, that you also cannot escape it? And did the thought never occur to you that you also are subject to death, that you also cannot escape it? Not for the sake of My own well-being I practice universal benevolence, but... it is My desire to contribute to the happiness of living beings! Do not do to others what you would not like be done to yourself! Goodwill toward all beings is the true religion! Cherish in your hearts boundless goodwill toward all that lives! You must not worry; your mouth must not say evil words; you must remain benevolent, with pure loving hearts, thinking no evil. And even your enemies you have to embrace with loving thoughts, generous thoughts, deep and boundless thoughts purified from anger and hatred! The distinctive signs of true religion are goodwill, love, truthfulness, purity, nobility of feeling, and kindness. Immortality can be reached only by continuous acts of kindness; Perfection is accomplished by compassion and charity. That which is most needed is a loving heart! I am being hated, mistrusted, misunderstood and deceived by others! he who harbors such thoughts in his mind can never become free from the causes which inflict their destructiveness upon the thinker.* Whatever harm one man may do to another, the evil-thinking mind inflicts even greater harm (upon its owner). Evil is born of the selfhood*, and in the selfhood is its cause. Evil polishes the universe like a diamond I teach you to avoid the ten evils: 1. Kill not, but have regard for life! 2. Steal not, neither do you rob, but help everybody to be master of the fruits of their labor! 3. Abstain from impurity, and lead a life of chastity! April 2012 Page 27
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations 4. Lie not, but be truthful! Speak the truth with discretion, fearlessly, and with a loving heart! 5. Invent not evil reports, neither do you repeat them! Carp not, but look for the good sides of your fellow-beings, so that you may with sincerity, defend them against their enemies! 6. Swear not, but speak decently and with dignity! 7. Waste not the time in gossip, but keep to the purpose or keep silence! 8. Covet not, nor envy, but rejoice at the fortunes of others! 9. Cleanse yourself of malice and harbor no hatred, not even against your enemies, but embrace all living beings with kindness! 10. Free your mind of ignorance and be anxious to learn the truth, especially in the one thing that is needed, lest you fall a prey either to skepticism or to errors! Let no one deceive another, let no one despise another, let no one wish to harm another out of anger or resentment! 1. Do not kill! 2. Do not steal! 3. Do not commit adultery! 4. Do not tell lies! 5. Do not slander! 6. Do not speak harshly! 7. Do not engage in idle talks! 8. Do not covet others property! 9. Do not show hatred! 10. Think righteously!
April 2012
Page 28
Thus Spake Ramana

The Garland of Guru's Sayings
Ramana Maharishi (December 30, 1879 April 14, 1950)
Questioner: Should I give up my business and take to reading books on Vedanta? Ramana Maharshi: If the objects have an independent existence, i.e., if they exist anywhere apart from you, then it may be possible for you to go away from them. But they dont exist apart from you; they owe their existence to you, your thought. So, where can you go, to escape them? As for reading books on Vedanta, you may go on reading any number of them. They can only tell you, Realise the Self within you. The Self cannot be found in books. You have to find it out for yourself, in yourself. There is no goal to be reached. There is nothing to be attained. You are the Self. You exist always. Nothing more can be predicated of the Self than that it exists. Seeing God or the Self is only being the Self or yourself. Seeing is being. You, being the Self, want to know how to attain the Self. It is something like a man being at Ramanasramam asking how many ways there are to reach Ramanasramam and which is the best way for him. All that is required of you is to give up the thought that you are this body and to give up all thoughts of the external things or the not-Self.
Question: May one have more than one spiritual master? Ramana Maharshi: Who is a master? He is the Self after all. According to the stages of development of the mind the Self manifests as the master externally. The famous ancient saint Dattatreya said that he had more than twenty-four masters. The master is one from whom one learns anything. The Guru may be sometimes inanimate also, as in the case of Dattatreya. God, Guru and the Self are identical. A spiritually-minded man thinks that God is all-pervading and takes God for his Guru. Later, God brings him in contact with a personal Guru and the man recognises him as all in all. Lastly the same man is made by the grace of the master to feel that his Self is the reality and nothing else. Thus he finds that the Self is the master.
April 2012
Page 29
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations The ultimate Truth is so simple, it is nothing more than being in one's own natural original state. However, it is a great wonder that to teach such a simple truth a number of religions should be necessary and that so many disputes should go on between them as to which is the God-ordained teaching. What a pity! Just be one's Self, that's all. I remarked that people did not want simplicity. "Exactly," replied Bhagavan, "they want something elaborate and mysterious, that is why so many religions have come into existence. For example the Christian will not be satisfied unless he is taught that God is somewhere hidden away in Heaven and cannot be reached without the help of the Church. Christ alone really knew Him and it is Christ alone who can guide us to Him. But if they are told the simple truth, `The Kingdom of God is within you,' they are not satisfied and read some complicated and far-fetched meaning into it. It is only those who are mature that can understand the matter in its naked simplicity."
Mind is consciousness, which has limitations. We are originally unlimited and perfect. Later on we take on limitations and become the mind. Meditation depends upon the strength of mind. It must be unceasing even when one is engaged in work. Particular time for it is meant for novices. When one makes the mind stick to one thought, the mind becomes rock-steady and the energy is conserved. The mind is only a bundle of thoughts. The thoughts have their root in the I-thought. Whoever investigates the True "I" enjoys the stillness of bliss. When the mind is left without anything to cling to, it becomes still. The inquiry "who am I" turns the mind introvert and makes it calm. There is no mind to control if you realize the self. The mind having vanished, the self shines forth. In the realized man, the mind may be active or inactive, the self remains for him. Meditation helps concentration of the mind. Then the mind is free from thoughts and is in the meditated form. Meditation is sticking to one thought. That single thought keeps away other thoughts; distraction of mind is a sign of its weakness; by constant meditation it gains strength. When we turn the mind inwards, God manifests as the inner consciousness.
April 2012
Page 30
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations See who is the doubter, who is the thinker. It is the ego. Hold it; the other thoughts will die away - the ego will be left pure. See the source from where the ego arises and abide in it. That is pure consciousness. The "I" thought is said to be the sum total of all thoughts. The source of the "I" thought has to be enquired into. The mind of one meditating on a single object becomes one-pointed. And one-pointedness of mind leads to abidance in the self. Real attainment is to be fully conscious, to be aware of surroundings and the people around, to move among them all, but not to merge consciousness in the environment. One should remain in inner independent awareness. Once the current of awareness of the self is set afoot, it becomes everlasting and continuous by intensification. Realization is to get rid of the delusion that you have not realized. Good thoughts keep off bad thoughts. They must themselves disappear before the state of realization. Realization is our true nature. It is nothing new to be gained. What is new cannot be eternal. Therefore there is no need to be doubting whether we would gain or lose the self. A realized one sends out waves of spiritual influence in his aura, which draw many people towards him. Yet he may sit in a cave and maintain complete silence. Turn the mind inward and cease thinking of yourself as the body; thereby you will come to know that the self is ever happy. Neither grief nor misery is experienced in this state. When we see our self, there is no world; and when we lose sight of the self, we get ourselves bound in the world. The self is like a pearl. To find it you must dive deep down into silence, deeper and ever deeper until it is reached. The self is pure knowledge, pure delight where there is no duality. The illuminated one who is happy in the peace of the self, without thought of the past and the future, and is like a mere witness of the present, has his knots of bondage cut.
April 2012
Page 31
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations He alone who has realized the self in the heart has known the Truth. Having transcended the dualities, he is never perplexed. The self cannot be found in books. You have to find it for yourself, within yourself. A self-realized man remains happy without being affected by false appearances, whereas the ignorant man is miserable. Seek the source of the ego, abide there for ever in the source and find yourself in bliss. That pure consciousness which is the reality, and which shines without a break, as "I AM" when the mind becomes calm, is the supreme bliss. The enlightened one that has become one with the unchanging supreme consciousness, like a river that has become one with the ocean, takes birth no more in a body. All actions, past, present and future, become extinct in the case of a liberated one, because his sense of being the doer is gone; it was lost along with the ego, who alone was the doer. You can never find mind through the mind. Go beyond it, and find it non-existent. How is it possible for the mind to know the Lord who imparts His light to the mind, and shines within the mind, except by turning the mind inward and fixing it on the Lord? Self realization is cessation of thoughts and of all mental activity. Thoughts are like bubbles upon the surface of the sea. Stillness means 'being free from thoughts' and yet aware.
April 2012
Page 32
SAYINGS OF RMAKRISHNA
Thou seest many stars at night in the sky, but findest them not when the sun rises. Canst thou say that there are no stars, then, in the heaven of day? So, O man, because thou beholdest not the Almighty in the days of thy ignorance, say not that there is no God. As one and the same material, viz. water, is called by different names by different people-one calling it 'water,' another 'vri,' a third 'aqua,' and another 'pani'--so the one Sat-kitnanda, the Everlasting-Intelligent-Bliss, is invoked by some as God, by some as Allah, by some as Hari, and by others as Brahman. Two persons were hotly disputing as to the colour of a chameleon. One said, 'The chameleon on that palm-tree is of a beautiful red colour.' The other, contradicting him, said, 'You are mistaken, the chameleon is not red, but blue.' Not being able to settle the matter by arguments, both went to the person who always lived under that tree and had watched the chameleon in all its phases of colour. One of them said, 'Sir, is not the chameleon on that tree of a red colour?' The person replied, 'Yes, sir.' The other disputant said, 'What do you say? How is it? It is not red, it is blue.' That person again humbly replied, 'Yes, sir.' The person knew that the chameleon is an animal that constantly changes its colour; thus it was that he said 'yes' to both these conflicting statements. The Sat-kit-nanda likewise has various forms. The devotee who has seen God in one aspect only, knows Him in that aspect alone. But he who has seen Him in His manifold aspects, is alone in a position to say, 'All these forms are of one God, for God is multiform.' He has forms and has no forms, and many are His forms which no one knows. Many are the names of God, and infinite the forms that lead us to know Him. In whatsoever name or form you desire to call Him, in that very form and name you will see Him. Four blind men went to see an elephant. One touched the leg of the elephant, and said, 'The elephant is like a pillar.' The second touched the trunk, and said, The elephant is like a thick stick or club.' The third touched the belly, and said, 'The elephant is like a big jar.' The fourth touched the ears, and said, 'The elephant is like a winnowing basket.' Thus they began to dispute amongst themselves as to the figure of the elephant. A passer-by seeing them thus quarrelling, said, 'What is it that you are disputing about?' They told him everything, and asked him to arbitrate. That man said, 'None of you has seen the elephant. The elephant is not like a pillar, its legs are like pillars. It is not like a big watervessel, its belly is like a water-vessel. It is not like a winnowing basket, its ears are like April 2012 Page 33
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations winnowing baskets. It is not like a thick stick or club, but its proboscis is like that. The elephant is the combination of all these.' In the same manner those quarrel who have seen one aspect only of the Deity. As the same sugar is made into various figures of birds and beasts, so one sweet Mother Divine is worshipped in various climes and ages under various names and forms. Different creeds are but different paths to reach the Almighty. As with one gold various ornaments are made, having different forms and names, so one God is worshipped in different countries and ages, and has different forms and names. Though He may be worshipped variously, some loving to call him Father, others Mother, &c., yet it is one God that is being worshipped in all these various relations and modes. Q. If the God of every religion is the same, why is it then that the God is painted differently by different religionists? A. God is one, but His aspects are different: as one master of the house is father to one, brother to another, and husband to a third, and is called by these different names by those different persons, so one God is described and called in various ways according to the particular aspect in which He appears to His particular worshipper. In a potter's shop there are vessels of different shapes and forms--pots, jars, dishes, plates, &c.--but all are made of one clay. So God is one, but is worshipped in different ages and climes under different names and aspects. God is one, but his aspects are many. One and the same fish may be made to taste differently, according to the different modes of preparing it, so one God is enjoyed variously (i.e. in His various aspects) by His devotees. Man is like a pillow-case. The colour of one may be red, another blue, another black, but all contain the same cotton So it is with man--one is beautiful, one is black, another is holy, a fourth wicked; but the Divine dwells in them all. All waters are brooded over by Nryana, but every kind of water is not fit for drink. Similarly, though it is true that the Almighty dwells in every place, yet every place is not fit to be visited by man. As one kind of water may be used for washing our feet, another may serve the purpose of ablution, and others may be drunk, and others again may not be touched at all; so there are different kinds of places. We may approach some, we can enter into the inside of others, others we must avoid, even at a distance. It is true that God is even in the tiger, but we must not go and face the animal. So it is true that God dwells even in the most wicked, but it is not meet that we should associate with the wicked.
April 2012
Page 34
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations The manifestation of the Divinity must be under-stood to be in greater degree in those who are honoured, respected, and obeyed by a large following, than in those who have gained no such influence. The Master said: 'Everything that exists is God.' The pupil understood it literally, but not in the true spirit. While he was passing through a street, he met with an elephant. The driver (mhut) shouted aloud from his high place, 'Move away, move away!' The pupil argued in his mind, 'Why should I move away? I am God, so is the elephant also God. What fear has God of Himself?' Thinking thus he did not move. At last the elephant took him up by his trunk, and dashed him aside. He was severely hurt, and going back to his Master, he related the whole adventure. The Master said, 'All right, you are God. The elephant is God also, but God in the shape of the elephant-driver was warning you also from above. Why did you not pay heed to his warnings?'
God, His scripture (the Bhgavata), and His devotee are all to be regarded as one, i.e. in one and the same light. Every being is Nryana. Man or animal, sage or knave, nay, the whole universe, is Nryana, the Supreme Spirit. As many have merely heard of snow but not seen it, so many are the religious preachers who have read only in books about the attributes of God, but have not realised them in their lives. And as many may have seen but not tasted it, so many are the religious teachers who have got only a glimpse of Divine Glory, but have not understood its real essence. He who has tasted the snow can say what it is like. He who has enjoyed the society of God in different aspects, now as a servant, now as a friend, now as a lover, or as being absorbed in Him, &c., he alone can tell what are the attributes of God. As the lamp does not burn without oil, so man cannot live without God. The human body is like a boiling pot, and the mind and the senses are like water, rice or potato, &c. in it. Put the pot with its ingredients on the fire; it will be so hot as to burn your finger when you touch it. But the heat does not belong to the pot, nor anything contained in it, but is in the fire. So it is the fire of Brahman in man that causes the mind and the senses to perform their functions, and when that fire ceases to act, the senses also, or the organs, stop. Says God, 'I am the snake that biteth and the charmer that healeth; I am the judge that condemneth and the executioner that whippeth.' God tells the thief to go and steal, and at the same time warns the householder against the thief.
April 2012
Page 35
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations How doth the Lord dwell in the body? He dwells in the body like the plug of a syringe, i.e. in the body, and yet apart from it. The Lord can pass an elephant through the eye of a needle. He can do whatever He likes. As fishes playing in a pond covered over with reeds and scum cannot be seen from outside, so God plays in the heart of a man invisibly, being screened by My. from human view. A man sitting under the shade of the Kalpa-vriksha (wishing-tree) wished to be a king, and in an instant he was a king. The next moment he wished to have a charming damsel, and the damsel was instantly by his side. The man then thought within himself, if a tiger came and devoured him, and alas! in an instant he was in the jaws of a tiger! God is like that wishing-tree: whosoever in His presence thinks that he is destitute and poor, remains as such, but he who thinks and believes that the Lord fulfils all his wants, receives everything from Him. The landlord may be very rich, but when a poor cultivator brings a humble present to him with a loving heart, he accepts it with the greatest pleasure and satisfaction. While a bell is being rung, the repeated ding-dongs can be distinguished one from the other, but when we stop ringing, then an undistinguishable sound only remains audible. We can easily distinguish one note from the other, as if each distinct note had a certain shape; but the continued and unbroken sound when the ding-dongs have ceased is undistinguishable, as if formless. Like the sound of the bell, God is both with and without form. As a boy begins to learn writing by drawing big scrawls, before he can master the smallhand, so we must learn concentration of the mind by fixing it first on forms; and when we have attained success therein, we can easily fix it upon the formless. As a marksman learns to shoot by first taking aim at large and big objects, and the more he acquires the facility, the greater becomes the ease with which he can shoot at the smaller marks on the target, so when the mind has been trained to be fixed on images having form, it becomes easy for it to be fixed upon images having no form. God is the Absolute and Eternal Brahman, as well as the Father of the Universe. The indivisible Brahman is like a vast shoreless ocean, without bounds and limits, in which I can only struggle and sink. But when I approach the always sportive (active) personal Deity (Hari), I get peace, like the sinking man who nears the shore. God is formless, and is with form too, and He is that which transcends both form and formlessness. He alone can say what else He is. April 2012 Page 36
At a certain stage of his path of devotion, the devotee finds satisfaction in God with form; at another stage, in God without form. The God with form is visible, nay, we can touch Him face to face, as with one's dearest friend. As at one time I am clothed, and at another time naked, so Brahman is at one time with attributes and at another without. As water when congealed becomes ice, so the visible form of the Almighty is the materialised manifestation of the all-pervading formless Brahman. It may be called, in fact, Sat-kit-nanda solidified. As the ice, being part and parcel of the water, remains in the water for a time and afterwards melts in it, so the Personal God is part and parcel of the Impersonal. He rises from the Impersonal, remains there, and ultimately merges into it and disappears. His name is Intelligence; His abode is Intelligence too, and He, the Lord, is Intelligence Himself. Two are the occasions when the Lord smiles. First, when brothers remove the chains which partition off the family property, saying, This is mine and that is thine;' and secondly, when the patient is on the point of death, and the physician says, 'I will cure him.' Lunatics, drunkards, and children sometimes give out the truth unconsciously, as if inspired by Heaven.
The sun is many times larger than the earth, but owing to the great distance it appears like a small disk. So the Lord is infinitely great, but owing to our being too far from Him we fall very, very short of comprehending His real greatness. Knowingly or unknowingly, consciously or unconsciously, in whatever state we utter His name, we acquire the merit of such utterance. A man who voluntarily goes into a river and bathes therein gets the benefit of the bath; so does likewise he who has been pushed into the river by another, or who while sleeping soundly has water thrown upon him by another. Satan never enters the house wherein are always sung the praises of Hari. A king having committed the mortal crime of killing a Brhmana, went to the hermitage of a sage to learn what penance he must perform in order to be purified. The sage was absent from home, but his son was there. The son hearing the case of the king, said, April 2012 Page 37
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations 'Repeat the name of God (Rma) three times and your sin will be expiated.' When the sage came back and heard the penance prescribed by his son, he said to him in great wrath, 'Sins committed in myriads of births are purged at once by but once uttering the name of the Almighty; how weak must be thy faith, O son, that thou hast ordered that name to be repeated thrice! For this offence of thine go and become a Kndla.' And the son became the Guhaka Kndla of the Rmyana. Consciously or unconsciously, in whatever way one falls into the trough of nectar, one becomes immortal. Similarly, whosoever utters the name of the Deity voluntarily or involuntarily finds immortality in the end. As a large and powerful steamer moves swiftly over the waters, towing rafts and barges in its wake, so when a Saviour descends, He easily carries thousands across the ocean of My (illusion). When the flood comes, it overflows rivers and streams, and makes one watery surface of all adjacent lands. But the rain-water flows away through fixed channels. When the Saviour becomes incarnate, all are saved through His grace. The Siddhas (perfect ones) only save themselves with much pain and penance. When a mighty raft of wood floats down a stream, it can carry a hundred men, and still it does not sink. A reed floating down may sink with the weight of even a crow. So when a Saviour becomes incarnate, innumerable are the men who find salvation by taking refuge under Him. The Siddha only saves himself with much toil and trouble. The locomotive engine reaches the destination itself, and also draws and takes with it a long train of loaded wagons. So likewise act the Saviours. They carry multitudes of men, heavily laden with the cares and sorrows of the world, to the feet of the Almighty. When Bhagavn Sr Rmakandra came to this world, seven sages only could recognise Him to be the God incarnate. So when God descends into this world, few only can recognise His Divine nature. On the tree of Sat-kit-nanda there are innumerable Rmas, Krishnas, Christs, &c.; one or two of them come down into this world now and then, and produce mighty changes and revolutions. The Avatra or Saviour is the messenger of God. He is like the Viceroy of a mighty monarch. As when there is some disturbance in a far-off province the king sends his viceroy to quell it; so whenever there is any waning of religion in any part of the world, God sends His Avatra there.
April 2012
Page 38
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations It is one and the same Avatra that, having plunged into the ocean of life, rises up in one place and is known as Krishna, and diving again rises in another place and is known as Christ. In some seasons water can be obtained from the great depths of the wells only and great difficulty, but when the country is flooded in the rainy season, water is obtained ease everywhere. So ordinarily, God is reached with great pains through prayers penances, but when the flood of Incarnation descends, God is seen anywhere everywhere. with with and and
A Siddha-purusha (perfect one) is like an archaeologist who removes the dust and lays open an old well which was covered up during ages of disuse by rank growth. The Avatra, on the other hand, is like a great engineer who sinks a new well in a place where there was no water before. Great men can give salvation to those only who have the waters of piety and goodness hidden in themselves, but the Saviour saves him too whose heart is devoid of all love, and dry as a desert. Think not that Rma, Sit, Sr Krishna, Rdh, Arguna, &c., were not historical personages, but mere allegories, or that the Scriptures have an inner and esoteric meaning only. Nay, they were human beings of flesh and blood just as you are, but because they were Divinities; their lives can be interpreted both historically and spiritually. None knoweth the immensity of the sacrifice which the Godhead maketh when it becomes incarnate or becomes flesh. The Saviours are to Brahman as the waves are to the ocean. What is the state which a Siddha attains? (A perfect man and well-cooked food are both called siddha. There is a pun here on the word.) As potato or brinjal, &c., when boiled properly (siddha), becomes soft and tender, so when a man reaches perfection (Siddha) he becomes all humility and tenderness. Five are the kinds of Siddhas found in this world:-i. The Svapna Siddhas are those who attain perfection by means of dream inspiration. ii. The Mantra Siddhas are those who attain perfection by means of any sacred mantra. iii. The Hathat Siddhas are those who attain perfection suddenly. As a poor man may suddenly become rich by finding a hidden treasure, or by marrying into a rich family, so many sinners become pure all of a sudden, and enter the Kingdom of Heaven. iv. The Krip Siddhas are those who attain perfection through the tangible grace of the Almighty, as a poor man is made wealthy by the kindness of a king. April 2012 Page 39
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations v. (s) The Nitya Siddhas are those who are ever-perfect. As a gourd or a pumpkincreeper brings forth fruit first and then its flower, so the ever-perfect is born a Siddha, and all his seeming exertions after perfection are merely for the sake of setting examples to humanity.
There is a fabled species of birds called 'Hom,' which live so high up in the heavens, and so dearly love those regions, that they never condescend to come down to the earth. Even their eggs, which, when laid in the sky, begin to fall down to the earth attracted by gravity, are said to get hatched in the middle of their downward course and give birth to the young ones. The fledgelings at once find out that they are falling down, and immediately change their course and begin to fly up towards their home, drawn thither by instinct. Men such as Suka Deva, Nrada, Jesus, Samkarkrya and others, are like those birds, who even in their boyhood give up all attachments to the things of this world and betake themselves to the highest regions of true Knowledge and Divine Light. These men are called Nitya Siddhas. The Divine sages form, as it were, the inner circle of God's nearest relatives. They are like friends, companions, kinsmen of God. Ordinary beings form the outer circle or are the creatures of God. When the shell of an ordinary cocoa-nut is pierced through, the nail enters the kernel of the nut too. But in the case of the dry nut, the kernel becomes separate from the shell, and so when the shell is pierced the kernel is not touched. Jesus was like the dry nut, i.e. His inner soul was separate from His physical shell, and consequently the sufferings of the body did not affect Him. Once a holy man, while passing through a crowded street, accidentally trod upon the toe of a wicked person. The wicked man, furious with rage, beat the Sdhu mercilessly, till he fell to the ground in a faint. His disciples took great pains and adopted various measures to bring him back to consciousness, and when they saw that he had recovered a little, one of them asked, 'Sir, do you recognise who is attending upon you?' The Sdhu replied, 'He who beat me.' A true Sdhu finds no distinction between a friend and a foe. The swan can separate the milk from water; it drinks only the milk, leaving the water untouched. Other birds cannot do so. Similarly God is intimately mixed up with My; ordinary men cannot see Him separately from My. Only the Paramahamsa (the great soul--here is a pun on the word 'hamsa,' which means both soul and swan) throws off My, and takes up God only. The wind carries the smell of the sandal-wood as well as that of ordure, but does not mix with either. Similarly a perfect man lives in the world, but does not mix with it.
April 2012
Page 40
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations A perfect man is like a lotus-leaf in the water or like a mud-fish in the marsh. Neither of these is polluted by the element in which it lives. As water passes under a bridge but never stagnates, so money passes through the hands of 'The Free' who never hoard it. As a rope that is burnt retains its shape intact, but has become all ashes, so that nothing can be bound with it; similarly,(the man who is emancipated retains the form of his egoism, but not an idea of vanity (Ahamkra). As an aquatic bird, such as a pelican, dives into water, but the water does not wet its plumage, so the perfect man lives in the world, but the world does not touch him. When the head of a goat is severed from its body, the trunk moves about for some time, still showing the signs of life. Similarly, though the Ahamkra (vanity or egoism) is beheaded in the perfect man, yet sufficient of its vitality is left to make such a man carry on the functions of physical life; but that much is not sufficient to bind him again to the world. Ornaments cannot be made of pure gold. Some alloy must be mixed with it. A man totally devoid of My. will not survive more than twenty-one days. So long as the man has body, he must have some My, however small it may be, to carry on the functions of the body. In the play of hide-and-seek, if the player once succeeds in touching the non-player, called the grand-dame (Boor), he is no longer liable to be made a thief. Similarly, by once seeing the Almighty, a man is no longer bound down by the fetters of the world. The boy, by touching the Boor, is free to go wherever he wishes, without being pursued, and no one can make him a thief. Similarly, in this world's playground, there is no fear to him who has once touched the feet of the Almighty. The iron, once converted into gold by the touch of the Philosopher's stone, may be kept under the ground, or thrown into a rubbish-heap, but it remains always gold, and will never return to its former condition. Similar is the case with him who has once touched the feet of the Almighty. Whether he dwells in the bustle of the world, or in the solitude of forests, nothing will ever contaminate him. The steel sword turns into a golden sword by the touch of the Philosopher's stone, and though it retains its former form it becomes incapable of injuring any one. Similarly, the outward form of a man who has touched the feet of the Almighty is not changed, but he no longer doeth any evil.
April 2012
Page 41
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations The loadstone rock under the sea attracts the ship sailing over it, draws out all its iron nails, separates its planks, and sinks the vessel into the deep. Thus, when the human soul is attracted by the magnetism of Universal Consciousness, the latter destroys in a moment all its individuality and selfishness, and plunges it in the ocean of God's infinite Love. Milk and water, when brought into contact, are sure to mix so that the milk can never be separated again. So if the neophyte, thirsting after self-improvement, mixes indiscriminately with all sorts of worldly men, he not only loses his ideals, but his former faith, love, and enthusiasm also die away imperceptibly. When, however, you convert the milk into butter, it no longer mixes with water, but floats over it. Similarly, when the soul once attains God-head, it may live in any company, without ever being affected by its evil influences. So long as no child is born to her, the newly-married girl remains deeply absorbed in her domestic duties. But no sooner is a son born, than she leaves off all her house-hold concerns, and no longer finds any pleasure in them. On the contrary, she fondles the newborn baby the livelong day, and kisses it with intense joy. Thus man, in his state of ignorance, performs all sorts of worldly works, but no sooner does he see the Almighty, than he finds no longer any relish in them. On the contrary, his happiness now consists only in serving the Deity and doing His works alone. So long as a man is far from the market, he hears a loud and indistinct buzzing only, something like 'Ho! Ho!' But when he enters the market he no longer hears the uproar, but perceives distinctly that some one is bargaining for potatoes, another for Brinjal, and so on. As long as a man is far away from God, he is in the midst of the noise and confusion of reason, argument, and discussion; but when once a person approaches the Almighty, all reasonings, arguments, and discussions cease, and he understands the mysteries of God with vivid and clear perception. So long as a man calls aloud, 'Allah Ho! Allah Ho! (O God! O God!), be sure that he has not found God, for he who has found him becomes still. So long as the bee is outside the petals of the lotus, and has not tasted its honey, it hovers round the flower, emitting its buzzing sound; but when it is inside the flower, it drinks its nectar noiselessly. So long as a man quarrels and disputes about doctrines and dogmas, he has not tasted the nectar of true faith; when he has tasted it he becomes still. Little children play with dolls in a room apart just as they like, but as soon as their mother comes in they throw aside the dolls and run to her crying, 'Mamma, Mamma!' You also are now playing in this world deeply absorbed with the dolls of wealth, honour, and fame, and have no fear or anxiety. But if you once see the Divine Mother entering in, you will not
April 2012
Page 42
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations find pleasure any more in wealth, honour, and fame. Leaving off all these you will run to Her. The naked Sage, Totpuri, used to say, 'If a brass pot be not rubbed daily, it will get rusty. So if a man does not contemplate the Deity daily, his heart will grow impure.' To him Sr Rmakrishna replied, 'Yes, but if the vessel be of gold, it does not require daily cleaning. The man who has reached God requires prayers or penances no more.' He who has once tasted the refined and crystalline sugar-candy, finds no pleasure in raw treacle; he who has slept in a palace, will not find pleasure in lying down in a dirty hovel. So the soul that has once tasted the sweetness of the Divine Bliss finds no delight in the ignoble pleasures of the world. She who has a king for her lover will not accept the homage of a street beggar. So the soul that has once found favour in the sight of the Lord does not want the paltry things of this world. When a man is in the plains he sees the lowly grass and the mighty pine-tree and says, 'How big is the tree and how small is the grass!' But when he ascends the mountain and looks from its high peak to the plain below, the mighty pine-tree and the lowly grass blend into one indistinct mass of green verdure. So in the sight of worldly men there are differences of rank and position, but when the Divine sight is opened there remains no distinction of high and low. When water is poured into an empty vessel a bubbling noise ensues, but when the vessel is full no such noise is heard. Similarly, the man who has not found God is full of vain disputations. But when he has seen Him, all vanities disappear, and he silently enjoys the Bliss Divine. A woman naturally feels shy to relate to all the talk she daily has with her husband, save to her own companions. Similarly, a devotee does not like to relate to any one but a true Bhakta (devotee) the ecstatic joys which he experiences in his Divine communion; nay, sometimes he becomes impatient of relating his experiences even to those of his own class. The moth once seeing the light never returns to darkness; the ant dies in the sugar-heap, but never retreats therefrom. Similarly, a good devotee gladly sacrifices his life for his God by renunciation. Why does the God-lover find such pleasure in addressing the Deity as Mother? Because the child is more free with its mother, and consequently she is dearer to the child than any one else.
April 2012
Page 43
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations The pious man, like a hemp-smoker, finds no pleasure in singing the praises of the Almighty alone. (The hemp-smoker never finds pleasure in smoking alone.) If a strange animal enters a herd of cows, it is driven off by the combined attacks of the whole herd. But let only a cow enter, and all the other cows will make friends with her by mutual licking of bodies. Thus, when a devotee meets with another devotee, both experience great happiness and feel loth to separate, but when a scoffer enters the circle they carefully avoid him. What is the strength of a devotee? He is a child of God, and tears are his greatest strength. The young of a monkey clasps and clings to its mother. The young kitten cannot clasp its mother, but mews piteously whenever it is near her. If the young monkey lets go its hold on its mother, it falls down and gets hurt. This is because it depends upon its own strength; but the kitten runs no such risk, as the mother herself carries it about from place to place. Such is the difference between self-reliance and entire resignation to the will of God. It is fabled that the pearl oyster leaves its bed at the bottom of the sea and comes up to the surface to catch the rain-water when the star Svti is in the ascendant. It floats about on the surface of the sea with its mouth agape, until it succeeds in catching a drop of the marvellous Svti-rain. Then it dives down to its sea-bed and there rests, till it has succeeded in fashioning a beautiful pearl out of that rain-drop. Similarly, there are some true and eager aspirants who travel from place to place in search of that watchword from a godly and perfect preceptor (Sad-guru) which will open for them the gate of eternal bliss, and if in their diligent search one is fortunate enough to meet such a Guru and get from him the much-longed-for logos, which is sure to break down all fetters, he at once retires from society, enters into the deep recess of his own heart and rests there, till he has succeeded in gaining eternal peace. The flint may remain for myriads of years under water, still it does not lose its inner fire. Strike it with iron whenever you like and out flows the glowing spark. So is the true devotee firm in his faith. Though he may remain surrounded by all the impurities of the world, he never loses his faith and love. He becomes entranced as soon as he hears the name of the Almighty. The Stone may remain for myriads of years in water, and the water will never penetrate it. But clay is soon softened into mud by the contact of water. So the strong heart of the faithful does not despair in the midst of trials and persecutions, but the man of weak faith is easily shaken even by the most trifling cause.
April 2012
Page 44
Bhaja Govindam of Shankara

