Chapter title: None

‌Chapter title: None‌

15 January 1981 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8101155 ShortTitle: POND15 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[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up.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.]

Your name, Marlene, has three meanings, and all three meanings are significant. They precisely define the whole process of sannyas.

The first meaning is bitterness, the second meaning is rebellion, the third meaning is fragrance.

Man is born as bitterness, and unless he goes through an inner transformation, a rebellion, his energy cannot be fragrant. It will remain bitter. It cannot be sweet.

Nothing is wrong with bitterness. It is just unpurified energy, raw, just like a raw diamond taken directly from the mind; it needs much work; only then will it shine forth in its absolute beauty.

The most precious diamond in the world is the Kohinoor. When it was found in a mine in the south of India, at Golconda, it was three times weightier than it is now. But it is millions of times more precious now than it was then. It has been continuously cut, given shape, polished. It remains only one-third of its original weight but it has gained a million times in value.

After it was found for the first time, it remained lying in a poor man's house for

three years. He was not aware that it was such a precious thing. His children used to play with the stone. Anybody could have stolen it. It was just by chance that a wandering sannyasin stayed in his hut one night and looked et the stone that was lying just in front of the hut. He used to be a jeweller before he became a sannyasin. He said 'What are you doing with this stone? I have never in my life seen such a big diamond. It can make you the richest person in the world.' And it proved to be the greatest; up to now no other diamond has been able to surpass it.

The same is true about human energy; we come as raw diamonds from the womb; that is the meaning of bitterness. With anger, with hatred, with jealousy, with possessiveness, with all kinds of ugly monsters we are born. But all those monsters can be transformed. The devil within us can become the divine. The words

'devil' and 'divine' come from the same root. As far as the root is concerned, they belong to the same 1/08/07

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Sanskrit root, 'div'. Devil means 'divine' upside-down, doing a sirshasan, a headstand, that's all, that's the only difference. If we can put the devil on his feet again he becomes divine.

But that's what rebellion is: putting things in their right perspective, arranging one's inner world in deep accord. And love can do that miracle. The only magic in existence is that of love.

If one can love then things start changing of their own accord and the bitterness one day becomes fragrance; hence I say your name defines the whole process of sannyas.

Misery is always old, bliss is always young. Misery is old because it depends on the past. It is nd bliss is always young because it is part of the now. It is never caused by the past. It springs up here and now. It cannot be old, it is intrinsically impossible for bliss to be old. That's why even an old person, If he is blissful,

radiates youthfulness. And the miserable person, even If he is young looks old, dull, dead.

To represent this fact in the East we have never made any statue of Buddha or Mahavira or Krishna in their old age. No statue represents their old age. Not that they never became old -- they became old, they died too -- but their statues represent only youthfulness.

It is very symbolic. It is not historical, but it is far more important than ordinary facts. It represents something of the inner.

It is saying that blissfulness is always young. The body may become old, the body may die, but bliss-fulness never dies. It never becomes old -- how can it die? It is impossible. Death never happens to blissfulness. In fact blissfulness is not part of time at all. Anything that is part of time is bound to become old sooner or later, because time always becomes past. It is always on the way towards the past. But bliss is part of eternity. So is now part of eternity.

What I call meditation is nothing but being utterly herenow, putting the past aside, dropping all dreams of the future, abiding in the moment... and suddenly, the spring bursts forth, suddenly there are flowers and flowers in your being. Suddenly life has taken a quantum leap, from time to eternity, from the physical to the metaphysical, from the outer to the inner. And the inner is always young, it never grows old. It is never born, it never dies. It always remains the same.

And that's the definition of truth; that which always remains the same. And, accordingly, the definition of dream is: that which goes on changing. That's why in the East we call the world just a dream, a maya, an illusion, because it goes on changing.

We have to find that which does not change. And it is there, within our innermost core. We just have to become silent enough, we just have to put a stop to our mind and its turmoil. And that's what past and future are, mind turmoil, noise of the mind -- either memories or imagination. Once these two things are not there you enter into the world of the eternal, into the world of truth.

