If you want to live, live now...

I have heard about a German professor. He wanted to have the biggest collection of philosophical, religious, spiritual literature. And he was a very rich man too, so he wandered around the earth collecting all kinds of scriptures. There are three hundred religions in the world, and there are hundreds of philosophies, and each philosophy has hundreds of books in different languages. And he had translators translating them all into German. This was all preparation for when he would start reading.

But by the time he was ninety, he was still collecting books.

Somebody told him, "Now it is time that you should start reading. The preparation has gone on too long, and you have thousands and thousands of books -- we don't think you will be able to read all of them. Your life is just at the very end, maybe a year or two more."
But the man said, "But my collection is not complete yet."

So he started collecting more forcibly, put more men into collection, into translation. Finally he fell sick, and the doctor said, "He is not going to survive more than seven days."

He called all the scholars who were translating his books: "Now stop translating. You just try to find small summaries from every scripture, because I have got only seven days and I want to know what is written in all the scriptures. So just prepare small summaries of all the scriptures."

But the scholars said, "You have collected so many scriptures, even summaries will not be possible. We will try, but in seven days all the summaries will not be ready."

The last day came. He inquired again, "What has happened?"

They said, "We are trying."

He said, "Forget all about it. You do one thing: just make one small note summarizing all the scriptures. Because there is no more time; I feel that I am going. So be fast and be quick."

They said, "How can we be fast and quick? We have to look into scriptures to find the very gist, the very essential center of all of them. It will take a little time."

The whole day passed, and by the evening when they had come to a conclusion, a small summary of a few pages.... They reached; the man was almost drowning. He said, "That many pages won't do. You just make it half a page, just a small summary that can be printed on a postcard. I don't have time for all these pages."

So they rushed back, again they summarized. Now it meant nothing, because all those scriptures, summaries and summaries... and by the time they came back, the man was dead.

His wife said, "It is a very sad thing. You can at least shout loudly in his ear; perhaps he may be able to hear. He is just going down."

The doctor said, "Now it is useless. But you can try, there is no harm in it." So one scholar shouted the summary of all the scriptures. But the man was dead already, and the doctors were saying, "Now he cannot hear."

His whole life went into preparation.

And this is not the story of one strange, weird man. This is the story of all normal people: preparation, preparation, preparation. They forget completely, that... preparation for what?

We are not certain even of the next moment.
Preparation for what?
Either live or prepare.
If you want to live, live now.

Or prepare for tomorrow -- and remember, tomorrow never comes. What comes in place of tomorrow is death. An intelligent person lives his life. He does not bother about preparations, disciplines.