Are You Falling or Raising in Love? Part II

when you want to communicate something to somebody, choose a right moment and a right climate. You can do the right thing in a wrong moment and then it is meaningless. And sometimes when the moment is right, even a small effort brings great harvest, and when the moment is wrong, great effort brings only frustration. Always watch out for the right time – that is immensely valuable.

It is very difficult to communicate with a wife, with a husband.Even when things are going well it is very difficult to communicate, because the relationship is somehow inimical, the relationship is that of domination. Whatsoever we say on the surface is not the point, but deep down it is a question of domination – it is political. The husband is trying to dominate in a thousand and one ways, the wife is trying to dominate in her own subtle and feminine ways. Her being sad may be nothing but an effort to dominate you, to make you more frustrated, to take revenge.

So even when ordinarily things are going well, then too it is difficult to communicate. It is very difficult for the husband to convert his wife to his philosophy, to his religion – so is the case for the wife: the wife cannot convert the husband… it is even more difficult. The husband feels very much offended. The very thing that the wife understands more than him is offending… it is very against the male ego.

And wives always know that husbands are foolish. In the first place if they were not foolish, why should they fall in love with them ? There is a deep self-condemnation. The moment you fall in love with a woman, she understands that you are a fool. It may not be very conscious, she may not say so, she may not even understand it, but deep down she has understood that you are a fool… otherwise who can fall in love with her? She is not in love with herself, so how can you be in love with her? She does not see anything beautiful in her, so how can you? You are deluded, you are a fool.

No wife believes that the husband can be wise – not even the wife of Socrates believed it, not even the wife of Buddha believed it. No wife has ever believed that the husband can be wise. The whole world may believe… but the wife cannot. She knows your foolishness, she knows your childishness, she knows your sexuality, she knows your lust. How can you be wise? She has seen you make love to her. How can she think that you can meditate, how can she think that now you have become a sannyasin? Whom are you trying to deceive? You can deceive the whole world; you cannot deceive the wife!

So many centuries of condemnation of sex has made it so. The wife knows that a sexual person is not a spiritual person. Now who knows better that you are a sexual person? Your whole relationship is that of sex, and if sex is sin then the husband and wife are joined together by sin. So the husband cannot believe that the wife has become holy and the wife cannot believe that her husband has become holy.

Sometimes it is possible that the husband may think that the wife has become spiritual… because wives don’t take much interest; at least they don’t show it. They are always passive partners in the love affair, and they show that they are just tolerating sex. But the man is very active, too interested; the wife cannot believe that the husband can become spiritual. So many centuries of wrong conditioning, and then continuous effort to dominate each other – things are bound to go wrong.

Are you falling in Love or Raising in Love?

The basic problem of love is to first become mature. 

In fact a mature person does not fall in love, he rises in love. The word ’fall’ is not right. Only immature people fall; they stumble and fall down in love.

Somehow they were managing and standing. They cannot manage and they cannot stand – they find a woman and they are gone, they find a man and they are gone. They were always ready to fall on the ground and to creep. They don’t have the backbone, the spine; they don’t have that integrity to stand alone.

A mature person has the integrity to be alone. And when a mature person gives love, he gives without any strings attached to it: he simply gives. And when a mature person gives love, he feels grateful that you have accepted his love, not vice versa. He does not expect you to be thankful for it – no, not at all, he does not even need your thanks. He thanks you for accepting his love. And when two mature persons are in love, one of the greatest paradoxes of life happens, one of the most beautiful phenomena: they are together and yet tremendously alone; they are together so much so that they are almost one. But their oneness does not destroy their individuality, in fact, it enhances it: they become more individual.

Remember If anyone Dominates you he does not Love you.

Two mature persons in love help each other to become more free. There is no politics involved, no diplomacy, no effort to dominate. How can you dominate the person you love? Just think over it. Domination is a sort of hatred, anger, enmity. How can you think of dominating a person you love? You would love to see the person totally free, independent; you will give him more individuality. That’s why I call it the greatest paradox: they are together so much so that they are almost one, but still in that oneness they are individuals. Their individualities are not effaced – they have become more enhanced. The other has enriched them as far as their freedom is concerned.

Immature people falling in love destroy each other’s freedom, create a bondage, make a prison. Mature persons in love help each other to be free; they help each other to destroy all sorts of bondages. And when love flows with freedom there is beauty. When love flows with dependence there is ugliness.

Remember, freedom is a higher value than love. That’s why in India, the ultimate we call MOKSHA; MOKSHA means freedom.Freedom is a higher value than love. So if love is destroying freedom, it is not of worth. Love can be dropped; freedom has to be saved: freedom is a higher value. And without freedom you can never be happy – that is not possible. Freedom is the intrinsic desire of each man, each woman – utter freedom, absolute freedom. So anything that becomes destructive to freedom – one starts hating it.

The difference between helping others and trying to change others

THERE IS A VAST DIFFERENCE, and tremendously significant, between trying to change the other and helping him. When you help somebody you help him to be himself; when you try to change somebody you try to change him according to your idea. When you try to change somebody you try to make a carbon copy of him. You are not interested in him. You have a certain ideology, a fixed idea, an ideal. You change him according to the ideal. The ideal is more important, the real man is not important at all.

In fact, trying to change the other according to some ideal is very violent. It is aggression, it is an effort to destroy the other. It is not love, it is not compassion. Compassion and Love always allows the other to be himself.