Meditation is not of the mind, it is of the heart. Mind knows nothing of love. It knows only logic. And logic is the farthest thing from love; they never meet. Love cannot be logical, logic cannot be loving. They are like parallel line; which never meet.

Meditation belongs to the heart, to the world of love.

Many people start meditation but they start meditation as part of their mind -- soon they will drop it. It is not their love affair. And mind is very calculating; one day it will meditate and it will look for the profit, the result, the reward and if it is not coming then the mind will say 'What is the point of waiting your time?'

Two days, three days, one week, two weeks -- these are not things which can be grown so quickly; these are not seasonal flowers. These are cedars of Lebanon, they take hundreds of years to grow. One needs patience, infinite patience, and only love can afford that. Logic is very impatient. Logic wants everything quickly because time is running fast, life is slipping out of our hands, death is knocking on the door hence everything has to be like instant coffee.

Meditation also has to be instant meditation. But meditation cannot be instant. Coffee can be, but meditation cannot be. And it is good that it cannot be. If it can be instant then it will be sold in the marketplace. Then you can have it in all colours, sizes and shapes. It will be manufactured like Transcendental meditation. Now TM is a trademark. Even the word 'TM' is copyrighted, patented; nobody can use it. It is like some commodity.

Meditation is not a commodity.

So this has to be the beginning of a sannyasin: the shift from mind, calculation, cunningness, logic, impatience, towards a love affair. If sannyas is a love affair -- then only are things going to happen. Then you function in a totally different way. Then there is tremendous readiness to wait. And the miracle is, one 1/08/07

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who can wait forever, he may even get it now. And the person who wants to get it now may have to wait forever. Impatience is a disturbance. patience is a help, a nourishment.

And love can wait, only love can wait. Only love can hope, only love can trust.

Love has all the great values which are needed to grow meditativeness, awareness, silence.

Initiation into sannyas is initiation into the ultimate love affair of life.

Meditation is a door to immortality. Without meditation we live in the world of death; with meditation we enter into the real world of life. Without meditation what we call life is nothing but sitting in a waiting room waiting for your train to come, or standing in a queue which every moment becomes smaller and smaller, as people go on disappearing into death.

A life in which death is the ultimate end is not much of a life. At the most it can be defined as slow death. For a few people it takes seventy years to die, for a few people who are lazy, ninety years, for a few people who are really lousy, one hundred years, one hundred and twenty years. Some people are quick too, but one thing is certain: from the cradle we are moving every moment towards the grave. This is not true life; it is just a belief that it is life. It is just slow death, slow poisoning.

Each moment we are dying; but once you enter into the world of meditation, once you know how to be silent, how to be alert and watchful, how to be unidentified with the mind, how to be not a mind -- that's what meditation is all about; a state of no-mind -- then suddenly there is no beginning, no end, no birth, no death. Then one tastes for the first time what life is. That life is called god.

And unless one knows that 'I am immortal,' that 'I have been here forever and I am going to be here forever,' one is bound to remain in anxiety and anguish and misery and fear and all kinds of nightmares. But the moment you know that you are not the body, not the mind, but an eternal soul. All dark clouds disappear. For the first time existence becomes full of sun, full of flowers, full of light.

Love is a bird on the wing, not a bird in the cage. Love is freedom, never a bondage. But we make love a bondage -- that's how we kill it. We put the beautiful bird into a golden cage, but it is not the same bird. It appears exactly the same, but it is no more the same, because the freedom is gone and with the freedom the spirit is gone. With freedom the whole sky was available; without freedom it has lost all its kingdom. It is encaged into a small space.

Maybe just out of old habit it will still sing but the song will be just a gramophone record -- out of habit, not out of spirit. There is nothing to sing

about any more. The same bird used to sing in the trees; flying into the wind, going beyond the clouds, longing to reach to the stars. Then there was song! Then that song was spontaneous, because there was something to sing about, something to celebrate about.

One of the greatest misfortunes that has happened to humanity is that we have destroyed love by making it a relationship, by making it a marriage, by making it a possessiveness, a domination. We have killed the whole of human freedom just because we have killed love.

My sannyasins have to release the bird from the cage. They have to live lovingly, but without any relationship, without any promises for the future, without any future and without any past. Then again you will be able to sing, again you will be able to dance, again you will be alive. And the very intensity of that life, the very crescendo of that song, is the experience of god!