OH IDIOT! SING THE SONG OF THE DIVINE; SING THE SONG OF THE DIVINE, SING THE SONG OF THE DIVINE, BECAUSE AT THE TIME OF DEATH THE MEMORIZATION OF GRAMMAR WILL NOT SAVE YOU. OH IDIOT! DROP THE DESIRE OF ACCUMULATING WEALTH, AWAKEN RIGHT UNDERSTANDING, MAKE THE MIND DESIRELESS AND BE CONTENTED AND HAPPY WITH WHATSOEVER YOU GAIN THROUGH YOUR OWN LABOUR.
he first and the basic sutra to be understood is that truth is attained in emptiness and is lost in words. Truth is attained in silence and is lost in speech. Truth has no language; all language is untruth.
Language as such is created by man. Truth is not created by man, it is his discovery. Truth is. It is neither to be created nor to be proved but only to be unveiled. And this unveiling of the truth happens only when all the noise of language inside stops, because language is the veil. Thoughts are the only obstacle. Bhajan, devotional singing, kirtan, divine songs and dance these are the means of expressing the feelings. Shankara is hinting that without saying anything you yourself should become a song, a divine song. These verses are very simple, these sutras are direct, and they are written by a genius like Shankara. In the whole of Shankaras literature there is nothing more precious than Bhaj Govindam. Shankara is basically a philosopher; whatever he has written is very complex; it is all words, scriptures, logic, analysis and thinking. But Shankara knows that godliness cannot be attained through logic, analysis and thinking. The way to attain is to dance and sing through feeling and not through thinking. The path of Shankaras realization is through the heart and not through the head. That is why, although Shankara has written commentaries on the Brahmasutra, the Upanishads and the Gita, you will find his innermost feelings expressed in these small verses; here he has opened his heart. Here Shankara does not speak like a scholar or a thinker, here he expresses himself like a devotee. OH IDIOT! SING THE SONG OF THE DIVINE, SING THE SONG OF THE DIVINE, BECAUSE AT THE TIME OF DEATH THE MEMORIZATION OF GRAMMAR WILL NOT SAVE YOU. OH IDIOT! SING THE SONG OF THE DIVINE. What is the idiocy? Shankara is not calling you names by addressing you as idiot. In fact it is his very loving expression. OH IDIOT! SING THE SONG OF THE DIVINE; SING THE SONG OF THE DIVINE, SING THE SONG OF THE DIVINE. April 2012 Page 45
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations What is the meaning of idiocy? Try to understand it. Idiocy does not mean ignorance. Idiocy means to think yourself to be knowledgeable when you are ignorant. Scholars are idiotic and not the ignorant ones. Why call the ignorant an idiot? Ignorant is just ignorant; he does not know, that is all. Many times it has happened that the ignorant one has come to know and the knowledgeable one has not reached anywhere, because the one who does not know has no ego. He is humble. Since he does not know he does not make any claim to know. But the scholar who does not know, thinks that he knows. Because he has learned words and scriptures and he can repeat the rules of grammar, he gets lost in all these things. There is a Sufi story. To earn his living a Sufi fakir used to work as a ferryman on a river. One day a village pundit wanted to go across the river. The fakir offered to take him across free of charge. He used to charge one or two paisa for the journey. The pundit sat down in the boat and the fakir started rowing. They were the only people in the boat. The pundit asked him, Can you read and write? What else can a pundit ask? He wants to teach others whatever he knows himself. We can give to others only what we have. Pundits are obsessed with their so-called knowledge. He could not see the radiance of the fakir; he took him to be an ordinary boatman. But the fakir was an extraordinary man. The pundit did not know that the godliness about which he had been contemplating, hearing and discussing was present in this extraordinary man. It was peeping through him. If he had eyes to see he could have found in the fakir all that he had dreamed about and read about in the scriptures. Something was present there. But all that the pundit could ask was, Do you know reading and writing? Well, if a pundit even meets God he is sure to ask, Where is your certificate? What is your education? A pundit has his own world, he lives in his own world of words and scriptures. The fakir replied, No, I do not know reading and writing. I am absolutely illiterate and rustic. If there was an iota of awareness in the pundit he would have seen the utter humility of the fakir. To accept ones own ignorance is the first step towards self-knowledge. If one accepts ones ignorance wholeheartedly then it can become the last step also. When you are acutely aware of not knowing anything then your ego is bound to disappear, its very foundation will give way. The building of the ego will fall down and you will slip into egolessness. That is the door from where one can be in contact with the divine. The fakir said, I dont know anything. I am absolutely illiterate. On hearing this, the pundit remarked, Then one-fourth of your life is wasted. The boat sailed a little farther. The pundit asked again, But you must know arithmetic at least? It is necessary for maintaining accounts. The fakir said, I do not possess anything so there is no need to maintain any accounts. Whatever I earn during the day, I spend by the evening. I do not earn more than the need of April 2012 Page 46
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations my daily bread. By the night I am a fakir again. Then in the morning I start earning again. Existence has been providing for me enough until now so why should I worry about tomorrow? If somebody gives me money, it is all right. If somebody does not give me anything, even then it is all right. I have lived up to now and will be able to live in the future also. Neither the giver gives anything which lasts forever, nor the one who does not give takes away something which may be a loss forever it is all just a play. On hearing this, the pundit said, Well, half of your life is wasted. Just at that time a storm started, the boat began to toss over the waves and it seemed that it may sink any moment. The fakir laughed because the pundit got very frightened. Who will not when death is imminent? The pundit used to talk of deathlessness, used to say that the soul is immortal, but these scholarly claims of the soul, of deathlessness, are of no use when faced by death. The fakir asked him, Do you know how to swim? The pundit answered, No, not at all. The fakir said, Then the whole of your life is wasted! I am going to jump because this boat will sink. OH IDIOT! SING THE SONG OF THE DIVINE, SING THE SONG OF THE DIVINE BECAUSE AT THE TIME OF DEATH perhaps Shankara knew the story which I have just told you THE MEMORIZATION OF GRAMMAR WILL NOT SAVE YOU. When you are about to be drowned, when death surrounds you, you will be saved only if you know how to swim... swimming in death. If you do not know how to swim in death, then death will drown you. It has drowned you many times before too, but you have not woken up yet, you have not learned to swim yet. At the time of death your knowledge of languages no matter how many languages you know as well as your knowledge of grammar, will be absolutely useless. Death is the criterion. Whatever is useful at the time of death is wisdom and whatever is useless at the time of death is scholarliness. Go on testing whatever you know on this criterion. Keep this touchstone always with you just as a goldsmith goes on testing the gold on the touchstone. Whatever is useful, helpful at the time of death, is true knowledge and whatever is useless and deceptive is nothing but scholarliness. And can anything which is useless in death be useful in life? What is of no use even in death, how can it be useful in life? because death is the ultimate culmination of life. It is the pinnacle of life. It is the festival of life. Whatever is useful in death is useful in life. Although it is easy to deceive in life it is impossible to deceive in death. Death exposes everything. Whom is Shankara calling idiot? He is calling that person an idiot who does not know the truth but who has memorized grammar, who knows the words and scriptures and can repeat them, explain them. Shankara is calling the pundit an idiot. His very words: OH IDIOT! SING THE SONG OF THE DIVINE, SING THE SONG OF THE DIVINE, BECAUSE AT THE TIME OF DEATH THE April 2012 Page 47
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations MEMORIZATION OF GRAMMAR WILL NOT SAVE YOU, prove that he was using the word idiot for the pundit; otherwise all of a sudden there was no need to mention about grammar. It is not the fool or the ignorant whom we consider as such; it is the pundit who is memorizing grammar, he is the idiot. The pundit is memorizing grammar, and this has become a big burden in India, so much so that almost every person has this false notion that he knows the divine just because he knows the word God. Remember that the word God is not godliness, just as the word water is not water. When one is thirsty the word water is of no use and actual water is needed to quench the thirst. At the time of death the principles and theories of immortality are of no use; the actual taste of immortality is needed. Once I was traveling during the summer. It had not rained that year in that area. The train stopped at a station where a man was selling water ten paisa per glass. He was calling out, A glass of water for ten paisa. He went on selling the water and collecting the money. A man sitting near me asked him, Wont you sell it for eight paisa? Hearing this, the water-seller did not even stop and he said, Then you are just not thirsty! Yes, he was right. When one is really thirsty, one does not worry about eight paisa or ten paisa. Only those who are not thirsty can think of bargaining. The water-sellers remark appealed to me. When one is thirsty one cannot think of saving two paisa. In fact one is ready to give everything at that time. The bargaining goes on only while one is not thirsty. You say that you are a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Christian; this only means that you are not thirsty yet. When one is thirsty one does not bother about being a Hindu, a Mohammedan or a Christian. When one is really thirsty one asks for the divine; temples, mosques or gurudwaras dont mean anything to him and these cannot quench his thirst. One does not bargain when one is thirsty. The meaning of renunciation, the meaning of sannyas, is that you are thirsty and you are ready to stake everything. People say, Yes, we want to know God but at present there are lots of other things to be done, there are lots of problems to be sorted out. So they go on postponing religion to the last. God is the last on the list of your necessities and the last of necessities is never fulfilled. He remains the last. One day you will be finished, you will never be able to attain him. When one necessity is fulfilled, ten others arise. When one ambition is fulfilled, thousands of others arise. Religion always remains the last. The divine does not come nearer even by an inch. Everything depends on whether religion is the first or the last on your list of life. An idiot is one who keeps religion as last on his list, and certainly that person is not an idiot who has it as first on his list. He has started waking up. He has understood properly that he may accumulate any amount of wealth April 2012 Page 48
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations but eventually death will snatch it away from him. So there is no sense in wasting time in accumulating things which will be snatched away in the end. OH IDIOT! SING THE SONG OF THE DIVINE. The meaning of bhajan should also be understood. You will see lots of people doing bhajan, singing the song of the divine, but they are not really doing bhajan. They are doing it very superficially. It may be a sort of recreation for them as they have not staked their life. It may be just an enjoyment for them, and this type of enjoyment they can get from any other song or from any other music. Bhajan means that there is a deep agony in your inner being; a sound arises from your inner depth. Your whole life is at stake as if it is a question of life and death. If you want to sing the song of the divine then you have to lose yourself. If you want to save yourself and to be devotional to Govinda, God, then you are deceiving yourself. Bhajan in itself is the climax. It is the ultimate. The disciples of Ramakrishna used to be very careful that when he is walking on the road nobody should say Ram Ram, or Jai Ram, because even if a stranger saluted him by saying Jairam-ji, he would stand there overwhelmed with emotion and ecstasy and he would start dancing right in the middle of the road. The disciples used to be embarrassed. The policeman would arrive and tell them to clear the chaos on the road. If he was invited to some wedding then nobody would bother about the bride and the bridegroom and all of them would gather around him. Once, one of his admirers had invited Ramakrishna to his daughters wedding so that he could give his blessings. The wedding ceremony was about to start when somebody called out the name of Govinda. There was a big crowd and somebody was shouting, Where is Govinda? Ramakrishna heard the name of Govinda and started dancing, and the bhajan of Govinda started! That wedding place changed into a divine scene. The marriage party was no longer a marriage party. The wedding ceremony was no longer a wedding ceremony; it was altogether a different thing. Bhajan means that there is a constant flow of the remembrance of the divine within you twentyfour hours a day. That constant flow was there within Ramakrishna, so when anyone uttered the name of Ram, Krishna or Govinda, the inner flow would erupt. The slightest outer stimulus would reveal the inner dance, the inner music, the inner sound. It is just like a well which is full of water. If somebody puts the bucket in the well, it will come out full of water. In the same way, if someone uttered the name of Ram, the inner bhajan, the inner remembrance would be expressed outwardly. Bhajan is not something which you can do at your own convenience. Bhajan is a continuous remembrance. When it starts it never ends, it goes on and on a continuous remembrance inside your being. April 2012 Page 49
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations OH IDIOT! SING THE SONG OF THE DIVINE, BECAUSE AT THE TIME OF DEATH THE MEMORIZATION OF GRAMMAR WILL NOT SAVE YOU. Death is not going to ask you, How much do you know about the scriptures? Death will reveal how much truth you have known. At the time of death only what you have known yourself will remain with you, and what was known by others and what was borrowed by you from others will be lost. If scripture is borrowed then it is useless, but if the scripture is revealed to you then you have reached the same source where the rishis of the Upanishads had quenched their thirst. In that case the Upanishads are not mere scriptures for you; then they are the expression of your own realization, of your own knowledge. People ask me why I speak on Shankara, Buddha or Christ I can also speak directly. I tell them that I am speaking directly, because in this song of Shankara, he has said the same thing which I would like to say, and he has said it so beautifully that it just cannot be improved upon. He has said the last word, so there is no need to repeat it. I am not speaking on Shankara because it seems to me that he knows; the question of my having belief in Shankara does not arise. It is because I have also drunk water from the very source from where he drank and this song was born in him. OH IDIOT! DROP THE DESIRE OF ACCUMULATING WEALTH, AWAKEN RIGHT UNDERSTANDING, MAKE THE MIND DESIRELESS AND BE CONTENTED AND HAPPY WITH WHATSOEVER YOU GAIN THROUGH YOUR OWN LABOUR. OH IDIOT, ALWAYS SING THE SONG OF THE DIVINE. Give up the desire of accumulating wealth. Wealth does not mean the wealth you know as wealth. Here wealth means all that which you go on collecting or accumulating... all that is wealth which you accumulate according to your desire, even knowledge. When you are accumulating knowledge you are accumulating wealth. One person goes on counting how much money he has put in his locker, another one is counting how much knowledge he has accumulated, how much information he has gathered and how many scriptures he has read, but both of them are accumulating. The third person may be accumulating renunciations, counting how many fasts he has done. The fourth may be accumulating fame he may be counting how many people have faith in him, how many worship him and how many follow him. Whatever you accumulate and whatever can be accumulated is wealth. And this wealth is very deceptive because outside you may go on accumulating, but you remain poor within. Whatever is accumulated outside cannot be taken inside, and death will snatch away what you cannot take inside, because you alone can go through death and nothing else. Only your being will pass; flames will not be able to burn it, arrows will not be able to pierce it. Only you will be able to pass through the gate of death, you in your purity and nothing else.
April 2012
Page 50
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations If you have accumulated only the outside wealth you will remain poor while passing through the gate of death. If death proves you to be poor, then it means that the wealth accumulated during life was nothing but a deception. Wealth is only that which can go with us; otherwise the rest is nothing but trouble. What you are accumulating appears like wealth to you but actually it is not so, it is only trouble. You also come to know after accumulating that the trouble has increased. The real wealth would bring contentment, the real wealth would bring peace, would bring fearlessness, would resonate a paradise in your life, would bring relaxation in your life. It would bring the relief of reaching the destination, of reaching home; a perfume of relaxation would arise in your life. But there is no such thing in you. With the increase of wealth your life stinks more, it becomes more unhappy and more fearful. The amassing of wealth creates thousands of worries. Wealth does not bring peace; it only disturbs peace. OH IDIOT! DROP THE DESIRE OF ACCUMULATING WEALTH. Yes, give up the desire to accumulate. Why are people so mad about accumulating? Once I used to live in a house whose owner was mad about collecting things. He even used to collect such things which were absolutely useless. His house was like a junk-house. I used to wonder how he managed to live in it. One day I was standing out in the garden and, while he was talking to me, his younger son came out and threw away an old, used, broken broomstick. Immediately he became restless. He kept looking at the broomstick as he talked to me. I knew that my presence was disturbing him, so I told him that I shall be back in a few minutes and I went in. When I came out I found the broomstick had disappeared. He had taken it in. I followed him in and caught him red-handed. He was standing there with that broomstick. I asked him, Why have you brought it in? He said, Well, it may be needed sometime. I said, But it is useless now. He protested, saying, No, no, it may be of use sometime. Why throw it away? Let it stay. This is the mania of collecting things. What is the reason for this? Why does man want to accumulate? Really there is big emptiness inside which has to be filled, and it has to be filled up with anything, otherwise one feels very empty. If one possesses nothing then one feels very empty inside. Just think: if you have nothing to possess, you will be free and empty inside. Friends come to me for meditation. When they have meditated for some time say for a month or so they start seeing that emptiness inside themselves. That emptiness was always there but it was not noticed. Meditation makes you more aware awareness increases and then one April 2012 Page 51
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations becomes aware of the emptiness. A very peculiar thing then happens. Whosoever feels that inner emptiness starts eating a lot. One or two cases of this type come to me every day. They say, What are we to do? We never used to eat so much food. The effect of the meditation is such that we want to eat all the time. I explain to them that the reason for this is that meditation has shown you the inner emptiness, and this emptiness hurts so it has to be filled up. You therefore fill up this emptiness with money, position and fame. By accumulating things and sitting amongst them, one feels that one has something. Those who do not have anything have the desire of accumulating. But those who have something do not accumulate, they are sufficient unto themselves. Just being is so fulfilling that there is no need to collect anything. That is why we worshipped Buddha, we worshipped Mahavira, we worshipped Shankara, because we noticed that their wealth is within them; there is something in them on account of which the emptiness has disappeared. There is some light within them on account of which the inner emptiness has become fulfilment, the inner emptiness has become truth. Meditation brings emptiness. If you are in haste you will have the desire to fill up the emptiness. But if you are not in haste and if you accept the emptiness and you are ready to live with it, then you will find that gradually the emptiness gets filled up by itself. Nature does not tolerate emptiness. You create the emptiness, nature fills it up. God does not tolerate emptiness; if you create emptiness, God fills it up. Only emptiness is needed, fullness comes on its own. Just like when it rains, water from all sides rushes into the pit; in the same way, when you become empty, the divine rushes towards you from all sides. If you make a pit, existence will fill it up. Half of the work is done by you, half by existence. But your doing is not so important; the real work is done by existence. All that you have to do is to be ready, to be empty. That is why all the enlightened people go on insisting, Do not accumulate. Do not have the desire to collect things... because if you fill yourself, then you are not giving a chance to the divine to fill you. I have heard a story. Once Krishna sat down for a meal. Rukmani was serving the food. Krishna had hardly taken the first morsel when all of a sudden he got up and ran out. But no sooner had he reached the door than he came back and sat down. Rukmani couldnt understand this behaviour. She asked him, Why did you run? For what? Then why did you come back from the door? You ran as if some house was on fire and you had to extinguish it before having your meal. But then you came back as if nothing had happened. Krishna replied, Yes, certainly something was on fire, but by the time I reached the door it was extinguished, so I came back. One of my devotees was walking on a street of the capital. People were throwing stones at him, his forehead was bleeding and he was calling, Govinda, Govinda! He was neither reacting nor trying to save himself. He had trusted himself to me entirely. So to save him I had to run. April 2012 Page 52
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations When one becomes helpless like that man, existence has to take care of him. When a person becomes so empty that in spite of being stoned he is doing nothing to save himself, he is not even running away and not even reacting, then the whole existence comes to save him. When there is a pit, water rushes from all sides to fill it up. Rukmani asked, Then why did you come back? Krishna replied, By the time I reached the door, he had changed his mind. He had picked up a stone in his hand. He himself was reacting so I was not needed anymore. God is needed when you are helpless, and in that helpless condition when Govinda, Govinda! is uttered by you, then that is bhajan, devotion. There is no need to say the word Govinda aloud; the inner emotion is enough. When your eyes full of love look towards the sky, when your heart is opened towards the sky and youre making no effort to do anything from your side, that is the moment when the divine rushes towards you. If you become a pit, he is always ready to fill it up. Mohammed used to say that if you take one step towards Allah, he takes a thousand steps towards you. But if you dont take even one step and that one step is very necessary because until and unless you give him the invitation, how is he going to come? Even if he wants to come, how is he to come? In spite of your not inviting him, not asking him to come, if he comes to you, your doors will be closed. Even if he knocks you will think that it is the mind. Even if he calls you loudly you will not be able to hear him because of your inner turmoil. OH IDIOT! DROP UNDERSTANDING. THE DESIRE OF ACCUMULATING WEALTH, AWAKEN YOUR RIGHT
Intellect means your cunningness; right understanding means your wisdom. That is why, as the world is becoming more and more clever, it is becoming more cunning too. It was expected that education would make people simple and innocent, but the surprising thing is that with the increase of education man is becoming more cunning, more dishonest and more of a hypocrite. He has become expert in exploiting others. Cleverness means efficiency in this world and good sense means efficiency in the inner world. The worldly people may think that the person of good sense is stupid. They are bound to say so because he will ask, What are you doing? It was because good sense prevailed that Buddha gave up his home, his palace, his kingdom. The charioteer who had gone to see him off at the boundary of his kingdom was an ordinary servant, but even he said, Please excuse my impertinence but I cant help telling you that what you are doing is absolutely stupid. Have you gone mad? The whole world craves for such a palace and for such a kingdom. You are fortunate enough to have them but you are giving up all these things. Where else will you get such a beautiful wife? Where else will you get this wealth, these comforts, these luxuries, this type of family and this respect? You had better come back.
April 2012
Page 53
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations Certainly the old charioteer is more worldly wise than Buddha, so he is giving this advice. Buddha said, I quite understand what you are saying. But where you see the palace I see only flames of fire; where you are seeing beauty I see death; what you see as wealth is only a deception of wealth for me. I am in search of real wealth, I am in search of a real home which cannot be snatched away one day. My search will continue until I get it. For the sake of this search I am ready to stake everything, because why not stake something which is eventually going to be taken away, it is only a matter of time? If I attain something which cannot be lost by staking something which is going to be lost, then this deal is not bad. It is just a matter of time. If I can stake what is to be snatched away tomorrow anyway for something which can never be taken away, it is not costly. Good sense has prevailed upon Buddha and the charioteer is just worldly wise indeed. Buddha became enlightened and returned home after twelve years. But his father was angry. He said, Dont be stupid! Come back home. You have deceived me, deceived your wife and the new-born child. In spite of all these things I will forgive you, because I have the heart of a father. Come back, your begging on the road does not look right. And why do you beg? You can give alms to thousands of beggars every day. Even now Buddha seemed stupid to his father. The religious intelligence always appears as stupidity to the worldly wisdom, and people generally think it to be utter madness. But to the person who has this religious intelligence, this worldly wisdom seems stupidity. And it is you who have to take the decision. Without this decision you cannot enter the world of religion. Until worldly wisdom seems stupidity to you, you cannot attain good sense. When you see worldly wisdom as foolishness, when you see worldly cleverness as deception, when you see the futility of worldly fame, of position and of reputation, then it means that the seed of right understanding has sprouted in you. AWAKEN RIGHT UNDERSTANDING, MAKE THE MIND DESIRELESS, AND BE CONTENTED AND HAPPY WITH WHATSOEVER YOU GAIN THROUGH YOUR OWN LABOUR. This is true regarding all types of wealth about the outer wealth also which one gets with ones own effort. Whosoever is satisfied with it, his life will be full of morality. And the same is true about the inner wealth also: when the inner wealth is obtained by ones own effort he will be religious within. Memorizing the scriptures means that you are committing theft. You are stealing the knowledge hidden in the scriptures; you did not get it by your own effort or hard work. It is all borrowed and stale, you are just holding on to the other persons knowledge. Dont construct your building on it. Its foundation is on sand so it will crumble down in the slightest gust of wind.
April 2012
Page 54
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations Just a few days ago I was telling a Zen story. One evening a Zen monk knocked at the door of a Zen monastery. It is a tradition of the Zen monasteries that if any traveling monk wants to rest there he has to give the right reply to at least one question. He has to earn the shelter to rest in by giving a correct reply to one question; otherwise he cannot halt at the monastery, he has to continue his journey. The head of the monastery opened the door and asked the guest a very old puzzle of Zen monks. The puzzle is: Which is your original face, the basic face? the real one which was yours even before the birth of your father and mother? This question is regarding the soul. What you have received from your mother and father is the body; your face was also received from them. But what is your basic face, the original face? What is your nature? And Zen monks say that the reply to this question cannot be given in words, its reply should be a living expression. As soon as this question was asked, the traveling guest monk took off his shoe and struck the face of the monk who had asked the question. The host stepped aside, saluted and said, You are welcome! Come in! After they had dinner together, they sat down by the fire at night and started talking. The host told the guest, Your answer was wonderful. The guest asked, Have you yourself experienced this answer? The host said, No, I have not experienced it. But I have read many scriptures and have learned from them that the one who gives the correct reply does not hesitate. You replied without any hesitation and your reply said everything. On the basis of the scriptures I understood that you have come to know the reply, because through your reply you said, You idiot! You are asking the question in words and you are wanting the reply without words; you are asking about the original face which you also have. Therefore by striking your face with the shoe I am saying that this face is not your original face it deserves a shoe-hit. The host said, So I understood your reply. I have also read the scriptures and such replies are written in them. The guest did not say anything. He went on sipping his tea. Upon this the host became a little doubtful. He looked at the face of the guest carefully and what he saw was very dissatisfactory. He said, Friend! I am asking you once again: Have you really experienced the answer or not? The guest answered, I too have read many scriptures. I have read this is an appropriate reply to the question you asked. But the fact is that I have not experienced the answer. Scriptures can be very deceptive because the replies are also written there. But to repeat the answer from the scripture is just like using the answers written at the end of the arithmetic April 2012 Page 55
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations book. One reads the problem, then turns the book and sees the answers at the end. In this way you will give the right answer but you will never know the method by which one reaches that answer. The answer will be correct but you will remain wrong, because if you had passed through the method you would have evolved, you would have developed. Another persons answer is of no use. An answer should be ones own. No one is going to test your knowledge of the scriptures; existence is going to test you existentially. No one is going to ask, What did you hear? What did you read? Existence will ask, How have you lived? If the answer came from your life then it means that it came with your own effort. With outer wealth, if you earn it with your labour, with your hard work, then your life will be full of morality, and if you earn the inner wealth with your labour then your life will be religious it will be authentic religion. That is why Ramateertha called this real religion. Yes, there is borrowed religion and there is authentic religion. Borrowed religion means the answers are correct but impotent; they are like empty, spent cartridges, they cant be used in a gun. People will laugh at you, but this is what most people are doing: they go on repeating others answers. They go on repeating them mechanically. How can they get their own answers when they dont even have their own questions? They dont even know what exactly they want to know. They dont know the question which they go on seeking. OH IDIOT! DROP THE DESIRE OF ACCUMULATING WEALTH, AWAKEN THE RIGHT UNDERSTANDING AND BE CONTENTED AND HAPPY WITH WHATSOEVER YOU GAIN THROUGH YOUR OWN LABOUR. OH IDIOT! ALWAYS SING THE SONG OF THE DIVINE.
April 2012
Page 56
Sayings from the Ramayana

