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‌CHAPTER 17

17 October 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Satyen means the truth. The real search is not for god and cannot be. To seek and search for god means that you have already accepted the idea that god is; you have already concluded. The search is no more true, no more authentic. Now your mind will try to prove whatsoever it has already accepted, believed – your enquiry is doomed from the very beginning. So the real search cannot be for god, although when the search is complete god is found. But one cannot search for god; one can only search for the truth. Truth simply means that which is. There is no need to believe in it; it is already there. This whole existence is truth.

The enquiry has to be into truth, and when you reach the very core of it god is found. God cannot be the object of enquiry; the object of enquiry can only be that which is. It is not a question of belief. You don’t believe in the trees – they are. You don’t believe in the sun – it is. You don’t believe in the people – there is no need to believe, you know they are. This totality that is, is truth and we have to enter it.

Of course when we reach to the innermost shrine of it god is found, but one cannot begin with god; one can only end in god.

Deva means divine, amido is one of the names of Buddha. The Sanskrit name is Amitabh – it means infinite light. Then it travelled to Tibet and to China and then to Japan and from Amitabh it became Amido; in Japan it is Amido. In this whole travelling it has become softer, is more round, more sweet, and has taken on a new beauty.

The inner core of every being is the Buddha, because at the innermost core there is nothing but pure consciousness. Buddha means awareness. Buddha is not a person. There has also been a historical person, but that was only one embodiment of Buddhahood; many more have been there before, many more afterwards, many more will always be happening. Buddhahood is a principle –

Gautam Buddha was one. the embodiments. Whenever anybody becomes aware, he becomes a Buddha... whenever inner darkness disappears and you are full of light. And that is the intrinsic capacity of every being – not only of human beings but even of animals, birds, trees, although they are very far away from it, because even human beings are very far away from it. But the potential is there. The distance may be long or short but the potential is there. Unless this whole existence becomes alert, aware, paradise cannot be found.

Paradise simply means that all those who were potential Buddhas have become actual Buddhas. That is the ultimate utopia. Buddha and Christ and Krishna and Lao Tzu have all been working for that ultimate utopia. That’s my work too, to help your Buddha to be awakened, to persuade your Buddha to open his eyes – there is no fear, you can open the eyes – to seduce your potential to become actual. Yes, a very seductive atmosphere is needed.

In the ordinary world it cannot happen, because it is just driving you to the opposite polarity; it makes you more and more asleep, it gives you more and more tranquillisers. All those entertainments and amusements and novels and movies and tv are nothing but tranquillisers to keep you fast asleep, never giving you any chance to be awake. keeping you dreaming. Hence communes are needed, schools are needed, where a few people can start moving towards awarenesss and can deliberately create an atmosphere, a certain energy field, where sleep has to be broken, and awareness has to be nourished.

By becoming a sannyasin you are entering a totally different kind of world. You may not be fully aware of it... but I welcome you!

Ehi Passiko... This is one of the most often repeated phrases of Buddha. Whenever he talks to his disciples either he will begin his discourse by ‘ehi passiko’ or end by ‘ehi passiko’; it means ‘come and see.’

The greatest contribution of Buddha to the world is not to believe... rather, experiment. Belief leads people astray. Belief only hides your ignorance but never makes you wise, because in the first place belief is a lie; you don’t know anything about god and you start believing. Now you are beginning a life of lies, and slowly slowly repeated so many times that the lie will start looking like a truth. That’s how millions of people are living. A few are Christians, a few are Hindus, a few are Mohammedans, but they are all living in lies because they have not encountered truth themselves, it has not been their own experience; they have believed others.

To believe simply means that you are not really interested in knowing, hence you can believe. The person who is really interested in knowing, how can he believe? He will say ‘I want to know, not to believe’; belief is a poor substitute. If you are thirsty you don’t want to believe in water. You want to drink water, not to believe in water. How is that going to help? But if somebody is not thirsty, he can believe. He will say ‘Okay, water exists – I believe in it.’

Just to avoid the argument, just not to waste time in it, that’s why people believe in god. They are not interested – they are just polite. They say ‘Yes, god is!’ That is their way of avoiding the problem completely; they don’t want to discuss, they don’t want to go into it. It is not thought very polite, mannerly, to discuss god, because it creates fear. Who knows? – the very discussion and you may get caught in something – some desire, some longing to search may arise. So it is better to believe,

to go to the church once in a while and pay your respects to the priests, to once in a while just read the Bible... some ritual, some ceremony, but those are just formal. Your heart is not involved there. That’s what Sunday religion is. It is not your commitment. It is just like a club – your church, your temple – where people meet. It is a getting-together of no real importance.

Buddha says ‘Don’t believe, because if you believe you will never know. If you really want to know, don’t believe.’ He does not mean to disbelieve, because disbelief is also another kind of belief. Those who believe in god, believe; those who don’t believe in god, they also believe. One believes in god’s existence, one believes in god’s non existence, but both are believers... no difference at all; the theist and the atheist are the same, the Catholics and the Communists – no difference at all. Whether it is the Vatican or the Kremlin it is the same.

Buddha says ‘Come and see!’ That is his invitation. He says ‘Come... and don’t believe in me but experiment with me. Go into it yourself, and if you can see, if you can feel, only then believe.’ But then it is no more belief; then it is trust, then it is faith. That is the difference between belief and faith: faith comes out of experience; belief is just a prejudice without any experience to support it.