When love is dead, god is dead. When love is dancing, alive, throbbing, pulsating, then god is alive. It all depends what you do with your love.

God is not a question of going to the church or to the temple or reading the Bible or the Gita -- that's all nonsense. That is only for the stupid. The true god has something to do with your love; your love energy has to be released in absolute freedom so the whole sky is yours. Then god is born in you!

And to give birth to god is the real fulfilment of life. There is nothing higher than that. There cannot be anything higher than that.

Your name, Dinesh, means the sun, the source of all light, the source of all warmth, the source of all life One may not immediately see the connection but when you are enjoying a rose flower, you are enjoying a gift from the sun. Life is not possible without the sun. The trees will wither, the birds will die, the people will disappear. If the sun dies then within ten minutes all life will be gone.

It will take ten minutes because light takes ten minutes to reach to the earth so we will come to know of the death of the sun after ten minutes. But nothing can be done about it. By the time we know we are finished. The moment we know, all is finished.

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The sun is the source of all that exists. Just as there is an outer sun, there is also an inner sun, because the inner and the outer are always in balance. Whatsoever exists on the outside also exist inside. That's how life keeps its balance. To search for the inner sun is the whole purpose of religion.

Science can be defined as the search for the outer source of life, and religion as the search for the inner source of life. And if logic is the method for the outer science then love is the method for the inner science, religion.

Use love to search for your innermost shrine of being and there will find not only yourself; you will find the source of all! At the centre of our being we are one, we are not separate. We are separate only on the circumference. In ignorance we are separate, in wisdom we are one. And love is the way towards that wisdom. Just as there can be no science without logic, there can be no religion without love.

Sannyas is an effort to go beyond the night of the soul. We have not yet seen the dawn. We go on stumbling in the dark. And the reason is that our eyes are focussed on the outside. We keep our own being at the back; that keeps our being in a shadow, in darkness.

If we can take a one-hundred-eighty-degree turn, then suddenly there will be dawn, immediately our inner being will be full of light. And that experience is enlightenment, to know oneself as full of light is to know all that is worth knowing. One who has lived without knowing one's own light has lived in vain.

Initiation into sannyas is a deep commitment towards inner journey, a decision for that one-hundred-eighty-degree turn. And it is only a question of deciding. If one decides one can do it. One is capable of doing it.

People are not able to do it just because they are indecisive, hesitant, ambiguous. Once the decision is there, absolute and total, in a single moment one can turn towards the inner world. And that single moment is far more important than living a long life, because that single moment will make you eternal. The long

life will take you only to death and nowhere else.

The experience of bliss has many things in common with the moonlight. First, it is light; second, it is very cool light. It is not feverish. it is not cold either, neither hot nor cold, but just exactly in the middle --

cool. And to experience the cool light gives you a bath. It rejuvenates you. It makes you beautiful, graceful.

It happens in the moonlight; the whole existence seems to be more beautiful than ever. It is the same existence, the same world with no difference at all. You have seen it -- the same rocks, the same trees, the same roads, the same houses -- but suddenly in the moonlight, as if a miracle happens, everything becomes more mysterious, becomes more poetic, becomes dreamlike, takes a flavour of sweetness, a fragrance.

The same happens in blissfulness you are showered with a cool light and it cleanses your very being, gives you a new freshness, a beauty, a grace. A miracle surrounds you. For the first time you feel you are made of the same stuff as dreams are made of, for the first time the prose style of life disappears and you attain to a poetic style; the mathematics evaporates and music enters in.

Moonlight gives you an ecstasy but the ecstasy has no excitement in it -- and that's its beauty, its indefinable quality, because whenever we thing of ecstasy we think of excitement. And the true ecstasy is without any excitement at all. It is a new dimension, so new that it is absolutely indefinable in the old words and in the old ways of expression. That's why the mystics have always felt that it cannot be said.

It can be shown, but it cannot be said. The master can share it in deep silence, heart-to-heart, but he cannot say it.

Man can live either in darkness or in light. Both alternatives are open.

