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‌CHAPTER 8

8 November 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva means divine, sugito means a song, a divine song. Life can become a divine song, it has the potential but the potential is not yet actual; it has to be actualised. That is the work of sannyas: to help the potential to come to a realisation.

This is the most subtle art, because man is the most mysterious being on the earth. All other beings are simple, man is complex. All other beings are like single notes of music. Man has so many instruments in his being that he can only be an orchestra, and that is the problem. If he does not become an orchestra he becomes a noisy crowd. Man is not a solo instrument. That is the trouble but that can also become a great opportunity. Never take yourself for granted. Man is basically a surpassing. Each moment you have to grope for something unknown. And remember, the journey is far more beautiful than the goal. Those who know, if you ask them they will say that the journey itself is the goal. So each step has to be lived, loved, tremendously. But still one has to remain open to the unknown, because much more is always possible and there is no end to that possibility. The potential has something infinite in it: you can go on actualising it and yet there is much still that has to be actualised.

Many milestones will come on the road, but the goal, never! So you can have a few resting places on the way, but remember: in the morning you have to go again. Never make your house on the road. All the houses on the road are nothing but caravanserais: stay for the night, enjoy the stay, rest, but don’t become attached.

Remember that the innermost core of man is that of a wanderer, a gypsy, and that is the beauty of man. All animals live as if they have arrived; man lives always as if he is arriving. But he never arrives, hence the ecstasy and the thrill.

Anand means bliss, and peter comes from Greek, it means the rock – the rock of bliss. The rock represents the eternal, the non-temporal.

In time everything is a flux. In time everything is constantly changing. In time there is nothing unchanging except change. It is like a river. Hence those who live only in time are found to live in misery, because you start enjoying something and by the time you are really getting in tune with it, it is gone.

And everything moves so fast that you cannot stay with anything. Everything goes on slipping out of your hands. One feels continuously thrown from this place to that; one is almost like driftwood, at the mercy of the waves. One cannot feel at ease and at home, because all homes are only sandcastles or, even better, just palaces made of playing-cards: a little whip of the breeze and the palace is gone. And you had put so much into making it. It happens so many times in a small life of seventy years that one’s whole life becomes nothing but a long long story of frustration.

The rock represents something that is beyond time, and one should make one’s house on the rock. Although the rock is beyond it is not impossible to reach it, because it is not only beyond, it is also within In fact the beyond and the within are synonymous. If you reach to your own innermost core you have gone beyond time. Right this very moment something exists in you which is not part of time – neither is it part of space. Your body is space, your mind is time, but there is something within you which is neither body nor mind: that is the rock.

Jesus told his disciple, Peter: You will be the rock of my church. In fact Peter was not his real name; it was given by Jesus, because this disciple whom Jesus called Peter was the only one who knew something beyond time. He had that tremendous trust in the master. It was not a question of mind- belief, it was a contact between spirit and spirit. He was the most faithful one. Hence Jesus said: You will be the rock of my church. To translate it rightly it means: only the eternal can be the right foundation of any temple anywhere. The temples and the churches that are made in time are not real temples and real churches.

Here we are again trying to make something out of the eternal. This has been the constant adventure of all those who have known. All the Buddhas of the past have been trying to work out only one single thing: how to help man to go beyond time into eternity.

The moment you are no more in time, you are in god, and to be in god is to make a house on an eternal rock. Everything else will be taken away from you. Death will destroy everything that you create, so before death comes, know something of the eternal life, because that is the only thing that death cannot take away from you, and that is the only way to defeat death.

Anand means bliss, nado means the soundless sound of existence. The Zen people call it the sound of one hand clapping; that is nado. It cannot be heard but still it can be experienced. It cannot be heard because it is not available through one sense. It can be experienced because it is only available to your totality.

