Enjoy the Moment

Two friends were talking. One friend said, "You will not be able to believe that last night in my dream I went fishing. My God, what a great fish, so huge. The whole night I was fishing and fishing and there was no end... greater and greater fish...!"

The other man said, "This is nothing. What I saw last night you will certainly not believe. I saw that on one side Marilyn Monroe is lying naked and on the other side another beauty."

As he asserted this the first man said, "You idiot. You pretend to be my best friend. Why did you not call me?"

The man said, "I did. I went running to your house, and your wife told me that you had gone fishing!"

Nobody is where he thinks he is. You think you are here? Really, you think...? If you look within yourself you may not believe it. It is strange, you are here and your mind is wandering somewhere else, is thinking about something else.

To be in the presence of a master is not to be just physically present. It has to be a presence of consciousness, of awareness, as if the whole world has disappeared. Only this moment -- and you are gripped by a great silence. Out of this silence will arise the dance, the celebration.

Mind creates so many systems, so many methods. It thinks, "If I drop out of the life I am leading, something deeper will be found." This is absurd. But the mind goes on thinking that somewhere in Tibet, somewhere in Meru Pravat, somewhere, the "real thing" must be happening. The heart is in conflict: how to go there? How to come in contact with the masters who are working there? The mind is always looking for something somewhere else, never for something here and now. The mind is never here.

Do not move in comparisons. Each moment is unique; it Cannot be compared. And this is the nonsense, the stupidity of the human mind: that the moment with which you are comparing your present moment was not so beautiful as you think, because when you were actually in that moment, you were thinking about something else. So the glory, the beauty, the happiness of it, is just a false phenomenon.

Everyone says that childhood was golden, and no child seems happy about his childhood. Every child is trying to grow up soon. If he can take a jump, if a child is allowed to take a jump, he will become his father immediately. No child is happy about his childhood, because childhood is such a slavery, and childhood is such a weakness, and a child is so much at the mercy of others. He feels it. Everything hurts. Mother and father and everyone is so strong, and he alone is so weak and dependent that he cannot do anything on his own. From everywhere comes the commandment "Don't!"

So every child is in deep misery. He contemplates the day when he will also be an adult -- powerful. But when he is an adult, he will begin to say, "Childhood was good." When he is old, just near death, he will create a golden dream. He will say, "What bliss childhood was! What a heaven!"

Psychologists say that this is also a trick of the mind. Because the reality is so hard, you have to escape somewhere. You are not capable of facing it, you do not want to encounter it. Really, the old man is now near death, so he wants to escape from it. When he begins to think about childhood, he has escaped, because childhood is as far away from death as anything. In his imagination, he has moved to being a child again. Now there is no death, no disease, no illness, no oldness. He is passing into the past, but why not into the future?

Old men always escape into the past, young men always into the future. Why? Because for an old man the future means death, so he doesn't want to see the future. Every day on the calendar a new date appears and death comes nearer. He doesn't want to see it, and the easiest way is to escape into the past. And to escape, you have to make it golden and beautiful, otherwise the journey will be boring.

Contentment means life here and now, living moment to moment without any escapes.

We go on missing the point and we go on thinking of something else which was not the case; this is how the foolish mind functions. Enjoy the moment, and whatsoever the moment makes available to you, be enriched by.

Open all Windows

An ancient Chinese story will help you to understand the great Zen master Eno. His every statement is a scripture in itself.

The ancient story is that a great emperor, being afraid of death, created a palace with a single door. No other doors, no other windows, no way of entering into the palace except from one small door where he had placed a complete row of guards. Guard number one was to be guarded by number two, and guard number two was guarded by number three, and guard number three was guarded by number four... seven guards watching each other! More protection is not possible.

A neighboring king heard about it, and he wanted to see this most secure palace. He was welcomed. The owner of the palace took him in, showed him all the facilities inside, that there was no way for any enemy, for any thief, for any killer to enter.

