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Truth is simple and truth is difficult.

In fact it is difficult because it is simple. It is so simple and your minds are so complicated that you cannot understand it, you go on missing it. It is so simple that it gives no challenge to you. It is so simple that you pass by the side of it remaining completely unaware that you have passed truth.

Truth is simple because truth is obvious. But simple does not mean easy. The simplicity is very complex. If you enter in it you will be lost, you may never be able to get out of it. That simplicity has depth in it, it is not shallow. And to attain to that simplicity you will have to lose many things – and to lose those things is difficult.

For example, why do these Buddha sutras look difficult to you? – because they are illogical. If you can lose your logic, they will be simple. The difficulty is coming from your mind, not from Buddha’s sutras. He is a very simple man. He is simply stating a fact. But the problem arises from you, because you cannot accept that simple fact. You have your ideas. Those ideas interfere.

You say, “How can this be? If this man is right then my whole logic is wrong.” And that you cannot accept. Your whole education, training, has been of logic, and he goes on stating illogical things. He is helpless. At that height, at that plenitude, logic does not exist.

What can he do? At that plenitude everything is paradoxical. At that plenitude, opposites meet, contradictions become complementaries. What can he do? He has to assert them. The problem is arising from you – because you want those truths to be translated according to your logic.

Suppose a boy in a high school physics class were to object, “I don’t approve of Albert Einstein’s formula.”
“No?” says the teacher. “Why not?”

“Well, firstly it is boring, and whenever you explain it I inevitably fall asleep. Secondly, it is unbalanced. Look at it! E = mc2. He has put one figure all by itself on one side of the equation, and three others all together on the other side. It is unartistic. Why didn’t he move one of those figures to the left side to make the formula more symmetrical? That’s why I hate it.”

Now he is raising beautiful questions. It is not symmetrical: “What kind of equation is this? Both sides are not equal. It is unartistic. Just by putting one figure on the other side, things would have been far better, more symmetrical.”

The boy is completely unaware of what he is talking about, but whatsoever he is saying looks logical. But the Einsteinian formula is not there to entertain you. It is to express reality. If you are bored with it, that simply shows that you are very dull witted, that you cannot understand that penetrating insight. It is said that only twelve persons used to understand Einstein’s theory of relativity. All around the earth, only twelve?

The truth is simple, but when you go into its details, when you start penetrating into its reality, it becomes difficult. For example, Saint Augustine is reported to have said, “Everybody knows what time is. I know what time is, but when somebody asks me: ‘What is time? Try to explain it to me,’ then I am at a loss.”

You know what time is, you live according to time. Six o’clock in the morning you get up, eleven o’clock in the night you go to bed, one o’clock you take your lunch. You go to the office, you come home. You use time, you know what time is, but can you explain it? The moment you try to explain it becomes elusive. You have never seen it, you have never seen it in your hand. You cannot grasp it. What is it?

Augustine is right – that the problem arises when you try to explain it. Light is so simple, it is all around, dancing on the trees, the whole sky is full of light. Try to explain it to a blind man and he will be bored and he will say, “Stop all this nonsense.” First, you will find it very difficult to put it into words.

Or, drop the question of light. It is a scientific question, you may not be interested in it.

You have loved, you know what love is. You must have loved – at least you must have loved your mother, your father, your sister, some woman, your wife, your husband, your children. Can you explain what love is? Then you become dumb. Then suddenly you lose all intelligence – as if somebody has simply struck you dead. You become paralyzed. What is love? Can you define it?

Love is everybody’s experience, more or less, but nobody can define it. Nirvana is not everybody’s experience – once in a while nirvana happens – and Buddha is trying to explain to you what nirvana is.

Truth is simple, but the moment you try to explain it, it becomes difficult. But remember, you are not here only to be entertained. And I am not against entertainment either – it is good in its own time. But something more than entertainment is needed, only that will become your enlightenment.

Entertainment is a very lower need. Enlightenment is the highest need. If you simply go on from one entertainment to another you will remain shallow, you will never grow, you will remain immature. You have to sometimes go into the depths of life and love and light and God. Sometimes you have to fly into eternity to have a taste of it. Only that will make you mature.

I understand your difficulties. You say: “I don’t enjoy these Buddha sutras.” Then learn how to enjoy. Then learn how to enjoy higher things.

There are higher things. If you want to enjoy classical Indian music you will have to learn. You cannot just go and enjoy it, it needs a certain preparation in you, it needs a certain receptivity in you. It is not vulgar. It needs a certain understanding in you…a deep understanding of sounds and silence – because music consists of sound and silence. It is not only sound, it contains silence in it.

The music becomes higher and deeper when it contains more silence in it. When it provokes your silence, when it penetrates your heart and releases your inner silence, when listening to it your mind disappears, your thoughts stop…. But then you will have to learn, you will have to go through a certain discipline, you will have to become more meditative. One day you will be able to enjoy it. But if you want to enjoy it right now and you are not ready for it, don’t blame it.

Don’t say that Buddha’s sutras are boring, just say that you are not capable yet of understanding that plenitude, that you are not capable of looking to that height, that you are not capable enough to climb the Everest of consciousness. Buddha is talking from the highest peak. You will have to move from your dark hole a little bit. You will have to climb the mountains, only then you will understand those sunlit sutras.

It is a difficulty because for that understanding we are not prepared at all, hence sometimes you may feel bored. But fight with boredom, destroy your boredom, pull yourself out of it. You have to go with the Buddha, you have to see what he has seen.

Seeing it, you will be fulfilled.