Eyes can see, ears can hear; these are specialised parts of your body, they are only parts. But there is a subtle way of experiencing things in which specialised parts are no more in use, in which you function as a total organic unity. Eyes are dissolved into it, ears are dissolved into it; all senses are dissolved into it. You are just like a cloud, with no specialised senses. Then something is experienced; that is nado. Think of the child when he is conceived in the mother’s womb. He has no eyes yet, no ears yet, no nose, nothing. It will take time for those specialisations to develop. But

even the one-day-old child in the mother’s womb experiences. That is nado. Experience comes first and then the specialisation. Experience is so complex and so tremendously overwhelming that the child has to develop special senses to classify the experience, to define the experience, to be able to manage it.

The same happens in a reverse process when one goes into meditation: slowly slowly ears disappear, eyes disappear, nose disappears. All senses disappear into a very deep chaos, but that chaos is immensely creative: it is out of that chaos that stars are born. It is immensely pregnant. In that chaos one becomes a Buddha or a Krishna or a Christ. That chaos is the goal of all meditations.

So one is no more a specialised being: in that experience all the senses have dissolved, poured themselves. It is a kind of seeing and a kind of hearing and a kind of taste and a kind of smell and a kind of touch all together. It is tremendous, because all these senses are functioning simultaneously and not in separation. It is the greatest synthesis possible; it is the synthesis we come from and this is the synthesis we have to reach again. The moment it is reached again the circle is perfect. And the perfection of the circle is fulfilment. Then there is nothing left to know, nothing left to desire. This perfect circle automatically produces immense contentment.

Nado is one of the most important words in the East. It also means music, melody, but that too with a very special meaning. When you hear music and you are overwhelmed by it, it is not the music, the noise, that overwhelms you; it is something else that comes in the gaps surreptitiously. It is not the music heard that overwhelms you; it is something unheard that penetrates you. The greatest musician is one who can manage this miracle, who can make available the soundless sound through sound.

The greatest painter is one who can make available the invisible through the visible colours. Those visible colours are only indicators, fingers pointing to the moon. The painting is not really in the paint; the painting is something that has to be read between the lines. So those who focus on the painting miss the whole point. It cannot be known directly; a totally different kind of look is needed. That’s why the critic goes on missing, because his very approach makes him focus on the material part of the painting; the paint, the canvas, the composition, the style and all that. He becomes focused on the material part of the painting and the real painting exists as a non-material phenomenon, just by the side of the material; just as the body is there and just hidden behind the body is the soul. If you focus too much on the body you will miss the soul. That’s how physicists go on missing: they become caught up in the gross. They can’t read between the lines. They can’t see the beauty of the blanks, the intervals.

When you are hearing music there are two things continuously being poured into you: one is the visible, that which is heard, the tangible, the sound. But between two sounds there is a moment of soundlessness, the interval, and that interval is really the music; that is nado. It is just as we write music on paper as a score: those who know how to read it will be able to read it, but it is not music. It simply represents music. The score on the paper simply represents music, it is symbolic; it is not music itself. You can go on looking at it but you will not be overwhelmed by it. Although it represents, it points to, something tremendously beautiful, in itself it is nothing.

In exactly the same way, music in its own turn is nothing. It is again a score, it again points to something higher than itself. Unless you hear that you are hearing only noise. And modern music has become more and more noise; nado has disappeared from it.

That is the beauty of classical music. If you go into Eastern music then it is just incredible. The whole beauty consists in there being less and less sound and more and more silence. The master musician manages with the least sound, the optimum soundlessness. He uses sound just as a jumping board, and then the ocean of the soundlessness is there. The sound leads you only to the jumping board, and then the real thing happens. If a musician can help one to go into silence through sound then he is really a maestro; only then is he a maestro, otherwise he is just a technician. So is the case with all kinds of art.

Poetry is not the words it is composed of. Poetry is something that is not there in the words but which hovers around the words. You need a very unfocused state to catch hold of poetry. If you become too interested in the words then you may know the grammar, the language, and you may know the metre and everything, but that is only the edifice. It is only the house, not the deity. You become too interested in the walls of the temple and you forget all about the deity.

So nado represents the invisible, which is everywhere. In music it is silence; in poetry it is not in words but in the wordless rhythm that lingers. And it only whispers; it is not very loud. Words are very loud, but nado is a fragrance; it is not even a flower. You cannot catch hold of it: you have simply to allow it to happen to you. You have to be just tuned in to it, available to it, in a passive alertness. So whether it is music or painting or poetry the goal is always nado; and if nado is achieved, god is achieved.

