535

There is no other way except to die.

A Zen master was asked – a great emperor came to inquire, he was afraid of death, as everybody is. And of course an emperor has more to lose than a beggar, so an emperor is bound to be more afraid of death than a beggar. Death will take more from an emperor than from a beggar and so of course obviously he was more afraid. He became old and he went to the Zen master and he asked, “Tell me something about death, master.” The master asked, “How am I to know about it?” The emperor replied, “But you are an enlightened master.” He said, “Yes, but – an alive one, not dead. How am I to know about death?”

This moment life is there – live it. That is the training for death. Otherwise when you are dead you will ask, “What is life?” Now you are asking “What is death?” And whether the soul continues after death or not. Now you are alive missing the possibility, the opportunity, to know what life is.

I will tell you one secret, don’t tell it to anybody – and if you do tell, please tell them not to tell anybody else. People who are alive come to me and ask, “What is death?” And ghosts come to me also and they ask, “What is life?” Please, while you are alive live it well, so that when you become a ghost you need not go to a master and ask, “What is life?” And if you can know life you will be able to know death, because knowing is the thing. If you have the capacity to know life, you will have the capacity to know death.

Knowing should be developed, that’s what Lao Tzu goes on saying – not knowledge but knowing. And remember, if you ask me and if I say, “Yes, you will survive death,” that will be knowledge for you, not knowing. And I am not here to help you become more knowledgeable. That would be a sin and I would suffer for it. I am here to make you more knowing – not to give you information but just to give you a situation in which you grow and your being flowers. Don’t bother about death. Right now you are alive, so alive. Live it, so that you can know life. If you can know life you have already known death, because death is the innermost core of life.

A child is born. You think he will die after seventy years? Then you are wrong. A child is born; he brings his death within him at the innermost core of his being. It takes seventy years for him to discover that core. It takes seventy years for that core to spread all over him; then one day suddenly he disappears. Death is nothingness within you; nothing else, just nothingness within you. A beautiful phenomenon! Life is beautiful, but it is nothing compared to death. Death is tremendously beautiful. Thousands and thousands of lives are nothing before death because death is the very crescendo. It is nothingness.

In deep meditation you will realize what nothingness is. You will come across death, and that is the only way to know it – come across it. So if when meditating deeply one day suddenly you feel that you are going to die – don’t get scared. Die! Let go. Let it happen. And death would have happened, and you would have remained a witness. Death will be all around and you will be hovering over it, and knowing it. But let it be a knowing not a knowledge.