The quotes selected and presented here are the words of the different characters of this great epic uttered in different situations. The ideas and values contained in them form part of what is called sanatana dharma and are eternally true for all ages. In these times of social upheaval it is all the more necessary for us to get back to these fundamental principles of life and living which we have almost forgotten in the rat race for material gains.
Aahuh satyam hi paramam dharmam dharmavido janaah 2.14.3 Those who have knowledge of dharma say that Truth is the highest dharma. ***
Durlabham hi sadaa sukham 2.18.13 To be happy always is something which is difficult to achieve. (That is to say, happiness and sorrow alternate in ones life and there cannot be uninterrupted happiness alone.) ***
Ramo dwir naabhibhaashate 2.18.30 Once Rama gives his word, that is final and it is kept at any cost. There is no question of repetition of the same a second time. ***
April 2012 Page 57
Gurorapy avaliptasya kaaryaakaaryam ajaanatah Utpathham pratipannasya kaaryam bhavati shaasanam 2.11.13 One who is haughty, who does not know whether what he does is right or wrong and who has taken to the wrong path is to be disciplined even if he is guru, parent or an elder in age or learning. ***
Viklavo veeryaheeno yah sa daivamanuvartate Veeraah sambhaavitaatmaano na daivam paryupaasate 2.23.16 Only the timid and the weak leave things to destiny (daivam) but the strong and the self-confident never bank on destiny or luck (bhagya) ***

Yo hi datwaa dwipashreshthham kakshyaayaam kurute manah Rajjusnehena kim tasya tyajatah kunjarottamam 2.37.3 If a person is gifting away his elephant but his heart is set on the rope used for tying the elephant, of what use is his attachment to the rope when he is giving away the elephant itself. ***
Naatantree vidyate veenaa naachakro vidyate rathah Naapatih sukhamedheta yaa syaadapi shataatmajaa 2.39.29 April 2012 Page 58
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations A Veena cannot exist without its strings. A chariot cannot exist without its wheels. Without her husband a woman can never live happily even though she has a hundred sons. ***
Shoko naashayate dhairyam shoko naashayate shrutam Shoko naashayete sarvam nasti shokasamo ripuh 2.62.15 Grief destroys ones courage. It destroys ones learning. It destroys ones everything. There is no enemy greater than grief. ***
Yadannah purusho bhavati tadannaastasya devataah 2.103.30 Whatever is ones food, the same food shall be offered to ones gods. ***
Kuleenam akuleenam vaa veeram purushamaaninam Charitrameva vyaakhyaati shuchim vaa yadi vaashuchim 2.109.4
Udwijante yathaa sarpaat naraadanruta vaadinah 2.109.12
Satyameveshwaro loke satye dharmah samaashritah 2.109.13
April 2012
Page 59
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations Only a persons conduct and character proclaim whether he is born in a good family or whether he is boasting about himself or whether he is unblemished (shuchih) or blemished (ashuchih). Just as people are afraid of serpents they are afraid of persons who utter lies. Truth controls this world and dharma is rooted in truth. ***
Na supratikaram tattu maatraa pitraa cha yatkrutam 2.111.9 It is difficult for the children to repay the debt of what the mother and the father have done to bring them up. ***
Lakshmee chandrat apeyaadwaa himavaan vaa himam tyajet Ateeyaat saagaro velaam na pratijnaamaham pituh 2.112.18 Beauty may leave the moon, Himayaan may become bereft of snow, the ocean may transgress its shores but I will never violate the promise given by my father. ***
Dharmaadarthah prabhavati dharmaat prabhavate sukham Dharmena labhate sarvam dharmasaaramidam jagat 3.9.30
April 2012
Page 60
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations Aatmaanam niyamaih taistaih karshayitwaa prayatnatah Praapyate nipunair dharmo na sukhaat labhate sukham 3.9.31 Wealth springs from dharma, from dharma comes happiness and one gets everything from dharma. Dharma is the essence of this world. Dharma, which is the source of all happiness, can be attained even by a skilled person, only after observing various disciplines for his own purification and after great effort subjecting himself to great strain and stress. One cannot attain such dharma by leading a life given to the pleasures of the senses. ***
Anaagata vidhaanam tu kartavyam shubhamichchhataa Aapadaashankamaanena purushena vipashchitaa 3.24.11 A wise man should foresee tragedy or misfortune and take action to prevent or overcome such tragedy or misfortune well before it strikes. Thus only he can enjoy a safe and good life. ***
Karma lokaviruddham tu kurvaanam kshanadaachara Teekshnam sarvajano hanti sarpam dushtamivaagatam 3.29.4

