Chapter title: None

‌Chapter title: None‌

22 June 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8006225 ShortTitle: IMPRIS22 Audio:

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[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Bliss is a child of light; it is a by-product. One cannot find it directly. Those who try to find it directly will create more misery for themselves because it is impossible to find it directly. It is as if one is trying to find the fragrance of rose flowers directly. it is a by-product: you grow roses and the fragrance comes on its own. When the roses bloom there is fragrance in the air.

Everybody seeks bliss but people rarely find it for the simple reason that they start seeking it directly.

And the more you seek bliss directly, the more miserable you will become, because except for frustration, and failure, nothing can be achieved.

The people who want to be blissful have to seek light, they have to find their inner flame; they have to find their inner awareness. Light represents awareness, darkness represents unawareness. Light means consciousness, darkness means unconsciousness -- and we are all living in unconsciousness. We have to move towards the dawn, towards light, towards awareness.

One has to completely forget about bliss. There is no need to bother about it. If you can transform your unconsciousness into consciousness, then slowly slowly

you will be surprised that a great bliss is arising in you for not reason at all. From where is it coming? You will not be able to find even its source. It is just through the flowering of the light inside you, the fragrance is released.

People who are seeking bliss directly start seeking money, power, prestige, because they think you can purchase everything if you have money; if you have enough money you can purchase bliss -- it seems logical. But bliss cannot be purchased.

Once a great king came to Mahavira. Mahavira is one of those few people who have attained the 1/08/07

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ultimate light. The king was a great conqueror, he had achieved everything, but again and again people told him 'You may have achieved everything but you have not achieved bliss yet. One thing more remains to be conquered.'

And that had always been a wound in him -- that one thing remained to be conquered. Where to find it?

From whom to find it? He knew only one way, and that was to conquer it, to fight for it.

Somebody suggested, 'Why don't you go to Mahavira? He is just very close to your capitol.' He went there and he said to Mahavira, 'I have heard you have attained bliss.' Mahavira said, 'You have heard rightly.' The king said, 'Then I have come to ask you to give it to me. I am ready to pay any price you ask for it.'

Mahavira laughed. He said, 'You don't understand at all. You understand how to conquer a a great kingdom, how to accumulate money, how to have many things, how to possess -- you don't know anything about bliss. You are asking such a childish question.'

The king said, 'Don't be worried about the price. whatsoever you ask I am ready to pay for it. Don't hesitate at all.'

Now this is how the worldly one always thinks: he can purchase everything. Mahavira played a joke on him. He said, 'Do one thing. I am not willing to sell it, I have no desire to sell it, but there is a man in your capitol itself, a very poor man. He has also attained it and he is so poor that he may be ready, he may be willing to sell it. Go and ask that men.'

Mahavira gave him the address. That man was a follower of Mahavira, a very poor man, but he had also attained.

The king said, 'Then it is very easy. The address that you have given is in the poorest part of the town. I will purchase it, but if the man is not willing to sell it, then he will be in trouble.'

He went to the poor man and he asked him. The poor man said, 'Mahavira must be joking, because it is not something that can be sold or purchased. I can give you my life; if you want ME I am ready. You can make me a prisoner, you can kill me -- whatsoever you want to do with me, I am ready. I am just your subject. I am a poor man -- you can do whatsoever you want.

'It is not that I am unwilling to give you bliss, but you don't understand the mathematics of bliss: it is a by-product. You have to find your inner light first. My inner light will not be of any use to you. My consciousness is my consciousness. It is unsharable, untransferrable. You will have to go deep into meditation -- there is no other way. You will have to go inwards. You know only how to go outwards. You are an extrovert, par excellence, you are an extreme extrovert -- and the whole process of finding the light is introversion. I have found it, Mahavira has found it, you can find it because I can see -- it is there inside you, but just a seed, just a potential.

'But forget about bliss. Go again to Mahavira and ask how to meditate. You asked a wrong question.

Ask how to find the inner light. Don't talk in terms of purchasing.'

Once you know how to find the inner light, bliss comes. It comes so silently that you will not even hear its footsteps. It fill you, and it fills you forever. It comes and never goes. In fact it does not come, it only appears to be a coming. It is your own innermost flowering and its fragrance.

Meditation and Karuna are tremendously significant words, and both have to be

understood.

Meditation is not concentration. It is written in the books that it is, because books are written by people who know nothing of meditation. Ninety-nine percent of books on meditation are written by non-meditators.

They may be scholars, they may have read all the literature about meditation, but they have not tasted its joy! They have not gone into it, it is not their own experience; hence they go on repeating each other.

It is so easy to write a book: just read ten books on meditation and the eleventh book is born.

Whatsoever you write, you have read in those ten books, and they were written in the same way.

I have come across many people who have written beautiful books on meditation and they have not tasted even a single drop of meditativeness. They have not experienced a single moment of that joy, of that bliss, of that ecstasy, of that dance, of that celebration. They are absolutely unaware of what they are writing, they are simply repeating like parrots.

All these books will tell you that meditation means concentration. If any book tells you that meditation means concentration, it simply means that the person knows nothing of meditation at all, because meditation is just the opposite of concentration.