The king was very much impressed. He said, "I will immediately order the same. Just give me the names of the architects, to make the same palace for me in my kingdom."

Talking with each other, they came out to where the chariot of the king was waiting. And when he said, "I'm going to make exactly the same palace. I loved it, the very idea. It is so safe and secure..." a beggar by the side of the road started laughing madly.

Both were stunned. For a moment there was silence.

They both asked the beggar, "Why are you laughing?"

He said, "I'm laughing because there is a loophole in all this, and I know the loophole. I have been sitting in this place for years, begging, so I have been watching the building of the palace."

The emperor asked, "What is the loophole?"

He said, "That one door!"

The emperor laughed. He said, "I have placed seven guards on it. They are guarding on each other, nobody can betray. What is the fear?"

The beggar said, "With due respect, I want to tell you that death will enter and your guards will not be able to see it. And death is the only insecurity. What else? Do you have any protection against death?"

The emperor was at a loss.

The beggar said, "My suggestion is that if you want really to be secure, tell your builders to raise a wall in place of that door! I still cannot guarantee that death will not enter -- but at least you have made as much effort as possible; close the door and be inside."

The emperor said, "But that means I'm already dead! It becomes a grave, not a palace, if I cannot come out."

The beggar said, "If you think just by closing one door your life will be finished, don't you think that by closing other doors, parts of your life are finished? By closing the windows, other parts of your life are finished? You are going to live at the minimum, while the maximum was available."

Both the kings were surprised to see the intelligence of the beggar. They came close to him and they asked him, "From where have you come?"

He said, "You will not understand. Your fathers were my friends. Once I also used to be an emperor. But seeing the whole unnecessary trouble, I made myself completely secure -- I dropped all walls, all worries, opened all windows. Now for almost half a century nobody has harmed me. I'm just a beggar -- why should anyone harm me? I have nothing to be stolen. I sleep as I have never slept before."

If you really want to be living at the maximum, don't listen to the duality of the mind.

The only security in existence is going beyond the mind.

The beggar was a great Taoist master. His name was Lieh Tzu. But people had forgotten that fifty years before he had dropped his kingdom.

He said, "The only security I have found is in being silent, in being myself, where all duality disappears. Where you and the universe are one, then death cannot do anything."

Each moment life reveals its newness

Boredom is the consciousness of repetition. Because animals cannot remember the past, they cannot feel bored. They cannot remember the past, so they cannot feel the repetition. The buffalo goes on eating the same grass every day with the same delight. You cannot. How can you eat the same grass with the same delight? You get fed up.

For a dull mind, everything is old; for a totally alive mind there is nothing old under the sun. Cannot be. Everything is in flux. Every person is in flux, is river-like. Persons are not dead things. How can they be the same? Are you the same?

The river is continuously flowing; it looks the same but it is not the same. The old Heraclitus has said that you cannot step twice into the same river because the river is never the same.

You always live with dead expectations. Every day you come home and you expect certain behavior from your wife. Now look how you create your own misery: you expect a certain fixed behavior from your wife and then you expect your wife to be new. You are asking the impossible. If you really want your wife to remain continuously new to you, don't expect. Come home always ready to be surprised and shocked, then the wife will be new. But she has to fulfill certain expectations. We never allow our total flux-like freshness to be known to the other. We go on hiding, we don't expose, because the other may not be able to understand it at all. And the wife also expects the husband to behave in a certain way, and, of course, they manage the roles. We are not living life, we are living roles. The husband comes home; he forces himself into a certain role. By the time he enters the house, he is no more an alive person -- he is just a husband.

A husband means a certain type of expected behavior. The woman there is a wife, and the man there is a husband. Now when these two persons meet there are really four persons: the husband and wife, which are not real persons -- just personas, masks, false patterns expected behavior, duties, and all that -- and the real persons hiding behind the masks. Those real persons feel bored.

