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‌CHAPTER 20

21 July 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Anand Patrice. Anand means bliss; patrice means noble. Bliss makes a person noble, not birth, not education, not morality: only an overflowing bliss brings grace, and grace is noble.

The miserable person is bound to be mean. He cannot afford to be noble. It is impossible for him. He cannot give that which he has not got himself in the first place. What does he have to share?

His misery, his thorns, his darkness, his pathology. Even if he intends otherwise, his intention does not matter. He may like to help people, to love people, to be a blessing to others, but he cannot. He may think he is doing good, but he will go on doing bad.

The flower of virtue cannot bloom when the heart is dark and gloomy. The flower of virtue can open itself up only when you are full of light and joy. It needs a certain season of rejoicing. Without that season the flower cannot open up.

In the past religions have been teaching people to be moral, to have this character or that, to follow a certain pattern, to be good, to serve people, to be virtuous, but all that has only helped people to be more and more egoistic. It has not brought joy on the earth. The so-called saints have made it very sad. All dance has disappeared from the human heart. The human heart is almost like a desert: nothing seems to have been left green and growing, everything has become shrunken. All sources of joy have disappeared; there is not even an oasis.

My effort in creating sannyasins is to create a few oases, a few people who can still live in paradise on this earth, a few people whose presence can be a proof that something more than the misery exists, is possible, that bliss is not only a dream; it can be a reality. And bliss makes one noble, because you cannot avoid sharing it with others. That’s what nobility is.

Another meaning of patrice is aristocrat. A blissful person is aristocratic. He may be a beggar, he may not have anything at all, but he has a certain aristocracy... something which is not of this ordinary, mundane, world, something that reflects the beyond. That’s exactly the meaning of aristo: it means something transcendental, it means something divine.

Be blissful. It requires only a decision to be blissful, because it is our decision to be miserable. We are so committed to being miserable that it seems almost impossible to pull oneself out of it, but it is only a question of decision; just a little will.

Take hold of yourself and pull yourself out of the old structures that have gathered around you. Next time when sadness starts coming, just pull yourself out of it, do the contrary: start dancing, sing a song, start laughing, and see how the energy that was going to become sadness becomes laughter – it makes a turn.

It’s the same energy! And once you have known it, you know the knack of transforming all sadness into bliss, all negativity into positivity. And that is the fundamental secret; to know it is to be an alchemist. Then one knows how to transform base metal into gold.

Deva Malcolm. Deva means divine; malcolm has two meanings, both are beautiful. One is servant; then it will mean God’s servant, the servant of the divine.

And to be a servant of God is the only way to be a master of your own life. Trying to be a master of your own life you will always remain a servant. You will be a servant of the ego, you will be a servant of desires, instincts, body, mind, you will be a servant of so many masters.

To surrender to God means getting out of the possession of all these masters: the body, the mind the instincts, the desires, the dreams... And God is not a person, God is only a presence. By being a servant of God you are not really being a servant to somebody; because there is nobody like God.

You simply melt into the presence of divine existence, you simply melt into the sun, into the wind, into the rain. You melt into rivers and oceans and into the sky. Slowly slowly one goes on melting... One day one is no more. Surrender is the beginning of melting, of dissolving oneself into the total. The day it is complete and you are not to be found any more, you have become the Master. You are not in one sense; you are for the first time, in another sense. Before you were a false entity, a pseudo phenomenon; now you are a reality. And to be real is to be a Master.

The second meaning of Malcolm is from Latin, the dove. The dove represents peace, silence; it is an ancient symbol in all the cultures for peace. Then your name will mean divine peace.

But it is the same because to be peaceful you have to disappear. The ego is a disturbance, it is noisy. The ego creates continuous conflict in you. It is the root cause of all your misery. It is your madness. It does not leave you a single peaceful moment, a single restful moment. Day in, day out, it tortures you. Even in sleep it goes on creating nightmares. Peace is possible only when you are not as an ego. When you die as an ego peace descends from the beyond.

You can choose any meaning: if you have some love for the word god, then the first meaning; if you are not in love with the word god... Many people are not any more, because in the name of God

so much harm has been done. Humanity has suffered so much in the name of God, not because of God but because of cunning politicians and priests. So if you feel a little antagonism about God, forget about the first meaning, then the second meaning will do. It will function in the same way. It will be the same thing, but not expressed in religious language. And religious language has lost relevance, it looks out-of-date.

Even if you are not antagonistic to the word god, you may be antagonistic to the word servant. Many people are. The very idea looks ugly. Why t should one be a servant? – because to be a servant is to be a slave, to be a servant seems to reduce one to a commodity. Why? It hurts because man has been oppressed, subjugated for so long that one – wants to remain independent; one does not want to it surrender to anybody any more, even though it is God, even though it is only the divine presence – why should one be a servant? The western mind particularly feels some deep rebelliousness against the word servant.

