670

Everybody is born in freedom, but dies in bondage. The beginning of life is totally loose and natural, but then the society enters; then rules and regulations enter, morality, discipline and many sorts of trainings. The looseness and the naturalness and the spontaneous being is lost. One starts to gather around oneself a sort of armor. One starts becoming more and more rigid. The inner softness is no longer apparent.

On the boundary of one’s being, one creates a fortlike phenomenon in order to defend, not to be vulnerable – to react, for security, safety; and the freedom of being is lost. One starts looking at others’ eyes: their approvals, their denials, their condemnations. Appreciation becomes more and more valuable. The others become the criterion, and one starts to imitate and follow others because one has to live with others.

And a child is very soft, he can be molded in any way; and the society starts molding him – the parents, the teachers, the school – and by and by he becomes a character, not a being. He learns all the rules. He either becomes a conformist, that is bondage, or he becomes rebellious – that too is another sort of bondage.

If he becomes a conformist, orthodox, square, that is one sort of bondage; he can react, can become a hippy, can move to the other extreme, but that is again a sort of bondage – because reaction depends on the same thing it reacts against. You may go to the farthest corner, but deep down in the mind you are rebelling against the same rules. Others are following them, you are reacting, but the focus remains on the same rules. Reactionaries and revolutionaries all travel in the same boat. They may be standing against each other, back to back, but the boat is the same.

A religious man is neither a reactionary nor a revolutionary. A religious man is simply loose and natural; he is neither for something nor against, he is simply himself. He has no rules to follow and no rules to deny, he simply has no rules. A religious man is free in his own being; he has no molding of habits and conditionings. He is not a cultured being – not that he is uncivilized and primitive – he is the highest possibility of civilization and culture, but he is not a cultured being.

He has grown in his awareness and he doesn’t need any rules, he has transcended rules. He is truthful not because it is the rule to be truthful; being loose and natural he is simply truthful, it happens to be truthful. He has compassion, not because he follows the precept: be compassionate. No. Being loose and natural he simply feels compassion flowing all around. There is nothing to do on his part; it is just a byproduct of his growth in awareness. He is not against society, nor for society – he is simply beyond it. He has again become a child, a child of an absolutely unknown world, a child in a new dimension – he is reborn.

Every child is born natural, loose; then the society comes in, has to come in for certain reason. Nothing is wrong in it because if the child is left to himself or herself, the child will never grow, and will never be able to become religious, he will become just like an animal. The society has to come in; the society has to be passed through, it is needed. The only thing to remember is: it is just a passage to pass through; one should not make one’s house in it. The only thing to remember is that the society has to be followed and then transcended; the rules have to be learned and then unlearned.

Rules come into your life because there are others; you are not alone. When the child is in the mother’s womb he is absolutely alone, no rules are needed. Rules come only when the other comes into relationship; rules come with relationship. Because you are not alone, you have to think of others and consider others. In the mother’s womb the child is alone; no rules, no morality, no discipline is needed, no order. But the moment he is born, even the first breath he takes is social. If the child is not crying, the doctors will immediately force him to cry because if he doesn’t cry for a few minutes then he will be dead. He has to cry because the cry opens the passage through which he will be able to breathe; it clears the throat. He has to be forced to cry; even the first breath is social – others are there and the molding has started.

Nothing is wrong in it. It has to be done, but it has to be done in such a way that the child never loses his awareness, does not become identified with the cultured pattern, remains, deep inside, still free, knows that rules have to be followed but rules are not life. This has to be taught. And that’s what a good society will do: “These rules are good because there are others. But these rules are not absolute, and you are not expected to remain confined to them; one day you must transcend them.” A society is good if it teaches civilization and transcendence to its members; then the society is religious. If it never teaches transcendence then that society is simply secular and political, it has no religion in it.

You have to listen to others up to an extent, and then you have to start listening to yourself. You must come back to the original state in the end. Before you die you must become an innocent child again – loose, natural; because in death you are again entering the dimension of being alone. Just as you were in the womb, in death you will again enter the realm of being alone. No society exists there. And the whole of your life… You have to find a few spaces in your life, a few moments like oases in deserts, where you simply close your eyes and go beyond society, move into yourself, into your own womb. This is what meditation is. The society is there… Simply close your eyes and forget the society, and become alone. No rules exist there, no character is needed, no morality, no words, no language. You can be loose and natural inside. Grow into that loose and naturalness. Even if there is a need for outer discipline, remain wild inside. If one can remain wild inside and still practice things which are needed in the society, then soon he can come to a point where he simply transcends.

