Meditation comes when you are happy...

WHY DID this idea arise in people's minds? that meditation brings happiness. In fact, wherever they found a happy person they always found a meditative mind -- both things got associated. Whenever they found the beautiful meditative milieu surrounding a man, they always found he was tremendously happy -- vibrant with bliss, radiant. They became associated. They thought: Happiness comes when you are meditative. It was just the other way round: meditation comes when you are happy.

But to be happy is difficult and to learn meditation is easy. To be happy means a drastic change in your way of life, an abrupt change -- because there is no time to lose. A sudden change -- a sudden clash of thunder -- a discontinuity.

A discontinuity with the past. A sudden clash of thunder, and you die to the old and you start afresh, from ABC. You are born again. You again start your life as you would have done if there had been no enforced pattern by your parents, by your society, by the state; as you would have done, must have done, if there had been nobody to distract you. But you were distracted.

You have to drop all those patterns that have been forced on you, and you have to find your own inner flame.

Don't be too much concerned about money, because that is the greatest distraction against happiness. And the irony of ironies is that people think they will be happy when they have money. Money has nothing to do with happiness. If you are happy and you have money, you can use it for happiness. If you are unhappy and you have money, you will use that money for more unhappiness. Because money is simply a neutral force.

I am not against money, remember. Don't misinterpret me: I am not against money -- I am not against anything. Money is a means. If you are happy and you have money, you will become more happy. If you are unhappy and you have money, you will become more unhappy because what will you do with your money? Your money will enhance your pattern, whatsoever it is. If you are miserable and you have power, what will you do with your power? You will poison yourself more with your power, you will become more miserable.

But people go on looking for money as if money is going to bring happiness. People go on looking for respectability as if respectability is going to give you happiness. People are ready, at any moment, to change their pattern, to change their ways, if more money is available somewhere else.

Once the money is there, then suddenly you are no more yourself; you are ready to change.

This is the way of the worldly man. I don't call those people worldly who have money -- I call those people worldly who change their motives for money. I don't call those people unworldly who have no money -- they may be simply poor. I call those people unworldly who don't change their motives for money. Just being poor is not equivalent to being spiritual; and just being rich is not equivalent to being a materialist. The materialistic pattern of life is that where money predominates over everything. The non-materialistic life is that where money is just a means -- happiness predominates, joy predominates; your own individuality predominates. You know who you are and where you are going, and you are not distracted. Then suddenly you will see your life has a meditative quality to it.

But somewhere on the way. everybody has missed. You were brought up by people who have not arrived. You were brought up by people who were unhealthy themselves. Feel sorry for them! I am not saying be against them; I am not condemning them -- remember. Just feel compassion for them. The parents, the school-teachers. the university professors, the so-called leaders of the society -- they were unhappy people. They have created an unhappy pattern in you.

And: you have not yet taken charge of your life. They were living under a misinterpretation -- that was their misery. And you are also living under a misinterpretation.

MEDITATION comes naturally to a happy person. Meditation comes automatically to a joyous person. Meditation is very simple to a person who can celebrate, who can delight in life. People are trying it from the other way -- which is not possible.

"Where do you want to reach?"...

The famous Sufi woman, Rabiya al-Adabiya, one evening when the sun was setting, was found searching for something just in front of her door on the road. A few people gathered and they said, "Rabiya, what have you lost? We can help you."

She was an old woman and loved by the people, loved because she was beautifully crazy. Rabiya said, "I have lost my needle. I was sewing and I lost my needle. I am searching for it, and there is not much time because the sun is setting. If you want to help me, help quickly, because once the sun has set and darkness has descended, it will be impossible to find the needle."

So they all started a hectic search for the needle. One of them suddenly thought, "The needle is such a small thing and the road is so big, and the sun is going down every moment, the light is disappearing -- unless we know the exact spot where it has fallen it will be impossible to find it." So he asked Rabiya, "Will you please tell us where the needle has fallen exactly? Then it will be possible to find it. Otherwise soon there will be darkness, and the road is very big and the needle is very small."

Rabiya started laughing. She said, "Please don't ask that, because I feel embarrassed by the question!"

They all stopped searching. They said, "What is the matter? Why should you feel embarrassed?"

She said, "I feel embarrassed because I lost the needle INSIDE the house, but because there is no light there, how can I find it? Outside on the road there is just a little light from the setting sun."

They all said, "Now you have gone completely crazy! We had always suspected that you were not sane, but this is an absolute proof!"

Rabiya said, "You think me insane, yet you have been doing the same for lives together -- and YOU are sane? Where have you lost yourself, and where are you trying to find it? Where have you lost your bliss, and where are you trying to find it? It is lost in your inner world, and you are searching on the outside!"