But you have invested much in your persona, in your mask. If you really want a life which has no boredom in it, drop all masks, be true. Sometimes it will be difficult, I know, but it is worth it. Be true. If you feel like loving your wife, love her, otherwise say you don't feel like it. What is happening right now is that the husband goes on making love to the wife, and goes on thinking of some actress. In imagination he is not making love to this woman, in imagination he is making love to some other woman. And the same is true about the wife. Then things become boring because they are no more alive. The intensity, the sharpness, is lost.

Live more authentically. Drop the masks; they are a weight on your heart. Drop all falsities. Be exposed. Of course it is going to be troublesome but that trouble is worth it because only after that trouble will you grow and become mature. And then nothing is holding life. Each moment life reveals its newness. It is a constant miracle happening all around you only you are hiding behind dead habits.

Become a Buddha if you don't want to be bored. Live each moment as fully alert as possible, because only in full alertness will you be able to drop the mask. You have completely forgotten what your original face is. Even when you stand before the mirror in your bathroom and you are alone, nobody is there, even standing before the mirror you don't see your original face in the mirror. There too you go on deceiving.

Existence is available for those who are available to existence. And then I tell you, there is no boredom. Life is infinite delight.

Either have no consciousness -- then you cannot feel repetition -- or have so much consciousness that in each repetition you can see something new. These are the two ways to get out of boredom. Either live like a Buddha or live like a buffalo, then you will not be bored. Now the choice is yours.

Frustration is a shadow of expectation

It is better not to meditate than to meditate with expectation, because at least you will not suffer the frustration. Don't meditate. But if you have decided to meditate, then be clear. Meditation does not guarantee anything to you. Not that nothing happens out of it; it happens, but there is no guarantee. Tremendous possibilities open but you cannot expect them. If you expect, doors remain dosed. It is your expectation that blocks the way.

Once you drop expectations you have learned how to live. Then everything that happens fulfills you, whatsoever it is. For one thing, you never feel frustrated because in the first place you never expected. So frustration is impossible. Frustration is a shadow of expectation. With the expectation dropped, frustration drops on its own accord.

Don't expect anything in the future. Don't corrupt it. Because if all your expectations are fulfilled then too you will be miserable... because it is your expectation and it is fulfilled. You will not be happy about it. Happiness is possible only through surprise; happiness is possible only when something happens which you had never expected, when something takes you completely unawares. If your expectations are fulfilled a hundred per cent, you will be living as if you are in the past, not in the future. You come home and you expected your wife to say something and she does. And you expected your child to behave in a certain way and the child does. Just think -- you will be constantly in boredom. Nothing will happen. Everything will be just a repetition, as if you are seeing something which you have seen before, hearing something which you have heard before. Continuously you will see that it is a repetition of something. and repetition can never be satisfying. The new, the novel, the original, is needed.

So if your expectations are fulfilled. you will remain completely unfulfilled. And if your expectations are not fulfilled. then you feel frustrated. Then you feel constantly as if you propose and God goes on disposing; you feel that God is the enemy; you feel as if everybody is against you and everybody is working against you. If your expectations are never fulfilled you will feel frustrated.

when everything happens unexpectedly, everything becomes new. It brings a freshness to your life; a fresh breeze is continuously blowing and it does not allow dust to gather on you. Your doors and your windows are open: in comes sunshine, in comes the breeze, in comes the fragrance of flowers -- everything unexpected. You never asked for it, and existence goes on showering it on you. One feels God Is.

To be a parent is a great art, something extraordinary

THE TROUBLE with the family is that children grow out of childhood, but parents never grow out of their parenthood! Man has not even yet learned that parenthood is not something that you have to cling to it forever. When the child is a grown-up person your parenthood is finished. The child needed it -- he was helpless. He needed the mother, the father, their protection; but when the child can stand on his own, the parents have to learn how to withdraw from the life of the child. And because parents never withdraw from the life of the child they remain a constant anxiety to themselves AND to the children. They destroy, they create guilt; they don't help beyond a certain limit.

