15

< Previous | Contents | Next >

‌CHAPTER 15

18 June 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin said that he felt a confusion because whatever he tried to verbalise was never what he really meant. He said he would like some meditation that would help him clarify things.

The problem is a very common one. People have impossible notions of being happy, so whatsoever happens is never satisfactory. Whatsoever happens is just so-so because of their ideas that something extraordinary and great has to happen. Even if this happens they will not be satisfied, because that which happens to you becomes ordinary. It is extraordinary only in imagination. When it really happens, it is ordinary.

You have a very wrong notion about being happy and if you don’t drop that notion, you will remain unhappy for your whole life. It is a very impossible notion of unhappiness. For example two plus two should become five; then only you will be happy. You will never be, because they cannot become five.

One has to find happiness in moderate measures. One has to find happiness in small things. There is nothing great in life. But if you go on living happily in small things, the accumulated happiness is tremendous. It is as if in collecting drop by drop, you collect the whole ocean. You are not collecting the drops because you say these are just ordinary, tiny bits, and what is the use of collecting them? You are waiting for the ocean to happen. It will never happen because the only way it can happen is to go on collecting tiny drops.

Make it a point to make each dew drop a potential ocean.

Otherwise you have such a notion that you will always remain unhappy. Nothing can be done about it because whatsoever happens, you will say it has happened to you so it cannot be very extraordinary; it is not very great.

I have heard about an actor of Hollywood who was very famous. He was requested to join a very exclusive club in America in which a very few people – only a hundred persons, never more than that – are members. When one person dies, they find another selected from the whole country. This actor was waiting to be asked, because to be asked to join is one of the greatest honours.

When he received the invitation he refused, because he said, ‘A club that can accept me as its member is not worth anything. That is not the club I would want to join.’

If something great happens, it will not be great because it has happened to you and you don’t have a very good opinion of yourself. So my idea is: start collecting these drops, pebbles on the shore, seashells. Those things become treasures. There is no way to go directly to the peak of happiness; one goes step by step. The path is like a mountain-path... round about, round and round it goes. Many times you come to the same point, just a little higher up. It is the same vision, the same world that you will come to again and again before you come to the peak, because the path goes in circles.

So start collecting small pleasures, small joys. You simply say, ‘Nothing much.’ That’s why you don’t meditate, because if something happens, it is ‘not much’; it is not great. This is a very wrong approach, basically wrong. Many people are unhappy in the world – not because there is so much unhappiness or that there is any need for so many people to be unhappy, they are unhappy because of some impossible notion of happiness.

Bring it down to earth. Bring it down to the very earth where you stand. Real happiness has to be very earthly. As time passes, in each moment you have to be happy in very small things. Sometimes talking with a friend one has to be happy, sometimes just sitting by the side of a tree doing nothing...

[A tibetan cuckoo was filling the evening air with his clear and penetrating call.]

Just listen to this cuckoo...

... it is tremendously beautiful. Not that it can be measured. If you try to prove that it is very great, you cannot. But it is tremendously beautiful.

In these tiny moments find out pleasure, happiness, joy, delight, and don’t miss any occasion. If it only brings a small smile and not a great belly laugh, don’t be bothered. A smile is also needed. One cannot survive only on belly laughter. Smiles are also needed. They give salt to life.

Very small things... just doing something for a friend or allowing somebody to do something for you...

[The sannyasin answers: I like doing everything for myself and it’s difficult to allow anyone to do anything for me.]

That’s very egoistic, very egoistic, but it is there.

There is a christian parable about Jesus carrying his cross to the top of Golgotha hill. He is very tired. The cross is very heavy and he has not slept the whole night; he has been interrogated. His whole life’s mission seems to be shattered, and his disciples have deserted him.

He is in a crowd of enemies and the cross is very heavy and he is going uphill. Not only that people are mocking him and throwing stones and spitting on him. They think him a sort of a clown and have put a crown of thorns on his head They are enjoying it as if it is a circus.

It is hot... he falls and cannot get up. Soldiers whip him and somehow he gets up. But the cross is heavy and it seems impossible that he will be able to carry the cross much longer. A man from the crowd, a stranger, offers himself, saying, ‘I can carry your cross for you.’ And Jesus allows him to carry the cross.

Now Christians have continuously pondered over it. Was it right that Jesus should allow the cross to be carried by somebody else? But I feel that the parable is very human, beautiful. Even Christ is not so independent that he can carry his cross all alone. Even he is a human being walking on the earth, fragile, and when somebody offers, he accepts. He allows him to carry his cross. It is very human.

Christians are a little confused about it because how can the son of God not carry his own cross? Then what about us poor human beings? If he needs somebody else’s help, what about us? If he, who is the saviour of the whole of humanity, needs somebody else’s help, then what about us? How can he be the saviour who himself is in need of help?

But to me the parable is very significant. If he had refused, Jesus would have been just ordinary. It was easy to refuse. He had carried it for so long, he could have carried it a little longer. It was not impossible. And he was going to die any moment so what was the point? When one is going to die, one can do anything; nothing matters. A little harder effort, a little more perspiration; that’s all. But he allowed this man, a stranger, to help, and he showed his humanity in it. He showed that we are interdependent... that nobody is an island, that we are parts of each other.

There are people, so-called religious people, who will say ‘No’; who will not allow anybody else to help them. They think that they are very independent people. They may even think that they don’t allow people to work for them because they don’t want that anybody should have to work for them, but deep down it is a very crystallised ego. It is inhuman.

So allow people to help you, otherwise you will become by and by like a stone. When you allow people to help you, you become connected. Then only your help can be accepted. It is a sharing. Life is a sharing. You cannot live alone; nobody can live alone. Many people have tried, and in their very effort they become almost dead. They shrink, and life oozes out of their beings. So be helpful to people, but when there is an opportunity let them also be helpful to you.

And gather small moments... just as one gathers flowers, small flowers. They become a garland.

Whatsoever you like, do, but enjoy it, delight in it. Don’t wait for some great and extraordinary happiness to come to you. These tiny moments pile up, and one day suddenly that great happiness is also there. It always comes indirectly. You cannot attack it directly. It is the total effect of a rightly lived life. It is not some thing. It is a total effect. It is more like a field that you go on creating and go on creating. One day suddenly you are in it. It surrounds you... it becomes your climate.

Yes, happiness is a climate. For three or four weeks you do the Dynamic and start collecting seashells and pebbles, coloured stones. Ultimately they all turn into diamonds.

< Previous | Contents | Next >