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Mamiya went to a great teacher to learn meditation.

The teacher told him to concentrate on the famous koan:

What is the sound of one hand?

Mamiya went away

and came back a week later shaking his head.

He could not get it.

Get out! said the master. You are not trying hard enough.

You still think of money and food and pleasure.

It would be better if you died,

then you might learn the answer.

The next week Mamiya came back again.

When the master asked him:

Well, what is the sound of one hand? –

he clutched at his heart, groaned

and fell down as if dead.

Well, you have taken my advice and died,

said the master,

but what about the sound?

Mamiya opened one eye:

I have not solved that yet, he said.

Dead men don’t speak, said the master.

Get up and get out!

326. Love.

We settle down where no settling is possible.

We make homes

whilst homelessness is the very nature

of our consciousness.

We go on doing things which are impossible

and then suffer!

But no one else is responsible.

We fight with the void and are then defeated –

not because the void is stronger than us

but because it is not.

Now stand up

and fight with the empty space of the room

so that you can know and taste

the whole stupidity of the human mind.

And then sit down and laugh at yourself,

and as the laughter dies down

be silent and search within,

and then you will come to know a deep mystery:

the mystery that the void is not only without

but within also!

327. Love.

Death is everywhere

but everyone deceives himself that it is not for him.

This is the greatest

and the deepest deception the human mind is capable of,

and unless one is constantly aware of this fact

one is bound to be a victim of this deception –

because the mind goes on giving

very beautiful and logical rationalizations

up to the very end.

I have heard about a ninety-year-old man

who got into a bitter argument with his shoemaker

as to how a pair of shoes should be made.

See here, said the shoemaker,

What’s the idea of doing so much yapping?

You are past ninety

and there is little chance of your living long enough

to wear these shoes out.

The old fellow looked sternly at the shoemaker

and said: Apparently you are not aware

that statistics prove that very few people

die after ninety years of age!

328. Love.

Information is not knowledge

because information is not transformation

and can never be –

and knowledge comes only through transformation.

Information is adding something to the same old mind.

It is quantitative;

there is no qualitative change

because the mind behind it remains the same.

That is why all that is called education

just proves to be superficial.

Mind must go through a qualitative change,

otherwise there is no wisdom;

and to go on adding information to ignorance is fatal.

I call meditation

the method for mind’s total mutation.

First let there be a transformation

of the very quality of the mind

and only then education can be educative.

In ancient times

the king of a certain country was concerned

because his son was something of a fool.

The king’s counselors urged that the son be sent away

to a great university in another land

in the hope that the boy

would acquire learning and wisdom.

The king agreed.

The son studied hard for several years

then wrote to his father that he had learned

just about everything possible

and pleaded to be allowed to return home.

The king assented.

When the son arrived at the palace

the king was overjoyed.

A great feast was prepared

and all the great men of the kingdom were invited.

At the end of the festivities

one of the sages present asked the son

what he had learned.

The young man ticked off the university’s curriculum

that he had gone through. While the lad was talking

the sage slipped a ring off his finger,

closed his hand over it,

held up his hand and asked: What do I hold in my hand?

The son thought for a moment and said:

It is a round object with a hole in the center.

The sage was astonished at such wisdom.

Maybe the lad had become a great mind.

Will you now name the object? asked the sage.

The king’s son pondered for a few moments, then said:

The sciences that I studied do not help me

in answering your question,

but my own commonsense tells me that it is a cartwheel.

The sage concluded to himself

that you can educate a fool

but you cannot make him think.

329. Love.

Yes, there is a way,

but in many the will is lacking to find it.

And it is not far away,

it is just by the corner, so to speak.

Knowingly or unknowingly all men long for it.

Really, the whole of life is a longing for it

because without it

there is no reaching, no flowering, no fulfillment.

But few men seek it

and still fewer seek it rightly

and still fewer find it –

and all of those who find it do not enter.

Only a few enter

and still fewer progressively follow it.

But those who follow it with their total being

realize that the way is the goal itself!

330. Love.

Mind and meditation are two names

of the same substance,

or the same energy.

Mind is energy flowing in dualisms,

in conflict and dis-ease;

and meditation is non-dual energy,

one with itself and at ease.

Thinking is impossible without dualisms,