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Remember the formless

and you will know immortality

because you will be that – then.

209. Love.

One’s attitude is everything.

Negative attitudes negate life –

they are good for dying but not good for living.

Life needs positive attitudes;

life feeds on them

because they make you

not only happy but creative also.

Once there lived an old woman,

but the older she became the younger she felt –

because youthfulness has nothing to do with age,

it is an attitude,

and with age and its richness

one can really be younger than the young.

The old woman was so cheerful and creative

that everyone wondered at her.

But you must have some clouds in your life,

said a visitor.

Clouds? she replied. Why, of course:

if there were no clouds

where would the blessed showers come from?

In the presence of trouble –

and there are troubles in life –

the positive mind grows wings

but others buy crutches.

Grow wings, and do not buy crutches.

210. Love.

There is no security in life

because life cannot exist except as insecurity –

that is why the more secure one is

the less alive one becomes.

Death is complete security.

So never be in search of security

because you are searching for death.

To live totally and in ecstasy never demands security.

Accept insecurity blissfully

and when you accept it

then you will know that it has a beauty of its own.

Mulla Nasruddin’s tomb

was fronted by an immense wooden door,

barred and padlocked.

Nobody could get into it – at least through the door.

As his last joke

the Mulla decreed that the tomb

should have no walls around it…

What the Mulla did with his tomb

everybody is doing with his life –

and unknowingly!

If you also want to do it –

at least do it knowingly,

because I know that you cannot do it knowingly!

Not only you cannot, but no one can do it,

because no one can knowingly be stupid.

211. Love.

The universe cares for little but play.

But man in his life does hardly anything but work,

and because of this everything has become upside down.

Hence the agony.

The law, the tao of the universe, is play – leela –

and the law of human reason is work

because reason cannot think beyond utility.

But existence exists beyond utility.

Meditate on this gap and you will find the bridge –

and the bridge is necessary

because you cannot exist without work,

and to exist only for work is unbearable and unlivable.

The meditative man works

so that he can play more intensely –

the reason for his work is play.

And the unmeditative man plays so that he can work more efficiently –

the reason for his play is work.

212. Love.

Life does not need comfort when it can be offered meaning

nor pleasure when it can be shown purpose,

because in the total intensity of intentional living

is the fruition of the seed of consciousness.

And consciousness without the self is the goal.

Consciousness without the center –

and you have reached.

Consciousness without ego is nirvana:

or you may call it God or whatsoever you like.

Know that everyone is seeking this state of being,

but unless the seeker is lost, this state of being cannot be found –

and the seeker can only be lost

in the fire of total intensity of living.

So live totally.

And live in the moment

and moment to moment,

because there is no other way to live totally,

and no other way to dissolve the center, the self, the ego.

213. Love.

The secret of meditation is the art of unlearning.

Mind is learning;

meditation is unlearning.

That is – die constantly to your experience.

Don’t let it imprison you.

Experience becomes a dead weight

in the living and flowing, riverlike consciousness.

Live in the moment unburdened of the past,

flow in the moment unblocked by the mind,

and you will be in meditation.

Know well that it is innocence that is full

and experience that is empty –

although the surface appearance is quite the contrary.

It is innocence that knows

and experience that knows not –

though innocence never claims

and experience is nothing but claims and claims and claims!

And that is why I say:

innocence is meditation because it opens the doors of the unknown.

So learn how to unlearn.

So learn how to be beyond the mind.

Do not cling to the known

and the master key will be in your hands.

Be open and vulnerable,

always living and flowing into the unknown,

and you will be in meditation –

you will be meditation.

214. Love.

Three men made their way to the circle of a Sufi

seeking admission to his teachings.

Almost at once one of them

detached himself from the group,

angered by the erratic behavior of the master.

On the master’s instructions

the second was told by a disciple

that the sage was a fraud.

He withdrew soon afterwards.

The third was allowed to talk

but was offered no teaching for so

long that he lost patience and left the circle.

When they had all gone away

the teacher instructed his circle thus:

The first man was an illustration of the principle:

Do not judge fundamental things through seeing.

The second was an illustration of the injunction,

Do not judge things of deep importance through hearing.

The third was an example of the dictum: