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If you are confused then you will have to continue meditations. Confusion is the illness, meditation is medicinal. Both the words – meditation and medicine –come from the same root. If you are confused, you will have to go on meditating. When you see the point without any confusion, then there is no need. But meditation will prepare you; meditation will force you to see the point that there is no need to do anything. Only meditation can do that.

Just listening to me… I have told you that to be natural is to be enlightened. Now you think, “So, that is great! I can sit silently and do nothing.” But can you really sit silently and do nothing? If you can really sit silently and do nothing, then this question would not have arisen. You would have sat and known and you would have bowed before me and thanked me. There would have been no question. You would have come dancing to me, not with a question and a confused mind.

If you can sit silently doing nothing, what else is needed? That’s what Buddha was doing under the bodhi tree: sitting silently doing nothing – and then it happened. That’s how it happened to me. That’s how it always happens.

But doing nothing is not so easy. Because you have become so accustomed to doing something or other, even sitting will be a doing to you. You will have to force yourself in a yoga posture and you will sit strained, still, in control, holding, trying to sit silently and not do anything, and boiling within, to do a thousand and one things, and thousands of thoughts will clamor around, will distract you.

Can you just sit and do nothing? That is the ultimate; that’s what nirvana is, samadhi is. It can happen; just listening to me it can happen also, but great intelligence is needed. Then, simply, you have seen the point: that to be natural is all. Then where is the confusion? What is the confusion? Where does it come from? You have seen it, or you have not seen it. If you have seen it, all confusion has disappeared and you will sit silently, you will walk silently, you will eat silently, you will talk silently. You will become a non-doer; you will become a natural being.

But if you have not seen it, then you will need a few more crazy things; you will have to go through them. Those meditations will force you to see the point. Either you see just by listening and sitting by my side, or you will have to see the hard way.

Buddha meditated for six years, and meditated intensely, totally. Then this realization arose in him: “What am I doing? Trees are perfectly happy, birds are perfectly happy – what am I doing? And these trees are not meditating, and these birds have never thought about meditation, and they have not read Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, and they don’t do yoga asanas and they don’t chant any mantras. And the whole existence is so tremendously ecstatic! What am I doing standing on my head and fasting and all that nonsense?”

He saw it, but it took six years for him to see this. And he was no ordinary man; he was tremendously intelligent. It took six years for him to see the point. But the moment he saw it, he relaxed under the bodhi tree. He fell asleep and the next morning he was awakened. Not only were his eyes opened physically, but his eyes were opened spiritually. Next morning when he opened his eyes, he was totally a different man, the real man had arisen. Just a glimpse of the real man, says Ikkyu, and you are in love. And the moment he saw his real man, he started living a life of compassion and love. There was no other way now, no choice. He became a natural man.

So, if you feel confused, then go on meditating. Meditation is not for enlightenment: meditation is for confused people. Meditation does not lead you to enlightenment; it simply makes you fed up with your confusion. Just see the point: meditation is not a way to enlightenment, it is just a way to get rid of confusion. And when there is no confusion, enlightenment comes of its own accord. Meditation’s work is negative; it takes things away from you. It does not give you anything; it simply goes on taking things away from you. Anger disappears, greed disappears, desire disappears, and you start losing whatever you had. You become poorer and poorer every day. That’s what Jesus means when he says: Blessed are those who are poor in spirit.

Anger is not there, greed is not there, ambition is not there. Slowly, slowly, chunks of your being are cut from you. And one day suddenly nothing is there, or, only nothing is there. That very moment, light penetrates. All those things – greed, anger, passion, lust, hatred, ambition, ego – were hindering the path. They were not allowing the light to penetrate into you; they were functioning like a rock between you and God. All those removed and suddenly God enters into you and you enter into God.

If you understand me, there is no need for any meditation. But if you don’t understand me, then meditation will be needed. Then go on doing it.

I understand your confusion, your trouble. You can meditate only if it leads to enlightenment. That’s what your problem is. You have not said it so clearly, but that’s exactly where the problem is. You can do it if I emphasize that it will lead you to enlightenment, and I cannot do that, because that is not true. You want me to promise you so that you can go on doing meditation. You want me to hypnotize you, you want me to go on supporting your desires, your goals, that you want to become enlightened, that you want to become natural. Now look at the whole absurdity of becoming natural! How can one become natural? You are natural. All becoming will lead you toward unnatural structures. Becoming cannot bring you to being natural; becoming means becoming unnatural.

Natural you are, but you want me to support you because you cannot sit silently. You cannot sit really; you need something to think about, something to do. You want some goal. And if I take the goal away you ask, “Then why should I do meditation if it is not needed?” It is still needed. It is needed, not for enlightenment but to destroy this constant restlessness in your mind.

It is like this: if you live in a room with closed doors the sun will not penetrate, although by opening the door you are not creating the sun. By opening the door you don’t create the sun, the sun is there, but by opening the door, you become available to the sun. Meditations are just like opening the door.

Right now if you sit, you will be sitting in confusion, and the confusion will grow more and more as you sit. You will gather it; it will become almost impossible to bear it, you will have to go to a movie or listen to the radio or TV or go to a club, or somewhere.

Meditations are cathartic. They throw all the rubbish that you contain inside. They simply cleanse you; they open the doors, they open the eyes, and the sun is there. Once you are available, it starts penetrating you.

Then you will never say, “I became natural.” You will say, “I was natural. The problem was not how to become natural; the problem was how not to go on becoming unnatural.”