Whatsoever you want to find, you will find...

Two men were imprisoned. It was a full-moon night; both were standing near the window of their dark cell. The full moon was there. One was looking at the moon, and it was the rainy season -- must have been like these days -- and there was much water and mud just in front of the window. Dirty, and it was smelling and stinking.

One man continued to look at the moon, the other continued to look at the mud. And the man who was looking at the mud, of course, was feeling very miserable. And the man who was looking at the moon was aflame, aglow; his face was reflecting the moon; his eyes were full of beauty. He had completely forgotten that he was imprisoned.

BOTH are standing at the same window, but they are choosing different things. There are people: if you take them to a rosebush they will count the thorns; they are great calculators -- their mathematics is always right. And when they have counted thousands of thorns, it is simply logical that they will not be able to see the one roseflower. In fact, their inner world will say, "How is it possible? -- amidst so many thorns, how is a roseflower possible? It must be a deception, it must be illusory. Or even if it is possible, it is worthless."

Then there are people who have never known the thorns of a rosebush -- they look at the rose. And looking at the rose, feeling the rose, the beauty of it, celebrating the moment, they come to feel that even thorns are not so thornlike. "How can they be when they are growing on the same rosebush as the roseflower?" When their mind is focused on the roseflower, they start looking at thorns also in a different way: they start thinking that thorns are there to protect the roseflower. They are no longer ugly, they are no longer irrelevant; they are no longer anti -- a positive attitude arises.

It is up to you to make whatsoever you want out of your life. An enlightened consciousness makes even death beautiful. An unenlightened consciousness makes even life ugly. For an enlightened consciousness, only beauty exists -- only beauty; only bliss exists -- only bliss.
So the question is not how to change ugliness into beauty, how to change pain into pleasure, how to change misery into happiness. No. The question is how to change the unconscious into conscious, the unenlightened attitude into the enlightened attitude -- how to change your inner world of being, how to attain to life-affirmative values and drop life-negative values.

A man who knows how to be happy becomes happy in any sort of situation. You cannot give him any situation in which he will not find something to be happy about.

And there are persons who have learnt the trick of being unhappy. You cannot give them any situation in which they will not find something to be unhappy about.

Whatsoever you want to find, you will find. Life goes on supplying all sorts of things to you. You choose!

What is beauty and what is ugliness?

If somebody asks you and tries to force you to confess to what exactly beauty is, you will be in trouble. You will not be able to define. Nobody has yet been able to define. Centuries and centuries of philosophers have been working on it, trying to define what beauty is, and ultimately they decide that it is indefinable. But still you feel beauty. If you talk to a small child whose desire has not yet ripened, and you say, "This woman is beautiful," he will look at you surprised, shrug his shoulders, and go on his way -- "Gone mad. All women are alike." For a small child, it makes no difference. He cannot see why one woman should be thought beautiful and another not.

In fact, he knows only one woman who is beautiful: she is his mother -- and that too, for some other reasons, not for beauty. She is his nourishment, his life, so she is beautiful. But one day when his desire arises and his love ripens, he will start looking with different eyes. Then all women are not alike. Then certainly there are women who are beautiful; then certainly there are men who are tremendously appealing and magnetic. But one day again, when one becomes very alert, understanding, again all men and women are alike. Then again beauty or ugliness don't matter. Then again duality is transcended.

Many African tribes don't like women with hair. The women are shaved, then they become beautiful. Now, you cannot think women beautiful when they are shaved. They look like Buddhist nuns! And one feels an urgent desire to escape from them. Skulls without hair look ugly -- but that too is an idea. Thin lips are thought to be beautiful, but in Africa they like thick lips. They hang weights on their lips to make them more thick. Girls hang stones on their lips so their lips become very, very thick. You will think this is ugly, but this is beauty to them.

What is beauty and what is ugliness? -- just a mind concept. Nobody has yet been able up to now to define what beauty is, and nobody is ever going to be able to define what beauty is -- because beauty is nothing but your idea of it. You create beauty and you can believe in it; then it is beautiful. You can believe in ugliness, and it is ugly.

Just watch, and you will see that your mind conditions you towards certain things. And then you start looking for those things. And then you will project in your dreams, and by and by while you are awake you will project.

Priest will only pretend that he is bridging...

Life-affirmation, not life-negation, is religion -- because God is life, and there is no other God. God is the green of the trees and the red of the trees and the gold of the trees. God is all over the place. Only God is. To deny life means to deny God, to condemn life means to condemn God, to renounce life means you are thinking yourself wiser than God.

God has given you this life, this tremendously valuable gift, and you cannot even appreciate it. You cannot welcome it, you cannot feel any gratitude for it. On the contrary, you are complaining and complaining and complaining. Your heart is full of grudges, not gratitude.

But this is what you have been taught by the priests down the ages. Priests have lived on it; this has been their basic strategy to exploit people.

If life is lived in its totality, the priest is not needed at all. If you are already okay as you are, if life is beautiful as it is, what is the need for a priest? What is the need of a mediator between you and God? You are directly in contact with God: you are living in God, breathing in God, God is pulsating in you. The priest will be utterly useless, and so will be all his mumbo jumbo, his religion and scriptures. He can be significant only if he can create a rift between you and God. First the rift has to be created, then he can come and can tell you, "Now I am here, I can bridge the rift." But first the rift has to be there, only then can it be bridged.

And of course, you have to pay for it. When the priest does such great work bridging the rift, you have to pay for it. And in fact deep down, he is not interested in bridging it. He will only pretend that he is bridging it; the rift will remain. In fact he will make it more and more unbridgeable; the more unbridgeable it is, the more important he is. His importance consists in denying life, destroying life, making you renounce it.

When the dancer disappears in his dance, he is divine. When the singer disappears in his song, he is divine. Rejoice so deeply, so totally, that you disappear in your rejoicing: there is rejoicing, but there is nobody who is rejoicing. When it comes to such an optimum, there is a transformation, a revolution. You are no more the old dark ugly self. You are showered with blessings. For the first time you come to know your grandeur, the splendor of your being. Say yes to life, say a total yes to life.