GREAT IDEA! SOME IDEA! But it is ver
y
difficult to just sit. You are so restless. If you can just sit, you
ARE a master! But think of just sitting, doing nothing -- can you allow
that much rest to yourself even for a single moment?
That's what I go on telling you: Sit silently, passively, doing nothing, just being. And you look at me with bewildered eyes: "Just sitting, doing nothing?" People ask me, "Can't we chant a mantra? Please give us a mantra, so we can at least chant a mantra when we are sitting." That mantra is for nothing but your restlessness.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's transcendental meditation has appeal in America because America is so restless. People can't sit silently; they have to do something or other. If there is nothing to do then they have to repeat Rama-Rama-Rama or Coca-Cola-Coca-Cola-Coca-Cola -- but something. Coca Cola is a great mantra: repeat it and you will have all the benefits of transcendental meditation.
What happens when you repeat a mantra? It just gives your restlessness something to do. It becomes concentrated, then you can sit. But this is not real sitting; you have escaped again. Now you have escaped into the mantra. A mantra is a mind trip. Just sitting means no mantra, no thought, no movement. Just sitting exactly means just sitting.
Yes, then you can become a master; you HAVE become a master. People will start coming to you of their own accord -- because whenever somebody just sits, such grace arises in that non-moving energy because he is utterly in the present. He can't move anywhere -- he can't move to the past, he can't move to the future. He is just utterly here, he is totally one with this moment. In that, he is bridged with reality, he is one with God.
And a man who is one with God is a master. In that moment, such great gravitation arises in him that people will be attracted, people will start moving towards him. He may be sitting deep in a cave in the Himalayas and people will start reaching there, people will start finding the way to where he is. There is some unconscious pull.
In Buddha's days there was no way, because the world was really very disconnected. Nations existed secluded; there was nothing like newspapers, radio, television -- no way to spread the message. But people started moving. From almost every nook and corner of the known world, people came to Buddha. Somehow it functions, it spreads; it has its own momentum.
You will be a master if you can sit silently. But the very idea of being a master will not allow you to sit silently. You will open your eyes to see whether disciples have started to come or not: "And what am I doing here? It is time, and nobody has come -- I don't see any photographers and any newspaper people and media people coming..." You will not be able to sit silently. You will start waiting for disciples: that's the meaning of the desire to be a master.
A master is one who has no desires. Now, even the desire to be a master is enough; it won't allow you to be a master. A master is not trying to be a master -- he is. He is not managing it, it is spontaneous. He is not searching and seeking for disciples; they come. It happens on its own. The very silent energy of a master -- that luminous energy of being alert, peaceful, at ease, at rest, at home -- starts many people moving towards that source. It is not really in the mind that it happens, this pull. It happens deeper than the mind: it happens in your unconscious.
You say: I WANT TO BE A MASTER.
That will be a barrier. And the reason is the idea of just sitting there and doing nothing. You must be a mighty lazy person. Just sitting there and doing nothing is not a state of laziness, mind you. It is of utter energy, ultimate energy. It is not a kind of sleep, a kind of coma; it is not lethargy. It is a reservoir of energy. The energy is not moving anywhere, the energy is accumulating. And the more it accumulates, the more powerful it becomes.
You must be just a lazy person. The idea appeals to you, because to be a disciple seems to be difficult, arduous -- you have to do this and you have to do that, and you have to meditate, and you have to pass through so many things, and here is Yoga and Zen and Tantra and Sufism and you have to find and search and roam and wander and inquire, and it seems to you to be a long journey. You would like to simply be a master.
I have heard:
A poor half-wit was befriended by a millionaire lover of music who happened to have a private orchestra. One day the half-wit came to his benefactor and asked for a position in his orchestra. Astonished, the rich man said, "I had no idea you could play an instrument."
"I can't," was the answer. "But I see you have a man there who does nothing but wave a stick around while the others play. His job I can handle."
That job is not easy, that is the hardest of all -- from the outside it appears to be very easy.
Just sitting is the hardest thing in the world, the most arduous thing in the world. You can do everything -- you can go to Everest and you can go to the moon -- but just sitting? that is impossible. You can move into any kind of activity -- that fits, that fits with the ego, that enhances the ego: you become a great doer.
But when you are sitting and doing nothing, what happens? What is the difficulty? The greatest difficulty is, when you are not doing anything you start disappearing -- because man exists through his acts.
Jean Paul Sartre is right when he says that man defines himself through his activity. You are what you do.