I will tell you a story and then I will enter into the sutras. This is a Sufi story:

An old man and a young man were traveling with a donkey. They had reached near to a town; they were both walking with their donkey. Some school children passed them and they giggled and they laughed and they said, “Look at these fools, they have a healthy donkey with them and they are walking. At least the old man can sit on the donkey.”
Listening to those children the old man and the young man decided, “What to do? People are laughing and soon we will be entering the town, so it is better to follow what they are saying.” So the old man sat on the donkey and the young man followed.

Then they came near another group of people who looked at them and said, “Look, the old man is sitting on the donkey and the poor boy is walking. This is absurd! The old man can walk, but the boy should be allowed to sit on the donkey.” So they changed – the old man started walking and the boy was allowed to sit.

Then another group came and said, “Look at these fools. And this boy seems to be too arrogant. Maybe the old man is his father or his teacher and he is walking, but the boy is sitting on the donkey – this is against all the rules.”
So what to do? They both decided, “Now there is only one possibility: we should both sit on the donkey.” So they both sat on the donkey.

Then other groups came and they said, “Look at these people, so violent! The poor donkey is almost dying – two people on one donkey. It would have been better if they carried the donkey on their shoulders.”
So they again discussed. And then there was the river and the bridge; they had now almost reached the boundary of the town. So they thought, “It is better to behave as people think in this town, otherwise they will think we are fools.” So they found a piece of bamboo, put the bamboo on their shoulders, hung the donkey by his legs, tied them to the bamboo and carried him. The donkey tried to rebel; as donkeys are, they cannot be very easily forced. He tried to escape because he was not a believer in society and what others are saying. But the two men were too much and they forced him, so the donkey had to yield.

Just in the middle of the bridge, a crowd passed. Then they all gathered and said, “Look, these fools! We have never seen such idiots – a donkey is to ride upon, not to carry on your shoulders. Have you gone mad?”
Listening to them – and a great crowd gathered – the donkey became restless, so restless that he jumped, fell from the bridge down into the river and died. The two men came down – the donkey was dead.

They sat by the side and the old man said, “Now listen…” This is not an ordinary story – the old man was a Sufi master, an enlightened person, and the young man was a disciple. And the old master was trying to show him a lesson because Sufis always create situations; they say unless there is a situation, you cannot learn deeply. So this was just a situation for the young man. Now the old man said, “Look: just like this donkey you will be dead if you listen too much to people. Don’t bother what others say because there are millions of others and they have their own minds and everybody will say something; everybody has his opinion and if you listen to opinions this will be your end.”

Don’t listen to anybody, remain yourself. Just bypass them, be indifferent. If you go on listening to everybody, everybody will be prodding you this way or that. You will never be able to reach to your innermost center.

Everybody has become eccentric. This English word is very beautiful: it means “off the center,” and we use it for the mad people. But everybody is eccentric, “off the center,” and the whole world is helping you to be eccentric because everybody is prodding you. Your mother is prodding you toward the north, your father toward the south, your uncle is doing something else, your brother something else, your wife, of course, something else – and everybody is trying to force you somewhere. By and by, a moment comes…you are nowhere. You remain just on the crossroads being pushed from north to south, from south to east, from east to west, moving nowhere. By and by, this becomes your total situation: you become eccentric. This is the situation. And if you go on listening to others and not listening to your inner center, this situation will continue.

All meditation is in order to become centered, not to be eccentric, to come to your own center. Listen to your inner voice, feel it, and move with that feeling. By and by, you can laugh at others’ opinions, or you can be simply indifferent. And once you become centered you become a powerful being; then nobody can prod you, then nobody can push you anywhere, simply nobody dares. You are such a power, centered in yourself, that anybody who comes with an opinion simply forgets his opinion near you; anybody who comes to push you somewhere, simply forgets that he had come to push. Rather, just coming near you, he starts feeling overpowered by you.

That’s how even a single man can become so powerful that the whole society, the whole history, cannot push him a single inch. That’s how a Buddha exists and a Jesus exists. You can kill a Jesus but you cannot push him. You can destroy his body, but you cannot push him a single inch. Not that he is adamant or stubborn, no. He is simply centered in his own being. He knows what is good for him, and he knows what is blissful for him. It has already happened; now you cannot allure him toward new goals, no salesmanship can allure him to any other goal. He has found his home. He can listen to you patiently but you cannot move him. He is centered.