Everywhere people are running with great speed. Time is short, the sun is setting; any moment the darkness can descend. Run as fast as you can! Man has been inventing faster and faster ways to reach, but if you ask him, "Where do you want to reach?" he feels embarrassed; he is not really clear where he wants to reach. One thing he is clear about is that he wants to reach there quickly, because life is short and much has to be found. The soul, God, bliss, truth, freedom...so many things have to be found, and his hands are absolutely empty.

Action is good, it is needful, but it is not all...

The world has come to a point... and it has been brought to this point by the Western attitude of action, and always action, and condemnation of inaction. Now the East can be of immense help. Action is good, it is needful, but it is not all.

Action can give you only the mundane things of life. If you want the higher values of life, then they are beyond the reach of your doing. You will have to learn to be silent and open, available, in a prayerful mood, trusting that existence will give it to you when you are ripe, that whenever your silence is complete, it will be filled with blessings.

Flowers are going to shower on you.

You just have to be absolutely a non-doer, a nobody, a nothingness.

The great values of life -- love, truth, compassion, gratitude, prayer, God, everything -- happen only in nothingness, in the heart which is absolutely silent and receptive. But the West is too rooted in action. And there seems to be perhaps not enough time left for it to learn non-doing.

You will be surprised to know that India never invaded any country -- and India was invaded by almost all the countries of the world. Whoever wanted to invade India, that was the easiest thing. It was not that there were no courageous people, that they were not warriors, but simply the idea of invading somebody else's territory was so ugly.

It is a surprising fact that one Mohammedan conqueror, Mohammed Gauri, invaded India eighteen times, and he was thrown back by a great warrior king, Prithviraj. Mohammed Gauri was driven back, but Prithviraj never entered his territory.

Prithviraj was told again and again, "This is going too far. That man will gather armies again in a few years, and again he will invade the country. It is better to finish him once and for all. And you have been victorious so many times -- you could have gone a little further. He has just a small country by the side of India; you could have taken his country and... finished! Otherwise, he is a constant worry."
But Prithviraj said, "That would be against the dignity of my country. We have never invaded anybody. It is enough that we force him to go back. And he is such a shameless fellow that even after being defeated dozens of times, he again comes.!"

The eighteenth time when Mohammed Gauri was defeated, all his armies were killed, and he was hiding in a cave and thinking, What to do now? And there he saw a spider making its net. Sitting there, he had nothing else to do, so he watched the spider. It fell again and again. It fell exactly eighteen times, but the nineteenth time it succeeded in making a net, and that gave the idea to Mohammed Gauri: "At least one time more I should make the effort. If this spider was not discouraged after eighteen failures, why should I be?"

He again gathered his army, and the nineteenth time he conquered Prithviraj. Prithviraj had become old, and having fought his whole life, his armies were tattered, ruined. He was taken prisoner, handcuffed, chained -- which was absolutely against the Eastern way of life.
When another king, Poras, was defeated by Alexander the Great, and was brought before him, chained, Alexander asked him, "How should you be treated?"

Poras said, "Is that a question to be asked? An emperor should be treated like an emperor."

There was a great silence for a moment in the court of Alexander. It was very appropriate for Poras to say this, because his defeat was not really a defeat; his defeat was through the utter cunningness of Alexander. Alexander had sent his wife to meet Poras -- he was waiting on the other side of the river. It was the time when, in India, sisters would tie a small thread around the wrist of their brothers -- and it was called rakshabandhan, a bondage, a promise that "You will defend me."

When Alexander's wife came she was received just like a queen should be received. Poras himself came to receive her, and asked, "Why have you come? You could have informed me -- I could have come to your camp."

That was part of the Eastern tradition: by the time sun was down, people would go into each other's camp -- the enemy's camp -- just to discuss how the day went, who died, what happened. It was almost like a football game -- nobody took it that seriously.

But the woman said, "I have come because I don't have a brother. And I heard about this tradition here, so I want to make you my brother."
And Poras said, "It is a coincidence; I don't have a sister."

So she tied the thread and took the promise of Poras that "Whatever happens in the war, remember, Alexander is my husband; he is your brother-in-law, and you should not want me to be a widow. Just remember that."

There came a moment when Alexander's horse died as Poras attacked the horse with his spear, and Alexander fell on the ground. Poras jumped down with his spear, and the spear was just going to pierce Alexander's chest when Poras saw his own wrist with the thread. He stopped.
Alexander said, "Why have you stopped? This is the opportunity -- you can kill me."

Poras said, "I have given a promise. I can give my kingdom, but I cannot break my promise. Your wife is my sister, and she has reminded me that I would not like her to be a widow." And he turned back.

Even this kind of man was treated by Alexander as if he were a murderer. And Alexander asked Poras,
"How should you be treated?"

"You should treat me just as an emperor treats another emperor. Have you forgotten that just a second more, and you would not have been alive? It is because of your wife -- the whole credit goes to her."

