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CHAPTER 17
17 May 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
Anand means bliss, Roy has two meanings. One comes from the French; it means the king. The other comes from the Celtic; it means red. Both are beautiful. Bliss makes you a king. Without bliss one may be Alexander the Great but one remains poorer than the poor. One of the most naked fakirs of all ages, Diogenes, laughed at Alexander. When Alex-ander asked “Why are you laughing?” he said “I am laughing because I have nothing but I am a king, and you have everything and you are a beggar. Because of this ridiculous situation, because of this absur-dity, I am laughing. You appear to be the king, I appear to be the beggar, but the reality is just the opposite: you are the beggar and I am the king.
“Look into my eyes” Diogenes said to Alexander. Alexander looked into his eyes and said “If God gives me another opportunity to be born I will ask him to make me Diogenes and not Alexander.”
Bliss makes one a king. And bliss is some thing that never comes from without, so the king dom is not without; the kingdom is within. And the other meaning is also significant and relevant for a sannyasin, because red is the color of sannyas – blissful redness. The red represents many things. One: it represents life because it is the color of blood. It represents aliveness.
A sannyasin has not to be a monk. A monk is one who shrinks, escapes from the world, commits a slow suicide. The sannyasin has to live in the world as totally as possible, as dancingly as possible. He has not to escape; he has not to become a pale monk. He has not to become a dead leaf; he has to remain alive and juicy.
Red is also the color of youth. A sannyasin has to remain young to the very last moment. Even when death comes a sannyasin remains young; youth is his very flavor. It is not a question of age or time. He may be sixty, he may be seventy, he may be one hundred, it doesn’t matter, but he remains young. Youth is his inner space, and by being young I mean that he remains capable of learning.
CHAPTER 17.
He never becomes old because he never accumulates experiences. He never becomes old because he never becomes knowledgeable. He remains young because he functions from the state of not- knowing, he functions out of innocence. And he is young because he is always in love: in love with existence itself, in love with all its manifestations.
Red is also the color of the morning, the dawn, the beginning of the day. Think of your initiation as the end of the night and the beginning of the dawn.
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