This centering is the first thing toward being natural and loose; otherwise if you are natural and loose, anybody will take you anywhere. That’s why children are not allowed to be natural and loose, they are not mature enough to be centered. If they are natural and loose and running all around, their lives will be wasted. Hence, I say, society does a needful work: it protects them. The citadel becomes a cell-like character. They need it; they are very vulnerable, they may be destroyed by anybody. The multitude is there, they will not be able to find their way; they need character armor.

But if that character armor becomes your total life, then you are lost. You should not become the citadel, you should remain the master and you should remain capable of going out of it; otherwise it is not a protection, it becomes a prison. You should be capable of going out of your character. You should be capable of putting aside your principles. You should be capable, if the situation demands, to respond in an absolutely novel way. If this capacity is lost then you become rigid, then you cannot be loose. If this capacity is lost then you become unnatural, then you are not flexible. Flexibility is youth, rigidness is old age – the more flexible, the more young; more rigid, more old. Death is absolute rigidity. Life is absolute looseness, flexibility.

This you have to remember and then try to understand Tilopa. His final words:

[The supreme understanding
transcends all this and that.
The supreme action
embraces great resourcefulness without attachment.
The supreme accomplishment
is to realize immanence without hope.]

Very, very significant words.

[The supreme understanding
transcends all this and that.]

Knowledge is always either of this or of that. Understanding is neither. Knowledge is always of duality: a man is good, he knows what good is; another man is bad, he knows what bad is, but both are fragmentary, half. The good man is not whole because he does not know what bad is; his goodness is poor, it lacks the insight that badness gives. The bad man is also half, his badness is poor; it is not rich because he does not know what goodness is. And life is both together.

A man of real understanding is neither good nor bad, he understands both. And in that very understanding he transcends both. A sage is neither a good man nor a bad man. You cannot confine him to any category; there exists no pigeonhole for him, you cannot categorize him. He is elusive, you cannot catch hold of him. And whatsoever you say about him will be half; it can never be total. A sage may have friends and followers, and they will think he is God because they see only the good part. And the sage may have enemies and foes, and they will think that he is the Devil incarnate because they know only the bad part. But if you know a sage, he is neither, or both together; and both mean the same. If you are both together, good and bad, you are neither because they annihilate each other, negate each other, and a void is left.

This concept is very difficult for the Western mind to understand because the Western mind has divided God and the Devil absolutely. Whatsoever is bad belongs to the Devil and whatsoever is good belongs to God; their territories are demarked, hell and heaven are apart, set apart. That’s why Christian saints look a little poor before tantric sages, very poor: just good, simple, they don’t know the other side of life. And that’s why they are always afraid of the other side, always trembling with fear. A Christian saint is always praying for God to protect him from evil. Evil is always around the corner; he has avoided it and when you avoid something, it is continuously in the mind. He is afraid, trembling.

A Tilopa knows no trembling, no fear, and he never prays to God, “Protect me.” He is protected. What is his protection? His understanding is his protection. He has lived all, he has moved to the farthest corner into evil, and he has lived the divine, and now he knows both are aspects of the same. And now he is neither worried about good nor worried about bad; now he lives a loose and natural, simple life, he has no predetermined concept and he is unpredictable.

You cannot predict a Tilopa. You can predict Saint Augustine, you can predict other saints, but you cannot predict a Tantra sage. You cannot predict – simply unpredictable because in each moment he will respond and nobody knows in what way, nobody knows; even he himself does not know. That’s the beauty of it because if you know your future then you are not a free man, then you are moving according to certain rules, then you have a prefabricated character; then somehow you have to react, not respond.

Nobody can say what a Tilopa will do in a certain situation. It will depend; the whole situation will bring the response. And he has no likings, no dislikings: neither this nor that. He will act, he will not react; he will not react out of his past, he will not react according to his future concepts, of his own ideals. No. He will act, he will act here and now, the response will be total; nobody can say what will happen. Understanding transcends duality.

It is said that once Tilopa was staying in a cave and a passerby, a certain type of seeker, came to visit him. Tilopa was taking his food and he was using a human skull as a pot. The traveler became afraid. It was weird, he had come to see a sage and this man seemed to be something of the world of black magicians. In a human skull…
Tilopa was enjoying, and a dog sitting by his side was also eating from the same skull. And when this man came, Tilopa invited him to participate as well. “Come here,” he said, “So beautiful you reached at the right time because this is all that I have got. Once it is finished, then for twenty-four hours there is nothing. Only the next day somebody may bring something. So come and join and participate.”
The man felt very disgusted – a human skull, food in it, and a dog also a participant! He said, “I feel disgusted.”

