There are people all around who will make you jealous...

Any love which has some conscious or unconscious conditions is bound to bring frustration, because those conditions cannot be fulfilled. The very nature of conditions is such.

Every girl hates her mother; she may not be conscious of it at all. But the thing becomes more complicated because she hates the mother and she imitates her too, because there is no other woman whom she can imitate and learn from. So she learns all those ugly ways that she hates! Every young girl loves the father, just as the boy loves the mother. It is very natural, because the first experience of the other polarity for the girl is the father, and for the boy is the mother. That is their first experience of the other sex, and naturally there is a tremendous attraction.

But there is also a big, wide barrier. The boy hates the father, just as the girl hates the mother. The reason is the same: the boy hates the father because he is possessing his love-object -- the mother. And the girl is jealous because the mother is possessing the father whom she would have liked to possess. These things go into the unconscious realms of your being, and they remain with you for your whole life unless you become enlightened. This makes your love strangely conditional, which cannot be fulfilled.

Every man unknowingly is expecting his wife to be his mother; that is the image of the woman that he is carrying. Now no other woman can fulfill that image, and anyway the girl has not married him to become his mother! And things become more and more complicated because the girl is carrying the image of her father; she wants her husband exactly to be like her father, and certainly no man marries a woman to become her father.

And the complexities go on becoming more and more difficult: the husband wants the wife to be like the mother, but she hates the mother. The girl wants the husband to fulfill the condition of being the father, but the poor husband in the first place has no idea what is expected of him and in the second place the husband also hates the father. Now things become so complex and complicated....

When I say love has to be unconditional it means you are not expecting from the other anything. You are not expecting the other to be someone else. You are simply loving to the other, as he or she is. And your unconditional love will make you unattached to individuals; it will be just an aroma around you. You will be a loving person. You will love the trees, you will love the sunset, you will love a woman, you will love all that this universe provides you.

Right now, the conditional love is like an imprisonment. Two persons who don't like each other are holding each other in imprisonment. It is a strange thing. If you don't like the other, say good-bye. But you cannot say good-bye because you are afraid he may enjoy himself somewhere else. It does not fit with your jealousy, he has to be happy with you. A husband does not like his wife to be laughing, to be happy with another man. Neither does the wife like such a situation.

This whole society is boiling with jealousy. Nobody says it, everybody hides it. But the more you hide it, the more it goes on like a cancerous growth, expanding in your interior being. Just look how many things you are jealous of: somebody has a beautiful house and somebody has a beautiful physique, and somebody has a beautiful strong body. Somebody is an intellectual giant and somebody has the most wealth that one could ever think of. So on, so forth, there are people all around who will make you jealous.

Instead of your life being in an oceanic love, it is suffering in a gutter of dirty jealousy. But unless you start looking inwards and finding the roots, you will not be able to transform it.

Your enlightenment is perfect only when silence has come to be a celebration...

To me, if all the scriptures of Buddha disappear nothing is lost. Only this anecdote should not disappear. This is the most precious, and scholars have dropped it from Buddha's biography. They say, "This is irrelevant; it doesn't fit with Buddha." But I say to you, "All that Buddha did was just ordinary -- anybody could do that -- but this is extraordinary, this is exceptional. Only a buddha can do this."

This story is one of the most significant ones, because from this was passed the tradition of Zen. Buddha was the source, and Mahakashyap was the first, the original master of Zen. Buddha was the source, Mahakashyap was the first master, and this story is the source from where the whole tradition -- one of the most beautiful and alive that exists on earth, the tradition of Zen -- started.

Try to understand this story. Buddha came one morning, and as usual a crowd had gathered, many people were waiting to listen to him. But one thing was unusual -- he was carrying a flower in his hand. Never before had he carried anything in his hand. People thought that someone must have presented it to him. Buddha came, he sat under the tree. The crowd waited and waited and he would not speak. He wouldn't even look at them, he just went on looking at the flower. Minutes passed, then hours, and the people became very much restless.

It is said that Mahakashyap couldn't contain himself. He laughed loudly. Buddha called him, gave him the flower and said to the gathered crowd, "Whatsoever can be said through words I have said to you, and that which cannot be said through words I give to Mahakashyap. The key cannot be communicated verbally. I hand over the key to Mahakashyap."

This is what Zen masters call transference of the key without scripture -- beyond scripture, beyond words, beyond mind. He gave the flower to Mahakashyap, and nobody could understand what happened. Neither Mahakashyap nor Buddha ever commented upon it again. The whole chapter was closed. Since then, in China, in Tibet, in Thailand, in Burma, in Japan, in Ceylon -- everywhere Buddhists have been asking for these twenty-five centuries, "What was given to Mahakashyap? What was the key?"

Mahakashyap laughed at the foolishness of man. They were restless and thinking, "When will Buddha stand up and drop this whole silence so that we can go home?" He laughed. Laughter started with Mahakashyap and has been going on and on in the Zen tradition.

Mahakashyap laughed, and this laughter carried many dimensions in it. One dimension was at the foolishness of the whole situation, at a buddha silent and nobody understanding him, everybody expecting him to speak. His whole life Buddha had been saying that the truth cannot be spoken, and still everybody expected him to speak. The second dimension -- he laughed at Buddha also, at the whole dramatic situation he had created, sitting there with a flower in his hand, looking at the flower, creating so much uneasiness, restlessness in everybody. At this dramatic gesture of buddha he laughed and he laughed.

The third dimension -- he laughed at his own self. Why couldn't he understand up to now? The whole thing was easy and simple. And the day you understand, you will laugh, because there is nothing to be understood. There is no difficulty to be solved. Everything has always been simple and clear. How could you miss it?

Two ignorant persons can talk. They talk much; they do nothing except talk. Two enlightened persons cannot talk -- it would be absurd. Two ignorant persons talking is meaningless because there is nothing to convey. They don't know anything that can be said, that should be said, but they go on talking. They are chattering. They cannot help it; it's just a mad catharsis, a release.

Two enlightened persons cannot talk because they know the same. Nothing is to be said. Only one enlightened person and one unenlightened person can have a meaningful communication, because one knows and the other is yet in ignorance. A meaningful communication, I said. I don't say that the truth can be conveyed, but some hints, some indications, some gestures can, so that the other becomes ready to take the jump. The truth cannot be conveyed, but the thirst can be given. No teaching worth the name can give the key through words.

Buddha must have known Mahakashyap. He must have known when he was looking at the flower silently and everybody was restless, he must have known only one being was there, Mahakashyap, who was not restless. Buddha must have felt the silence coming from Mahakashyap, but he would not call. When he laughed, then he called him and gave him the flower. Why? Silence is only the half of it. Mahakashyap would have missed if he had been innocently silent and didn't laugh. Then the key would not have been given to him. He was only half grown, not yet a fully grown tree, not blossoming. The tree was there, but flowers had not yet come. Buddha waited.

Now, I will tell you why Buddha waited for so many minutes, why for one or two or three hours he waited. Mahakashyap was silent but he was trying to contain laughter, he was trying to control laughter. He was trying not to laugh because it would be so unmannerly: What would Buddha think? What would the others think? But then, the story says, he couldn't contain himself any more. It had to come out as a laugh. The flood became too much, and he couldn't contain it any more. When silence is too much it becomes laughter; it becomes so overflooded that it starts overflowing in all directions. He laughed. It must have been a mad laughter, and in that laughter there was no Mahakashyap. Silence was laughing, silence had come to a blossoming.

Then immediately Buddha called Mahakashyap: "Take this flower -- this is the key. I have given to all others what can be given in words, but to you I give that which cannot be given in words. The message beyond words, the most essential, I give to you." Buddha waited for those hours so that Mahakashyap's silence became overflooded, it became laughter.

Your enlightenment is perfect only when silence has come to be a celebration. Hence my insistence that after you meditate you must celebrate. After you have been silent you must enjoy it, you must have a thanksgiving. A deep gratitude must be shown towards the whole just for the opportunity that you are, that you can meditate, that you can be silent, that you can laugh.

When no one can become one, how can you become one?

If Jesus meets you, you will not recognize him. If Buddha meets you somewhere suddenly and no one introduces you to him, you will not recognize him -- because this inner flowering is such a subtle, hidden force, that unless you are a fellow traveller, unless you are also moving in the same dimension, you cannot recognize him.

So when you ask whether it is possible now, in this age, for a Buddha to be or a Christ to be,, you again ask a meaningless question. Anywhere, in any time, Christ is possible, Buddha is possible, because the possibility belongs to the innermost realm of your being, not to the procession of events which we call history. It doesn't belong to history, it doesn't belong to time. It belongs to the innermost realm of Being which is in eternity, not time. You can be a Buddha. Take the jump and you will be! And time will not hinder you so that you cannot take the jump. This factor about time is irrelevant.

It must be understood deeply and pondered over because we are very cunning and very self-deceiving. If someone says that in this age to become a Buddha is not possible, then you begin to feel, "It is not my responsibility to transform." And there are religions which say that in this age becoming a Buddha is not possible, and in a way every religion says it. Any organized religion will say that a Jesus is born only once: "He is the only begotten son of God, and now no one can be a Jesus again. You can only be a Christian, not a Christ."

Why? Why do they say this? For two reasons: deep down you like it very much, and the responsibility is not upon you to transform yourself. The time is bad, so you are not a Jesus. k is not your responsibility. Religions will say, "In this kaliyuga, in this age of sin, no one can be a Christ, so, therefore, you are not one." Then it is not your responsibility. "It is the very times which hinder you; otherwise you could flower like a Jesus at any moment. You are ready, but the time is not helpful."

Everyone likes this deep down, appreciates it. Then you can be whatsoever you are. There is no burden on you to flower into a Buddha. Because of this deep satisfaction and deep, cunning deception, we are happy. We think that we can only be criminals, we can only be weak human beings. "That is all that the age allows!"

And, secondly, every religion thinks that if a Buddha is going to be born again and again, then you cannot have an organized church for Buddha because every other Buddha will disturb the whole thing. Christians cannot allow anyone to be a Christ again. Another Christ will disturb the whole Christian kingdom, because such persons are bound to be non-traditional, such persons are bound to be non-sectarian, such persons are bound to be absolutely free, independent. They will destroy any organization if they are born.

So no religion would like or appreciate a Jesus to be again in any form. The Pope is the representative and he is enough; Jesus is no more needed. So every religion goes on insisting that nothing can be done at this moment. All that you can do is to follow, worship and follow: "Just be a follower in the crowd; do not try to be an individual."

Buddha was an individual: he was not a Buddhist. He was born a Hindu, and then the organization could not contain him. No organization could. Jesus was born a Jew, he died a Jew. He was not a Christian. But because the Jews could not contain such a seed, because he could not be contained, they threw him out. And because he was thrown, the seed sprouted into Christianity.

Buddha was a Hindu. He lived as a Hindu and he died as a Hindu: he was not a Buddhist. But Hindus could not absorb him, because if you want to absorb a Buddha you will have to transform the whole society. He could not be absorbed so he was thrown out.

If a Buddha is born now into a Buddhist society he will also be thrown out. If Jesus is born now into a Christian society, he will be thrown out. It is not that Jews or Hindus are against Buddhas and Christs: any organization will be against them -- even their own organizations -- because organizations live in tradition. They exist because of tradition, and these persons are absolutely anti-tradition; rather, they are "traditionless". They move every moment in freedom; you cannot say what they will do.

That is why it is very difficult to create a sect with a living Enlightened person. It is very difficult! You are never at ease with what he is going to do, what he is going to say. When the Teacher is dead, a sect can be created. Now you know what the Teacher wants, how he behaves. Now you can categorize everything. Now you can separate, divide, analyze; now you can make a doctrine and principle out of it. Now a creed is possible.

Only a dead Teacher will allow a creed to be there. With a living Teacher, the seed is every day growing, changing, transforming, moving into the unknown. You are never certain with him. So only with a dead Teacher are creeds born. And when creeds are born, you begin to think in high terms about Jesus and Buddha. They were not thought of so highly in their own day.

So remember these two things: one, religion is a continuous process; it never stops in any age. And, secondly, spirituality is an individual phenomenon. If you choose it, it will happen to you. But no one can buy it. It needs a total decision.

Buddhas and Christs are not bound to any age. At this very moment there are persons who are Enlightened -- but you cannot recognize them. It will take hundreds of years for society to recognize them. When they are long dead then the society will come to feel that they were rare, that something unique had happened in the past.

It takes time to recognize that a Buddha is a Buddha. It takes time! And it takes so much time that when Buddha is no more you recognize him, when Jesus is no more you recognize him. And when he is, you not only do not recognize him, but if someone says that he is, you will deny it. It takes time! This is one of the most unfortunate tendencies of the human mind. Because of this we miss much.

There are stories. People have come to ask Buddha, "Someone said you are an Enlightened One. Are you really? Have you attained the unattainable?" If Buddha says, "Yes, I have attained," then they will go and say that he is an egoist. If he says, "I have not attained," they will say, "We knew it already." If he remains silent, they will say that he knows nothing.

When a Buddha is present amongst you, he looks just like you. He lives like you, he eats like you, he falls ill like you, he dies like you, so how can you think: "A person just like me is Enlightened and I am not"? It is humiliating. It is deep down a hurt to the ego. Because it hurts the ego, because you feel humiliation, you deny. When you deny, you feel good.

So I will say to you that whenever you are in contact with someone who may be an Enlightened One, if you feel the tendency of the mind to deny, remember this: because of this tendency you have missed many Buddhas, and because of this tendency you will never be able to recognize one. And unless you recognize this something which has happened in someone, it is not going to happen to you. When you go on denying, and thinking that no one is a Buddha, ultimately you will come to believe that you cannot become one yourself. When no one can become one, how can you become one?

When you recognize Buddhahood in someone else, deep down you have recognized your own Buddhahood in the future. To recognize a Buddha in the present is to recognize your own future, your own future possibility, your own destiny.

When a rich man creates a religion...

Gautam Buddha does not promise you any paradise where beautiful women will be available to you, where rivers of wine will be flowing -- strange, but not inexplicable. He is fed up with women, he is fed up with wine, he is fed up with everything that money can purchase. All that he can promise to his disciples is a pure silence.

But Mohammed cannot do that, Jesus cannot do that. Jesus has to provide in his paradise all those beautiful things which poor people are missing on the earth. Mohammed provides rivers of wine, beautiful women. And you will be shocked to know, because homosexuality was very much prevalent in Saudi Arabia, in paradise beautiful boys are also provided for the sages.

Jesus provides everything that a poor man can dream of and can hope for. Mahavira provides only absolute aloneness. This will not appeal to a poor man. He is already very lonely, and you have come... and to attain to that aloneness he has to go through all these disciplines. Are you mad? He wants things -- he wants beautiful women, he wants beautiful men, he wants beautiful houses -- and you have come here saying, "You have to fast, you have to train yourself in yoga, you have to meditate. And finally you will get a pure nothingness."

This can appeal only to the very rich. They are tired of things, they want just silence; they are tired of people, they want pure aloneness. The poor man is not tired... he has not even had the chance to be tired of money. He is hoping some day he will have money, have a beautiful house.

When a poor man creates a religion it is bound to be full of your desires, your greed, your lust, and a promise that everything will be fulfilled. When a rich man creates a religion his religion is going to be a purity, a silence, a beautiful space. But you are one with that beautiful space, not separate.

Looking at the religions, their holy books, you can decide whether those holy books came from poor people or from people who have known riches. And remember one thing, the poor man's paradise is just a projection. That's why all the religions that have been created outside India -- just by coincidence -- don't have the quality, the superiority, the grandeur that Indian religions have.

But India is no longer rich. Those religions were created some seven thousand years ago, some five thousand years ago, some twenty-five centuries ago. Today even the Indian masses have turned to Christianity -- Christianity is now the third greatest religion in India. They have turned to Mohammedanism, which is now the second greatest religion in India. Hinduism goes on shrinking, and more and more people go on turning towards Christianity, Mohammedanism, because more and more people are poor. And Hinduism has nothing to offer to the poor people.

They are not interested in nirvana, they are not interested in meditation, they are not interested in their inner being.

Zen is not for those who are seeking employment, not for those who are hungry, starving. It needs intelligence to understand Zen. It needs a kind of frustration with the world -- the kind of experience where you feel that all that this world provides is meaningless, that it leads nowhere, that it is sheer wastage of life. Something more is needed -- something that money cannot purchase, something that science cannot produce, something that is not available in the market, something that you have to find within yourself.

But why are people not interested in themselves? Perhaps in their past lives at some moment they had reached the house of God, and ever since they have been running away from it. Although they give good names for their running -- they are running in search of God, they are running in search of self-realization, they are running for enlightenment -- in fact they are running away from exactly these things, as far away as possible.

But you cannot run because your enlightenment is your very being, whether you like it or not. Existence has not asked you whether you want to be born or not; neither has existence asked you whether you want enlightenment in your innermost core or not. Existence does not treat you as separate; hence there is no question of asking you, you are part and parcel of this beautiful universe. And this universe goes on moving into different forms, but the innermost core remains the same: the same light, the same joy, the same celebration.

Your silence should not be a repressed stillness...

Silence is blissfulness, not in the dictionaries, but in actual experience. And I don't see that in actual experience it can be different to different people. As you become silent, you cannot be worried, you cannot be tense; you cannot be miserable, you cannot be noisy, you cannot be chattering continuously. Otherwise, how can you be silent?

And when all these stupid activities are gone, silence simply clears the ground for blissfulness to be discovered. They are almost the same phenomenon because they happen simultaneously. As you become silent, a certain sweetness, a certain fragrance, a certain beatitude spontaneously arises in you.

But your silence should not be a repressed stillness; you should not be silent by force. If you are silent by force, if you have repressed your mind then rather than doing meditation you are doing gymnastics, fighting with the mind. It is possible you can force the mind to be silent, but then there will be no blissfulness. There will be just emptiness and a silence of the graveyard, not the silence of the garden; something empty, not something overflowing.

The silence that comes out of meditation is not an empty experience, it is very positive -- it is overflowingly positive. And what is there to overflow in silence except blissfulness? So, please check. If your silence is not bringing blissfulness then you are trying to have a wrong kind of silence -- blissfulness is the criterion -- then stop doing what you are trying to do.

In meditation, silence comes on its own accord. You simply go on watching the mind without any control, without any repression, and silence comes suddenly just like a breeze, and with the silence, the fragrance of the flowers -- that is your blissfulness; it is your own fragrance which you were not capable of knowing because there was so much noise.

The mind was creating so much fuss, thoughts were creating so many dark clouds, emotions and moods, it had become a thick barrier between you and your real self. When the barrier is removed, it is as if you have removed a rock which was preventing a stream, a fountain.

And the moment you remove the rock, suddenly the fountain bursts forth in a great dance of joy. Your blissfulness is not something that comes from outside, it springs from within you. Just the rock of your mind -- thoughts, miseries -- has to be removed. It is not that you have to repress it, because by repressing it you will be repressing the fountain behind it too.

Silence is all that is needed, and everything else follows on its own accord.

Buddha is unique not because he is the great saint...

You can be unique only when you are nothing. If you are something, you are comparable. If you are somebody you can be compared with others, and that which can be compared cannot be unique. Unique means incomparable. Unique means you are alone, there is nobody like you. So if you are somebody.... If you are a man there are millions of men; you are comparable. If you are rich, then there are millions of rich people; you are comparable. If you are good you are comparable. If you are bad you are comparable. If you are a painter you are comparable. If you are a singer you are comparable. If you are somebody you are comparable, and by being comparable you cease to be unique.

The moment you attain to a nothingness, when the "I" disappears.... The "I" is comparable; the "no-I" is incomparable. That's why I say if you become nothing you become unique. If you become nothing you become uncorruptible; the nothing cannot be corrupted.

You have heard Lord Acton's saying, "Power corrupts; and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Why does power corrupt? Because power makes you somebody. It gives you a definition. It says who you are -- you are a prime minister of a country or a president of a country. Power gives you a definition; it demarks who you are. If you have money, it demarks you. If you don't have money, it demarks you. If you are a musician or a poet or a singer, it shows who you are. The moment you know who you are, you are limited, you are finite -- and you are comparable.

But if you are nobody -- just a pure nothingness, pure sky with not even a particle of dust -- then how can you be compared.?

God is unique because God is nothing. You cannot find God anywhere. Either you can find him everywhere or nowhere, but you cannot find him somewhere. Either he is the whole or he is nothing.

When you are nothing you also become the whole. When you are nothing you also become divine. By being somebody you remain human. By being nobody you attain to divinity, you become divine. Hence I have said that the moment nothingness arises in you, you have become unique.

Buddha is unique not because he is the great saint, because there are millions of saints. Jesus is unique not because he is the most virtuous man. That's all nonsense. He is unique because he is nothing. He is unique because he is ready to crucify his ego. And the moment his ego is crucified, he resurrects -- he resurrects as the whole. He dies as the part and resurrects as the whole. He dies in time and is resurrected in eternity.

Ambition is the root of politics...

Mind IS politics, because mind is ambitious and ambition is the root of politics. If you are ambitious you are political. Your ambition may take the form of religion, but the politics is there. Then you are competing with other saints.

The night Jesus departed from his disciples, the so-called apostles were not much worried about what was going to happen to Jesus. Their worry was: after Jesus, when the Day of Judgment will come and they all will go to paradise, who will stand next to Jesus? Of course, Jesus will be at the right hand of God; that much they can concede. But who will be next to Jesus? They were quarreling and arguing about this. The last night of the master, tomorrow he may be crucified... but that is not their concern. Those apostles are political, and those apostles have created Christianity, and Christianity is politics and nothing else. So is Hinduism and so is Mohammedanism -- all political desires hidden behind religious words.

Man cannot live without politics, because of the mind. You are brought up, you are trained to be political. Every child is poisoned from the very beginning, poisoned by ambition. We teach children to be ambitious: be somebody in the world, be somebody special, somebody superior, defeat others! We give the idea to every child that life is a struggle and only the fittest survive. Whether you survive by right or wrong means, that is not important.

Twenty-five years of education -- almost one third of your life you are being trained to be ambitious. How can you avoid politics? The only way to avoid politics is to get out of your mind; that means that unless mind is dropped totally, politics will go on clinging to you. You can even be antipolitical but then that will become politics.

"Why do people think that to live without politics is impossible?" -- because they cannot conceive how to live without the mind and desire, or how to live without ambition. They know only one way to live: compete, fight! If you are not going to dominate the other, the other is going to dominate you; so before the other dominates you, dominate the other. It is certainly better to dominate than to be dominated; it is better to be the master than to be the slave; it is better to be rich than to be poor. And there is great struggle, and millions of people are fighting for the same thing -- and things are not so many.

How many people can be presidents, and how many people can be prime ministers, and how many people can be Fords, Rockefellers and Morgans and Birlas and Tatas? How many people? Very few people. And life is short, and these are the goals to be fulfilled. If you cannot be a Rockefeller, if you cannot be the president of a country, your life is a sheer wastage, you are a failure. Unless you understand that even by becoming a Rockefeller, a Morgan, you are not going to achieve anything... you will be farther away from yourself. You will be deeper in the dreams.

By becoming a president or a prime minister you are not going to achieve any peace or bliss. No music is going to explode in your innermost being. In fact, you will become more and more ugly. By the time a person becomes a prime minister he becomes the ugliest possible, because the whole struggle makes him ugly. He has to be cunning, more cunning than others, otherwise he will not succeed. He has to be cruel, he has to be violent, he has to be very diplomatic. He has to say one thing, think another, do still another. By the time he reaches to the highest post of his desire, he is completely destroyed. He is no more a human being. He is hollow inside; he has no substance, no soul.
But these people are thought to be successful people, these people are thought to be the makers of history. These people are thought to leave their mark on human evolution. These are the most mischievous people in the world, these are the greatest criminals: Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, these are the real criminals in the world. Small criminals suffer in the prisons, big criminals become presidents and prime ministers.

But the people who have not been able to achieve these foolish desires also suffer very much. They suffer from an inferiority complex, from failure. Your education creates only two kinds of people. First, those who succeed, and by succeeding they come to know that they have wasted their lives. But it is pointless to tell it to others, because then others will laugh and will think you ridiculous. It is better to go on smiling although you know deep down that you have failed, your life has not been of any significance, you have not enjoyed being here. You have not danced, no song has been sung by your heart. Your whole life has been an experiment in futility. You know it but it is too late. You cannot go back, and you cannot say the truth -- that will simply reveal your stupidity. It is better to go on playing the role of being successful.

And then the other kind is those who see these successful people and suffer with great jealousy, envy, are greatly wounded that "We could not make it in this life." This is politics.

Let the mind be dropped. Don't be a slave of your mind. Become more conscious, more alert of all the nuisance that your mind is doing to you, the mess the mind is creating in you, the chaos the mind has reduced you to. Just watch, be alert. And slowly slowly, as your watchfulness grows -- Buddha calls it "right mindfulness" -- you will be able to slip out of the mind. Out of the mind and you are out of politics; otherwise, whatsoever you do is politics. If you don't do anything, that too is politics. You participate, either positively or negatively. If you vote you participate, if you don't vote still you participate, in a negative way. There seems to be no choice. In every way you will be part of it.

The whole crowd is going in a certain direction. If you move in some other direction the crowd becomes angry at you. The crowd does not allow nonconformists. It wants total submission, it wants slaves, it respects slaves. It gives all kinds of honors -- from the lowest honor to the Nobel Prize -- to the slaves, to the conformists, to those who are somehow supporting the status quo.

You can see it happening everywhere. Just look at the so-called respectable people, they are the greatest slaves. That's why they get respect. It is a mutual understanding. You follow the crowd, the crowd respects you, calls you a saint, a mahatma.

If you feel that politics is a dirty game, don't be worried: "Why do people think that to live without politics is impossible?"
Don't waste your time in that. The crowd is going to remain like that forever, but you can come out of it. Even if you can manage that, that's enough. And maybe if you can manage, then a few others will see the light too, because they will see a new joy arising in your being, a new aroma surrounding you, a new aura, a new atmosphere, a new milieu will start touching other people's hearts.

I am not saying, "Become a missionary." That is a dirty word. But if you are out of these ugly games, your life becomes such a beautiful phenomenon that those who have eyes will see and those who have ears will be able to hear and those who have hearts will be able to feel it. And that's all that you can do. That is real service.