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Or can you?

But this is irrelevant.

If you can reason with yourself that is more than enough!

302. Love.

In life everything is whole, and organically whole.

You cannot divide it

or take it in parts.

Love is like that

and meditation is also like that.

Even death is like that.

That is why I say:

Death is not dead but organically one with life.

You cannot die partially!

– either you die or you do not die.

Nor can you die gradually.

Please remember this always

when you are in meditation or in prayer or in worship.

A very valuable dachshund

owned by a wealthy woman was run over.

The policeman sent a man

to tell the woman of her misfortune.

But break the news gently, he said.

She thinks a lot of this dog.

The man rapped on the mansion door

and when the woman appeared, he said: Sorry, lady,

but part of your dog has been run over.

303. Love.

Artificial and outward discipline have no use –

the inner and natural discipline is enough.

But what is the inner discipline?

In one word: acceptance –

total acceptance.

And acceptance can be only total

because partial acceptance

is just a contradiction in terms.

If you live – live!

If you die – die!

If you suffer – suffer!

And then there is no problem

and no anxiety

and no anguish –

and what freedom!

A Zen master was once asked:

It is terribly hot, how shall we escape it?

Why not go, answered the master,

to the place where it is neither –

neither hot nor cold?

Where is that place?

And then the master laughed and said:

In summer we sweat and in winter we shiver.

304. Love.

How can a man learn to know himself? inquires Goethe,

and then answers:

Never by reflection but only by action.

John Burroughs doubts this.

He says:

Is not this a half-truth? –

because one can only learn his powers of action by action

and his powers of thought by thinking.

But I say that

man is always more than all his actions and

all his thoughts,

and unless that more is known no one knows himself.

That more can be known neither

by action nor by reflection

because they both belong to the periphery

and that more is eternally the center.

It can only be known through witnessing action

and thought both:

not by them but by witnessing them.

And witnessing is meditation.

305. Love.

There is no answer to man’s ultimate questions

because the questions are absurd,

and moreover there is no one to answer them.

Existence is silent and has always been so,

so do not ask

but be silent and live it and know it,

because there is no knowing except living.

The search for answers is meaningless.

A patient in a mental hospital

placed his ear to the wall of his room, listening intently.

Quiet! he whispered to an orderly and pointed

to the wall.

The attendant pressed his ear against the wall, listened, and then

said: I don’t hear anything.

No, replied the patient.

It’s awful, it’s always been this way!

306. Love.

The mind lives in a logical somnambulism,

and it feeds on arguments and words.

You cannot come out of it gradually

or logically or rationally.

Rather, take the jump,

illogical and irrational —

and the jump can be nothing else than that.

It cannot be calculated

or conceptualized or predetermined

because it is going into the unknown

and the unchartered

and the unpredictable,

and ultimately not only into the unknown

but into the unknowable also.

307. Love.

Meditation cannot be taught directly

because it is not a mechanical technique,

but a living art.

Dogo had a disciple called Soshin.

Soshin waited long with his master

to be taught the art of meditation.

He expected lessons the way a schoolboy

is taught at school,

but there no special lessons were forthcoming,

and this bewildered and disappointed the disciple.

One day he said to the master:

It is a long time since I came here

but not a word has been given to me

regarding the essence of meditation.

Dogo laughed at this heartily and said:

What are you saying, my boy?

Since your arrival I have continually

been giving you lessons on the matter!

At this the poor disciple was even more bewildered

and for some time he could not think what to say.

Then one day he gathered courage and asked again:

What kind of lesson could it have been, sir?

Dogo said:

When you bring me a cup of tea in the morning, I take it;

when you serve me a meal, I accept it

and when you bow to me I return it with a nod.

How else do you expect to be taught in meditation?

Soshin hung his head

and began to think about the

puzzling words of the master,

but at this the master said again:

If you want to see, see, right at once,

because when you begin to think

you miss the point altogether.

308. Love.

Meditate, pray and wait.

Do not will anything,

for in you there is strength

greater than any strength of your own.

But it works only when your will is at rest.

309. Love.

Be free at the center;

let the center relax and die:

be only a circumference –

and this is the only renunciation I know.

No man is free until he is free at the center.

When he lets go then he is really free –

and then life is not anguish