Tilopa said, “Then escape as soon as possible from here and run fast and never look back because then Tilopa is not for you. Why are you disgusted with this human skull? You have been carrying it for so long. And what is wrong if I am taking my food in it? – it is one of the cleanest things. You are not disgusted with your own skull inside, and your whole mind. Your beautiful thoughts and your morality and your goodness and your saintlihood are all in the skull. I am taking only my food in it; and your heaven and your hell and your gods and your Brahma, are all in your skull. They must have become absolutely dirty by now – you should be disgusted about that. And you yourself are there in the skull. Why do you feel disgusted?”

The man tried to avoid and rationalize, he said, “Not because of the skull but because of this dog.”
And Tilopa laughed and said, “You have been a dog in your past life, and everybody has to pass through all the stages. And what is wrong in being a dog? What is the difference between you and a dog? – the same greed, the same sex, the same anger, the same violence, aggressiveness, the same fear. Why do you pretend that you are superior?”

Tilopa is difficult to understand because ugly and beautiful make no sense to him; purity and impurity make no sense to him; good and bad make no sense to him. He has an understanding of the total. Partial is knowledge; understanding is total. And when you look at the total, all distinctions drop: what is ugly and what is beautiful, what is good and what is bad.

All distinctions simply drop if you have a birds-eye view of the total, then all boundaries disappear. It is just like looking down from an airplane. Then where is Pakistan and where is India? And where is England and where is Germany? All boundaries lost, the whole earth becomes one. And if you go still higher in a spaceship and look at it from the moon, the whole earth becomes so small. Where is Russia and where is America? And who is a communist and who is a capitalist? And who is a Hindu and who is a Mohammedan? The higher you go, the fewer are the distinctions, and understanding is the highest thing, there is nothing beyond it. From that highest peak everything becomes everything else. Things meet and merge and become one, boundaries are lost – an unbounded ocean with no source to it, infinity.

[The supreme understanding
transcends all this and that.
The supreme action
embraces great resourcefulness without attachment.]

Tilopa says be loose and natural, but he doesn’t mean be lazy and go to sleep. On the contrary, when you are loose and natural much resourcefulness happens to you. You become tremendously creative. Activity may not be there; action is there. Obsession with occupation may not be there, will not be there, but you become tremendously resourceful, creative. You do millions of things, not because of any obsession but just because you are so free with energy, you have to create.

Creativity comes easy to a man who is loose and natural. Whatsoever he does becomes a creative phenomenon. Wherever he touches becomes a piece of art; whatsoever he says becomes poetry. His very movement is aesthetic. If you can see a buddha walking, even his walking is creativity. Even through his walking he is creating a rhythm, even through his walking he is creating a milieu, an atmosphere around him.

If a buddha raises his hand he immediately changes the climate around him. Not that he is doing these things, they are simply happening. He is not the doer. Calm, settled inside, tranquil, collected, together inside, filled with infinite energy, over-pouring, overflowing in all directions, his every moment is a moment of creativity, of cosmic creativity.

Remember that. It has to be remembered because many people can misunderstand. They can think that no activity is needed, so they can think, “No action is needed.” Action has a different quality altogether. Activity is pathological. If you go into a madhouse you will see people in activity, every madman doing something because that is the only way they can forget themselves. You may find somebody washing his hands three thousand times a day because he believes in cleanliness. In fact, if you stop him washing his hands three thousand times a day he will be unable to stand himself, it will be too much. This is an escape.

Politicians, people who are after wealth, power, are all mad people. You cannot stop them because if you stop them they don’t know what to do then. They are thrown into themselves and that is too much.

One of my friends was telling me once that they had to go to a certain party; and they had a very small child, a beautiful child, and of course very active, as children are. So they locked his room and told him, “If you behave well and don’t create any disturbance in the house, we will give you whatsoever you ask for, and within an hour we will be back.”
The child was allured – whatsoever he asks will be given. So he acted really well. In fact, he didn’t do anything; he simply stood in the corner because, “Whatsoever I do may turn out… Nobody knows, nobody knows about these adult minds: what is wrong and what is good. And they also go on changing their opinions.” So he stood with closed eyes just like a meditator.
And when they came back they opened the door; he was standing stiff, in the corner. He opened the eyes and looked at them, and they asked, “Did you behave well?”
He said, “Yes, in fact I behaved so well that I couldn’t stand myself.”