You are a doctor because you do a certain kind of work. You are a painter because you paint, you are a singer because you sing. Your identity is given by your action. YOU are this, you are that -- your definition comes from your activities. When you are not doing anything who will you be? A doctor, a painter, an engineer, a singer -- who? You will be nobody. You will be simply nobody! Your identity will start disappearing, your definition will slip out of your being. You will be utterly nude and naked and not knowing who you are.
And that is the arduousness of it -- it is very arduous. You will be getting into a great chaos, and great fear will arise in you: what is happening? You will immediately rush into some act, you will start doing something. And once you start doing something you are again at ease, because again you know who you are.
Have you not watched it? Just sitting silently in your room, have you not observed it again and again that you start doing something meaningless? People start moving their furniture, arranging the paintings again or cleaning the books or the cupboard -- they have to do something. Because when they are doing, they are perfectly settled in their knowledge of who they are.
You are a housewife: doing something, you know. You are a mother: when the child is with you, you know who you are. You are a husband: with the wife you know who you are. When the wife dies, something in the husband dies immediately, because he becomes very much frightened -- now who is he? He had become accustomed to living with the idea that he is a husband.
Mulla Nasruddin's wife died and he was crying like anything. One of his closest friends could not believe his eyes -- such big tears were coming from Mulla's eyes, and he had never seen the man cry. And he had always thought that this man is a brave man -- just crying like a child?
To console him the friend said, "Don't be worried, Nasruddin, time heals everything. Within three to six months you will have forgotten this woman. And I say to you, you are still young enough -- you will fall in love again, you will be married again. So don't become so desperate."
Mulla looked with anger at the friend and he said, "What are you talking about? Six months? And what am I going to do tonight?"
If you have become accustomed to a wife, she has become part of your definition. In the night, alone, you will be afraid -- afraid of the fact that again your definition has disappeared.
When a very rich man goes bankrupt what happens? Why do people commit suicide when they go bankrupt? Is money so valuable, more valuable than life? The problem is, that was their definition. Now there is no money in the bank, their soul has disappeared, they don't know who they are. And it seems so arduous to define themselves again, to start from ABC, to start begging again. And it will take thirty or forty years to be able to make that much money again and have that definition again. That seems to be too long and too much; it is better to disappear, it is better to drop the whole effort.
Your activity keeps you defined; it gives you a certainty, a security. Whenever you are not doing anything you become uncertain. An abyss starts yawning in your being and you feel you are falling into the abyss, and immediately you jump to do something.
I have seen people reading the same newspaper again! I used to travel for fifteen years continuously -- almost three weeks a month I was travelling and watching people. Sometimes it would happen that only one more passenger was with me in the compartment, and I would watch him. He would read the same newspaper again and again -- and would feel a little ashamed also, because I was there. He would open the window and close the window, open the suitcase and arrange it and close it again -- and he would become very much ashamed also, because somebody was just sitting there and doing nothing. And he could not sit. And he would try to sleep, and he could not sleep, and he would jump up and go to the bathroom and come back. And he was not an insane person, just a normal person, for twenty-four hours caged in a compartment, not knowing what to do.
Have you not seen people? -- their holidays are the most difficult days; they don't know what to do. The whole week they think that Sunday is coming and they are going to rest, and they never rest on Sunday! They start a thousand and one things: they start mowing the lawn or they start fixing things around the house. They get more tired on Sunday than they ever get in their office -- because in the office who works? One simply postpones. Files move from one table to another table -- they go on moving and moving and moving, and nothing ever happens. People become so skillful at avoiding in the office, that is their work there. To avoid, to say no, not to do anything: that is their activity there.
Psychologists are perfectly aware that once a person becomes retired he dies earlier than he would have died if he had remained in his work. Ten years' difference happens. If a man was naturally going to live eighty years, and when he is sixty he becomes retired... And he had been hoping for that retirement his whole life -- he was thinking, "Just a few years more and I will get retired and then I will rest and do all those things that I always wanted to do. I will read great poetry, listen to great music, play the guitar or make a beautiful garden, or go to the mountains and rest in the sun, in the wind..."
And when he becomes retired all that happens is he simply becomes afraid of death -- nothing else happens. Once he is retired he starts losing his identity. He was a collector or a commissioner or something, a prime minister, a president...
When politicians are in office they are very healthy. Once they lose their office they become ill; they die soon. Harnessed, they can live long. Unharnessed, they don't see what the point of living is. People start neglecting you, people start ignoring you, you become a nonentity. And not only for people do you become a nonentity, you become a nonentity for yourself -- because you don't know now who you are. You had been a prime minister, now you are not a prime minister -- then who are you? And no answer arises.