Na chiram paapakarmaanah kruooraah lokajugupsitaah Aishwaryam praapya thishthhanti sheernamoolaah iva drumaah 3.29.5 April 2012 Page 61
Na chiraat praapyate loke paapaanaam karmanaam phalam Savishaanaamivaannaanaam bhuktaanaam kshanadaachara 3.29.9 O Rakshasa! People will kill, as they kill a poisonous snake, a cruel and ferocious person whose actions are against the people and hurt them. Those cruel persons who, by their sinful actions, inflict physical and mental injury on others are detested by people. Though such people may amass immense wealth they cannot retain it for long. They will perish like a tree whose roots have become decayed. In this world, one will, before long, suffer the consequences of ones sinful actions in the same way as poisonous food taken by a person kills him within a short time. ***
Paradaaraabhimarshaattu naanyat paapataram mahat 3.38.30 There is no greater sin than coveting another mans wife. ***
Sa bhaarah saumya bhartavyo yo naram naavasaadayet Tadannamapi bhoktavyam jeeryate yadanaamayam 3.50.18
April 2012
Page 62
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations Yatkrutwaa na bhaveddharmo na keertirna yasho dhruvam Shareerasya bhavet khedah kastatkarma samaacharet 3.50.19 One should lift only such weight as will not exhaust one beyond a limit. One should eat only such food as will easily digest. Who will engage himself in such action as will get him neither dharma nor reputation nor lasting fame and which will only result in physical exhaustion? ***
Mumurshoonaam tu sarveshaam yatpathhyam tanna rochate 3.53.17 One who is bent on courting his death will not take kindly to sage counsel given by his well-wishers. ***
Utsaaho balavaanaarya naastyutsaahaat param balam Sotsaahasya hi lokeshu na kinchidapi durlabham. 4.1.121 Enthusiasm has great strength. There is no greater strength than enthusiasm. There is nothing which is not attainable in this world for the enthusiastic. *** :
Dukhitah sukhito vaapi sakhyurnityam sakhaa gatih 4.8.40 Whether in sorrow or in happiness a friend is always a friends support. ***
April 2012
Page 63
Jyeshthho bhraataa pitaa vaapi yashcha vidyaam prayachchhati Trayo vai pitaro jneyaah dharme cha pathhi vartinah 4.18.13 Ones elder brother, father and the teacher who gives knowledge - all these three, treading the path of dharma, are to be considered as ones father. ***
Arthheenaam upapannaanaam poorvam chaapyupakaarinaam Aashaam samshrutya yo hanti sa loke purushaadhamah 4.30.71 A person gives hope to another who requests for money or other material thing or to one who had helped that person in the past. Having given them hope, if that person disappoints them by not keeping his promise, then he is the worst kind of person in this world. ***
Goghne chaiva suraape cha choure bhagnavrate tathhaa Nishkritih nihitaa sadbhih kritaghne naasti nishkritih 4.34.12 There is atonement, laid down by men of character, for one who kills a cow, consumes intoxicating drinks, steals or breaks ones promise but there is no atonement for one who is ungrateful. ***
April 2012
Page 64
Na kashchinnaaparaadhyati 4.36.11 To err is human, there is none who has not erred some time or other. ***
Anirvedam cha daakshyam cha manasashchaaparaajayam Karyasiddhikaraanyaahuh 4.49.6 Not getting dejected or depressed, skill in doing ones job and not losing heart in the face of difficulties these are the qualities which enable one to achieve ones goals. ***

Na vishaade manah kaaryam vishaado doshavattarah Vishaado hanti purusham baalam kruddhah ivoragah 4.64.9 One should not let ones mind to be overcome by melancholy. Melancholy or moroseness is a very bad thing. It kills (destroys) a man just as an angered serpent kills a child. ***
Anirvedah shriyo moolam anirvedah param sukham 5.12.10
April 2012
Page 65
Vinaashe bahavo doshaah jeevannaapnoti bhadrakam 5.13.45 Not getting depressed, frustrated or dejected is the basis for all prosperity and happiness. Giving up ones life produces nothing good, to continue to live is the way to joy and happiness. ***
Dhigastu paravashyataam 5.25.20
Drishyamaane bhavet preetih sauhridam naastyadrishyatah 5.26.41 To be under the control of another is to be condemned; it is the worst thing that can befall a person. Love and affection is possible only when a person is being seen and is not out of sight in a far away place. ***
Kalyaanee bata gaathheyam laukikee prathibhaati me Ethi jeevantam aanando naram varsha shataadapi 5.34.6 The saying If one continues to live, happiness and bliss may come even after a gap of a hundred years seems to me an auspicious one. ***
April 2012
Page 66
Aanrushamsyam paro dharmah 5.38.39 To be compassionate, kind, merciful and humane is a great virtue. ***
Na saama rakshassu gunaaya kalpate Na daanamarthopachiteshu yujyate 5.41.3 Words of conciliation to the rakshasas will not bring out any good (Soft words will not have any effect on a rakshasa). In the same way one cannot pacify an immensely wealthy person by offering him material things. ***
Kopam na gachchhanti hi sattwantah The strong of heart do not become angry.
Vaachyaavaachyam prakupito na vijaanaati karhichit Naakaaryamasti kruddhasya naavaachyam vidyate kwachit 5.55.5
Naagniragnau pravartate 5.55.22 One who is angry does not distinguish between April 2012 Page 67
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations what can be spoken and what is unspeakable. There is nothing which an angry man cannot do meaning he can commit any crime. There is nothing unspeakable for him. Fire cannot act on fire. ***
Nirutsaahasya deenasya shokaparyaakulaatmanah Sarvaarthhaah vyavaseedanti vyasanam chaadhigachchhati 6.2.6 The efforts of one who is unenthusiastic, weak and immersed in sorrow cannot bring out any good and he comes to grief. ***
Mantramoolam cha vijayam pravadanti manaswinah 6.6.5 Wise men say that the root of victory is consultation and discussion with learned and wise men. *** !
Jaanaami sheelam jnaateenaam sarvalokeshu raakshasa! Hrishyanti vyasaneshwete jnaateenaam jnaatayah sadaa 6.16.3
April 2012
Page 68
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations Yathhaa pushkarapatreshu patitaastoyabindavah Na shleshamabhiganchchanti tathhaanaaryeshu sauhridam 6.16.11 I know the nature of ones relatives. Relatives always rejoice when their relatives are in trouble. Just like drops of water on lotus leaves do not stick to the leaves, in the same way is the friendship with people who lack character. ***
Aaakarah chhaadyamaanopi na shakyo vinigoohitum Balaaddhi vivrunotyeva bhaavamantargatam nrunaam 6.17.64 Ones innermost thoughts and emotions reflect on ones physical appearance which it is difficult to cover up however one may try to do it. Such changes in ones physical appearance forcefully expose such innermost emotions and thoughts. ***
Garjanti na vruthhaa shooraah nirjalaa iva toyadaah 6.65.3 The thundering of clouds which have spent all their water does not produce any rain. But the really valiant do not roar in vain; they show their valour in action also. ***
Yah swapaksham parityajya parapaksham nishevate swapakshe cha kshayam yaate pashchaattaireva hanyate 6.87.16 April 2012 Page 69
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations The one who abandons ones own camp and joins the enemys camp will be killed by the very men of his former camp after the latter camp is completely destroyed by the former. ***
Paraswaanaam cha haranam paradaaraabhimarshanam Suhrudaamatishankaa cha trayo doshaah kshayaavahaah 6.85.23 Stealing the wealth of others, coveting another mans wife and doubting the integrity and character of friends these three lead to ones destruction. ***
Deshe deshe kalatraani deshe deshe cha baandhavaah Tam tu desham na pashyaami yatra bhraataa sahodarah 6.101.14 One may have wives and relatives in every country but one cannot have a brother like Lakshmana in every place. ***
Nahi pratijnaam kurvanti vithathhaam satyavaadinah Lakshanam hi mahattwasya pratijnaaparipaalanam 6.101.52 Those who always adhere to truth do not make false promises. Keeping ones promises is, surely, the mark of ones greatness. *** April 2012 Page 70
Pativrataanaam naakasmaat patantyashrooni bhootale 6.111.67 The tears of virtuous women (pativratas) do not fall on the ground in vain, meaning it will destroy those who caused them such anguish of heart causing tears to be shed. ***
Dhaaranaaddharmamityaahuh dharmena vidhrutaah prajaah (7.59 Prakshipta: 2/7) Dharma is so called because it sustains or supports society (from the root dhri meaning to support). The people of a country are held together and sustained by Dharma. ***
Krodhah praanaharo shatruh krodho mitramukho ripuh Krodhohyasirmahaateekshnah sarvam krodhopakarshati (7.59 prakshipta 2/21) Anger is the enemy which takes ones life. Anger is enemy with the face of a friend. Anger is like a very sharp sword. Anger destroys everything. ***
April 2012
Page 71
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations Na saa sabhaa yatra na santi vruddhaah Vriddhaa na te ye na vadanti dharmam Naasau dharmo yatra na satyamasti Na tatsatyam yachchhalenaanuviddham That is not an assembly where wise old men are not there. They are not wise old men who do not preach dharma. That is not dharma where there is no Truth. That is not Truth which is covered over with deceit. ***
Tapo hi paramam shreyah sammohamitaratsukham 7.84.3 Tapa is the highest good. All other pleasures or joys are only delusions.
April 2012
Page 72
The Pinnacle of Meditation