It was too much... People who are too occupied with activities are afraid of themselves. Activity is a sort of escape; they can forget themselves in it. It is alcoholic; it is an intoxicant. Activity has to be dropped because it is pathology, you are ill. Action has not to be dropped; action is beautiful.

What is action? Action is a response: when it is needed you act, when it is not needed you relax. Right now you go on doing things which are not needed, and right now when you want to relax, you cannot. A man of action, total action, acts, and when the situation is over he relaxes.

I am talking to you. Talking can be either activity or action. There are people who cannot stop talking; they go on and on. Even if you stop their mouths it will not make any difference inside; they will go on chattering, they cannot stop it. This is activity, a feverish obsession. You are here and I talk to you; I don’t even know what I am going to talk to you about. Until the sentence is uttered, I am not even aware what it is going to be. You are not the only listeners; I am also a listener here. When I have said something, then I know that I have said it. Neither can you predict nor can I predict what I am going to say. Even the next sentence is not there; it is your situation that brings it.

So whatsoever I say, I am not solely responsible; remember you are also half responsible for it. It is half-half: you create the situation; I act. So if my listeners change, my talk changes. It depends, because I have nothing pre-formulated. I don’t know what is going to happen, and that’s why it is beautiful for me also. It is a response, an act. When you are gone I sit inside my abode, not even a single word floats in the inner sky.

It is you… So sometimes it happens people come to me and say, “We were going to ask a certain question and you answered it.” Every day it happens. It is happening: you have a certain question, you create a climate around you of that question; you come filled with that question. Then what I am to do? I have to respond. Your question simply creates the situation and I have to respond. That’s why many of your questions are simply solved. If some question is not solved the reason must be somewhere in you; you may have forgotten it. In the morning it was in the mind but when you entered this room you forgot about it. Or there were many questions and you were not certain exactly which question was to be asked; you were in confusion, vague, cloudy. If you are certain about your question the answer will be there.

It is nothing on my part, it simply happens. You create the question; I simply float into it. I have to because I have nothing to say to you. If I had something to say to you, you would be irrelevant; whatsoever question you had wouldn’t make any sense. I would have my prepared thing in me and I would have to tell it to you. Even if you were not there, it would not make any difference.

The All India Radio used to invite me, but I felt it was very difficult because it was so impersonal: talking to nobody! I simply said, “This is not for me. It is such a strain and I don’t know what to do; there is nobody there.” So they arranged… They said, “This can be done: a few people from our staff can come and they can sit there.” But then I told them, “Then don’t give me a subject because those people will give me the subject. It would be totally irrelevant – somebody sitting there and you had given me a subject to talk on and nobody involved in that subject; they would be just a dead audience.”
When you are there you create the question, you create the situation and the answer flows toward you. It is a personal phenomenon. Then I simply stopped going there. I said, “This is not for me, it is not possible. I cannot talk to machines because they don’t create any situation for me to float in. I can talk only to people.”

That’s why I have never written a book. I cannot, for whom? Who will read it? Unless I know that man who will read it, and unless he creates a situation, I cannot write – for whom? I have written only letters because then I know that I am writing to somebody. He may be somewhere in the United States, it makes no difference – the moment I write a letter to him it is a personal phenomenon: he is there. While I am writing he helps me to write. Without him it is not possible; it is a dialogue.

This is action. The moment you are gone, all language disappears from me; no words float, they are not needed. And this should be so! When you walk you use your legs and when you sit in your chair, what is the point of moving your legs? It is mad! When there is a dialogue, words are needed; when there is a situation, action is needed. But let the whole decide it; you should not be the deciding factor, you should not decide. Then there are no karmas; then you move, from moment to moment, fresh. The past dies by itself every moment, and the future is born and you move into it fresh like a child.

[The supreme understanding
transcends all this and that.
The supreme action
embraces great resourcefulness without attachment.]

Actions happen but there is no attachment; you don’t feel, “I have done this.” I don’t feel I have said this. I simply feel it has been spoken, it has happened. The whole has done it, and the whole is neither I, nor you; the whole is both and neither. And the whole hovers around and the whole decides: you are not the doer. Much happens through you, but you are not the doer. Much is created through you, but you are not the creator. The whole remains the creator – you simply become vehicles, mediums for the whole.