No, sitting silently is very difficult, just next to impossible -- unless you are ready to die in silence, unless you are ready to lose all identity, all ego. Yes, if you are ready to lose all identity, the master will arise in you. But you cannot become a master.
When you have disappeared, the master comes. It is always God who is the master. That's why in the East we call the master divine. The West cannot understand it, because the phenomenon has been very rarely happening there. The West knows bishops, priests, rabbis; it does not really know the phenomenon of a master, it is very rarely happening there. It knows prophets, visionaries, it knows preachers, priests -- but very rarely, only once in a while, has the West come across a master.
And whenever the West has come across a master it has behaved very badly with the master. with Jesus it behaved in a very uncivilized way, because the phenomenon was very much unknown. If Jesus had been just a rabbi, everything would have been perfect. But he was a master. He had disappeared, God had appeared in him. Now God was speaking, now Jesus was not speaking.
And when God speaks, God speaks with great authority. When God speaks, God speaks in absolute terms. When God speaks, God speaks like a God. Jesus says, "I am the truth." This is God speaking. Not Jesus, not Joseph's son Jesus. Christ, not Jesus. It is God speaking: "I am the truth." NOW, no rabbi has ever said that -- how can the Jews forgive this man? He seems to be very arrogant and egoistic.
Now, see the ridiculousness of it. Always, whenever ego disappears, God appears. And God speaks in such ways that it looks as if the man has become very egoistic: "I am the truth! I am the way! And nobody reaches God unless he comes through me." Just see these words: "I have come to liberate you. I and my Father in heaven are one." Now, these statements cannot be tolerated. This man seems to be neurotic, mad, a megalomaniac, has lost all senses, is insane.
Still psychoanalysts go on calling Jesus insane. And it looks insane, because who in his senses can say, "I am the way, I am truth, and nobody ever reaches God unless he passes through me"? Who in his senses can say such things?
Yes, he was not in his senses. He was not at all -- how could he be in his senses? God was speaking, he was just a mouthpiece.
A man becomes a master only when the man disappears. So if you have the desire to be a master, that very desire will prevent you.
Right now, become a disciple. Slowly slowly, the disciple disappears and the master arrives. The first step towards masterhood is disciplehood.
TAKE IT EASY VOL 2
BY SPY
That's what I go on telling you: Sit silently, passively, doing nothing, just being. And you look at me with bewildered eyes: "Just sitting, doing nothing?" People ask me, "Can't we chant a mantra? Please give us a mantra, so we can at least chant a mantra when we are sitting." That mantra is for nothing but your restlessness.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's transcendental meditation has appeal in America because America is so restless. People can't sit silently; they have to do something or other. If there is nothing to do then they have to repeat Rama-Rama-Rama or Coca-Cola-Coca-Cola-Coca-Cola -- but something. Coca Cola is a great mantra: repeat it and you will have all the benefits of transcendental meditation.
What happens when you repeat a mantra? It just gives your restlessness something to do. It becomes concentrated, then you can sit. But this is not real sitting; you have escaped again. Now you have escaped into the mantra. A mantra is a mind trip. Just sitting means no mantra, no thought, no movement. Just sitting exactly means just sitting.
Yes, then you can become a master; you HAVE become a master. People will start coming to you of their own accord -- because whenever somebody just sits, such grace arises in that non-moving energy because he is utterly in the present. He can't move anywhere -- he can't move to the past, he can't move to the future. He is just utterly here, he is totally one with this moment. In that, he is bridged with reality, he is one with God.
And a man who is one with God is a master. In that moment, such great gravitation arises in him that people will be attracted, people will start moving towards him. He may be sitting deep in a cave in the Himalayas and people will start reaching there, people will start finding the way to where he is. There is some unconscious pull.
In Buddha's days there was no way, because the world was really very disconnected. Nations existed secluded; there was nothing like newspapers, radio, television -- no way to spread the message. But people started moving. From almost every nook and corner of the known world, people came to Buddha. Somehow it functions, it spreads; it has its own momentum.
You will be a master if you can sit silently. But the very idea of being a master will not allow you to sit silently. You will open your eyes to see whether disciples have started to come or not: "And what am I doing here? It is time, and nobody has come -- I don't see any photographers and any newspaper people and media people coming..." You will not be able to sit silently. You will start waiting for disciples: that's the meaning of the desire to be a master.
