and once you know it and be it
you are in that ecstasy which is the purpose
of purposelessness!
Don’t be a
Mind is thinking, and thinking is going astray
from the
Mind is forgetfulness of “that which is”.
Meditation is
So, come back home.
And I create situations so that
you may remember the forgotten,
and I will go on creating situations
until you have returned.
271. Love.
There are things which cannot be proved,
and there is no evidence for them
because they are self-evident.
To try to prove them is ridiculous,
and the effort shows that one
is not acquainted with them.
Such are all the proofs of God.
Sitting one day in the teahouse
Mulla Nasruddin heard the rhetoric of
a traveling scholar –
he was arguing to prove the existence of God.
Questioned by one of the company on some point
the scholar drew a book from his pocket
and slammed it on the table:
This is my evidence.
A man who could not only read but write was a rarity,
and a man who had written a book…!
The villagers treated the pundit with profound respect –
and of course Mulla Nasruddin was impressed.
Some days later Mulla appeared at the teahouse
and asked whether anyone wanted to buy a house.
Tell us something about it,
Mulla, the people asked him,
for we did not even know that you had a
house of your own.
Actions speak louder than words! shouted Mulla,
and from his pocket he took a brick
and hurled it on the table in front of them.
This is my evidence! Examine the quality –
and I built the house myself!
272. Love.
When you are with me be completely at ease and relaxed;
that is, be totally yourself.
If you feel like crying, then cry;
if you feel like weeping, then weep –
but just be continually aware.
Do not think about what you are doing,
just be the doing.
And when your senses are shaken like leaves in the wind,
enter this shaking,
because only in such situations is the being revealed.
If a feeling against someone or for someone arises
do not project it on the person in question
but remain centered in yourself,
and you will know a transcendence
which is not of this world at all.
273. Love.
The past is not
nor is the future,
but the mind exists between these two non-existences,
and therefore – the misery.
To live in the mind is to live in misery,
in agony and in hell.
The mind is the hell.
Be aware
and then there is a new opening:
the opening of the present,
the opening of that-which-is.
The present is the only existence
or, it is the existence.
Live in it and there is bliss.
274. Love.
No ideology can help to create a new world
or a new mind
or a new human being,
because ideological orientation itself
is the root cause of all the conflicts and all the miseries.
Thought creates boundaries,
thought creates divisions
and thought creates prejudices.
Thought itself cannot bridge them;
that is why all ideologies fail.
Now man must learn to live without ideologies:
religious, political or otherwise.
When the mind is not tethered to any ideology
it is free to move to new understandings.
And in that freedom flowers all that is good
and all that is beautiful.
275. Love.
A disciple of Rinzai met a party
of three men on a bridge.
One of the three asked him: How deep is the river of meditation?
Find out for yourself, he said,
and offered to throw the questioner from the bridge.
But unfortunately the man ran away from him in time
and escaped.
If you meet such a man, who can throw you in the river,
be fortunate enough to be thrown!
And you have met such a man!
Now be
276. Love.
You possess only that which will not be lost in death.
All else is illusion –
even the possessor,
because that too will not be able to stand the final shipwreck.
Then find out what is left.
Turn in and meditate.
Discard all that is vulnerable to death.
Say: Not this, not that,
and go deep to the point where nothing more remains to be discarded
– and
277. Love.
Nothing great is ever accomplished without going mad,
that is, without breaking through
the ordinary level of consciousness
and letting loose the hidden powers lying further below,
and also penetrating to the realm that is further above.
And it may not be true for any other great thing,
but it is absolutely true as far as meditation is concerned.
Meditation means
of course, with a method!
278. Love.
Detach yourself from all fixed ideas:
they are the killers of all aliveness and innocence –
which are musts for illumination.
Beware of the trap of preconceptions;
they make a stagnant pool of your consciousness,
and to meet the ocean you need a dynamic one.
Be alive and fluid and flowing –
then the goal is not far off.
279. Love.
Meditation is the disciplined opening of the self to God.
Because of fear we are closed, and only love
can become a door.
So love more –
or rather be loving, then there is less fear and less tension,
and you are more open.
This helps meditation as nothing else.