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This is so because life’s needs require an occupied mind

and meditation means being unoccupied.

We train ourselves to be occupied

and then forget that one needs to be unoccupied sometimes

to know the ecstasy of sheer existence.

One is to be totally vacant inside

because only then is one a host to the divine guest.

335. Love.

Meditation is beyond knowledge.

You can be it but you cannot know it.

All knowledge is superficial.

It is never anything else

but an acquaintance from outside.

It is always about

but never the thing itself;

When the Chinese emperor Wu

came to meet Bodhidharma

he asked the master:

What is the holy, ultimate truth?

Bodhidharma laughed and replied:

Nothing holy, sir,

and it is emptiness itself.

Of course Wu was taken aback, but he asked again:

Then who is the one who at present

stands confronting me?

Bodhidharma simply said:

I don’t know.

Do you see the beauty of it?

And the truth?

And the innocence?

And the holiness?

And the fullness?

And how absolutely ultimate it is?

336. Love.

It is very easy to progress from one illusion to another

because no foundational transformation is needed.

There is no shaking of the foundations

because you remain the same.

So the real problem is not to change the objects of desire

from the worldly to the other-worldly

but to transform oneself;

not to change the seeking

but to change the seeker –

otherwise the problem remains as it is,

it just takes new shapes.

But how to change the seeker?

First find out where it is and what it is,

and then you will come to know a hidden secret:

the seeker exists only while it is not sought,

and when someone goes out to search for it –

it is never found.

It exists only in ignorance and in darkness;

in awareness it is not.

This realization of no-self is the jump.

Jump into the unknown.

Jump into the truth.

337. Love.

Whatever I say is nothing new,

nor is it anything old.

Or it is both –

the oldest and the newest.

And to know it you need not listen to me.

Listen to the birds in the morning

or to the flowers and grass blades in the sun

and you will hear it,

and if you do not know how to listen to them

then you will not know from me either.

So the real thing is not what you listen to

but how you listen,

because the message is everywhere, everywhere, everywhere.

Now I will tell you the art of listening:

walk about until exhausted or dance or

do vigorous breathing

and then, dropping to the ground, listen;

or repeat your own name loudly until exhausted

and then suddenly stop and listen;

or at the point of sleep

when sleep has not yet come

and external wakefulness vanishes,

suddenly be alert and listen.

And then you will hear me.

338. Love.

That which is never lost cannot be found,

and to search for it is absurd.

But the moment this absurdity is understood

all seeking stops by itself

and that which is never lost is found!

That is why I say:

Seek and you will not find,

because the very seeking is the barrier.

The search itself is the hindrance

because it creates the seeker, the ego,

the illusion that I am.

And I am not.

Do not seek and you will find it:

the I-am-not-ness.

This nothingness is the gate.

The Gateless gate.

Riko once asked Nansen

to explain to him the old problem of the goose

in the bottle.

If a man puts a gosling into the bottle, he said,

and feeds the gosling through the bottle’s neck

until it grows and grows and becomes a goose –

and then there is simply no more room inside the bottle,

how can the man get it out without killing the goose

or breaking the bottle?

Riko! shouted Nansen, and gave a great clap

with his hands.

Yes master! said Riko with a start.

See! said Nansen.

The goose is out!

339. Love.

Meditation requires understanding and not effort,

understanding is essential, not effort,

and remember always that you cannot

substitute understanding with any effort whatsoever.

But what do I mean by understanding?

By understanding I mean – living a natural life.

Of course, you cannot try to be natural,

that is self-contradictory!

You can be natural but you cannot try to be natural.

Do you understand this?

Suzuki tells a story:

A monk once asked one of the old Chinese masters:

What is the way?

The master replied: The natural one, the ordinary one,

is the way.

How, continued the monk, am I to be in accord with it?

When you try to be in accord with it, said the master,

then you deviate from it.

Does this mean that one should not try?

No, because that too is a way of trying.

Of course, indirect, but still intentional;

that too will not help.

But just see the dilemma clearly and you are out of it.

Are you not?

340. Love and blessings.

I received your letter.

I was waiting for it daily since you left.

I know that you have gone far away from here

but I also know that now you cannot go away from me –

and that nearness is all that counts.

You have come near me in a non-spatial and

non-temporal sense.

The meeting has taken place in the nowhere

or in the everywhere –