A master is one who has no desires. Now, even the desire to be a master is enough; it won't allow you to be a master. A master is not trying to be a master -- he is. He is not managing it, it is spontaneous. He is not searching and seeking for disciples; they come. It happens on its own. The very silent energy of a master -- that luminous energy of being alert, peaceful, at ease, at rest, at home -- starts many people moving towards that source. It is not really in the mind that it happens, this pull. It happens deeper than the mind: it happens in your unconscious.
You say: I WANT TO BE A MASTER.
That will be a barrier. And the reason is the idea of just sitting there and doing nothing. You must be a mighty lazy person. Just sitting there and doing nothing is not a state of laziness, mind you. It is of utter energy, ultimate energy. It is not a kind of sleep, a kind of coma; it is not lethargy. It is a reservoir of energy. The energy is not moving anywhere, the energy is accumulating. And the more it accumulates, the more powerful it becomes.
You must be just a lazy person. The idea appeals to you, because to be a disciple seems to be difficult, arduous -- you have to do this and you have to do that, and you have to meditate, and you have to pass through so many things, and here is Yoga and Zen and Tantra and Sufism and you have to find and search and roam and wander and inquire, and it seems to you to be a long journey. You would like to simply be a master.
I have heard:
A poor half-wit was befriended by a millionaire lover of music who happened to have a private orchestra. One day the half-wit came to his benefactor and asked for a position in his orchestra. Astonished, the rich man said, "I had no idea you could play an instrument."
"I can't," was the answer. "But I see you have a man there who does nothing but wave a stick around while the others play. His job I can handle."
That job is not easy, that is the hardest of all -- from the outside it appears to be very easy.
Just sitting is the hardest thing in the world, the most arduous thing in the world. You can do everything -- you can go to Everest and you can go to the moon -- but just sitting? that is impossible. You can move into any kind of activity -- that fits, that fits with the ego, that enhances the ego: you become a great doer.
But when you are sitting and doing nothing, what happens? What is the difficulty? The greatest difficulty is, when you are not doing anything you start disappearing -- because man exists through his acts.
Jean Paul Sartre is right when he says that man defines himself through his activity. You are what you do.
You are a doctor because you do a certain kind of work. You are a painter because you paint, you are a singer because you sing. Your identity is given by your action. YOU are this, you are that -- your definition comes from your activities. When you are not doing anything who will you be? A doctor, a painter, an engineer, a singer -- who? You will be nobody. You will be simply nobody! Your identity will start disappearing, your definition will slip out of your being. You will be utterly nude and naked and not knowing who you are.
And that is the arduousness of it -- it is very arduous. You will be getting into a great chaos, and great fear will arise in you: what is happening? You will immediately rush into some act, you will start doing something. And once you start doing something you are again at ease, because again you know who you are.
Have you not watched it? Just sitting silently in your room, have you not observed it again and again that you start doing something meaningless? People start moving their furniture, arranging the paintings again or cleaning the books or the cupboard -- they have to do something. Because when they are doing, they are perfectly settled in their knowledge of who they are.
You are a housewife: doing something, you know. You are a mother: when the child is with you, you know who you are. You are a husband: with the wife you know who you are. When the wife dies, something in the husband dies immediately, because he becomes very much frightened -- now who is he? He had become accustomed to living with the idea that he is a husband.
Mulla Nasruddin's wife died and he was crying like anything. One of his closest friends could not believe his eyes -- such big tears were coming from Mulla's eyes, and he had never seen the man cry. And he had always thought that this man is a brave man -- just crying like a child?
To console him the friend said, "Don't be worried, Nasruddin, time heals everything. Within three to six months you will have forgotten this woman. And I say to you, you are still young enough -- you will fall in love again, you will be married again. So don't become so desperate."
Mulla looked with anger at the friend and he said, "What are you talking about? Six months? And what am I going to do tonight?"
If you have become accustomed to a wife, she has become part of your definition. In the night, alone, you will be afraid -- afraid of the fact that again your definition has disappeared.
When a very rich man goes bankrupt what happens? Why do people commit suicide when they go bankrupt? Is money so valuable, more valuable than life? The problem is, that was their definition. Now there is no money in the bank, their soul has disappeared, they don't know who they are. And it seems so arduous to define themselves again, to start from ABC, to start begging again. And it will take thirty or forty years to be able to make that much money again and have that definition again. That seems to be too long and too much; it is better to disappear, it is better to drop the whole effort.
Your activity keeps you defined; it gives you a certainty, a security. Whenever you are not doing anything you become uncertain. An abyss starts yawning in your being and you feel you are falling into the abyss, and immediately you jump to do something.