To be a parent is a great art. They are to support, they are to strengthen, they are to nourish, but not to impose their ideas, not to give the shoulds and should-nots. They are not to create slaves.

But that's what parents all over the world go on doing: their whole effort is to fulfill their ambitions through the child. Of course nobody has been ever able to fulfill his ambitions, so every parent is in a turmoil. He knows the death is coming close by every day, he can feel the death is growing bigger and bigger and life is shrinking, and his ambitions are still unfulfilled, his desires are still not realized. He knows that he has been a failure. He is perfectly aware that he will die with empty hands -- just the way he had come, with empty hands, he will go.

Now his whole effort is how to implant his ambitions into the child. He will be gone, but the child will live according to him. What he has not been able to do, the child will be able to do. At least through the child he will fulfill certain dreams.

It is not going to happen. All that is going to happen is the child will remain unfulfilled as the parent and the child will go on doing the same to his children. This goes on and on from one generation to another generation. We go on giving our diseases; we go on infecting children with our ideas which have not proved valid in our own lives.

Parents are not consciously exploiting their children; they are doing it for the child's sake. They think that if he is a engineer, a scientist, a mathematician, a professor, a politician, a president, a prime minister, that will be good for him; if he is rich, has great money and wealth and name and fame, he will be happy in his life. But they are completely unconscious because they know... but they know only in a very very vague way, it is not clear-cut. They see presidents, prime ministers; they know they are not happy. They see the rich people; they know they are not happy. They themselves may be rich and they know they are not happy. They may have succeeded in their life, in their profession, and they know that life has been just a stupid exercise of utter futility, nothing has been gained. But that's all they know, and that's all they can teach. With all good wishes they impose their ideas on the child.

That becomes the circumference of everyone.

To be a parent is a great art. To give birth to children is nothing -- any animal can do it; it is a natural, biological, instinctive process. To give birth to a child is nothing great, it is nothing special; it is very ordinary. But to be a parent is something extraordinary; very few people are really capable of being parents.

And the criterion is that the real parents will give freedom. They will not impose themselves upon the child, they will not encroach upon his space. From the very beginning their effort will be to help the child to be himself or to be herself.

FIND FRIENDS WHO LOVE THE TRUTH

DO NOT LOOK FOR BAD COMPANY
OR LIVE WITH MEN WHO DO NOT CARE.
FIND FRIENDS WHO LOVE THE TRUTH.

That is the meaning of a spiritual commune: FIND FRIENDS WHO LOVE THE TRUTH -- because alone you may not be able to gather that much courage to go into the uncharted sea. But when you see many are going, a great courage may arise in your heart. It is there, lying dormant; it may become active. Hence a commune is needed -- Buddha created a SANGHA, a commune -- where seekers can gather together, where lovers of truth can hold hands with each other, where meditators can share their experiences with each other, where people can feel that they are not alone, where they can create an alternative society.

Alone you may not be able to gather that much courage, alone you may feel hopeless. But when you see many people dancing, singing, rejoicing in their journey, great courage arises in your heart, great trust arises in yourself. You become confident that it is possible in this life to be a buddha.

DO NOT LOOK FOR BAD COMPANY.... What is "bad company"? People who are not interested in truth. ... OR LIVE WITH MEN WHO DO NOT CARE. And avoid people who are indifferent to truth, because they are going to waste their life. To be with them you will have to be like them. To be with them you will have to behave in their ways. Find people who are in a love affair with existence. That will help your search tremendously; you will be immensely benefited.

Avoid all serious company; avoid people who are trying to become somebody. Get more and more in tune with people who are simply living their life, not trying to become anybody, who are simply being as they are. Move to them, they are the real spiritual people in the world.

The only thing that matters - Did you Enjoy the Game ?

Buddha says: LIVE IN JOY, WITHOUT POSSESSIONS, LIKE THE SHINING ONES. Live like the buddhas, who don't possess a thing but can use everything. The world has to be used, not possessed. We come empty-handed and we go empty-handed, so there is no point in possessing anything. To be possessive is ugly -- but use everything! While you are, use the world, enjoy everything that the world makes available, and then go without looking back, without clinging to things.