Many, many years ago, in a certain country, there was a young and famous painter. He decided to create a truly great portrait, a lively portrait full of the joy of God, a portrait of a man whose eyes radiated eternal peace. And so, he set out to find someone whose face reflected that eternal, ethereal light. The artist roamed from village to village, from jungle to jungle, in search of his subject, and at long last he came across a shepherd with shining eyes, with a face and features that held the promise of some celestial home. One look was enough to convince him that God was present in this young man. The artist painted a portrait of the young shepherd. Millions of copies of the portrait were made and it sold far and wide. People felt great gratitude, just being able to hang the picture on their walls. After a spell of some twenty years, when the artist had grown old, he decided to paint another portrait. His experience had shown him that life is not all goodness; that Satan also exists in man. The idea of painting a picture of Satan persisted; were he to fulfill the project; then the two pictures would complement each other, would show the complete man. He had already done a painting of godliness; now he wanted to portray evil incarnate. He sought a man who was not a man but Satan. He went to gambling dens, to bars and to madhouses. This subject had to be full of hells fire; his face had to show all that is evil, ugly and sadistic. After a long search, the artist finally met a prisoner in a jail. The man had committed seven murders and had been sentenced to be hanged in a few days. Hell was evident in the mans eyes; they spouted hate. His face was the ugliest one could possibly hope to find. The artist began to paint him. When he had completed the portrait he brought out his earlier picture and set it by the side of the new painting for contrast. It was difficult to assess which was better from an artistic point of view; both were marvelous. He stood, staring at both of them. And then he heard a sob. He turned and saw the chained prisoner, crying. The artist was bewildered. He asked, My friend, why are you crying? Do these pictures disturb you? The prisoner said, I have been trying to hide something from you all this time, but today I am lost. You obviously do not know that the first picture is also of me. Both portraits are of me. I am the same shepherd you met twenty years ago in the hills. I cry for my downfall in the last twenty years. I have fallen from heaven to hell, from God to Satan. April 2012 Page 73
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations I do not know how true this story is, but one thing is for certain: each mans life has two converse sides; two portraits of everyone are possible. In every man both God and Satan exist; in every man there is the possibility of heaven, and the possibility of hell. A bouquet of beautiful roses can grow in man; a heap of mud can also pile up in him. Every man swings between these two extremes. Man can attain to either of these extremes, but most people are inclined towards the infernal. Those fortunate few who aspire to the eternal, who let godliness grow in them, are rare. Can we succeed in making our lives temples of God? Can we also become like the portrait that had the glimpse of God in it? How can man become the reflection of God? How is it possible to make mans life heaven, to make it fragrant, beautiful, harmonious? How is it possible for man to know that which is deathless? How is it possible for man to enter the temple of God? In this context, the facts of life indicate that all our progress, so far, has been in the opposite direction. In childhood we are in heaven, but as we grow older, by and by we land in hell. The world of childhood is full of innocence and purity, but we gradually begin traveling a road paved with lies and treachery and by the time we are mature we are old not only physically but also spiritually. Not only does the body become weak and infirm, but the soul falls into a ruinous state as well. But we simply accept this; we simply let the matter finish there. But we also finish ourselves. Religion is fatalistic about this question, about this downfall, about this journey from heaven to hell. But this journey ought to be reversed. This journey should be a rewarding one from sorrow to joy, from darkness to light, from mortality to immortality. Mans inner urge is to reach the deathless from the death-bound; this is the thirst of mans innermost soul. The souls only search is to reach from the darkness to the light. The basic drive of our primal energy is to reach from untruth to truth. But for that voyage, man needs to conserve his energy; he needs to allow his energy to grow. To scale truth, to reach to the soul, man must strive to become a reservoir of limitless strength; only then can he reach to the eternal. Heaven is not for the weak. I repeat, heaven is not for the weak. The truth of life is not for those who dissipate their energy, who allow themselves to become feeble and frail. Those who squander lifes energies, who become insipid and impotent within, cannot undertake this expedition. It requires great energy to scale the heights. Conservation of energy is a prime requisite of religion. But we are a weak, sick generation, and through this loss of energy we are progressively sinking to weaker and weaker levels. Our vitality is being drained away and all that is left inside is a honeycomb of dry cells; nothing is left but a terrible emptiness. Our lives are one sad continuous story of loss; our lives are not productive at all.
April 2012
Page 74
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations Why does this unattractive situation exist? And how do we lose our energy? The biggest outlet for mans energy is sex. Sex is a continuous drain, and it should be stopped. No one likes to lose anything, but as I told you earlier, there is an irresistible reason why man overdraws on his energy so much. Because of the blissful glimpse in sex, man is dragged, willynilly, into losing energy time and time again. The luminescent but transient rapture that comes with sex has such a great attraction for him that man is falling headlong into losing the very thing that is the basis of everything. If the same ecstasy were available by some other means, would one not stop wasting ones energy through sex? Is there any other way to obtain that same experience? Isnt there any other way to realize the very same exalted experience where we fathom the deeper-than-deep recesses of the soul, where we touch the highest peak of existence, where we are given a revitalizing glimpse of subtle bliss and pure joy, where all definitions and all limitations evaporate? Is there any other way? Is there any technique for plunging into that serene abyss within ourselves? Is there any other process for uniting with the eternal source of peace and joy that exists in us all? This knowledge will spark a transformation in man. Then he will turn his back on Kama and will turn towards Rama; then his journey will be from lust to the Lord. Then an inner revolution will take place; then a new door will open. If man is not shown a new door, he will continue to revolve in the same repetitive circle and will eventually destroy himself. But mans backward idea of sex has prevented him from even thinking about any other door, about any superior outlet. And a great and disruptive chaos has been created in his life. Nature has endowed man with one door only, that of sex, but the teachings down the centuries have slammed that door shut, have jammed that release. In the absence of an adequate outlet, the swirling energy in man travels around and around, vainly pushing upwards: disintegrating his personality, degenerating him, turning him into a neurotic. Moreover, this disintegrated, neurotic man cannot even utilize the natural door of sex, and the onrush of energy from within shatters the walls and the windows of his being. As a consequence it erupts, and man falls and cracks his head, stumbles and breaks his arms and legs. Because it is confined by the closed, natural door, and because the supernatural door is not yet open, mans sex energy flows out through unnatural outlets. This is mans greatest misfortune. No new door has been opened yet, and the old door is already closed. This is why I am firmly against the traditional teachings of enmity for, and suppression of, sex. It is because of the old teachings that sexuality has not only grown in man but has also become perverted. What is the remedy? Is there no other alternative?
April 2012
Page 75
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations Let us look at the situation carefully. The realization that comes in the moment of orgasm consists of two elements: egolessness and timelessness. Time freezes and the ego evaporates. Because of the absence of the ego and the stoppage of time, one has a clear vision of ones own self of ones real self. But that glory is momentary, and then we are back in the same old rut. And in the meantime we have lost a considerable amount of energy. The mind pines for that illumination; the mind yearns to grasp it again, but that light, that realization, is so transitory that we have scarcely glimpsed it when it disappears. What remains then is an urge, an obsession, a deep anxiety to achieve that experience again. Throughout the full span of his life, again and again man tries to grasp that glimpse, that exhilarating experience, but it never lingers. There are two ways to attain super consciousness, to reach the essence of the inner self: sex and meditation. Sex is the door provided by nature. Sex is the natural course: animals have it; birds have it; plants have it; man has it. So long as man avails himself of natures door, he is not above the animals; he cannot rise above the animals. That door is also accessible to them. The day man finds a new door can be considered as the dawning of human-ness in him. Prior to that, we are not men; prior to that, our center coincides with the animals center, with natures center. Until we rise above this, until we transcend this, we are truly at the level of the animals. In appearance we are men. We clothe ourselves like men; we speak the language of men, but inside, at the core, at the center, we are like animals. And we can be no more than that. That is the reason the animal in us bursts forth at the first available opportunity. During the commotion at the time of the formation of India and Pakistan, we came to know that a carnivorous animal lurks behind the mask of man. We came to know of what the people who pray in the mosques and recite the Gita in the temples are capable: they loot; they slaughter; they rape. The very people who were seen praying in the temples and mosques the day before were seen raping in the streets. What had happened to them? A man takes a holiday from being human whenever theres the slightest opportunity to let his obligations go and the animal, ever ready in him, springs forth. The animal is always anxious for free rein. And man is always tense curbing this animal, chaining it. In a crowd, in a group, a man finds the opportunity to throw off his adopted garb of humanity and to forget himself. In a crowd, he develops the courage to forget himself, to forget the real identity he has been restraining. The animal is released. As an individual, no man has committed as many sins as he has in a crowd. A solitary man is a bit afraid someone may recognize him; he worries about what he is wearing. A solitary man will think first about what he is going to do; he is afraid others may call him an animal. But in the midst of a big crowd of people a man loses his identity; he is not worried about being spotted at all. Then he is part and parcel of the mass; then he does what the people around him are doing.
April 2012
Page 76
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations And what does he do? He hurls stones, he starts fires, he commits rape. As part of the mob, he seizes the opportunity to set his animal free. And that is why, every five to ten years, man is anxious for war, why he is always lying in wait, hoping for a riot to break out. If it is under the pretext of a Hindu-Moslem problem it is fine with him. If not, a Gujarati-Marathi cause will also suit his purpose. If the Gujaratis and Marathis are not ripe for rioting, then a conflict between Hindi-speaking and non-Hindi speaking people will satisfy him. He needs an excuse, any excuse, to free the insatiable beast within. The animal in man is frustrated by constant bondage; it is howling to get out. But unless this animal is vanquished, destroyed, mans consciousness can never rise above bestiality. Our nature, our life-force, our energy, has only one easy outlet, and that outlet is sex. Sealing that channel will create problems, so before sealing it, it is very important to throw open a new door so that the energy can be diverted in a new direction. This is possible, but it has not yet happened for the simple reason that repression is much easier than transformation. It is easier to cover a thing, to sit upon it, than to tackle it, than to transform it because the latter demands the effort of a sadhana, of a steady course of meditative action. Hence, we have chosen the internal repression of sex. At the same time, we are unaware that nothing can be destroyed by suppression; on the contrary, it is strengthened as a reaction. We also forget that repressing something intensifies our attraction for it. That which we repress not only becomes the center of our consciousness but also sinks into the deeper layers of our subconscious. We may repress it during our waking hours, but at night it flashes across our dreams. Inside it waits, anxious to lash out at the slightest opportunity. Repression will not free man from anything; on the contrary, its roots will go deep into his subconscious and trap him as a consequence. In the process of trying to stamp out sex, man has entangled himself; he has become trapped. Although animals have their limits and their periods, man has neither. Man is sexual each hour throughout the year. Without exception, no animal in the animal kingdom is sexual to this degree. Animals have a specific time for it, a period, a season; it comes and it goes. And afterwards an animal doesnt think about it again. But look at what has happened to man. The thing which man has tried to repress, has tried to suppress, shoots up throughout his life. It is an ever-active volcano. Have you ever observed that no animal is sexual all the time, but that man leans toward sex in each and every situation? Sexuality fumes inside man, as if sex were all and everything in life. How has this perversion come about? How has this disaster occurred? Why hasnt it happened to any animal? There is only one cause: man has done his utmost to suppress sex. And it has erupted throughout his personality in equal measure.
April 2012
Page 77
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations And think of what we have done to suppress sex! We have had to develop an insulting attitude toward it; we have had to degrade it; we have had to abuse it. We have had to call it sin; we have had to shout from the rooftops, Sex is sin! We have had to proclaim that those who indulge in sex are contemptible, are to be despised. We have had to invent countless degrading names for sex in order to justify our suppression of it. But we have never worried for a moment that these abuses and objections would eventually poison our entire beings. Nietzsche once made a very meaningful statement. He said that although religion had tried to kill sex by poisoning it, that sex was not dead, but still alive and full of poison. It would have been better had it died, but it was not to be; it was poisoned but yet it lived on. The device misfired. The sexuality we see around us today is the epitome of poisoned sex. Sex also exists in animals because sex is the source of life, but sexuality only exists in man. There is no sexuality in animals. Look into the eyes of an animal; you will not find lust there. But if you look into a mans eyes you will see nothing but lust; nothing but the gross desire for sex. And so, today, animals are beautiful in a way, but there is no limit to the ugliness and stench of man, the mad repressor. As a first step in freeing man from sexuality, children both boys and girls should, as I told you yesterday, receive instruction in the subject of sex. In addition to their being given this knowledge, the ugly and unnatural distance between them should be erased. As a matter of fact, they should be brought much nearer; this segregation is completely unnatural. Men and women have become altogether different species. By looking at the separation, at the man-made compartments between them, it is difficult to believe that men and women are of the same kind, that they are both part of mankind. If boys and girls were free to move about the house without clothes, as and when they liked, it would nip in the bud the obscene and unnatural curiosity that develops at a later age. We already know full well how this ignorance of each others bodies shows up in the inquisitiveness of children: look how all children of civilized men love to play doctor. Furthermore, I wonder if you know about a new movement initiated by a segment of American society, all so-called religious people. Their aim is to stop dogs, cats, horses and other animals being taken out unclothed; they want them to be dressed before they are taken into the streets. The idea behind it is that children may become corrupted if they look at naked animals. How funny it is to think of a child being corrupted by seeing a naked animal! But anyway, they are forming an association to ban unclothed animals from the streets. See how many things are being done to save mankind! These so-called saviors are the very people who are destroying man. Have you never noticed just how wonderful and how beautiful the animals are, even unclothed? Even in their nakedness they are innocent, simple and plain. You rarely ever think of an animal as being naked, and you will never see animals as naked unless you are hiding your own nakedness inside you! But April 2012 Page 78
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations those who are afraid and those who are cowards will try anything and everything to compensate for their own fear of nakedness. Because of the invention of such remedies, mankind is degenerating, day by day. Man ought to be so simple that he can stand up naked, unclad, innocent and full of bliss. A person like Mahavir undertook to stand up unclothed and, likewise, every man should cultivate a mentality whereby he could also stand up unclothed. People, so-called religious people, say that Mahavir discarded clothes, that he abandoned wearing garments. But I deny this. His chitta, his consciousness, became so clear, so innocent as pure as that of a child that he rose up, nude, to face the world. When there is nothing at all left to conceal, a man can lay himself bare. Man covers himself because he feels there is something inside that needs to be hushed up. But when there is nothing to hide, one need not even put up with clothes. There is a great need for the kind of world where every individual will be so guiltless, so pure of mind and so serene that he will be able to discard his clothes. Where is the crime? What is the danger in being naked? It is a different matter if clothes are worn for other reasons, but if they are worn solely out of ones fear of nakedness then this is contemptuous. Wearing clothes because of a dread of nakedness is indicative of a greater nakedness, is proof of a contaminated mind. But today we feel guilty even wearing clothes, as if we still havent been able to scrub away the existence of our inner nudity. Ah! God is so childish! He could so easily have created man with clothes. By the way, please do not conclude that I am against the wearing of clothes. But I make no bones about stating that clothes worn out of sheer fear of nakedness do not cover nakedness; rather, they uncover it. This unnatural awareness of nakedness is contemptible, and degenerating. And this awareness has been decreed by a long social tradition. A person can seem naked wearing clothes and a nude person can appear to be clothed. Is it necessary to elaborate further on this point after seeing the modern, skin-tight clothes for both men and women? This is the outcome of an unsatisfied desire to leer at and to display the body. If men and women were familiar with each others bodies, clothes would automatically serve no other purpose than to protect the body. But alas, nowadays, clothes are designed to arouse sexuality. Where is mans civilization going when clothes are no longer clothes but aids to sexuality? This is why I advocate letting children remain nude up to a certain age. They should understand that the necessity for clothes has to do with something other than sex!
April 2012
Page 79
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations Moreover, the concept of nakedness is a subjective one. To a simple mind, to an innocent mind, nudity is not offensive; it has its own beauty. But up to now, man has been fed on poison, and gradually, with the passage of time, this poison has spread from one pole of his existence to the other. Consequently, our attitude to nakedness is completely unnatural. When I spoke on this topic at the first meeting, at the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan Auditorium, a lady came to me and said, I am very upset. I am very angry with you. Sex is a scandalous subject. Sex is sin. Why did you speak about it at such length? I really despise sex. Now, you see, this lady despises sex although she is a married woman with sons and daughters. How can she love the husband who leads her into sex? How can she love those children who have been born out of sex? Her attitude to life is permeated with poison; her love will remain poisonous. And so there is bound to be a basic and deep rift between this woman and her husband. There will also be a fence of thorns between her and her children because the latter, to her, are the fruits of sin. The relationship between her and her husband is sin-oriented; she is haunted by an unconscious guilt complex where sex is concerned. Can one live in harmony with sin? Those who slander sex have disturbed everyones marital life. Instead of affording any kind of deliverance, this disruptive attitude against sex has had deeply injurious effects. The man who meets with an invisible barrier between himself and his wife can never feel content with her: he will look around for other women; he will go to prostitutes. All the women in the world could have been like sisters and mothers to him had he received full gratification at home, but because of its absence, he will now see all women as potential wives, always after something. It is but natural; it had to be so. He finds poison, repulsion, and talk of sin where he ought to have been blessed with bliss, with ecstasy and serenity. His basic needs are not met at home and so he roams everywhere, searching for satisfaction in every nook and corner. And what has man not invented to meet those basic needs! You would be amazed if we tried to list all the devices he has come up with. Man has gone out of his way to devise many, many tricks but he has never thought carefully about the basic drawback. Now that which was a lagoon of love has become a pool of sex, and the pool is poisoned. And when there is an acute sense of sin, of poison; when there is a feeling of hesitation between husband and wife, this guilty approach ends the possibility of any growth in their lives together. As I understand it, if a husband and wife can try to appreciate sex in harmony and with an understanding love towards each other, with a feeling of pure joy and without any sense of gloom, then their relationship can be transformed, elevated. And after this, it is possible that the wife, the same wife, will be there, but she will be in the form of a mother! I have heard that Gandhis wife, Kasturba, once went to Ceylon with Gandhiji and his party. In his welcoming speech, the host said how very fortunate they were to be honored by the April 2012 Page 80
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations presence of Gandhijis mother, who was accompanying Mr. Gandhi on his trip and was seated beside him. Gandhijis secretary was floored. The mistake was his; beforehand, he ought to have introduced the members of the party to the organizers. But then it was too late: Gandhiji was already facing the mike and had begun his speech. The secretary feared the rebuke he might get from Gandhiji afterwards, but he did not know that Gandhiji would not be angry with him at all, because the woman who is able to change from wife into mother is very rare indeed. Gandhiji said, It is a happy coincidence that the friend who introduced me has, by mistake, spoken the truth. In the last few years Kasturba has truly become my mother. At one time she was my wife, but now she is my mother. Together, this can happen. If a husband and wife put a bit of effort into examining their sexual life together, they can become friends and can help each other transform sex. And the day a husband and wife succeed in transforming sex, a feeling of overwhelming gratitude is born between them. But nowadays there is nothing but a subtle and inborn enmity between husbands and wives. A constant tussle exists; never a serene friendship. A sense of profound gratification is born between husband and wife when each serves as a medium to transform the sexual desires of the other. A true friendship flowers when they become partners in ascendancy, in the transcendence of sex. That day, the man is filled with respect for the woman because she has helped him gain deliverance from lust; that day, the woman is filled with gratitude towards the man for freeing her from passion. From that day on, they live in the true harmony of love, and no longer in lust. This is the beginning of that voyage whereby the husband becomes God for his wife and the wife becomes a deity for her husband. But that possibility has been poisoned. I stated yesterday that it is difficult to find a greater enemy of sex than I am. I do not mean to imply that I abuse or reproach sex; I said it apprehensively, as a guide in the direction of transcendence, as an indication of how lust can be transformed. I am an enemy of sex in the sense that I favor the transformation of coal into diamonds. I wish to transform sex. How can this be done? What is the procedure? I say that another door must be opened, a new door. Sex does not rear its head as soon as a child is born. The body gathers energy, the cells gain strength, and still there is time before the full-fledged development of the body takes place. The energy will slowly muster itself, and then it will push open a door that has been shut for the first fourteen years and this is the childs introduction into the world of sex. Once one door is open it is very difficult to open a new door. Because of the nature of the lifeforce, ones full vitality, ones entire energy, rushes along in the direction it has forced open. Once the Ganges has set its course it continues to flow along it; it does not seek out a new April 2012 Page 81
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations course every day. Fresh water may pour in daily, but it will continue to flow through the same channel. Similarly, mans life-force digs out a course for itself and then continues to travel it. If man is to be cured of sexuality, it is very important to create a new opening before the door of sex opens. That new opening is meditation. Each child in his tender years should be taught meditation, should be instructed in meditation. False teachings against sex should be abolished, and meditation should be taught. Meditation is a positive door; it is a higher opening. A choice between sex and meditation must be made, and meditation is the superior alternative. Do not condemn sex; teach children to meditate. Being opposed to teaching children about sex only alerts them to its existence. And this is a highly dangerous approach. Later, it leads to the perversions of immature sexuality. As yet, when no door has opened, when both the doors are shut, when the energy is still safe, either door can be pushed open but this constant harping against sex is like knocking on sexs door. A supple young plant can be bent in any direction; it can also bow humbly of its own accord. But as it grows, it hardens. If you try to bend it then, it will become misshapen, it will break. The case here is the same. It is very difficult to attain the state of meditation when one is older. Older people trying meditation is like sowing seeds after the season is over. The seed of meditation can easily be sown in children, but man, as he is, only shows interest in meditation towards the end of his life. He is anxious to meditate then when his energy has ebbed, when all the possibilities of progress have dried up. Only then does he inquire about meditation and yoga. He wants to reform himself when the die has already been cast, when transformation is very difficult indeed. A man with one foot in the grave asks if anything can be done to attain freedom through meditation. This is strange. The notion is quite mad. This planet can never be at peace until we launch a journey into meditation in every young mind. But it is futile to try this with people who are at the end of the road, with people who are in the evening of their lives. Even if it were to be attempted by them it would demand enormous effort and, also, would not be to much advantage. But it could have been achieved had it been attempted earlier in life, when it does not call for so much effort. So the first step towards the transformation of sex is to begin meditation in small children to coach them to be calm and to keep their own counsel, to teach them to be silent and to enlighten them about the state of no-mind. Although children are already calm and peaceful by adult standards, if they were guided in the right direction and taught to practice reticence and serenity even for a little while each day, a new door would open before they were fourteen years of age. Then, when sex rears its head, when the energy wells up and is about to spill over, it would flow through the new door that has already been opened. They would already have realized the serenity, the bliss, the joy, the timelessness and egolessness of meditation long April 2012 Page 82
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations before the experience of sex. This familiarity would prevent their energy from moving into wrong channels; it would divert it onto the right path. Instead of teaching the tranquility of meditation, we teach children to abhor sex. Sex is sin, sex is dirty, we say. We tell them it is ugly and bad; we say that it is hell. But name-calling does nothing whatsoever to alter the actual situation. On the contrary, children become curious; they want to know more about this hell, about this evil, about this dirty thing that makes their parents and teachers afraid and panic-stricken. They look anywhere and everywhere for the answer; they are anxious to understand what the commotion is all about. And within a very short time, children come to know that their parents themselves are engaged in the very same pursuit; day and night, their parents are doing the very thing they are not allowed to know anything about. The instant and automatic result of the discovery of this fact is the end of their admiration for their parents. Modern education is not responsible, as it is generally believed, for the great decrease in the reverence for parents; the parents themselves are to blame for this. Children quickly observe the paradox; they soon come to know that their parents are completely submerged in the very thing they are being taught to hate. Children are very acute observers. They see that your night-life is different from your day-life, that your preachings and your practices differ widely. They see what goes on in the house. Despite what father calls dirty and mother calls bad, they see that the same things are afoot at home. They understand what is happening and, this being the case, lose all reverence for their parents. Parents are tricky, hypocrites, the children conclude. And remember, children who have lost their faith in their parents will never be able to develop any faith in God. Children have their first glimpse of faith, their first glimpse of God, through their parents. If this faith is shattered, they will surely grow up to be atheists. Children have their first recognition of God in the righteousness of their parents, and if that proves to be illusory, it will be difficult to turn those children to God. The rapport between them and God will be broken because their first deities betrayed them, because their mother and father proved to be dishonorable. Today, the modern younger generation denies the existence of God, ridicules the idea of liberation and calls religion humbug, not because they have searched for themselves and therefore arrived at their own conclusions, but because of this betrayal by their parents. Their parents have exiled them to lives of cynicism. This feeling of betrayal has come about because sex has been wrongly represented by their elders. It should be openly explained to them that sex is part and parcel of life, that we are all born out of sex, and that sex is also part of their lives. This will help them to understand their parents behavior in its proper perspective, and when they grow and experience life for themselves they will be filled with reverence for the honesty of their parents. The beginning, in a child, of this faith and reverence will lay the foundation for a religious life. Children today April 2012 Page 83
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations suspect that their parents are hypocrites; hence the present ideological clash between the younger and the older generations. The suppression of sex has separated husband from wife and has set children against their parents. We do not need this repression of sex; clarification of sex is the need of the hour. As soon as children mature, as soon as they inquire, parents should lay the principal facts of life before them in a palatable manner. This ought to be done before children become unnecessarily or harmfully curious, before they begin to nurture unhealthy attractions that can lead them to satisfy their curiosities in wrong quarters. Otherwise, as is the case today, children find out what they want to know, but they find it out from the wrong people, they find it out under abnormal conditions and through dangerous practices. These ways are detrimental and ruinous. The results pain and torture them for the rest of their lives, and ultimately a wall of shame and secrecy exists between children and their parents. Parents never know about the sex lives of their children, just as children are ignorant of the sex lives of their parents. The alienation that results from this game of hide-and-seek is very dangerous indeed. Children must be properly educated about sex; they must be given the right education. Secondly, children should be taught to meditate how to remain calm, serene, silent; how to reach the state of no-mind. Children can learn to accomplish this very, very quickly. Every home should have a scheduled program to help children move into silence. And that will only be possible, when you, as parents, also practice with them. A daily hour of sitting silently should be compulsory in every home. One should even do away with a meal if necessary, but an hour of silence must be observed at all costs. It is wrong to call that house a home where an hour of silence isnt observed daily. It cannot even be called a family. A daily hour of silence will conserve energy. And then, at the age of fourteen, it will surge in a tide and push open the door of meditation that state of meditation where man touches timelessness and egolessness, where he glimpses the soul, where he glimpses the Supreme. A meeting with that summit before the experience of sex would put a stop to the mad rush after sex; the energy would have found a better, more blissful, more exalted path. This is the first stage in the process of celibacy: to transcend sex. And the way is meditation. The second fundamental is love. Children should be taught love from infancy. The common fear is that teaching love will lead man into the labyrinths of sex. But this fear is groundless. Teaching sex can lead man to love, but teaching love will never drag him into sexuality. The truth is at odds with the general belief. The energy of sex is transformed into love. A man is able to spread love to those around him in direct proportion to the love that grows within him. Those who are empty of love are filled with sex. And sex-minded they remain. The less a man loves, the more he hates; the less love there is in a mans life, the more spiteful his April 2012 Page 84
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations life will be. And those who are devoid of love are filled with jealousy to the same degree. The less a man loves, the more strife he will know. People are worried and unhappy in direct proportion to the lack of love in their lives. And the more a man is engulfed by worry, jealousy, vanity, lies and the like, the more his energies will weaken, will become frail and feeble; he will be tense all the time. And the only outlet for this crude, crass, low and debased group of emotions is sex. Love transforms energies. Love is fluid, creative, flowing; it fulfills. And the gratification of love is much deeper and much more valuable than that obtained through sex. One who knows that contentment will never look for any substitute, just as the man who acquires jewels will never search for stones. But a man full of hate can never find contentment. He is always restless; he destroys everything in his path. And destruction never brings happiness; only creation can shower a man with a feeling of gratification. A man full of jealousy is belligerent and competitive, but being like this never brings contentment. An aggressive man only encroaches upon others. Bliss can only be attained by giving, never by taking. Grabbing and hoarding everything in sight will never bring peace of mind, but it can be had by giving, by beneficial distribution. An ambitious man hops from one post to another; he is never at peace but those who are not after power but are in pursuit of love, those who distribute love anywhere and everywhere, live in exalted bliss. As full of love as a man is, such is the depth of the contentment, of the deep satisfaction, of the joy, of the sense of achievement he will find in his heart of hearts. Such an enlightened man will not bother with sex; he will not even have to try not to look in its direction. Because the contentment and bliss to be found in sex is perpetually available to him from love. The next motto: grow to the fullness of love. We should adore love; we should bestow love; we should live in love. But to love other men alone is not the name of the game; to be devoted to love is to replenish ones whole personality with love. I am speaking of a total education in loving. We should be able to pick up a stone as if we were lifting a friend; we should be able to shake hands with an enemy as if we were holding the hand of a friend. Some men handle material things with loving care, while some give other men the kind of treatment that should not even be handed out to non-living things. To a man preoccupied with hate, humans are no better than inanimate objects; but a man full of love even imparts an individuality, a personality, to everything he touches. A learned traveler once came to see a celebrated fakir. For some reason the man was upset, probably because of a difficult journey, and he angrily undid his shoelaces, tossed his shoes into a corner and pushed the door open with a heavy thud.
April 2012
Page 85
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations In anger, a man will take off his shoes as if the shoes were his worst enemy. He will even open a door as if there were great hostility between him and the door. The man threw open the door, went in, and offered his respects to the fakir. The fakir said, No, I do not accept your homage. First go and apologize to the door and to the shoes. What is wrong with you? he asked. Apologize to a door? And to a pair of shoes? Why? Are they alive? The fakir replied, You didnt consider that when you took your anger out on those inanimate objects. You dashed the shoes down as if they had been guilty of something, and you opened the door in such a fashion that it seemed to be your enemy. When you can acknowledge their individuality by taking out your anger on them, you should also be prepared to beg their pardon. Please go and offer them your apologies. Otherwise, I am not inclined to continue this interview with you. The traveler figured that since he had come so far to meet this illustrious fakir, it would be ridiculous to end the conversation over such a trivial matter, so he went to the shoes and with folded hands, said, Friends, pardon my insolence. To the door he said, Sorry. It was a mistake to push you like that in anger. What a moment for him! In his memoirs the traveler has written that he felt very ridiculous at first, but that when he had finished making his apologies something new had dawned in him: he felt so calm, so serene, so peaceful. It was beyond his wildest imaginings that a man could feel so quiet, so collected and so joyful just by asking forgiveness of a door and a pair of shoes. After he had made his apologies, he went in and sat down by the fakir, who began to laugh and said, Now it is okay. Now you are attuned. Now we can talk. Now you have shown some love and are unburdened. Now there can be a rapport between us. The principle is not just to love human beings alone, it is a question of being filled with love. To say one should love his mother is wrong; it is a misrepresentation. If a father asks his child to love him just because he is his father it is deception; he is giving a reason for love. Similarly, if a mother tells her child he must love her for the simple reason that she is his mother, it is an imposition. The love that has the strings of because and therefore attached to it is misnamed. Love should be motiveless; it should not be bogged down with reasons. The mother says, I looked after you; I brought you up, therefore love me. She is giving a reason. And there, love ends. If a child is forced, he may unwillingly show some affection because she is his
April 2012
Page 86
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations mother, but the aim of teaching love is not to force the child to express love for some reason, but to create an environment in which the child will be full of love. It must be brought home to you that a childs growth, his whole personality, his entire future, depends on this joy at being loving to anybody or anything he meets be it a stone, a human being, a flower, an animal, whatever. The point is not just to love an animal or a flower or his mother or someone else, the whole point is for the child to be full of love. On this depends not only his future, but the future of mankind. The tremendous possibilities for the flowering of joy and of happiness in a mans life depend on how much love there is inside him. A loving man can also be freed from sexuality. But we do not bestow love; we have no zeal for love. Do you think a man can love one person and hate another at the same time? No, it is impossible. A loving man, even when he is alone, is full of love because love is his nature; it has nothing to do with your relationship to him. An angry man is angry even when he is alone; a man full of hate hates even when he is alone. Observe such a man when he is alone and you will feel his anger even though he may not be showing his anger to anyone in particular at the time. His whole being simply overflows with hate, with anger. Conversely, if you see a love-filled man, you can feel him brimming over with love even when he is alone. Flowers blooming in the jungle spread their fragrance whether there is anyone there to appreciate it or not, whether anyone is passing by or not. To be fragrant is a flowers nature. Do not be under the illusion that a flower emits its fragrance just for you! People should simply be full of love; it should not depend on with whom. But the lover wants the beloved to love only him, to love no one else. Love me alone, he says, but he does not know that those who cannot love all cannot love one. The wife says her husband should love only her and not show affection to anybody else, but she does not realize that such love is false and that she has caused it to be so. How can a husband who is not always full of love for everybody be loving towards his wife? To be loving is the nature of life. One cannot be full of love for one person and devoid of love for everyone else. But mankind hasnt been able to see this simple truth. The father asks the child to love him, but has he ever taught the child to love the old servant in the house? Isnt he a man too? The servant may be old, but he may also be someones father. No, he is just a servant, and so there is no question of being courteous or loving towards him. But this father does not realize that when he has grown old he will complain when his sons do not show him any affection. His sons could have grown into men filled with love had they been taught to love all. And then they would have revered their old father as well. Love is not a relationship, love is a state of mind. It is an essential component of a mans personality. Therefore, the second stage in the teaching of love is to teach the child to love all. If a child does not even replace a book properly, his attention should be drawn to the fact that it is unseemly to replace the book that way. He should be made aware of what people will think of April 2012 Page 87
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations him if he treats the book in that fashion. If you have behaved brutally, even to your dog, it indicates a shortcoming in your personality; it is proof that you are devoid of love. And one who is not full of love is not a man at all. I recall the story of a fakir who lived in a small hut. One night, about midnight, it was raining heavily and the fakir and his wife were asleep. Suddenly, there was a knock on the door: someone wanted shelter. The fakir woke his wife. Somebody is outside, he said. Some traveler, some unknown friend. Have you noticed? He said, Some unknown friend. You do not even befriend those you know. His attitude was one of love. The fakir said, Some unknown friend is waiting outside. Please open the door. His wife said, There is no room. There is not even enough room for the two of us. How can one more person come in? The fakir replied, My dear, this is not the palace of a rich man. It cannot become any smaller. A rich mans palace seems smaller if even one more guest arrives, but this is the hut of a poor man. His wife asked, How does the question of poor and rich come into this? The plain fact is that this is a very small hut! The fakir answered, If there is enough room in your heart, you will feel that this hut is a palace, but if your heart is narrow, even a palace would seem small. Please open the door. How can we refuse a man who has come to our door? Up to now, we have been lying down. Three may not be able to lie down, but at least three can sit. There is room for another if we all sit. The wife had to open the door. The man came in, soaking wet. They sat together and started to chat. After a while, two more people came and knocked on the door. The fakir said, It seems someone else has come, and asked the guest sitting nearest the door to open it. The man said, Open the door? There is no space. The man, who had himself taken shelter in this hut moments before, forgot that it was not the fakirs love for him that had given him a place, but that he had found shelter because there was love in the hut. And now, some new people had come. And love must accommodate the newcomers. But the man said, No, it is not necessary to open the door. Dont you see the difficulty were having, squatting here? The fakir said, My dear man, didnt I make room for you? You were allowed in because there is love here. It is still here; it has not ended with you. Open the door, please. Now we are sitting April 2012 Page 88
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations apart from each other, so we will simply huddle together. Moreover, the night is cold and it will give us warmth and pleasure to sit so snugly together. The door was opened and the two newcomers came in. They all sat together and began to get acquainted. Then, a donkey came and pushed at the door with its head. The donkey was wet; it wanted shelter for the night. The fakir asked one of the men, who was almost sitting on top of the door, to open it. Some new friend has come, the fakir said. Peeking outside, the man said, This isnt a friend or anything like a friend. Its just an ass. Its not necessary to open up. The fakir said, Perhaps you are not aware that at the door of the rich, men are treated as animals, but this is the hut of a poor fakir and we are accustomed to treating even animals as human beings. Please open the door. In unison, the men groaned, But the space? There is plenty of space. Instead of sitting, we can all stand. Dont be upset. If it becomes necessary, I will go outside and make enough room. Can love not do this much as well? It is imperative to have a heart full of love. A loving attitude is what we all should have. Humanness is only born in a man when he has a loving heart. And with a loving heart comes a feeling of deep contentment, a deep and delightful contentment. Have you never noticed, after youve shown a little love to someone, that a great wave of contentment, a great thrill of joy pervades your entire being? Have you never realized that the most serene moments of contentment were those which came in moments of unconditional love? Pure love can only survive if it is not adulterated by conditions; a conditional love is not love. Have you never had a feeling of contentment after having smiled at a stranger in the street? Didnt a breeze of peace follow it? There is no limit to the wave of tranquil joy you will feel when you lift a fallen man, when you support a fallen person, when you present a sick man with flowers but not when you do it because he is your father or because she is your mother. No, the person may not be anyone in particular to you, but simply to give a gift is itself a great reward, a great pleasure.
April 2012
Page 89
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations Love should well up inside you love for plants, love for human beings, love for strangers, love for foreigners, love for those on their way toward the moon and the stars. Your love should be ever on the increase. The possibility of sex in a mans life lessens as love increases within him. Love and meditation will open that door which is the door to God. Together, love and meditation touch God, and then celibacy flowers in a mans life. Then the entire life-force ascends through a new passage. Then it does not leak out gradually; then it never recedes. The energy rises upwards from within; it rises on its voyage to heaven. Our journey, at present, is towards the lower levels. By nature, the energy only flows downward, into sex, but celibacy is the upward journey. And love and meditation are the basic ingredients of celibacy. Tomorrow, we will talk about what we attain through celibacy. What do we acquire? To what heights does it lead us? Today I spoke to you of two things: love and meditation. I told you that training should begin at the infant stage, but you should not infer from this that since you are not children any more nothing remains for you to do. In that case, my labors go to waste. Whatsoever your age, this good work can be begun any day. Although it becomes harder with the advent of age, the journey on this path can be undertaken at any time of life. It is better to begin this journey in childhood, but it is good to undertake it at any stage in life. You can begin today. Older people who are willing to learn, who have an aptitude for learning, are still children even if they are old in years. They, as well, can start afresh; they, as well, can learn, if they havent taken for granted that they already know everything or that they have already achieved everything desirable. Gautam Buddha had a disciple who had been a devotee for many years, and one day Buddha asked him, Monk, what is your age? The monk replied, Five. Buddha was surprised. Five years old? You look at least seventy. What kind of answer is this? The monk replied, I say this because the ray of meditation entered my life five years ago, and only in the last five years has love showered in my life. Before that, my life was like a dream; I existed in sleep. When counting my age I do not consider those years. How can I? My real life only began five years ago. I am only five. Buddha told all his disciples to note the monks answer well. You should all count your ages in this manner; this is the standard for calculating age. If love and meditation are not yet born in you, your life, up to now, is negated; you are not born yet.
April 2012
Page 90
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations But it is never so late that you cannot start trying. We should all strive for a higher life. And for that it is never too late. So do not conclude from my words, because you have passed through childhood, that this talk is meant for future generations only. At no time has any man gone so far on the wrong path that he cannot return to the right one; no man has become so wayward that he cannot benefit from the true light. Comparatively speaking, this journey does not require much endeavor. The returns in accomplishment and satisfaction at the dawn of enlightenment are much greater than any efforts you have made. The mere glimpse of that ray of light, of that joy, of that truth, gives us the feeling we have achieved such a lot with such little effort; it shows us we have attained the invaluable with very insignificant efforts indeed.
April 2012
Page 91
Meditation of the Month

