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Never judge by speech or the lack of it.

When asked by a disciple

why the applicants could not have been

instructed in this matter

the master retorted: I am here to give real knowledge,

not to teach what people pretend

that they have already learned at their mother’s knees.

215. Love.

Always remember the golden rule: One step at a time.

A good natured woman was often asked for food by tramps.

She finally decided to refuse them;

it was becoming too burdensome.

But shortly after she made her resolution

one young man stopped

and asked her for a little piece of thread.

She noticed that his pants were badly ripped,

that he had a needle,

and she realized he could not get work

with his pants in their present condition,

so she gave him the thread.

The fellow took the thread,

went down the road and sat under a tree

for a few minutes,

then came back to the house.

He told the woman he could not repair the pants

unless he had a piece of cloth for a patch.

She gave him a small piece of material.

About an hour later the young fellow

came again to the house

and said: Madam, these pants are beyond repair.

It would be very good of you

if you could give me a pair of your husband’s old pants.

So she gave him a pair of old pants

and smiled at his cleverness.

The young man went behind the barn

and changed into the pants given to him.

Then he returned to the house and told the woman

that the pants were sort of big around the waist,

but if she could give him some food

he was sure they would fit perfectly.

This time the woman burst out laughing

and gave him a big dinner.

And all because he took one step at a time.

216. Love.

Knowledge is accumulation,

that is why knowledge is always dead,

while learning is moment to moment

because learning is not accumulation but movement.

So do not be dead with knowledge

but move with learning,

only then will you be alive.

Do not be tethered to experience –

experience is slavery.

Always transcend that which has been

so that you are ready to receive the new.

Ecstasy is always with the new,

with the fresh, with the young,

with the discontinuous –

and to be always in the discontinuous

is to be in the divine.

217. Love.

If one is aware of the present moment

then one also becomes aware of the fact that

there is no me inside.

The me is my past,

the me is the dead past.

The me is not my life because it is not living.

The ego can exist only in the past

or in the future –

which is nothing but a projection of the past.

That is why awareness, moment to moment awareness,

leads to egolessness –

because the ego cannot exist in the present

and because awareness cannot exist except

in the present.

So they cannot exist simultaneously.

Ego is unawareness

and awareness is egolessness.

218. Love.

I live without planning,

and I also feel that this is the only way to be alive at all.

In fact I live a wild life,

absolutely unplanned,

not knowing anything about the future –

not even about the next moment.

Today is enough for me –

really more than enough!

The moment that is present is the only living moment –

the past is dead in the sense that it is no more

and the future is also dead

in the sense that it is not yet born.

And so to be concerned with the past is to be dead

and to be concerned with the future is also to be dead.

The only way to be alive is to be here and now –

in the moment and totally in it.

Living moment to moment I have found that ecstasy and bliss

which is not of this world at all.

The single moment lived totally transcends time itself.

It becomes the gap between two moments of time,

and if one can be in this gap

then one is beyond death

because time is death

and timelessness is life.

Life is not something fixed and finished,

life is living what is,

a process, just riverlike,

flowing always into the unknown,

from the shores of the known to the shores

of the unknown.

219. Love.

Anger, violence, greed or envy

cannot be overcome by the cultivation of their opposites,

because anger itself will cultivate its opposite

and violence will be present in its cultivated non-violence.

So always be aware

of the hypnotic spell of the opposite:

it never solves any problem

because it is beating around the bush.

Do not fall into the trap of the opposite

but understand anger, violence or greed

or anything else

directly.

To seek the opposite is a way of escape.

To seek the opposite is cowardice.

Live with your mind as it is.

Do not try to change it.

Be brave and face it and understand it.

When the light of awareness falls on anger or

greed or envy

there is change.

Awareness acts as a catalytic agent –

and then anger does not change into its opposite,

it is not that violence becomes non-violence,

but there is no-anger,

there is no-violence.

And when there is no-violence there is no-mind,

and an altogether different dimension opens its door:

the dimension of the spontaneous,