‘Ehi’ means come; ‘passiko’ means see. Buddha says ‘I have opened the doors – come and see!’ He repeats again and again ’Don’t believe because the scriptures say so. Who knows? Maybe the people who wrote the scriptures were just cunning and clever and were out to exploit you. Who knows? Maybe they were themselves deceived – maybe they were honest people but they were themselves deceived; they were hallucinating about god.

‘So don’t believe because scriptures say so, and don’t believe because respectable people say so, because they may be saying it only because by saying it they become respectable. Don’t believe because priests say so, because priests are just doing a kind of business. They have to say so; they are salesmen. They are selling some invisible commodity, which you cannot see but you have to believe.’ And Buddha says ‘Don’t believe because I say so... but experiment, go into the existential experience of it all, and then only can you come to faith.’

Faith liberates – belief is a bondage. I am giving you one of the most beautiful names.…

Deva Shanto. Deva means divine, shanto means silence, peace, serenity. All that is needed is the knack of falling into a spontaneous silence. Silence can be cultivated, but a cultivated silence is not a true silence; it is just repressing your thoughts, your turmoils, and sitting upon them. But the volcano is there and you are somehow managing to keep it together It is not very deep – it cannot be. That’s what many people go on doing in the name of meditation, prayer: they simply repress their thought process and the thoughts continue underneath; they go underground, that’s all. They disappear from the surface and start moving underneath, but they are there. Just a moment’s forgetfulness and they will pop back. It takes too much energy to repress them, and to no point.

The real meditation consists of a knack, not of an art – the knack of falling into spontaneous silence. What I mean exactly is: if you watch, in twenty-four hours, every day, you will find a few moments in which you are falling automatically into silence. They come on their own; it is just that we have not watched. So the first thing to be aware of is when those moments come... and when they come then simply stop all that you are doing. Sit silently, flow with the moment. It has come naturally, you have not forced it, so there is no repression involved; you are simply allowing it to possess you. And

they come – they are natural; a few windows always open on their own but we are so occupied that we never see that the window has opened and the breeze is coming in and the sun has penetrated; we are so occupied with our work.

These openings cannot be forced to happen at a particular period, but people try to do meditation at a particular period so sometimes very rarely, is there a coincidence; otherwise it never happens. You go on doing your meditation like a ritual.

So watch... early in the morning when you are fresh after a long deep sleep and the world is just awakening and the birds have started singing and the sun is rising and if you feel a moment surrounding you, a space growing in you, just fall into it. Sit silently under a tree, by the side of the river, or in your room, and just be... nothing to be done. Just cherish that space, and don’t try to prolong it. When it disappears, get up; forget about it. You have to do many other things too. And don’t long for it – it will come on its own again; it always comes uninvited. It is very shy: if you invite it, it never comes; if you chase it, it disappears. It is very delicate and very shy; it is very feminine, that space called meditation, but it comes. If you can wait patiently, it comes, and many times a day.

Sometimes in the night when the whole world has fallen silent, suddenly it is there; then dive into it. And sometimes it happens even in the marketplace, when noise is all around. It is there and you feel transported. Then it is divine silence. It is not created by you but a gift from god – ‘prasad’; it is grace.

And once you have known the knack of it, it will be coming more and more. Then you start falling into a kind of harmony with it. A love affair starts between you and that space called silence, serenity, tranquillity, stillness. And the bond becomes deeper and deeper. Finally, ultimately, it is always there. You can always close your eyes for a moment and look at it; it is there. You can almost touch it – it becomes tangible. But it is a knack, not an art. You cannot learn it... you have to imbibe it.

[A sannyasin says: I love you and I love being here.]

Good! This love is going to grow every day. And this love is the beginning of god. It is not an ordinary love, because it has no motivation, it has no cause; it has no desire behind it. It is a simple expression of joy. And whenever love is unmotivated, whenever there is no shadow of desire in it, love is prayer. And it is such a love that leads you to god.…

Prem Viren? It means love and courage. Love needs guts. Only courageous people can be in love; cowards cannot move into love at all. Because love needs the greatest sacrifice possible: it needs surrender. It asks you to commit a kind of suicide. The ego has to be dropped only then is love possible. And very few people can have that much courage to drop the ego and to be just nobody, a nothingness. Unless you are a nothingness love cannot happen. Love happens only when you are not – it happens in your absence. If you are too full of yourself there is no space for love to enter, no space for it to spread and grow and expand.

That’s why you see so many people talking about love, singing about love, philosophising about love, but never moving into love. All their philosophisation and all their poetry about love is just a trick of the mind so that they can go on befooling themselves: ‘Look how much we are in love. We talk about love, we discuss love, we write poems, we sing songs of love...’ It is just a trick of the mind

so that you can go on creating the illusion that you are a great lover, but in fact you have not tasted love at all; and no poetry can be a substitute for it. Either you know it or you don’t know it – either you are in it or you are not in it; nothing else can be of any help. Millions of people live a life without love, utterly devoid of love. And to live without love is not to live at all.

It is like a tree without fruits and without flowers. It is a flower without fragrance. It is a life of somehow dragging yourself, lived at the minimum, very lukewarm. Only love makes you hot, only love gives you passion to live and then there is great passion in life. Many flowers bloom... many lights are enkindled. Then life is no more a dark night.

Love needs courage... that is the meaning of your name. Let it become your existential experience too. Love and be courageous, and whatsoever love demands be ready to give it – whatsoever, I say, unconditionally – because if love is gained and all is lost, then all is gained. And if love is lost and all is gained, then nothing is gained. Be a gambler. Stake all for love and you will never be a loser!

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