Yes sir, I am here.

It was heard about one Zen master that he would call his own name many times during the day. In the morning he would call, Bokuju? and then he would say, Yes sir, I am here. Bokuju was his name. And his disciples would ask why he did this. He would say, I go on forgetting. I have become so smooth that I have to remind myself Bokuju? And then I say, Yes sir, I am here. Life can become such a smooth flow, such a silent river, that no noise is created. But if you are bent upon being something, somebody, extraordinary, special, then life cannot flow through you. Then there is a constant struggle between life and you, between your small ego and the cosmos. This is creating madness. The whole earth has become a mad planet. And this madness cannot be helped by treatments, therapies, because it is so basic a style of life that it is not a pathology. This is how we are living. Our whole style of life is mad. So you cannot be helped through therapies unless the whole life-style changes. There are only two life-styles: ego-oriented and egoless-oriented. You must be somebody... this is one way of life. Then madness is the outcome. Really, the madman is the most extraordinary man. He has achieved extraordinariness because now he is completely uprooted from reality, he is not concerned with the reality at all. Now he lives isolated in himself, he has created his own world. Now the dream is the real and the real has become just a dream. Everything is upside down. You cannot convince a madman that he is wrong, because he is very logical. Madmen are very rational and logical. One madman used to come out of his house every day in the morning and chant some mantras and make some gestures. So, whosoever was passing would ask, naturally, what he was doing. And the madman would say, I am protecting this neighborhood from ghosts. So the person who was asking would say, But there are no ghosts in this neighborhood. And the man would say, See, because of my chanting mantras, there are no ghosts.

He is rational, you cannot convince him ghosts are not there because of his chanting. But he lives now in his own subjective dream-world and you cannot pull him out. If you think yourself somebody nobody can be somebody that is not in the nature of things but if you think yourself somebody, then a part of you has gone mad. That somebodiness is your madness. And the more this cancer of somebodiness grows, the more you will be cut off from reality. A Buddha is a nobody. All his doors are open. The wind comes and blows, the rains come and blow, the sun-rays enter and pass, the life flows, but he is not there. This is what I mean when I say meditation has happened to you. And this is very ordinary, natural, real.