But it was a conspiracy. The East cannot think of such things. Mohammed Gauri imprisoned Prithviraj -- and Prithviraj was the greatest archer of those times. The first thing Mohammed Gauri did: he took both of Prithviraj's eyes out.

Prithviraj's friend was also captured with him -- he was a poet. Prithviraj told him, "You come with me to the court. Nobody understands our language, and I don't need eyes to hit my target -- you just describe how far he is."

Mohammed Gauri was so afraid of Prithviraj that he was not sitting on his usual throne, he was sitting on the balcony; the whole court was on the ground floor. And Chandrabardai, the poet, described exactly how many feet high, how many feet away. "Mohammed Gauri was sitting...." He sang it in a song, and blind Prithviraj killed Mohammed Gauri just through that description. His arrow reached exactly to his heart.

But Chandrabardai was very much puzzled, because in Prithviraj's blind eyes there were tears. Prithviraj said, "It is not right of me, but he has forced to do me something which goes against our whole tradition."

The East has a totally different approach towards things. If the West learns something about the East, the most important thing will be that all that is great comes out of non-doing, non-aggressiveness -- because every act is potentially aggressive. Only when you are in a state of non-doing are you non-aggressive. You are receptive, and in that receptivity, the whole existence pours all its treasures into you.

No old man can believe that the days are good now...

In youth, everyone is in a flood, and then the whole outlook is tinged and coloured by the ego. Then you walk, then you talk, behave, relate, but everything is tinged, coloured, by the ego. Much misery of course happens because you are thinking yourself to be that which you are not, and you are believing in the shadow. Soon the flood will recede, the autumn is not going to be forever. You will become old, torrents will not fall into you, streams will become dry, banks will appear, summer will come, and this vast looking Yellow River will become just a tiny stream. You may become just a dry bed of sand and nothing else.

It happens in old age. Then one feels very irritated, cheated -- as if existence has been cheating you. Nobody has cheated you, you simply magnified yourself foolishly. Your own ego created the whole problem -- now you feel cheated. You cannot find a man who is old and yet happy. If you can find one, live with him -- he is a wise man. You can find happy young men, that is nothing. If you can find a happy old man, that is something. When the summer has come and the autumn flood is no more and an old man is happy, then he has known something else: he has found some eternal source.

When you are young, you have a dance in your feet -- that is nothing, it is just the flood. When you are old and everything has been taken back, nobody even remembers you, nobody bothers about you; you are simply neglected, out of the way, thrown away like rubbish, garbage, and you are still happy....

Buddha has said that when you find an old man as happy as a youth, there is something there -- bow down to him, listen and learn from him. In India, it was the tradition that whenever we found an old man happy, dancing, we would make him a master. He would move to the forest, he would create a small university around him -- A GURUKUL, a household of the master -- and disciples would start pouring in from all over the country.

In India we have never made a young man a teacher. Only an old man can be a teacher, and that is right. Exceptions may happen, but generally it is right. Only an old man can be a teacher, one who has lived through all seasons of life, who is seasoned and still happy and blissful. To be in flood and happy is nothing special, it is ordinary, but to be happy and ecstatic when the stream is almost dry, when only sands are left, when one's whole body is just a ruin.... To be alive at the peak of life and to dance is nothing. But when death comes near and you go dancing to meet it, then it is something. Then the rare has happened, the extraordinary has entered into the world of the ordinary, then the Divine has penetrated.

If you are happy because you are young you will not be happy for long, soon your happiness will be shattered. And if you can become aware before it is shattered, it is good. This is the beauty: if you can become sad while you are young, you will be happy when you become old. Otherwise you will become sad because now this is just a flood. If you look at it, it is not you; it is the thousand torrents falling into you that is giving you the impression that you are vast. Soon that which is given to you will be taken, and if you can be happy when everything is taken only then is your happiness unshakeable. Then your happiness has become bliss. This is the difference between happiness and bliss.

Every old man, all old persons start looking backwards. Old people always go into memories, the days when they were something, somebody, the days when they were loved and respected and honoured. They go on again and again. Just listen to old men and you feel they are very boring. Why do you feel they are boring? Why do you feel irritated? Because they go on repeating the same story of the old days. Always they start in the good old days. Why the good? Why aren't the days good now? No old man can believe that the days are good now -- they were always in the past, the golden past, the good old days when things were like this and that. This is not a question of things, or economic situations or political situations -- nothing. They were young and everything was good. They were flooded. It happened that a chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States went to visit Paris after he was retired. He had been once before, thirty years before. His old wife was also with him. Looking at Paris for two or three days, he became very sad and he said: We were waiting for this, to come and see Paris, but nothing looks like it was before. The wife laughed and said: Everything is as it was before, only we are not young. Paris remains the same.