That is why Zen people tried to go into meditation through many many arts – calligraphy, painting, sculpture, gardening, flower arrangements, archery even. Zen has done something immensely creative. No other religion has been able to rise to such heights of creativity; all other religions have remained poor in that way. And the height consists of only one thing: Zen people became aware that nado can be achieved through as many ways as possible. It is not a question of what you do; it is a question of reading between the lines in whatsoever you are doing.

For example, in archery you are not to concentrate on the target; you are not to concentrate on being successful; you are not even to concentrate on the bow and the arrow. You are not to be a doer; you have to let it happen. You are just there, passively alert, and some unknown energy takes possession of you. Some unknown energy starts flowing through your hands, through the arrow, through the bow, and you are not motivated at all towards reaching the target. There is no question of it; it is as if the arrow on its own reaches the target. But whether it reaches or not is irrelevant; the real thing is that you were not a doer – you allowed it to happen. Whenever somebody allows something to happen, nado descends, and that is the whole secret of meditation.

It can happen walking if you simply allow the walking. You are not going somewhere... just for a morning walk, with no hurry, with no motive; with not even health as the motive. There is no motive at all – it is just for the sheer joy of the rising sun and the birds and the trees and the people and the dogs barking and the street warming up and people starting to move and the trees waking. With just the sheer joy of this beautiful, waking morning you are in a let-go, and you will be in nado!

It can happen in millions of ways. God has no particular way to come to man, all doors are his doors. But man has to be in a particular situation, a particular milieu, and that milieu can be reduced to simply two words: let-go.

[The new sannyasin says: Oh, what you say is... so overwhelming... so beautiful. I wish I could remember all, but I.]

There is no need to remember; it has penetrated your heart! Something to say to me?

[A sannyasin, who is leaving for the West, says: My heart wants to be here but my mind keeps interfering.]

The mind is not the question! Listen to the heart and then manage to be here. You have given enough to the mind; now the time has come to give to the heart!

People are very closed to love. They don’t invite love towards themselves, and even if love comes they remain closed. And love comes, love comes in a thousand and one ways – it knocks continuously on your doors – but people are very much afraid of love; they don’t invite it in. The fear is that love is a very overwhelming experience. You lose control in love, you are no more the master in love. When love is there you are just a slave; when love is there you are reduced to nothingness. When love is present you become absent; that is the fear. The ego is very very apprehensive about love so any sign of love coming close and the ego immediately closes all doors, all windows, all possibilities; the ego protects itself against love. Love seems to be like a death to the ego.

But then you feel suffocated, then you feel starved, because without love there is no nourishment for the soul, and without love there is no fresh wind coming in, no sun-rays coming in. Without love you live in a grave. The ego can protect itself against love but then life becomes just a suffocation, a misery, a hell. But people are so unintelligent that they choose to live in a hell rather than sacrificing the ego. And to sacrifice the ego is nothing because it is just a shadow, an idea.

... When love knocks on the door, open your doors, invite love in. Let the love become your guest and you be the host, and it will transform you! It will take you into a totally different world. Every knock of love is in a subtle way the knock of god. To reject love is to reject god; to accept love is to accept god. A loving person is a religious person, and if you can accept love, only then can you give it to others. If you cannot accept you cannot give either; they both go together like incoming breath and outgoing breath.

If you don’t inhale how will you exhale? What will you exhale? First the inhalation has to come; your lungs have to be full of air, then you can exhale. Your soul has to be full of love, then you can exhale. So the person who accepts love is the person who is capable of giving it to others. They are two aspects of the same event, like incoming breath and outgoing breath.

So love has to become your religion. Love is really the religion. Live in love and forget all other theologies and gods and churches and temples. Live in love and forget all philosophies! And that’s more than enough. It will take you to the ultimate destiny of life.

Meditate while you are here. Learn at least one meditation that you like, and then continue it back home.…

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