A hollow bamboo, and the whole puts his fingers and his lips on it, and it becomes a flute and a song is born. From where does this song come – from that hollow bamboo you call a flute, from the lips of the whole? No. From where does it come? Everything is involved. The hollow bamboo is involved, the lips of the whole are also involved, the singer is involved, the listener is involved – everything is involved.

Even a small thing can create a difference. Just a roseflower at the side of the room and this room will not be the same because the roseflower has its own aura, its own being. It will influence, it will influence your understanding, it will influence whatsoever I say. The total moves, not parts. Much happens but nobody is the doer.

[...great resourcefulness without attachment.]

And when you are not the doer, how can the attachment happen? You do a small thing and you become attached. You say, “I have done this.” You would like everybody to know that you have done this and you have done that. This ego is the barrier for the supreme understanding. Drop the doer and let things happen. That’s what Tilopa means by being loose and natural.

[The supreme accomplishment
is to realize immanence without hope.]

This is a very deep thing, very subtle and delicate. Tilopa says, “What is the supreme accomplishment?” It is: […to realize immanence without hope]: that inside, the inner space is perfect, absolute, without hope. Why does he bring in this word hope? It is because with hope comes future, with hope comes desire, with hope comes the effort to improve, with hope comes greed for more, with hope comes discontentment, and then, of course, frustration follows.

He is not saying to be hopeless, because that too comes with hope. He is simply saying no hope, not hopeful, not hopeless – because they both come with hope. And this has become such a great problem for the West because Buddha says the same, and then Western thinkers think that these people are pessimists. They are not. They are not pessimists; they are not optimists. And this is the meaning of no-hope.

If somebody hopes, we call him an optimist. We say that he can see the silver lining in the darkest cloud, we say that he can see the morning following the darkest night: he is an optimist. And then there is the pessimist, just the opposite of it. Even in the brightest silver lining he will always see the darkest cloud. You talk about the morning and he will say, “Every morning ends in the evening.”

But remember: they may be opposites but they are not really separate; their focus is different but their minds are the same. Whether you see the bright lining, silver lining in the dark cloud, or you see the dark cloud in the silver lining, you always see the part. Your division is there; you choose, you never see the total.

Buddha, Tilopa, myself, we are neither optimists nor pessimists; we simply drop hope. With hope, both optimism and pessimism come in. We simply drop the coin of hope, and both aspects are dropped with it. This is a totally new dimension, difficult to understand.

Tilopa sees the suchness of things; he has no choice. He sees both the morning and evening together, he sees both the thorns and the flower together, he sees both pain and pleasure together, he sees both birth and death together. He has no choice of his own. He is neither a pessimist nor an optimist; he lives without hope. And that is a really wonderful dimension in which to live, to live without hope.
Use the very words …without hope… and inside you it feels that it is something pessimistic, but that is because of the language – and what Tilopa is saying is beyond language.

He says:
[The supreme accomplishment
is to realize immanence without hope.]

You simply realize yourself as you are in your total suchness, and you are simply that. There is no need for any improvement, change, development, growth – no need. Nothing can be done about it. It is simply the case.
Once you go deep into it, that this is simply the case, suddenly all flowers and all thorns disappear, days and nights disappear, life and death disappear, summer and winter disappear. Nothing is left because the clinging disappears. And with the acceptance, whatsoever you are, whatsoever is the case, is then no problem, no question, nothing to be solved; you are simply that. A celebration comes; and this celebration is not of hope, this celebration is just an overflowing of energy. You start blooming. You simply bloom, not for something in the future; you cannot do otherwise.

When one realizes the suchness of being, the blooming happens: one goes on blooming and blooming and celebrating for no visible cause at all. Why I am happy? What have I got that you have not got? Why am I serene and quiet? Have I achieved something that you have to achieve? Have I attained to something that you have to attain? No. I have simply relaxed into the suchness. Whatsoever I am – good, bad, moral, immoral – whatsoever I am, I have simply relaxed into the suchness of it. And I have dropped all efforts to improve, and I have dropped all future. I have dropped hope, and with the dropping of hope everything has disappeared. I am alone and simply happy for no reason at all, simply silent because now, without hope, I don’t know how to create disturbance. Without hope, how can you create disturbance in your being?

# This discourse is too long for 1 audio fragment.
# Here ends part 1. Go to Pearl 671 for part 2.