< Previous | Contents | Next >
CHAPTER 30
If you know one secret – to be happy right now – you have learned it
all
30 January 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
Anand means bliss, and sangeetam means music: bliss music. They have something in common. Bliss is a music – can be expressed only by music – and music has a blissfulness in it. Hence whenever somebody is lost in music, a glimpse of bliss, like a whip, comes into one’s being. More over, music has no intellectual content in it; it is non-intellectual. You cannot explain music. You can enjoy, but you cannot explain. You may not enjoy, but then too you cannot explain. Either you enjoy or you don’t, but there is no explanation. It is tremendously mysterious. Nobody can say why they enjoy music – the ‘why’ remains unanswered.
Music has no expressed intellectual content in it – it is non-rational – hence it is closest to existence, because existence also is non-intellectual. And music is universal – no language is needed to understand it. You need not know indian languages to understand indian music; you need not understand chinese to understand chinese music. Because music is not something that you understand by the head – it is something that goes through the heart. You fall en rapport with it.
So deep down there is nothing like indian music, chinese music, western, eastern – these categories are just superficial. Deep down there is only one music – these are all different expressions of that one music. And bliss is also just like music.…
One cannot philosophise about it, one cannot speculate about it – either it is or it is not. When it is not, the only thing that can be done is to remain available to it. When you listen to music you will have an insight that you will miss if you listen too attentively. If you are concentrated too much you
will become tense and you will miss, because the rhythm will not enter into your being. You have to be porous, relaxed. You have to be just in a deep rest – then music enters you. You are not to search for it. When you are available it seeks you, it comes on its own.
So these two words – one is concentration, and another is centering – have to be understood. Concentration is on something outside you, centering is something within you. Concentration is extroverted, centering is introverted. Concentration is objective and centering is subjective. You concentrate on something – you centre on yourself... In yourself, rather.
If you want to understand mathematics you will have to concentrate. If you want to understand music you will have to centre. Centering happens only when you are relaxed. Concentration happens only when you are very very tense. That is the meaning of the word’attention’; it means ‘tension’.
When you attend to something you become very closed, narrow; you don’t attend to anything else. If you attend to me and to what I am saying, you will not listen to the birds and this silence of the night or to somebody playing the drum. You will exclude all that – you will bracket it off – and you will concentrate on me. But then you will only understand my words – you will miss my music.
To understand music one has to be relaxed – no narrowing is needed. You are just open – open to everything.open to me, open to these insects, open to the drummer, open to the trees and the
birds, and everything – open to the whole. Then you are centred at your very core. That is the way to listen to music.
And whenever you can listen to music you will feel happy, tremendously happy for no reason at all. From some unknown source a river of bliss flows in, drowns you completely, overfloods you, overwhelms you, starts flowing over you. In those moments if somebody comes close to you, you will feel that something of tremendous significance is flowing through you. He will feel your vibeit
will touch others too. Centering is such a grace.…
Anand means bliss and sangeetam means music; bliss music. So become more and more blissful, centred, and start listening to the music. It is all over... the whole existence is full of music! It is a great harmony, a great orchestra. It is not a chaos – it is a cosmos. Everything fits with everything else. Except for man, nothing is out of rhythm, out of step. Only man is out of step.
So feel blissful and feel more and more musical, mm?
[A sannyasin who is leaving says: I’m feeling very happy right now. I think maybe it’s because I’m escaping.
When I came here I felt miserable – the day that I came – and then when I saw you I felt very happy. And now I feel happy again, and I don’t know]
That’s very good. Don’t think about it, because thinking can create misery any moment. Thinking is the root cause of all misery. If you think, only then can you be miserable – if you don’t think you are happy.
A non-thinking mind cannot be miserable – that’s why animals are not miserableAnd buddhas
are not miserable. Animals are below mind and buddhas are above mind, but one thing is common between both: they don’t have any mind. Animals cannot think and buddhas have dropped thinking – they don’t think – but one thing is common: thinking is absent.
So whenever you feel that you are becoming miserable, know well that the root cause is somewhere in thinking. If you start thinking about happiness – about why you are happy – even that will do it; even that will destroy happiness. If you start thinking about whether you will be happy tomorrow or not, whether you will be happy in the west or about what is going to happen, you will create many ripples of misery. And not that you will be unhappy tomorrow – you will become unhappy right now!
Once this trick is understood, once this mechanism of the mind has been looked into, there is no need to be miserable unless you really want to be. If one wants one can be miserable, but if one doesn’t want then there is no need.
It is such a simple thing – to be happy should be the most simple thing – because happiness is natural, unhappiness is unnatural. To be miserable needs great effort. To be miserable needs much cleverness, cunningness. To be miserable means you have to earn it. It is not cheap – it is very costly.
To be happy is very simple. You need not earn it, you need not be clever, you need not be very educated, you need not be on a high post, you need not be rich. You need not be anything: because to be happy is simply natural. You have brought it with you – it is in-built. It is as natural as fire is hot.it is as natural as ice is cool. Nothing else is needed to be done about it.
With doing comes misery – with non-doing there is happiness. And that’s my whole teaching: don’t do anything. Let things happen – don’t be the doer. Don’t think much of the past, of the future. Don’t think much – be in the present.