This is the way of the buddhas. AES DHAMMO SANANTANO: this is the inexhaustible law of the buddhas. Then a buddha can be a beggar if he chooses to be so -- if that is his way -- or a buddha can be an emperor. There have been emperors who were buddhas.

In India there has been one man, Janaka, the father of Sita, Rama's wife, who was a buddha. He lived in the palace with all the richness of a great king and yet he was absolutely nonpossessive, he possessed nothing. It was just as if you are staying in a hotel; you don't possess anything. You stay for a few days and then you are gone. You use.

The intelligent person uses life and uses it beautifully, aesthetically, sensitively. Then the world has many treasures for him. He never becomes attached, because the moment you become attached you have fallen asleep.

THE WINNER SOWS HATRED
BECAUSE THE LOSER SUFFERS.
LET GO OF WINNING AND LOSING
AND FIND JOY.

How to find joy? Let your ambition disappear; ambition is the barrier. Ambition means an ego trip: "I want to be this, I want to be that -- more money, more power, more prestige." But remember, Buddha says: THE WINNER SOWS HATRED BECAUSE THE LOSER SUFFERS. LET GO OF WINNING AND LOSING AND FIND JOY. If you want to find joy, forget about winning and losing. Life is a play, a game. Play it beautifully, forget all about losing and winning. The real sportsman's spirit is not that of winning or losing, it is not his real question. He enjoys playing; that is the real player. If you are playing to win, you will play with tension, anxiety. You are not concerned with the play itself, its joy and its mystery; you are more concerned with the outcome. This is not the right way to live in the world.

Live in the world without any idea of what is going to happen. Whether you are going to be a winner or a loser, it doesn't matter. Death takes everything away. Whether you lose or win is immaterial. The only thing that matters, and has always been, is how you played the game. Did you enjoy it? -- the game itself -- then each moment is of joy. You never sacrifice the moment for the future.

All postponement is dangerous...

When you are dying, the life is slipping out of your hands and you cannot cling anymore; in that impotence you say,'I renounce.' Just look at the absurdity of it: when life is renouncing you, you go on playing the ego game; you say,'I renounce. Wait a minute more; life is renouncing you itself. You are already being carried towards the rubbish heap!

It is said that one day Diogenes and Alexander went out of the town for a morning walk. They came across a cemetery and Diogenes started looking at the skulls and the bones, and there was a big heap. Alexander was disgusted and he said,'What are you doing?'

He said,'I am looking for your father's skull. He was such a great emperor, your father. Come please, because I cannot recognize which one is your father's skull. You may be able to recognize it because he was your father. And don't feel so disgusted, because sooner or later we will be on this heap also, and nobody will be able to recognize! Remember Alexander, nobody will even be able to recognize who was who.'

When you are on your death-bed, just being carried toward the grave, then you start thinking of God. You have missed the opportunity. When you were young, you had something to offer to Him. Now you have nothing; you are a wasted opportunity. You are already empty, hollow. Now there is nothing to give to Him. How can you offer yourself to Him? -- you have nothing to offer. The song that you could have sung, you never sang; the dance that could have been your life, you missed; the flower that could have been offered to Him, you never helped it to open. In fact, you did all that was just the contrary, just the opposite of it. And then you think of renouncing, and then you think of God, and then you think of prayer. When the heart is already dead, you think of prayer....

Remember this: while you are flowing and young, that is the moment of sannyas, that is the moment of offering yourself to God. Don't postpone it. All postponement is dangerous, because with the very idea of postponing there is no end to it. You will go on postponing.

While you still have life, offer it to God. It will look like death, but it will become a resurrection. If you give yourself totally, God will give Himself totally to you. You will lose nothing; you will gain much. For nothing, you will gain the Whole.