Focus on Fire
In life, nothing is certain except death. Secondly: death is not going to happen in the end; it is already happening. It is a process. Just as life is a process, death is a process. We create the now, but life and death are just like your two feet, your two legs. Life and death are both one process. You are dying every moment. Let me put it in this way: whenever you inhale, it is life, and whenever you exhale, it is death. For fifteen minutes, exhale deeply. Sit in a chair or on the ground, exhale deeply, and while exhaling close the eyes. When the air goes out, you go in. And then allow the body to inhale, and when the air goes in, open the eyes and you go out. It is just the opposite: when the air goes out, you go in; when the air goes in, you go out. When you exhale, space is created within, because breath is life. When you exhale deeply, you are vacant, life has gone out. In a way you are dead, for a moment you are dead. In that silence of death, enter within. Air is moving out: you close your eyes and move within. The space is there and you can move easily. Within fifteen minutes you will feel so deeply relaxed, and you will be ready to do the technique. Lie down. First conceive of yourself as dead; the body is just like a corpse. Lie down, and then bring your attention to the toes. With closed eyes move inwards. Bring your attention to the toes and feel that the fire is rising from there upwards, everything is being burned. As the fire rises, your body is disappearing. Start from the toes and move upwards. Why start from the toes? It will be easier, because the toes are very far away from your I, from your ego. Your ego exists in the head. You cannot start from the head; it will be very difficult, so start from the far away point. The toes are the most far away point from the ego. Start the fire from there. Feel that the toes are burned; only ashes remain, and then move slowly, burning everything that the fire comes across. Every part the legs, the thighs will disappear. And just go on seeing that they have become ashes. The fire is rising upwards, and the parts it has passed are no more there; they have become ashes. Go on upwards, and lastly the head disappears. Everything has become...the dust has fallen unto dust... You will remain just a watcher on the hill. The body will be there dead, burned, ashes and you will be the watcher; you will be the witness. This witness has no ego. This technique will take at least three months. Go on doing it. It is not going to happen in one day, but some day you will actually see the body gone to ashes. Then you can watch.
April 2012
Page 92
Taoshobuddha Responds questions on Meditation
April 2012
Page 93
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations Dear Master, I wanted to ask a doubt from you. At some rare occasions while in meditation I feel some subtle presence around on the top of my left eye and cheek. I feel the presence of some divine soul,...I sense it as some cool breeze and some sort of coldness on my eye and nearby areas of my face. Then I try to communicate with it but fail. Sometimes my whole body starts vibrating with energy during such presence. And always it comes at the same place. Can you shed some light on it? Am I imagining things? This is what you wrote. Now I will rephrase it somewhat poetic: At some rare moments of meditation I feel a deep subtle presence first around and then on top of the left eye and the cheek. A deep feeling envelops me of the presence of a Divine Soul. The feeling intensifies as cool breeze. Suddenly I feel something on and around the eye as something indescribable and this cooling effect continue. In that state personifying it I try to communicate but of no avail. Explanation: This is how I will like to put. Your expression is prosaic and logical. My explanation is poetic. This can be a mental projection and at the same time it will not. It can be the mental projection because it is you who is experiencing it and there is no witness to it. It is private. This is wave worm. Like a wave such experiences arise on the surface of the ocean. This is in your hand as mind can project. Also through this you can move from the wave form to the oceanic form. In that case, the peace, serenity, bliss beyond description remains surrounding you. And you will always find it difficult to express and explain. When through this experience you are connected to the oceanic consciousness the process of transformation begins. But you are not to hold on to it. It comes like first satori. With first satori the process begins if you do not cling. Sometimes my whole body starts vibration with an unknown energy during such presence. Through this sentence you have tried to make an effort to express the after effect but you have failed. Your failing in expression is good because mind did not come. Remember your feeling and inner state after such vision or experience always indicates if it is mental projection or something beyond mind transcendental. I take certain examples and also a response of Osho to a question from a seeker. Hope this will help also my energy will flow to make it settle deep with. You are blessed with the presence of Osho Shailendra, Osho Priya and Osho Siddhartha. Visions of Krishna or Buddha, Mahavira or Christ are seen in two different ways. One is what we call a mental projection what you see is nothing but your dreams, your desires, your imaginations taking a visual form, a shape in front of your eyes. There is nothing real in front of you; it is all imagination. The mind is quite capable of it. It can project an image of your dreams and desires, and you can think it is real. As you dream in sleep, so you can dream in the waking April 2012 Page 94
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations state as well. This is how a Hindu sees visions of Krishna or Rama; a Christian sees visions of Christ or Mary. It is just mental, imaginary, and hallucinatory. The other way is real, but it does not bring you face to face with Krishna or his image; it makes you encounter and experience what may be called the Krishna-consciousness. In an experience like this there is no image whatsoever of Krishna or Christ, there is only a state of heightened awareness, a contact-high. As I said yesterday, there are two forms of Krishna: one is his oceanic form and the other is his wave form. While his oceanic form represents the universal consciousness or superconsciousness, his wave form represents Krishna the man who happened some ve thousand years ago. Now an image, an icon of his wave form Krishna the man can be used to come in contact with his oceanic form, with Krishna-consciousness. But when you will really come in contact with Krishna-consciousness, this image, this symbol of Krishna will disappear and only the superconsciousness will remain with you. While it is true that his statue can be used for connecting with Krishnas super-consciousness, if someone sees only visions of Krishna and does not experience his consciousness, then it is merely a case of mental projection and nothing else. The experience of Krishna-consciousness does not happen by way of visions and images. It is pure consciousness without any shape or form. We associate Krishnas name with it because a person loves Krishna and comes to this consciousness with the help of his image. Another person can come to it with the help of Buddhas image, and he can call it Buddha-consciousness. It can he called Christ-consciousness if someone attains it through the image of Christ. Names dont matter; the real thing is the oceanic consciousness, which is without name and form. Aurobindos experience of Krishna-visions is concerned with Krishnas image, his physical form. He says that Krishna appeared before him in physical form. This is simply a case of mental projection. Of course such an experience is pleasant and gratifying, but it is nonetheless a projection of our mind. It is an extension of desire. Certainly it is exactly dream-stuff. It is our minds creation. We can begin with the mind, but we have to go beyond the mind sooner or later. The journey begins with the mind, and ends with the no-mind, cessation of the mind. It is signicant to know that the mind is the world of words, forms and images; words, forms and images constitute the mind. And where forms and images disappear the mind disappears on its own. There is no way for the mind to exist without words, forms and images. The mind cannot exist in emptiness, in void; it lives on the determined, the concrete. The moment the concrete world comes to an end, the mind itself comes to an end. Krishna-consciousness is attained only when the mind ceases to be; it is a state of no-mind. Whoever says he has encountered Krishna in his physical form is a victim of mental projection. He is projecting his own mental images on the vast screen of universal consciousness and viewing the objective reality. It is like a movie projector projects fast moving pictures on all empty screen; there is really nothing on the screen except shadows. Such visions are not a spiritual experience, they are wholly psychic. They are, however, very gratifying; a Krishna devotee is bound to be overjoyed to see visions of one he has been desiring to see all his life. But remember, it is only a kind of happiness, not bliss. Nor can you call it an experience of truth.
April 2012
Page 95
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations I dont mean to say that Aurobindos experience is not real, but he describes it in the way of a scholar, an intellectual. And this makes the experience appear to be one of mental projection. It is not difcult to distinguish a real experience, an experience of the oceanic consciousness from the one that is projected or imagined. An oceanic experience is ever lasting; once it comes it comes forever, and it wipes out all other experiences from your mind. It really wipes out the mind itself. One blessed with such an experience sees the divine everywhere in trees and rocks, in streams and rivers, in mountains and stars. But so far as projected visions are concerned, they appear and disappear, they never last. They are transient, momentary. Being an intellectual, Aurobindo is not able to portray it rightly; for a man of intellect such a task becomes difcult. Still there is another side of Aurobindo which is poetic. He is not only an intellectual but also a great poet. As a poet he is not less than Rabindranath Tagore. If he failed to receive the Nobel Prize, it was not because he did not deserve it, but because his poetry is much too complex and difcult to understand. His Savitri ranks among the great epics of the world; there are hardly ten great epics of the stature of Savitri. And unlike the scholar, the poet in Aurobindo is quite capable of seeing Krishnas visions. Ironically, Aurobindo has expressed this experience strictly in terms of logic and reason, which is of course natural. And his account of the experience does not have the avor of the trans-conscious. We use words in two ways. In one way the word is kept within the connes of its known meaning; it conveys only that which is conveyed by its meaning. It fails to go beyond its own limitations. In the other way, the word used communicates much more than its given meaning. The word itself may be small, but its meaning is vast; the meaning is larger than the word itself. Aurobindos way is quite different; while he uses big words, he fails to communicate any great meaning through them. He is known for his long words and lengthy sentences. That is why he always ends up as a philosopher. When words really take off, when they transcend their given meaning, they enter a world of mystery they become a vehicle for the transcendental experience. Such words are pregnant with tremendous meaning; they are like ngers pointing to the moon. Aurobindos words are not that pregnant, they dont have an arrow directed toward the beyond. His words never transcend their given meaning. And there are reasons for it. Aurobindo was educated in the West at a time when, like Darwin in science, Hegel was the most dominant inuence in philosophy. And Hegel is also known for the pompous language replete with big words and complex phrases in his treatises. Going through Hegels works one has a sense of profundity about them in the beginning. We tend to think that what we do not understand must be very profound. But it is not necessarily so, although it is true that profound things are difcult to understand. So many people use obscure words and elaborate phrases to create an impression of depth on their listeners and readers. Hegel is a case in point: his language is very complex, devious and bombastic full of lengthy, explanatory statements enclosed within brackets. But as scholarship gained maturity in Europe, Hegels reputation declined in the same measure, and people came to know that he knew much less than he pretended. Aurobindos way of expression is Hegelian, and like Hegel he is also a systematizer. He too has not much to say, and so he has to say it in a great many words, and long and involved sentences at that. April 2012 Page 96
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations Expression has to have a logical and rational buildup. However, if it says something which goes beyond it, then it means the person saying it, has known that which lies beyond words as well. But if he exhausts himself in his words, which say nothing more than what they mean, then it is clear he is only a knowledgeable person. Going through all of Aurobindos works you are left with a feeling that they are wordy. Indeed there is nothing experiential about them. Always remember If you have who known something of the beyond and are keeping silent, then even your silence will be eloquent. But in the absence of such an experience, even a million words will prove to be wastage. When you say something, you have to say it logically, but if your something is experiential it will leave its avor, its perfume in your every word and metaphor. Not only that, your words will also say that they could not say what they really wanted to say. As far as Aurobindo is concerned, it seems he has said much more than was worth saying. In this context I recall a signicant event from the life of Rabindranath, which will help you to understand the thing better. The great poet is on his deathbed, and an intimate friend has come to say farewell. The friend says, You sang all you wanted to sing, you said all you wanted to say; not only that, you did all you wanted to do. I believe now you can leave this world in perfect peace and contentment, with a feeling of utter gratefulness to God. Rabindranath opened his eyes and said, You have got it all wrong. Right now I have been saying to God, How ironical it is that when I have put together all the musical instruments and am ready to sing, I am called upon to leave the world. I have yet to sing my song. What people think to be my song is only preparation for the real song I was going to begin, but alas! I have yet to say what I wanted to say. Aurobindo cannot say the same thing. He has said all that he wanted to say, and said them very methodically. And I say that as a mystic Rabindranath is head and shoulders above Aurobindo. Someone asked Osho this question once. Questioner: We would like to return to Aurobindo seeing visions of Krishna, which you think to be a case of mental projection. In this connection we recall what you once said about the Tibetan lamas, that on a particular day of each year some competent lamas gather together and establish contact with Buddha. On another occasion you had said something about Gandhi and on being further questioned you said that you had your fact from Gandhi himself. And we have heard that till recently there were lamas in Tibet who traveled astrally from one place to another where they again appeared in their physical bodies. Will you please shed some more light on this matter? Osho: In this context a few things have to be understood rst. It is true that on a particular full moon night, which is known as Buddhas full moon night, ve hundred lamas gather at one of the summits of the Himalayas the same Himalayas where we are gathered at this moment and see visions of Buddha. The number of lamas who gather there never exceeds ve hundred; it is xed for good. It is only on the death of one of them that another lama is admitted in his place.
April 2012
Page 97
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations But there is a basic difference between this and Aurobindo seeing visions of Krishna. In the case of his visions of Krishna, it is Aurobindo who takes the initiative and makes efforts to see them. The lamas dont have to do anything; Buddha himself appears before them according to a promise he had given to his disciples in his lifetime. The lamas have only to be present there at the appointed time. And this difference between the two events should be clearly understood. Buddha has left behind him a promise that at a particular time of Buddhas full moon night of each year and at a particular spot in the Himalayas, he would appear for his chosen disciples. At this promised moment Buddhas oceanic body takes the form of a wave body, seen by ve hundred lamas together. But the lamas have no part in it except that they present themselves on the said occasion. This is one difference between this encounter, this darshan, and the one that Aurobindo has. Secondly, while Aurobindo is alone at the time of Krishnas appearance, there are altogether ve hundred lamas to witness Buddhas appearance. An event of mental projection is always personal you cannot make another person an associate with you. If you ask Aurobindo or any other person who sees such visions, for that matter, to allow you to share his experience, he will just say no, it is not possible. But when ve hundred people see visions of Buddha together, it cannot be a case of psychic projection. Not only that, all the people present compare notes and accept something as real only when each of its accounts tallies with another. As far as Aurobindo is concerned he is his own witness. And then while Aurobindo comes to it after long efforts, the lamas make no efforts whatsoever. It is just the fulllment of a promise made by another person in another time.
April 2012
Page 98
Question: In todays talk you mentioned that the sex is the root. And anger, jealousy, hatred, violence, ego (and so on) are the branches that grow on the tree of sex and ultimately will start dying once you go beyond sex. Does it mean that if the lust dies, then the anger, jealousy, hatred, violence, ego disappears? But what about a small child, who has no feeling of lust in that young age, but still has anger, jealousy, ego and so on? Please specify how a tree can have branches when is has no root (like in case of a small child that has no lust)? Or when you say SEX is the root, do you mean something else then LUST?
April 2012
Page 99
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations Please specify the connection, between the sex and the branches - anger, jealousy, and ego and so on. You asked: Or when you say SEX is the root, do you mean something else then LUST? Before I continue let me first explain the word sex and lust. Sex is natural. Sex is existential bioenergy. Sex by its very nature is innocent. It is natural spontaneous energy. Sex can lead to love or lust depending on your awareness. Sex is separate both from love and lust. Lust is totally different. Lust is the creation of the mind. Lust is unnatural. Lust is the way you approach an object or the person. Sex and lust are not synonym. However these are generally taken to mean the same thing. This is erroneous. However love and lust go together. Love and Lust are two words in the English language that are used often as words that show same connotation, but strictly speaking they differ in many ways when it comes to their usage. Love is more universal or cosmic in sense whereas lust is physical in sense. Love suggests affection and compassion whereas lust suggests sensuality. You will recall expressions such as: God is love, Love all and Love of labor. Each of these expressions differs slightly in their sense. In the first expression God is love, God is described as the very embodiment of love. In other words He is described as love personified. In the second expression Love all, the word love is used in the sense of universality. In the third expression Love of labor, the word love is used in the sense of attachment. Hence it is clearly understood that love can be used in different connotations. On the other hand the word lust can be used in only one main connotation. It has the sense of sensuality attached to it. That is why we hear expression such as lust for women and lusty looks. In the first expression the word lust is used in the sense of sex appeal or physical appeal. In the second expression the word lust is used in the sense of passion. Lusty looks mean passionate looks. The word lust is also used in the secondary sense sometimes in connection with words such as money and land. We often hear expressions such as lust for money and lust for land. Hence the word lust pertains to material pleasures. Love pertains to unworldly joys. Love refers to dimensions beyond. It suggests universal bliss. The supreme bliss is suggested by the word love. This is one of the main differences between the two words love and lust. They should be used very carefully in writing otherwise you communicate something diametrically opposite. There is difference between love and passion as well. Love and Passion are feelings we already felt at least once in our lives. We both relished them to the extreme and have made memories out of them. But as intense as both these are, they are very different. April 2012 Page 100
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations Love Love is defined as very deep and long-spanning. This is a feeling of fondness and devotion. Love is not fleeting. It does not go away after initially feeling it. It usually lasts for a really long time and if you believe in forever, it does. For the romantics out there, love encompasses all emotions and usually, it is enough to sustain a partnership. Passion Passion is a very intense feeling filled with seemingly endless ecstasy. But usually, passion does not last very long. Because if it does, we would not be able to go forth with our lives for we will always be distracted by this intense feeling that we have. Unlike love, passion is not always the most positive thing in the world. Difference between Love and Passion Both feeling can be strong depending on the person who experiences it. But differences abound between the two. They can overlap each other many times but really they do not. Love is very deep and for long term; passion is fleeting and can be a bit shallow. While love is a very tender feeling, passion is intense. Love is when you cross over from being passionate; passion is a more primal feeling filled with lust. Passion is always filled with lust. Love is felt by people that could defy time; passion is said to be just state of mind. These feelings and emotions are said to be intense and can move mountains. They say if you have felt at least one of them once, you are officially a feeling person. In love the other is important. And in lust you are important. Have you ever looked lovingly at any object? You may say yes because you do not know what it means to look lovingly at an object. You may have looked lustfully at an object that is another thing. That is totally different, diametrically opposite. So first thing is to know the difference and also feel the difference. A beautiful face, a beautiful body you look at it, and you feel that you are looking at it lovingly. But why are you looking at it? When you want to get something out of it then it is lust, not love. Do you want to exploit it? If you want to exploit it then it is lust, not love. Then really, you are thinking of how to use this body, how to possess it, how to make this body an instrument for your happiness. Lust means how to use something for your happiness. Love means your happiness is not at all concerned. Really, lust means how to get something out of it and love means how to give something. They are diametrically opposite. If you see a beautiful face and you feel love toward the face, the immediate feeling in your consciousness will be how to do something to make this face happy, or how to do something to make this man or this woman happy. The concern is not with you, the concern is with the other. Both love and lust are part of this existential bio-energy. The difference is of awareness and the way you approach the person or the object. April 2012 Page 101
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations In love the other is important; in lust you are important. In lust you are thinking how to make the other your instrument; in love you are thinking how to become an instrument yourself. In lust you are going to sacrifice the other; in love you are going to sacrifice yourself. Love means giving; lust means getting. Love is surrender; lust is an aggression. What you say is meaningless. Even in lust you talk in terms of love. Your language is not very meaningful, so do not be deceived. Look within, and then you will come to understand that you have not once in your life looked lovingly toward someone or some object. Lust with Awareness gives indescribable Bliss. Then it is transformed. Passion creates many things in you. Of all the things it creates fever first and then it makes you more unconscious - more unconscious than you already are. It drags you deeper into the mud. And with passion breeds in hatred, illusion and desire - and then you are distracted from your nature. Your nature is poisoned, your innocence is poisoned. You lose all simplicity and humbleness too. Beware of the poisoning by passion. Be warm, and loving because that is a totally different phenomenon. Be worm but not full of lust. Warmth is possible with your consciousness. A Buddha is very warm a Jesus is very warm, very loving. Passion has disappeared. With awareness passion has transformed into compassion. Their compassion showers on you like flowers. Just as passion poisons you, compassion purifies you. Compassion is nectar while passion is poison. The energy that is involved in passion can be released into compassion. And the way to release the energy, and channel it towards compassion, Buddha calls SAMMASATI - right awareness, right remembering; Gurdjieff calls as self-remembering, Krishnamurti calls simply awareness, and this is meditation. They are all the same, different names indicating the same energy and the phenomenon. You have to become alert, conscious of what you are doing. When you are angry, try to be conscious, and you will be surprised. If you become conscious, anger disappears. And suddenly you have found a key or you have stumbled upon a secret. When sex dominates you and you are full of lust, close your eyes, sit silently and meditate on this energy that is surrounding you, this lust that is surrounding you like a cloud. Just watch it. I am not saying be against it, because if you are against it you have already taken a standpoint. Now you cannot watch. For watching, the necessary step, or the most necessary, is not to take any prejudice, and not to conclude beforehand. Just remain silently watchful, neither for nor against. And within minutes you will be surprised that that great storm of lust is over. And when the storm is over, the silence that is left behind is so profound, so great, and such a blessing that you may not have felt it ever. No sexual experience can give you that beauty that will come if you watch your lust and through watchfulness the lust disappears. Then a silence overwhelms you which is virgin, belongs to the beyond, or to the other shore. Love never hurts anybody. It is something else pretending to be love which feels hurt. Unless you see this you will go on moving in the same circle again and again. Love can hide many unloving things in you. Man has been very clever, cunning, in deceiving others and in deceiving himself too. He puts beautiful labels on ugly things, he covers wounds with flowers. This is the first thing you have to go into. April 2012 Page 102
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations Love ordinarily is not love, it is lust. And lust is bound to feel hurt, because to desire somebody as an object is to offend. It is an insult, it is violent. When you move with lust towards somebody, how long can you pretend it is love? Something which is superficial will look like love, but scratch a little bit and hidden behind it is sheer lust. Lust is animalistic. To look at anybody with lust is to insult, humiliate, is to reduce the other person to a thing, to a commodity. No person ever likes to be used; that is indeed the ugliest thing you can do to anybody. No person is a commodity no person is a means towards any end. This is the difference between lust and love. Lust uses the other person to fulfill some of your desires. The other is only used, and when the use is complete you can throw the other person away. It has no more use to you; its function is fulfilled. This is the greatest immoral act in existence: using the other as a means. Love is just the opposite of it. Love is respecting the other as an end unto himself or herself. Had you loved anybody, Mimi, as an end unto himself, then there would have been no feeling of hurt; you would have become more enriched through it. Love makes everybody rich. Secondly, love can only be true if there is no ego hiding behind it; otherwise love becomes only an ego trip. It is a subtle way to dominate. And one has to be very conscious because this desire to dominate is very deep rooted. It never comes naked; it always comes hidden behind beautiful garments, ornaments. Parents never say that their children are their possessions they never say that they want to dominate the children, but that is actually what they do. They say they want to help them to be intelligent, healthy, and blissful, but that has to be according to their ideas. Even their happiness has to be decided by their ideas and they have to be happy according to their expectations. They have to be intelligent, but at the same time obedient too. This is asking for the impossible. Normal Sex and tantric Sex Your sex act and the tantric sex act are basically different. Your sex act is to relieve; it is just like sneezing out a good sneeze. The energy is thrown out and you are unburdened. It is destructive, it is not creative. It is therapeutic. It helps you to be relaxed, but nothing more. The tantric sex act is basically, diametrically opposite and different. It is not to relieve, or to throw energy out. It is to remain in the act without ejaculation, without throwing energy out and to remain in the act merged just at the beginning part of the act, not the end part. This changes the quality completely. Try to understand two things. There are two types of climaxes or orgasm. The first type of orgasm is known. You reach to a peak of excitement, and then you cannot go further the end has come. The excitement reaches to a point where it becomes non-voluntary. The energy jumps into you and goes out. You are relieved of it, unburdened. The load is thrown; you can relax and sleep. You are using it like a tranquilizer. It is a natural tranquilizer: a good sleep will follow only if your mind is not burdened by religion. Otherwise even the tranquilizer is destroyed. If your mind is not burdened by religion, only then can sex be a tranquilizing thing. If you feel guilt, even your sleep will be disturbed. You will feel depression, you will start condemning yourself and you will begin to take oaths that now you would not indulge anymore. Then your sleep will become a nightmare afterwards. April 2012 Page 103
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations If you are a natural being not too much burdened by religion and morality, only then can sex be used as a tranquilizer? This is one type of orgasm. This is like coming to the peak of excitement. Tantra is centered on another type of orgasm. If we call the first kind a peak orgasm, you can call the tantric orgasm a valley orgasm. In it you are not coming to the peak of excitement, but to the very deepest valley of relaxation. Excitement has to be used for both in the beginning. That is why I say that in the beginning both are the same, but the ends are totally different. Excitement has to be used for both: either you are going toward the peak of excitement or to the valley of relaxation. For the first, excitement has to be intense indeed more and more intense. You have to grow in it and also help it to grow towards the peak. In the second, excitement is just a beginning. And once the man has entered, both lover and beloved can relax. No movement is needed. They can relax in a loving embrace. When the man feels or the woman feels that the erection is going to be lost, only then is a little movement and excitement required. But then again relax. You can prolong this deep embrace for hours with no ejaculation, and then both can fall into deep sleep together. This is a valley orgasm. Both are relaxed, and they meet as two relaxed beings. In the ordinary sexual orgasm you meet as two excited beings - tense, full of excitement, trying to unburden yourselves. The ordinary sexual orgasm looks like madness; the tantric orgasm is a deep, relaxing meditation. You may not be aware of it, but this is a fact of biology, of bio-energy, that man and woman are opposite forces. Negative-positive, yin-yang, or whatsoever you call them, they are challenging to each other. And when they both meet in a deep relaxation, they revitalize each other. They both revitalize each other, they both become generators, they both feel livelier, they both become radiant with new energy, and nothing is lost. Just by meeting with the opposite pole energy is renewed. The tantric love act can be done as much as you like. The ordinary sex act cannot be done as much as you like because you are losing energy in it, and your body will have to wait to regain it. And when you regain it, you will only lose it again. This looks absurd. The whole life is spent in gaining and losing, regaining and losing: it is just like an obsession. The second thing to be remembered: you may or may not have observed that when you look at animals you can never see them enjoying sex. In intercourse, they are not enjoying themselves. Look at baboons, monkeys, dogs or any kind of animals. In their sex act you cannot see that they are feeling blissful or enjoying it -- you cannot! It seems to be just a mechanical act, a natural force pushing them towards it. If you have seen monkeys in intercourse, after the intercourse they will separate. Look at their faces: there is no ecstasy in them it is as if nothing has happened. When the energy forces itself, when the energy is too much, they throw it. The ordinary sex act is just like this, but moralists have been saying quite the contrary. They say, Do not indulge, and enjoy. They say, This is as animals do. This is wrong! Animals never enjoy; only man can enjoy. And the deeper you can enjoy, the higher is the kind of humanity that is born. And if your sex act can become meditative, ecstatic, the highest is touched. But remember Tantra is a valley orgasm, it is not a peak experience. It is a valley experience!
April 2012
Page 104