I have seen people reading the same newspaper again! I used to travel for fifteen years continuously -- almost three weeks a month I was travelling and watching people. Sometimes it would happen that only one more passenger was with me in the compartment, and I would watch him. He would read the same newspaper again and again -- and would feel a little ashamed also, because I was there. He would open the window and close the window, open the suitcase and arrange it and close it again -- and he would become very much ashamed also, because somebody was just sitting there and doing nothing. And he could not sit. And he would try to sleep, and he could not sleep, and he would jump up and go to the bathroom and come back. And he was not an insane person, just a normal person, for twenty-four hours caged in a compartment, not knowing what to do.
Have you not seen people? -- their holidays are the most difficult days; they don't know what to do. The whole week they think that Sunday is coming and they are going to rest, and they never rest on Sunday! They start a thousand and one things: they start mowing the lawn or they start fixing things around the house. They get more tired on Sunday than they ever get in their office -- because in the office who works? One simply postpones. Files move from one table to another table -- they go on moving and moving and moving, and nothing ever happens. People become so skillful at avoiding in the office, that is their work there. To avoid, to say no, not to do anything: that is their activity there.
Psychologists are perfectly aware that once a person becomes retired he dies earlier than he would have died if he had remained in his work. Ten years' difference happens. If a man was naturally going to live eighty years, and when he is sixty he becomes retired... And he had been hoping for that retirement his whole life -- he was thinking, "Just a few years more and I will get retired and then I will rest and do all those things that I always wanted to do. I will read great poetry, listen to great music, play the guitar or make a beautiful garden, or go to the mountains and rest in the sun, in the wind..."
And when he becomes retired all that happens is he simply becomes afraid of death -- nothing else happens. Once he is retired he starts losing his identity. He was a collector or a commissioner or something, a prime minister, a president...
When politicians are in office they are very healthy. Once they lose their office they become ill; they die soon. Harnessed, they can live long. Unharnessed, they don't see what the point of living is. People start neglecting you, people start ignoring you, you become a nonentity. And not only for people do you become a nonentity, you become a nonentity for yourself -- because you don't know now who you are. You had been a prime minister, now you are not a prime minister -- then who are you? And no answer arises.
No, sitting silently is very difficult, just next to impossible -- unless you are ready to die in silence, unless you are ready to lose all identity, all ego. Yes, if you are ready to lose all identity, the master will arise in you. But you cannot become a master.
When you have disappeared, the master comes. It is always God who is the master. That's why in the East we call the master divine. The West cannot understand it, because the phenomenon has been very rarely happening there. The West knows bishops, priests, rabbis; it does not really know the phenomenon of a master, it is very rarely happening there. It knows prophets, visionaries, it knows preachers, priests -- but very rarely, only once in a while, has the West come across a master.
And whenever the West has come across a master it has behaved very badly with the master. with Jesus it behaved in a very uncivilized way, because the phenomenon was very much unknown. If Jesus had been just a rabbi, everything would have been perfect. But he was a master. He had disappeared, God had appeared in him. Now God was speaking, now Jesus was not speaking.
And when God speaks, God speaks with great authority. When God speaks, God speaks in absolute terms. When God speaks, God speaks like a God. Jesus says, "I am the truth." This is God speaking. Not Jesus, not Joseph's son Jesus. Christ, not Jesus. It is God speaking: "I am the truth." NOW, no rabbi has ever said that -- how can the Jews forgive this man? He seems to be very arrogant and egoistic.
Now, see the ridiculousness of it. Always, whenever ego disappears, God appears. And God speaks in such ways that it looks as if the man has become very egoistic: "I am the truth! I am the way! And nobody reaches God unless he comes through me." Just see these words: "I have come to liberate you. I and my Father in heaven are one." Now, these statements cannot be tolerated. This man seems to be neurotic, mad, a megalomaniac, has lost all senses, is insane.
Still psychoanalysts go on calling Jesus insane. And it looks insane, because who in his senses can say, "I am the way, I am truth, and nobody ever reaches God unless he passes through me"? Who in his senses can say such things?
Yes, he was not in his senses. He was not at all -- how could he be in his senses? God was speaking, he was just a mouthpiece.
A man becomes a master only when the man disappears. So if you have the desire to be a master, that very desire will prevent you.
Right now, become a disciple. Slowly slowly, the disciple disappears and the master arrives. The first step towards masterhood is disciplehood.
TAKE IT EASY VOL 2
BY SPY
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