Concentration is a process of the mind. It is focussing the mind on one object; meditation is a state of unfocussing. In concentration there is one object; in meditation there is no object at all. It is objectless; it is 1/08/07

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a mirror reflecting nothing -- just a mirror, not a reflecting even a single object. When two meditators face each other they are like two mirrors. And when two

mirrors are in front of each other, they go on reflecting each other -- nothing else. There is only emptiness reflected again and again.

Once a great meditator, Sheikh Farid -- he was a Sufi mystic -- met another great mystic, Kabir. They both sat for two days together. Not a single world was uttered by either -- neither Kabir nor Farid said anything. Their disciples were very much puzzled: 'What has happened?' They were expecting that something would be said that would be of immense value. But those two people were absolutely silent.

They looked into each other's eyes, they smiled, they nodded, they laughed, they hugged each other and then they departed -- not even a goodbye.

When they were left along with their disciples their disciples said, 'Master, this is too much! For two days we waited and waited and waited, and we have been waiting for this opportunity for years, thinking that at the meeting of two great enlightened persons something would be bound to transpire. We were thrilled, so excited, but you both remained utterly silent.'

Farid said, 'When two mirrors face each other, nothing is reflected or only nothing is reflected, again and again. He is silent, I am silent; he knows, I know; I am not, he is not. We have both disappeared into the ultimate. what is there to say? Who is there to say it?'

And the same was said by Kabir. When his disciples asked him, 'Lord...' he said, 'If either of us had spoken, that would have proved that he knew nothing. We looked into each others' eyes and we recognised that the other had become a mirror, he recognised that I had become a mirror. That's why we nodded: without saying yes, we recognised, that it happened. It is very rare, so we rejoiced, we laughed. and we laughed at you also because you were so excited, sitting and waiting for something to be said. the meeting was beautiful,' Kabir said, 'It was tremendously beautiful: the meeting of two hearts, two souls, in deep silence.'

Meditation means becoming a mirror without any thoughts, any clouds. Concentration needs effort, meditation needs relaxation. Concentration tires you, meditation rejuvenates. concentration is a forced thing, unnatural, against tao.

Meditation is simply flowing with the river, going with the wind, just like a dead leaf moving with the wind, wherever it goes. The dead leaf has no will of its own. If the wind is going south it goes south; if the wind suddenly turns towards

the north it starts moving towards the north. It does not say 'What does it mean? We were going to the south and now you have turned towards the north -- this is contradictory. The whole effort is wasted.' It says nothing; there is nothing to say. It has simply become surrendered.

Meditation is surrender, concentration is struggle. Concentration is a fight to force the mind into a certain pattern, to channelise the mind towards a certain object, not to allow it freedom, to chain it, to make it tethered and to force it to remain stagnant on that point, not to move. Meditation is a flowing phenomenon. There is no question of any effort, not question of forcing, no question of fighting, no question of any goal, achievement, ambition. It is a total let-go, it is the most beautiful experience. There is nothing which is more beautiful than meditation; hence out of such relaxation, compassion arises.

Compassion is the flowering of a relaxed consciousness. One starts feeling great compassion for all that is. One starts feeling compassion because people are unnecessarily miserable. They need not be miserable; that is not their destiny. They are creating their misery, they are making a great effort to create their hells, and then they are caught in their own nets. They go on crying and weeping and they want to get out of the misery but still they go on making the same prisons again and again. They don't want to remain imprisoned, but they have become so unconscious, so mechanical, that they only know how to make prisons. They go on saying "We want to be free, we want to be blissful," but whatsoever they do brings more misery, On one hand they make some effort to get out of the prison, on the other hand they destroy it. People are in a dilemma.

The man of meditation feels tremendous compassion for all beings -- not only man: animals, birds, trees, rocks -- for all that is, because they are all imprisoned. Every being is an imprisoned splendour -- it can be released, But nobody can force anybody out of his imprisonment, If he has decided to remain a prisoner nobody can do anything about. Hence the man of meditation feels even more compassion., He can see clearly the whole ridiculousness of it. The absurdity of the human mind, of the human endeavour, is so clear to him that there is no question about his compassion, It is not something cultivated. It is not that he forces himself to feel compassion for others, he simply feels compassion.

Buddha made it a point -- and it was the first time in the history of thought; before him nobody had 1/08/07

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made it clear in that way, nobody had emphasised it -- that true compassion is not a cultivated phenomenon, True compassion comes naturally out of meditation. Hence he says, 'Compassion is the criterion of whether meditation has succeeded or not, whether you have really become relaxed or not.'

If your life becomes compassionate, that is the proof, a very concrete proof that you have gone through an inner transformation, all tensions have disappeared and there is now absolute calm, absolute silence, absolute peace, you have arrived home. Compassion becomes the symbol, the criterion, the manifestation of what has happened at the innermost core of your being.

Meditation happens inside, compassion is its outer expression, its manifestation. Nobody can see anybody else's meditativeness, but everybody can see the compassion, the love, that surrounds such a person. He becomes love, he becomes compassion.

Go deeply into meditation so compassion can be achieved. That is the ultimate truth of life.

The Imprisoned Splendor

Chapter #23

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