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations In the West, Abraham Maslow has made this term Peak Experience very famous. You go into excitement towards the peak, and then you fall. That is why, after every sex act, you feel a fall. And it is natural: you are falling from a peak. You will never feel that after a tantric sex experience. Then you are not falling. You cannot fall any further because you have been in the valley. Rather, you are rising. When you come back after a tantric sex act, you have risen, not fallen. You feel filled with energy, more vital, more alive, and radiant. And that ecstasy will last for hours, even for days. It depends on how deeply you were in it. If you move into it, sooner or later you will realize that ejaculation is wastage of energy. No need of it -- unless you need children. And with a tantric sex experience, you will feel a deep relaxation the whole day. With one tantric sex experience you will feel relaxed, at ease, at home, non-violent, non-angry, and non-depressed even for days. And this type of person is never a danger to others. If he can, he will help others to be happy. If he cannot, at least he will not make anyone unhappy. Only Tantra can create a new man, and this man who can know timelessness, egolessness and deep non-duality with existence will grow. Anger and Sex Anger and sex are directly related. When sex remains unfulfilled anger breeds in. There are several other reasons as well. However the unfulfilled sex is the main reason. Put your energies into creativity. You can enter into sex creatively. Through sex you are creating a new energy field. When you enter into sex creatively the experience is profound. Entering into sex creatively does not mean you are going to create something. Instead it requires you to enter sex meditatively. Therefore forget about anger as a problem, ignore it. Channelize your energy towards more creativity. Pour yourself into something that you love if the opportunity to channelize the energy at the level of sex is not available. Rather than making anger your problem, let creativity be your object of meditation. Shift from anger to creativity and immediately you will see a great change arising in you. And tomorrow the same things will not feel like excuses for being angry because now energy is moving, is channelized, is being sublimated, is enjoying itself, its dance. Who cares about small things? The way to become aware even while engaged in the act of sex I am not the body, I am not the mind is what meditation is all about. Watch, your body walking, sitting, lying down, and engaging in the act of sex you will be able to see that you are the watcher, not the body. You are the watcher of your sex act not the one involved in the act. Watch your mind in anger, in hatred, in love, in greed, in misery, in joy, and in love making you will become aware one day that you are not these things that happen in the mind instead you are the watcher. Slowly and slowly the watcher becomes crystallized. That is the birth of the soul. This can happen through any act. And when this happens through sex not only anger vanishes instead you transcend the realm of sex. Something else is born in you. That day you are really born, that day your real life begins. From that moment god is a reality for you, and the only reality. In anger the mind is focused entirely on one point. That is why there is so much power in anger. Whenever you are in anger, remember yourself. In that very remembering the focus or the gestalt changes and then there is transformation. You become more and more centered. Anger remains there just on the periphery of your being, but you know now that it is separate from April 2012 Page 105
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations you. You are not angry instead you are only a witness to it. Now it is up to you to choose to be angry or not to be angry. You are no more identified; hence the freedom to choose. Today it may seem that your anger is very strong, how can meditation break it? But it breaks it has always broken. Rock is very strong. And water falling drop by drop on the rock and meditation is very delicate, but this is the mystery of life the continuity of the delicate can break the strongest and the hardest. If you want to observe anger in its entirety, you will have to observe it alone, in the privacy of your room. Then alone can you see it in its fullness, for then there are no limitations. This is why I advise the pillow meditation to certain people, so that they can observe their anger fully. It is only through meditation that slowly and slowly more consciousness is created within you, more light is created; more watchfulness, witnessing, happens. And that is the miracle of awareness: if you become aware of anger you become a master of anger. Then it is up to you whether to be angry or not. You are absolutely free to be this way or that way. Then anger is your freedom not the bondage. That is what meditation is all about. Meditation creates an integrated consciousness so that you can watch everything undisturbed, unprejudiced, without any a priori conclusions. Now without being for or against from the very beginning you are just watching it silently without any interpretation, just looking at anger, at jealousy at possessiveness, at sexuality, everything that disturbs your peace and there are hundreds of such things. You have to use the same method of detached observation and you have to go to the very root of everything unafraid. There is no need to be afraid and there is no need to be in a hurry; it needs patient observation. With patience and observation the miracle happens. You have accumulated anger, sex, violence, greed, everything! Now this accumulation is madness within you. It is there, inside you. If you begin with any suppressive meditation for example, with just sitting you are suppressing all of this, you are not allowing it to be released. So I begin with a catharsis. First, let the suppressions be thrown into the air; and when you can throw your anger into the air, you have become mature. When you practice Dynamic Meditation for the first time this will be difficult, because we have suppressed the body so much that a suppressed pattern of life has become natural to us. It is not natural! Look at a child: he plays with his body in quite a different way. If he is crying, he is crying intensely. The cry of a child is a beautiful thing to hear, but the cry of an adult is ugly. Even in anger a child is beautiful; he has a total intensity. But when an adult is angry he is ugly; he is not total. And any type of intensity is beautiful. If you are angry you will share anger, if you are greedy you will share greed, if you are full of lust you will share your lust. We can share only that which we have, we cannot share that which we dont have. This has to be the fundamental thing to be remembered; hence the first step is meditation and the second step is compassion. Meditation is the alchemy of transforming the unconscious into the conscious. It gives you a tremendous power, far greater than anger, greed and lust. Meditation is nothing but an effort to drop all the foreign elements so that you can see yourself as you were before you were born, mirrored in its purity. It is a great silence and a great joy to April 2012 Page 106
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations be there, and once you start abiding there is no death and no time. All fear, all greed, all anger, disappears: one is just there with no idea, no desire. Meditation is like the moon: it transforms the energy of lust into love, anger into compassion, greed into sharing, aggressiveness into receptivity, ego into humbleness. When you feel angry, there is no need to be angry against someone; just be angry. Let it be a meditation. Close the room, sit by yourself, and let the anger come up as much as it can. If you feel like beating, beat a pillow. Man lives in unconsciousness. He lives like a robot. The major part of his being is in darkness; just a little bit has come out of the darkness, just the tip of the iceberg and that too is very fragile. At any moment it goes back again into darkness. Somebody insults you and you lose your consciousness. It is very fragile. You become unconscious, you start behaving in an unconscious way, and later on you yourself recognize it. You wonder How did I do all this? You start saying It happened in spite of me. I never wanted to do it. People have done things in anger which only insane people can do and they were not insane, they were as sane as anybody else, but in anger they lose consciousness, in passion they lose consciousness. There are a thousand and one situations every day when we lose consciousness, so that small portion of consciousness is not very effective either. If one is alert about using it rightly the only purpose is to meditate with that small piece of consciousness that you have not, because through meditation more and more of the unconscious starts becoming conscious, more and more of your hidden darkness starts disappearing. Right now ninety per cent is unconscious, ten per cent is conscious. As you meditate, slowly, fifteen per cent becomes conscious, twenty per cent becomes conscious. The moment there is at least fifty per cent of consciousness and fifty per cent of unconsciousness, then you can rely upon your consciousness because now there is a balance; the unconscious cannot easily take over. You dont have to change your anger, you dont have to change your greed, you dont have to change anything. You have simply to be alert and aware. And all the projections of greed, all the projections of anger, all the projections of delusion, will evaporate just the way, every morning, your dreams evaporate. They are made of the same stuff as dreams are made of. Become more watchful and anger will be less and greed will be less and jealousy will be less. If somebody has insulted you, feel thankful to him that he has given you an opportunity to feel a deep wound. He has opened a wound in you. The wound may be created by many insults that you have suffered in your whole life; he may not be the cause of all the suffering, but he has triggered a process. Just close your room, sit silently, with no anger for the person but with total awareness of the feeling that is arising in you the hurt feeling that you have been rejected, that you have been insulted. And then you will be surprised that not only is this man there: all the men and all the women and all the people that have ever insulted you will start moving in your memory. You will start not only remembering them, you will start reliving them. You will be going into a kind of primal. Feel the hurt, feel the pain, dont avoid it. Thats why in many therapies the patient is told not to take any drugs before the therapy begins, for the simple reason that drugs are a way to escape from your inner misery. They dont allow you to see your wounds, they repress them. They dont allow you to go into your suffering and unless you go into your suffering, you cannot be released from the imprisonment of it.
April 2012
Page 107
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations You are angry, and you watch it. You are not just angry, a new element is introduced into it: you are watching it. And the miracle is that if you can watch anger, the anger disappears without being repressed. Atisha has been wrongly translated. What he actually means is: Dont be violent, even in your words. Even while joking, dont be violent, because violence breeds more violence, anger will bring more anger, and it creates a vicious circle that has no end. My emphasis is also exactly the same as Atishas. You come to me with a thousand and one problems, but my answer is always the same. If you come with anger I say be aware of it, if you come with greed I say be aware of it, if you come with lust I say be aware of it because awareness cuts the very root. What is the root? Unawareness is the root One can be angry only if he is unaware. Try to be angry and aware together and you will find it impossible. Either you will be aware, then anger will not be found, or you will be angry and awareness will have disappeared. Up to now, nobody has been able to manage both together, and I dont think you can prove the exception. Try it. It is possible you may think both are happening, but if you minutely watch you will see: when awareness is there anger is not, when anger is there awareness is not. Unawareness is the root of all illnesses; then awareness is the only medicine. Anger is there like smoke inside you. Becoming aware in the very thick of it, that is the first difficulty, but it is not impossible. Just a little effort and you will be able to catch hold of it. In the beginning you will see, you become aware when the anger has gone and everything has cooled you become aware after fifteen minutes. Try you will become aware after five minutes. Try a little more you will become aware immediately after one minute. Try a little more, and you will become aware just when the anger is evaporating. Try a little more, and you will become aware exactly in the middle of it. And that is the first step: be aware in the act. It happens inside exactly like that. Meditate on anything negative, and slowly and slowly you will be simply taken by surprise that sadness turns into joy, that anger turns into compassion, that greed turns into sharing, and so on, so forth. This is the science of inner alchemy: how to change the negative into the positive, how to change the base metal into gold. If you are angry, the priest will say anger is wrong, dont be angry. What will you do? You can repress anger, you can sit upon it, you can swallow it, literally, but it will go into you, into your system. Swallow anger and you will have ulcers in the stomach, swallow anger and sooner or later you will have cancer. Swallow anger and you will have a thousand and one problems arising out of it, because anger is poison. But what will you do? If anger is wrong, you have to swallow it. I dont say anger is wrong, I say anger is energy pure energy, beautiful energy. When anger arises, be aware of it, and see the miracle happen. When anger arises, be aware of it, and if you are aware you will be surprised; you are in for a surprise maybe the greatest surprise of your life that as you become aware, anger disappears. Anger is transformed. Anger becomes pure energy; anger becomes compassion, anger becomes forgiveness, anger becomes love. And you need not repress, so you are not burdened by some poison. And you are not being angry, so you are not hurting anybody. Both are saved: the other, the object of your anger, is saved, and you are saved. In the past, either the object was to suffer, or you were to suffer. April 2012 Page 108
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations What I am saying is that there is no need for anybody to suffer. Just be aware, let awareness be there. Anger will arise and will be consumed by awareness. One cannot be angry with awareness and one cannot be greedy with awareness and one cannot be jealous with awareness. Awareness is the golden key. First observe, examine, and then start looking into the roots. Why does a certain thing happen again and again? You become angry again and again: examination will simply show you that anger comes and goes. Investigation will show you the roots of anger, from where it comes because it may be, it is almost always so, that anger is only a symptom of something else which is hidden. It may be your ego that feels hurt and you become angry, but the ego keeps itself hiding underground. It is like roots of the trees: you see the foliage but you dont see the roots. By examination you will see the tree, by investigation you will see the roots. And it is only by seeing the roots that a transformation is possible. Bring the roots to the light and the tree starts dying. If you can find the root of your anger, you will be surprised that the anger starts disappearing. If you can find the root of your sadness you will be again surprised. Anger transformed becomes compassion, sex transformed becomes prayer, greed transformed becomes sharing. Anger simply shows that something in you is hurt, some wound is there. Indulgence creates habit, repression gathers the poison within. In indulgence you throw the poison on others, but they are not going to remain silent they will throw it back. It becomes a match: you throw your anger on others, they throw their anger on you but nobody is helped, everybody is harmed and hurt. JEALOUSY 1. Jealousy means ego, jealousy means unconsciousness. Jealousy means that you have not known even a moment of joy and bliss; you are living in misery. Jealousy is a by-product of misery, ego, unconsciousness. 2. In the East a man becomes divine only when he is no longer jealous, a man is thought to be enlightened only when he is no longer jealous. Jealousy is a by-product of the ego and when the ego disappears jealousy disappears. You cannot offend a Buddha. Whatsoever you do you cannot offend him. 3. Drop envy and jealousy, otherwise there is no possibility because love cannot exist where envy and jealousies exist. Then your search is only for a certain type of power: that in the name of love you are just trying to fulfill the ego. And it is arduous to drop, because love exists only when all the negative elements of the mind are dropped. It is very arduous. 4. As far as your ego is concerned and your jealousy is concerned, my whole work here is to help you become so loving that the energy that becomes jealousy is transformed into love. And you know perfectly well that jealousy always follows your love. You are not jealous without love. A man who does not love is not jealous. Jealousy is almost like a shadow of love. If we can grow our love, it takes over the whole energy of jealousy and April 2012 Page 109
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations transforms it into love. It is an alchemical change. And I can say it with guarantee, because it has happened in me, it has happened in my thousands of sannyasins who have forgotten what jealousy is. Their love is so much. 5. Love can make a great celebration out of your life but only love, not lust, not ego, not possessiveness, not jealousy, not dependence. 6. We are identified with the ego, and with the ego there are many things: anger and hatred and jealousy and possessiveness and greed the whole train. The ego functions like an engine and there are many compartments following it. Once the ego dies the whole train stops. 7. The love to which ego is attached is a form of jealousy this is why nobody is as jealous as lovers are. The love which is attached to the ego is a conspiracy and a trick to possess the other. It is a conspiracy that is why nobody suffocates so many people as those who talk of love. This situation is created because of the love which comes from the ego there can never be any relation between love and the ego. 8. Love makes you empty empty of jealousy, empty of power trips, empty of anger, empty of competitiveness, empty of your ego and all its garbage. But love also makes you full of things which are unknown to you right now; it makes you full of fragrance, full of light, full of joy. 9. Remember: ego can create misery, ego can create anguish, ego can create hate, ego can create jealousy. Ego can never become a vehicle for the divine, it can never become the passage for the beyond. 10.Awareness is fire; it burns all that is wrong in you. It burns your ego. It burns your greed, it burns your possessiveness, it burns your jealousy it burns all that is wrong and negative, and it enhances all that is beautiful, graceful, divine. 11.That awareness is my teaching. Never fight with greed, ego, anger, jealousy, hatred all those enemies that the religions have been telling you, Fight with them, crush them, kill them. You cannot kill them, you cannot crush them, you cannot fight with them; all that you can do is just be aware of them. And the moment you are aware, they are gone. In the light, the darkness simply disappears. 12.Greed, desire, ambition, jealousy, possessiveness, domination you have to watch everything. And they are all interconnected, remember. If greed disappears, then anger will disappear. If anger disappears, jealousy will disappear. If jealousy disappears, violence will disappear. If violence disappears, possessiveness will disappear. They are all intertwined. In fact, they are spokes of the same wheel, and the hub that supports them all is the ego. So watch the ways of the ego. Watching, watching, watching one day suddenly it is not there. Only the watcher is left. That moment of pure watching is the moment of transformation 13.Drop jealousy and love wells up. Jealousy means that I am the owner. It is an ego trip, and wherever there is ego there is poison, and the poison kills the very source of love. One has to become aware of just these few things and discard them and ones life April 2012 Page 110
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations becomes a lotus of love. And then there is no need to go in any search of god, god will come in search of you. This is my observation, that god always comes seeking the true seeker. Whenever the disciple is ready the master appears. 14.Once you become more and more watchful of your inner workings things become simple. Then a few things have to be dropped. One has not to be jealous if one wants to be loving. It becomes so clear that there is no question about it; one can simply see the point that if you are jealous, love is impossible. Jealousy is bound to create misery. Jealousy is part of ego, the shadow of the ego, the shadow of a shadow and love needs egolessness. They cant go together, they cant co-exist. 15.One has to be very alert to go beyond lust. And one has to be constantly aware of jealousy, of possessiveness, of domination, because those are the strategies of lust. If you drop jealousy, possessiveness, ego trips, then slowly lust disappears and love arises. Love is a pure flame without any smoke. It is prayer, it is divine, and it makes you divine. EGO The heart is always pure; there is no way to make it impure. And the head is always impure; there is no way to make it pure. And these are the alternative ways to live: one either can live in the head or one can live in the heart. If you live in the head you may be successful in life, you may become very rich, powerful socially, politically, you may become very respectable, world-famous. But deep down you will be all tears and nothing else because you will see the futility of all that you have attained; you have wasted such a precious life for rubbish. Death takes everything away. This is the criterion: anything that can be taken away by death is not worth bothering about much. Anything that cannot be taken away by death that is something to create, to discover. One can sacrifice everything for it, it is worth sacrificing for. The heart cannot give you any outward success but it can give you a deep inner peace, a great joy, a blissfulness, a blessedness, a benediction, and it can slowly slowly lead you towards the other shore, towards god. When you are absolutely pure the ego disappears. You are, and yet you are not. In one sense you are not, not as you have always been; in another sense you are and for the first time you are. But you are no more an ego, confined in the body-mind complex. You are infinite. You are as vast as god. You are one with god. Only the door of the heart can become the door of gods temple. Move from the head to the heart. One can get bliss only if one deserves it, if one is worthy. And the way to deserve it is to disappear, not to be. To be is a hindrance.
April 2012
Page 111
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations The ego is the root of all misery. When the ego is not, from every nook and corner of existence bliss starts reaching you as if it were just waiting for the ego to disappear. Ego is a closed state of consciousness: all window, doors, are closed. You are living almost insulated, encapsulated; ego surrounds you like a capsule. Ego is like the egg: there is not even a small window to allow anything to enter. Ego is very much afraid; out of fear it closes itself, it shrinks into itself. That is how we create misery. Bliss is to be in the flow with existence, to be totally with it. Ego is like frozen ice and egolessness is melted ice. Then you become part of the ocean. Then you dont have any private goal, you have no destination. Then each moment is so blissful, so incredibly ecstatic, that the mind cannot comprehend it, cannot conceive it. Mind is part of the ego. It knows how to close, it does not know how to open up. To be a sannyasin means that now your whole effort will be to open up to existence to the flowers and to the bees and to the stars; how to open to this beautiful music that fills the whole of existence; how to open to this beautiful music that fills the whole of existence; how to open up to this celebration that goes on and on flowers dancing in the wind and trees enjoying the wind and the stars, always in a state of bliss. Except for man everything is in harmony. Man falls out harmony because he has consciousness. Consciousness can do two things: it can create ego, it can create egolessness. If it creates ego you live in hell, if it creates egolessness you are in paradise. The whole world is in paradise without knowing it. When man enter paradise he will be entering with full knowing. That is the grandeur, the beauty of man and that is the danger also, because out of thousands of people only once in a while does a person enter; others simply go on falling into the trap of the ego. Be egoless and all the grace of God is yours. Bliss is by the grace of god 1. Whenever you are now and here there is no ego to be found. You are a pure silence. 2. Mind is desiring. And when there is no mind how can there be an ego? Ego is the center of the false mind. 3. Your ego is your hell, your ego is your misery, your ego is the cancer of your soul. The only way out of it is to become a witness of your mind processes. 4. To be separate as an ego is the base of all misery; to be one, to be flowing, with whatsoever life brings to you, to be in it so intensely, so totally, that you are no more, you are lost, then everything is blissful. 5. The ego is goal-oriented. The ego is hankering for the future. It can hanker even for the other life, it can hanker for heaven, it can hanker for nirvana. It doesnt matter what it hankers for hankering is what it is, desiring is what it is, projecting into the future is what it is. 6. When desiring ceases, the other world opens. The other world is hidden in this world. But because your eyes are full of desire, full of the ego, you cannot see it. 7. On the moon, we have left behind flags. Man is busy desiring to find something which only he can do so that his ego acquires importance. But if you were born on Everest then you would be in great difficulty as to where to hoist the flag. April 2012 Page 112
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations 8. The ego stands for all your conditioning and heritage. But the ego cannot give you any nourishment and the ego cannot give you those tears of joy and gratitude; the ego can give you only misery, anguish, tension. 9. In the death of the ego love is born, God is born, light is born. In the death of the ego you are transformed; all misery disappears as if it had never existed. Your life right now is a nightmare. When the ego dies nightmares disappear and a great sweetness arises in your being, and a subtle joy, for no reason at all. You cannot explain it to anybody, you cannot explain it to yourself either. It is unexplainable, mysterious. But who cares for the explanation? When you are bathed, when you are in rejoicing, when the being is in a dance, who cares? 10.The ego only gives you goals, but whenever those goals arrive, it does not allow you to celebrate. One becomes more and more miserable! As life passes, we go on gathering misery, we go on piling up misery. And it is very difficult to realize this that you are causing your own misery; that is against the ego. So you throw the responsibility on others. 11.Start looking for the ego, not in others, that is not your business, but in yourself. Whenever you feel miserable, immediately close your eyes and try to find out from where the misery is coming and you will always find it is the false center which has clashed with someone. You expected something, and it didnt happen. You expected something, and just the contrary happened your ego is shaken, you are in misery. Just look, whenever you are miserable, try to find out why. 12.The goal is part of the desiring mind and bliss is a state of no-mind. Desiring is a barrier: non-desiring is the bridge. And all goals are egoistic because they are ambitions. Ambitions are shadows of the ego, and wherever ego is bliss is not. When the ego completely disappears, when not even a trace is left behind, bliss is found. Even to say that it is found is not exactly right, because it is our nature; we dont find it because we have never lost it in the first place. We have only become oblivious to it, we have become unconscious about it. We have gone into a deep sleep and we are dreaming all kinds of things. Because of our dreaming and sleep and unconsciousness, the bliss remains unexperienced. Otherwise it surrounds you. 13.The ego exists between the mind and the body. It is a false creation. The self exists not between body and mind, but beyond mind. And to reach to the self you have to learn the ways how the mind can be silenced, so its constant chattering is not there. Because the real self is absolute silence. 14.Stop your mind and the circle of thought disappears. Suddenly only your being is there and the circle is no more there. That circle is the ego. 15.Mind is such a thing; it turns everything into a possession, because the ego can exist only if it possesses. And ego is the barrier. Ego is the water in which only reflections can be caught, the real can never be known.
April 2012
Page 113
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations Sex What happens with your sex energy depends on how you use it. What it can become does not depend on it alone, but on your understanding and on how you live your life. Have you not observed that it becomes brahmacharya, the state of celibacy when it is transformed? bramhacharya is not hostile to passion; brahmacharya is the purification, the transcendence, the sublimation of passion. In the same way, the energy that manifests itself in violence becomes peace, serenity and tranquility. It is only a question of transformation. Love is not sexual passion. Those who mistake sex for love remain empty of love. Sex is only a passing manifestation of love. It is part of natures mechanism, a method of procreation. Love exists on a higher plane, and as love grows, sex dissipates. The energy that has been manifested in sex is transformed into love. Love is the creative refinement of sex energy. And so, when love reaches perfection, the absence of sex automatically follows. A life of love, an abstinence from physical pleasures is called brahmacharya, and anyone who wishes to be free from sex must develop his capacity to love. Freedom from sex cannot be achieved through supersession. Liberation from sex is only possible through love. The first thing: be a witness of sex too. Dont be the controller of it. Dont try to forcibly bring it under control, remain a witness of it too. Just as you are a witness of everything else, remain a witness of sex too. It is difficult, because you have been taught for centuries that sex is sin. That concept of sin has been fixed in your mind. Both are easy: it is perfectly easy to go unconscious in sex, to completely forget what is going on, to get intoxicated is easy. To control sex, to force it to stop, to prevent yourself is also easy. But in both you miss. The one who indulges misses, the celibate misses too. The real brahmacharya happens when you stand in the middle between these two, then you are only watching. Then you will find that sex arises in the body and reverberates in the body; in the mind a shadow briefly falls and departs. You remain standing far away. How can sexual desire be in you? How can any desire be in you? You are nothing but the observer. See life from a positive viewpoint. If you start being happy then the things that you grabbed onto because of your misery will drop by themselves. If meditation comes then wine will drop. If meditation comes, then meat-eating will drop. If meditation comes then slowly slowly sex energy begins to be transformed into brahmacharya. Just let meditation come. Just by condemning nothing is destroyed. If you say sex is bad, you condemn it, but you cannot destroy it. Just by condemning it, it is not destroyed. Rather, it may become a more dangerous force, because when repressed, it may struggle to be expressed. And if you go on struggling with it, not allowing it, it will become perverted. Repression will make you more sexual, and the sex energy will struggle and will try to come out in any way, in any form. All the perversions, all over the world homosexuality or sado-masochist perversions are basically byproducts of so-called religions, particularly christianity: because the more they repress, the more the energy has to find paths of its own. Natural sex is beautiful; perverted sex is just ugliness. Natural sex can be made hallowed and holy, but perverted sex cannot be made holy because it is twice removed from the original source. April 2012 Page 114
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations Sex is there: do not condemn it. Accept it. Do not create a division in your being, between parts of your being. Anger is there: accept it. Greed is there, or whatsoever: accept it. I do not mean be greedy. Rather on the contrary, the moment you accept you go beyond, because acceptance creates a unity, and when you are united within you have the energy to go beyond. You are born of sex. Your every body cell is a sex cell, all your energy is sex energy. So if religions teach that sex is bad, sex is sin, they have condemned you completely. And not only have they condemned you, now you will condemn yourself. Now you cannot go beyond it and you cannot leave it, and now it is a sin. You are divided; you start fighting with yourself. And the more this guilt can be created in you over the concept that sex is something unholy the more neurotic you will become. I take sex as the basic problem. And if your sex problem is solved, you are a different man or a different woman, because then all the perversions simply are no more. You have resolved the base. And when sex is solved and it is not a problem for you, not a fight, when you have deeply accepted it and said a deep yes to it, then you can transform it because that is the energy which is alive in you. When you are dead, that energy will go on and on, more and more. You are just a wave in a sex ocean: the ocean continues, and the waves go on, die and disappear. The ocean continues. Sex is the BRAHMAN. If you go deep into sex, then it is the very life. If you forget it, then you remain on the surface. Then it is ugly. If you do not fight with it or sink into it, but drop into it, dissolve into it, melt into it, when you allow sex to become life, then suddenly it is transformed into love. That is how the mechanism automatically works. If you fight it, sex becomes hate. So those who are filled with hatred are those who are fighting with their sex. If you do not fight it, if you accept it and melt into it, it becomes love. So love and hate are two faces of sex. If it is perverted, it becomes hate. If accepted deeply, it will become love. And you can create love out of your sex energies. If those energies transform into love, then you are at ease in the world, at home with the earth. That at-homeness is basic. This is the beauty: if you accept sex, you will not reject anything else. That is why there is so much emphasis on it. If you reject sex, you will have to reject many things. Sex is the root rejection. If you reject sex, you will reject many things. Food will be rejected, then clothes will be rejected, then everything will be rejected. It is a long sequence, and in that sequence you will have to reject and reject, because the whole life is sexual. If you reject sex you will go on and on rejecting, and ultimately you will reject life. Then suicide is the only thing worth doing because even to take a breath is sexual. It goes to your sex cells and gives them life. To be alive is to be sexual. If you are against sex, then you will be against everything. And a person who is against everything is bound to be neurotic, mad, and you cannot help him. When you are with a woman, if you are of the opposite sex, you begin to feel more alive than with a man. With a man you feel less alive because nothing is pulling you out. You are enclosed, the opposite energy pulls you out; the flame flickers, you can be more alive. And whenever you begin to feel more alive, you begin to feel happy. The mechanism of sex is so much a momentary phenomenon that it only functions momentarily; if you do not cooperate at the right moment, it stops. At the right moment your cooperation is needed, otherwise it cannot work. It is only a momentary mechanism, and if you do not cooperate with it, it will stop by itself.
April 2012
Page 115
Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations First the energy will try its best to be released sexually, because that is its usual outlet, its usual center. So one must first be aware of ones downward doors. Only awareness will close them; only noncooperation will close them. Sex is not so forceful as we feel it to be. It is forceful only momentarily: it is not a twenty-four-hour affair, it is a momentary challenge. One more point, thinking about sex is harmful than sex itself. Sex can be easy and natural but thinking about it too often is unnatural, is a perversion. After examining the experience of thousands of people, the psychoanalysts tell us that man is taking too much interest in mental sex and he does not derive any pleasure from the actual sex activity. The sex that is going on in the mind seems more interesting and colourful. If sex is thus perverted in the mind, confusion will be created within us. To think about sex is not the function of the mind. The intelligence of the person who uses his mind to do the work of sex centre becomes depraved is spoilt. Gurdjieff used to say so. The intelligence is bound to get spoilt, because the functions of these two are different. It is like this: If a person tries to take food with his ear, his ear will certainly be spoilt, and food will not reach the stomach. Both will be harassed.
...
April 2012
Page 116