So if that is the case, forget the first meaning. It is beautiful in itself, but if the association in the mind is not good, then there is no need to force yourself to feel like a servant. Hence I am telling you both meanings; you can choose whichever you like. The ultimate result is the same, so it doesn’t matter which one you choose. If you choose divine peace, it will function one way; if you choose God’s servant, it will function in the same way. Existentially both mean the same.

Anand Shunyo. Anand means bliss; shunyo means absolute emptiness. Bliss descends only in absolute emptiness. It needs a space inside you, and it needs a space absolutely uncluttered by any furniture. And the mind is full of furniture: thoughts, memories, imagination, desires, projections, prejudices, philosophies, dogmas – mind is almost a junkyard. It is so full of nonsense that there is no space left for bliss to enter. Bliss goes on knocking from every door and window, but all is closed.

The whole work of a sannyasin is to empty oneself, to throw all this rubbish out. How not to be a Christian, how not to be a Hindu, how not to be a Mohammedan, how not to be a communist – that’s the work. How to negate this whole piled up nonsense of centuries; how not to be a German how not to be a Chinese, how not to be an Indian, how not to be that, how not to be white or black; and ultimately, how not to be a man or woman, tool

Just to be, with no adjective attached to it, pure being, that’s what I mean by absolute emptiness – no past, no future. Then in the middle when you are just in the moment, there is space, infinite space. That space is shunyam. Buddha has called that space meditation. That is meditation. In that utter silence, in that utter emptiness, something from the beyond simply starts showering.

There is a beautiful parable about one of Buddha’s chief disciples... He is sitting under a tree and then suddenly flowers start showering. He looks all around: “What is happening? – the tree has no flowers, from where are the flowers coming? They are simply appearing from the sky!” He is puzzled, and then he sees gods above the tree showering flowers and he asks, “What is the matter?” And the gods say to him, “We are showering these flowers in gratefulness for your great sermon on silence.”

But the disciple says, “I have not spoken a single word! What sermon are you talking about?” And the gods laugh and they say, “Yes, you have not spoken a single word and we have not heard a single word – that is the sermon on silence. Neither have you spoken nor have we heard. You have been in silence – that is the only sermon on silence. To be silent is the only way to say something

about silence. You cannot say it in words. It can only be shown, it cannot be said. You have shown it so beautifully that we had to come from heaven. Just in tremendous gratitude we are showering these flowers on you!”

A beautiful story, of tremendous significance. Be silent, be empty, be a pure space, and flowers will go on showering – flowers of bliss, flowers of love, flowers of beatitude, flowers of benediction.

Anand Santoshi. Anand means bliss; santoshi means utterly contented, absolutely contented.

Bliss is possible only when there is no desire left, bliss is possible only when there is no complaint against existence. Bliss is possible only when you live in such trust that whatsoever is, is good, that whatsoever happens is good: when you are not hankering for something else, when there is no longing left for anything, worldly or otherworldly, when you are not even contemplating spiritual growth, or becoming enlightened, or being immortal, or reaching paradise. Those are all desires, and desire means discontent.

Discontent is the seed of desire – desire is the sprout of discontent. And when there is desire there is turmoil, when there is desire you are tense, when there is desire you are angry, when there is desire you are sad, when there is desire there is bound to be frustration. Each desire leads to frustration. It cannot lead you anywhere else. Each expectation is bound to turn sour, is bound to become frustration. This is how desire functions, this is the way of desire, the nature of desire; nothing can be done about it. Just as poison kills, desire frustrates.

Become contented. Whoever you are, wherever you are, whatsoever is the case, be contented. Feel grateful. And don’t project anything into the future, and don’t ask anything from existence; don’t demand and all will be given... all that you cannot even think about and dream about.

If you can remain desireless the whole kingdom of God is yours. Then all these stars and all this existence is yours. But you have to fulfill one condition and that condition is of desirelessness. Then life is bliss, then life is peace, then life is divine. Then it is a constant celebration. Then it is pure dance, unending. It goes on and on; even death cannot stop it, even beyond death it continues. Then it is not confined by birth and death, it is transcendental of all dualities.

And this state of non-dual, eternal dance, is the state Buddha lives in, Jesus lives in. Jesus calls it Christ-consciousness, Buddha calls it Buddhahood; those are just names, but it is a state of constant rejoicing. The only thing that has to be fulfilled on your part is for you to be contented. Learn contentment and you will know what it means to be a sannyasin.

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