Each moment we are at a cross road; we can choose to live ac enlightened beings but millions of people choose to live an unenlightened life.

It seems very strange -- why? Why do they choose the life of darkness when the life of light is available? It certainly is one of the most significant questions -- why people choose misery when they can be blissful?

There are very subtle reasons. One is that misery fulfills many things which bliss cannot. Misery gives you nourishment for the ego and bliss kills the ego completely. And we are brought up in such a way that ego seems to be very significant. Even the so-called psychologists go on saying that every person needs a very strong ego, otherwise he will not be able to survive in the struggle of life.

Life is not taken as a celebration. It is taken as a struggle, a war. And of course, if it is a war, then you have to be very egoistic to fight it. You cannot be relaxed.

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Without ego there is relaxation. Bliss brings relaxation, such total relaxation, that you are no more there.

The relaxation is so absolute that the ego is not possible. Ego needs tensions as support. Misery gives you enough tension; it supports the ego. The more miserable you are, the more the ego is nourished, fed, becomes stronger. And out of the ego all our projects arise. Only an egoistical person can seek power, prestige, respectability, money, and all that nonsense, only an egoistical person. And this whole society, for millions of years, has been teaching every child to have more power, more money, more than others. You have to defeat everybody, you have to be competitive. And all these are the subtle reasons why we choose misery. Only a miserable person can be a politician, only a miserable person can go after money.

The really blissful person does not bother about non-essential things. His life is so inwardly rich that he does not care to become a prime minister or to ba a president. Why should he take all this anxiety and worry and all kinds of nightmares? There is no reason!

Alexander the Great had asked Diogenes, a great mystic, 'I would like to be as blissful as you are.'

Diogenes used to live naked by the side of a river. He was taking his usual morning sunbath, lying down on the sand in the warm sun. When Alexander came Diogenes did not even congratulate him. He remained lying there. He didn't take any note of him. Alexander stood there and said 'You are the first man I feel jealous of. It seems you have more than I have got. You look so blissful. If I am to be born again I will ask god to make me a Diogenes.'

Diogenes laughed and said 'You are a fool! Why wait for another life? Who knows? If you really want to be a Diogenes you can be this very moment; this riverbank is so big -- throw off your clothes, lie down, relax, take a sunbath, just as I am doing -- who is preventing you? At least I am not preventing you and there is nobody else here If you want to be as blissful as I am, who is preventing you? Why should you postpone it for the next life? And if you cannot do it now, are you certain you will be able to do it in the next life? And if you can do it in the next life, then why not now? There is no problem in it.'

Alexander was very well-versed as for as philosophy and logic are concerned. He was a disciple of Aristotle, the father of western logic. Aristotle was his personal tutor. But for the first time he saw that his whole logic was useless before this man; 'What he is saying is right!'

He said 'I can understand -- what you are saying is right, I cannot argue -- but the time has not come for me. Right now I am going to conquer the whole world.'

Diogenes said 'Okay, then what you will do,' Alexander said 'Then I will relax.' Diogenes said 'This is just absurd; I am relaxing now without conquering the world. Is that a requirement for relaxation, that first you have to conquer the world? If I can relax without conquering the world, why is it you cannot?'

Alexander stood there almost dumb, then bowed down and said 'I am sorry. I can understand your point, but I cannot do it now.'

What was the problem? Why couldn't he do it that moment? That is the problem for everybody too, our projects, our ego projects. 'I have to conquer the world, I have to become this, I have to become that, I have to possess this, only then will I be happy.' We make so many conditions to be blissful, that's why we are miserable; otherwise there is no need to make any conditions. One can simply choose to be blissful, to be full of light, to be full of joy, to be full of songs. One can become a festival of lights.

And it is a sheer question of decision. I emphasise the point again and again to my sannyasins that each moment you are given two opportunities -- to be blissful or to be miserable. If you choose to be miserable, don't complain! (laughter) You have chosen it. The next moment, don't choose it! If you are really fed up with it, then the next moment choose to be blissful -- that is my message for you! (laughter) From this very moment (laughter)... start choosing to be blissful. Right? Good, Yama!

The Old Pond ... Plop

Chapter #16

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