Meditation Times April 2012

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Meditation Times April 2012

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

MEDITATION TIMES

A Downloadable Monthly E-Magazine

Taoshobuddha: mailtaoshobuddha@gmail.com Swami Anand Neelambaravatar411@gmail.com

You can also visit our website:

Thus Spake Zarathustra

www.youtube.com\taoshobuddha9 www.scribd.com\taoshobuddhacyberlibrary www.scribd.com\avatar411

Swami Anand Neelambar

Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations

Thus Spake Swami Vivekananda

Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885). Prologue 1

Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885). Prologue 3

Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885). Prologue 3

Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885). Prologue 5

Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885). Prologue 5

There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885)

Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885) April 2012 Page 19

Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885)

Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885)

Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885)

That is mediocrity though it be called moderation.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885)

Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885)

Not by wrath does one kill, but by laughter.

Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885)

God is a thought which makes crooked all that is straight.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885)

Part I, Chapter 7, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Part II, Chapter 29, Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885). Ch.18, "Old and Young Women"

Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885). Part II, Chapter 39, On Poets

Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885). Part II, Chapter 39, On Poets

Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885). Part II, Ch.42 "Redemption"

One does not kill by anger but by laughter.

Thus Spake Zarathustra (1885)

Thus Spoke Zarathustra: First Part; Zarathustra's Prologue (1883)

Thus Spoke Zarathustra: First Part; Zarathustra's Prologue (5) (1883)

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, First Part, "Prologue," section 4 (1883).

Also sprach Zarathustra

Thus Spake Zarathustra

Thus Spake Zarathustra

Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885). Part I, Chapter 2

Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations

Thus spake Buddha

Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations

Thus Spake Ramana

Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations

Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations

Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations

Bhaja Govindam of Shankara

Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations

Sayings from the Ramayana

April 2012 Page 57

Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations

Udwijante yathaa sarpaat naraadanruta vaadinah 2.109.12

Satyameveshwaro loke satye dharmah samaashritah 2.109.13

Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations

Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations

Meditation Times Taoshobuddha Meditations

Anirvedah shriyo moolam anirvedah param sukham 5.12.10