Buddha has a special word for that state. He calls it’chittakshana’ – a moment of consciousness, a conscious moment.
For consciousness, one moment is enough – for thinking one moment is not enough. It needs the whole past, it needs the whole future. The present is not enough for thinking.
To spread thinking you need a very big canvas of the past and the future. In fact the present is so small for thinking that thinking cannot exist in it. Hence – just as a corollary – misery never exists in the present because thinking never exists in the present. To think, you have to go back or you have to go ahead. To be miserable, you have to go back or you have to go ahead.
In this moment it is sheer delight! It cannot be otherwise because in the present only bliss and consciousness can exist. That’s what Buddha calls ‘chittakshana’ – a consciousness moment. And once you have learned that there is no need to be afraid, because it is always only a single moment that comes into your hand. Life never gives you two moments. There is no provision for it. Nobody is given two moments together. Only one is given – when that one is taken then another comes, but you always have one moment.
So buddha says,‘If you can transform one moment you have known the very peak – you can transform the whole eternity. Nothing else is needed.’
Sometimes people come to me and they say, ‘Right now I am feeling very happy, but what will happen to me?’ right now is the only thing there is. Tomorrow again it will be right now. Tomorrow exists not – it is always right now. If you are happy right now, finished – the samsara is finished. You have gone beyond it, because each moment that ever comes will come as right now. And if you know one secret – to be happy right now – you have learned all! There is nothing else... there is nothing more to it.
Religion is so simple... but man is very complicated. So be alert, and happiness will follow you like a shadow.…
[A sannyasin says: It seems to me that the names that we have deal with the missing link. That’s what I’m thinking about.]
I play with names! I have to play with something so I play with names!
.… And don’t give too much importance to the name, otherwise that can become a obsession. It is just a game! Don’t become esoteric about it, and don’t start finding ways and means to discover what it means and what it should mean and what can be the hidden secret meaning of it. There is nothing!
In fact you are nameless... the reality is nameless. The rose is not aware at all that he is a rose... but the rose is a rose! What you call it makes no difference – what you call it is irrelevant. It has no relationship with the reality of the rose.
Names are irrelevant. What you are called is a utilitarian thing. It is needed, certainly needed, otherwise it will be difficult – so many nameless people, it will be difficult. If somebody wants to call you, he will be at a loss what to do, mm? how to call you, how to talk to you; so it is a utilitarian device.
Remember – you are nameless.
I talk about the meaning of the name to help you drop the old name. I sell the new name... there is a reason for it! The reason is not that names are very important. The reason is that if I can sell the new name rightly you will be able to drop the old easily. I want to make the old appear meaningless. The new is as meaningless as the old – but that will be a later understanding.
Right now the whole effort is so that you can drop the past. It is as if you are holding in your hand many stones to which you cling, so I talk about diamonds and jewels and pearls and emeralds and precious stones. I talk so much about these diamonds and pearls and emeralds that you lose interest in the pebbles that you are carrying. Once you drop them I’m not going to give you any diamond, any pearl – nothing! Because all that you need is an empty hand.
But once you have dropped them you will have the taste of the emptiness and you will know that that emptiness is the real diamond. You will not complain; you will not say,‘You deceived me.’ You
will feel thankful, you will feel grateful, because if I had not talked about the diamonds – and those diamonds are just fictitious – you would not have been able to drop your ugly stones. You would have continued to cling to them, because your mind says,‘Unless there is something better, why drop it?’
To console your mind I talk about the new name and I make it appear as if it is tremendously significant. In that greed you drop the old. Once the old is dropped, I am going to tell you sooner or later that the new is as useless as the old. Use it – it is needed. It is arbitrary... it is just a label on you. It does not say anything about you – it cannot say anything about you; it has nothing to do with you. You are vast... you are immense! The name is just a small thing.But then you will be able to
understand.
So sometimes I have to lie – I have to tell lies. But that’s what buddhas have been doing down the centuries. There is no other way, because man lives in so many lies that only through lies can he be taken out of it – the mess that he is in. Man only understands the language of the lie.
For example, you understand the language of a beautiful name.
It feels good to the ego, it enhances the ego. Such a great name you have, such great possibility, potentiality; that all buttresses the ego. That is the language you understand – and I have to speak the same language.
Once you have started moving with me there is no problem. The first problem is how to make you move. You are stuck, so if you can move even through a dream I will create a dream for you. And not only names, but all spiritual powers and kundalini and inner lights and chakras and lotuses that bloom inside, are all dreams, allurements, so that you can start moving. You will not move otherwise. You can move only when there is a dream and that dream motivates you to move.
Once you have started moving you will know that the real thing is movement – not the goal. The real thing is dynamism.the real thing is the streaming energy, the pulsating energy. Not that you are
reaching somewhere. The goal is not the goal at all – the journey is the goal.
Once you have started moving and you know the beauty of the journey and you have become a real vagabond – a wanderer of the soul – you will forget about the goal. You will say ‘The journey is so beautiful, who bothers about the goal?’
Then you are not going anywhere. wherever you are, you are there, and you are tremendously delighted there. Then each moment is an experience of the eternal, the timeless, the immeasurable.
So remember that names don’t mean anything, mm? You mean much, but the names don’t mean anything.
< Previous | Contents | Next >