When I say, “Go and help others,” I mean: help them to be themselves. When I say, “The world is too irreligious because of too many preachers,” I mean that so many people are trying to change, convert, transform others according to their own ideology. The idea should not be more important than the person. Even the whole humanity is not more important than a single human being. Humanity is an idea; a single human being is a reality.

When somebody says, “Be like Jesus!” he has denied you AS YOU ARE. Whenever somebody says to be like somebody else, YOU are not accepted. You are not welcome, you are like an intruder. Unless you become somebody else, you will not be loved. What type of love is this which destroys you, and only when you become false, inauthentic…?

You can, authentically, only be yourself. All else will be false, all else will be just masks, personalities, but not your essence. You can decorate yourself with the personality of Buddha, but it will never touch your heart. It will never be related to you, it will not be connected with you. It will just be on the outside. A face, but never yours. So whosoever is trying to make you somebody else and says, “I will love you if you become Buddha, Christ…” does not love you. He may be in love with Christ, but he hates you. And his love for Christ can also not be very deep, because if he has really loved Jesus, he would have understood the concrete uniqueness of every individual.

Love is a deep understanding. If you have loved one person, you have started a different quality of vision within you. Now you can see with a clarity. If you have loved Jesus, then whosoever comes before you — you will see the reality of this man, of this concrete human being, of this potentiality herenow. And you will love this man, you will help this man to become whatsoever he can become. You will not expect anything else. All expectation is condemning, all expectation is a denial, all expectation is a rejection. You will simply give your love — for no reward, for no result. You will simply help, with no future in mind.

When love flows without any future, it is a tremendous energy. When love flows without motivation it helps, and nothing helps like it. Once you feel that even one single human being accepts you as you are, you feel centered. You are not unwelcome in this existence. At least one human being accepts you unconditionally. That gives you a grounding, a centering; that gives you a feeling that you are at home. And the more you are at home, the more you will be closer to God, because deepest in your heart is He. When you are close to yourself you are close to Him. When you are centered, you are in Him.

So when I say help, teach, I’m not giving you the idea to teach them. I’m saying: just create a climate around people. Wherever you move, carry the climate of love and compassion, and help the other to be himself.

That is the most difficult thing in the world — to help the other to be himself — because that is against your ego. Your ego would like to make imitators of people. You would like everybody to imitate you; you would like to become the archetype and have everybody follow you. Then your ego would be very, very fulfilled. You would think of yourself as the blueprint and everybody just has to follow you. You become the center and everybody becomes the false.

No, the ego will not like the idea. It wants to change others according to you. But who are you to change anybody? Don’t take that responsibility. That is dangerous; that is how Adolf Hitlers are born. They take the responsibility of changing the whole world according to them.

There is much difference between a Mahatma Gandhi and Adolf Hitler. But deep down, no difference at all, because both have ideas of changing the world according to them. One may be using violent methods, the other may be using nonviolent methods, but both are using methods to change the other according to themselves. One may be using the bayonet, the other is threatening you that “I will go on a long fast if you don’t follow me.” One may be threatening to kill you and the other may be threatening that he will kill himself “if you don’t follow me”, but both are using force, both are creating situations in which you can be forced to be something that you don’t want to be, that you never wanted to be. They both are politicians. Neither Hitler loves you, nor Gandhi loves you.

Gandhi talks about love, but he does not love. He cannot love, because the very idea — the ideal of how you should be — creates trouble. There is only one way of loving people: to love them as they are. And this is the beauty: that when you love them as they are, they change. Not according to you — they change according to THEIR reality. When you love them, they are transformed. Not converted; transformed. They become new, they attain newer heights of being. But that happens in their being, and it happens according to their nature.

Help people to be natural, help people to be free, help people to be themselves, and never try to force anybody, pull and push and manipulate. Those are the ways of the ego. And that is what all politics is.

I have always loved an ancient story

I have first to reply to the question that I had before. The question was important. I never postpone a question because one never knows what is going to happen tomorrow. I may be here to answer it or not. You may be here to listen to it or not.

But I had to postpone, because the question was important, and the time was already 9:30. I never want to do an imperfect job, so I took the risk. I hoped for the best — that tomorrow we will be meeting — and by chance it has come true. The questioner said that within his personality, the buddha and the zorba are in constant conflict.

My whole philosophy is to bring a harmonious unity between the zorba and the buddha within every human being. But the questioner is asking only from the mind. In reality, in actual experience, zorba and buddha can never be in conflict. This has to be underlined — because in reality the zorba is completely asleep, he does not know anything about the buddha, and you cannot fight with something you know nothing about. The zorba is not even suspicious that there is anything more in life than to eat, drink and be merry. That is his whole philosophy of life, there is nothing beyond it. How can he be in conflict with the buddha? Both have to be present simultaneously to be in conflict. This is very simple arithmetic.

If the buddha has arisen in you, if that awakening has happened in you, zorba disappears. It is just like you were asleep, and now you are awake. When you are awake, sleep is no more. Zorba is the name of your spiritual sleep. They cannot co-exist. The moment you are conscious, alert, aware, the darkness of the unconscious disappears. Either there is zorba, and buddha is dormant…. Buddha is just a seed as far as zorba is concerned, it is non-existential. When buddha has blossomed, zorba disappears, just as darkness disappears when you bring the light in. You cannot have light and darkness together.

I have always loved an ancient story. God made the world, and from that very day the sun went running after darkness. And darkness could not understand: it has not harmed the sun, it has not even talked with the sun, it has not even met the sun, yet the sun is continuously harassing her.

After millions of years of harassment, she finally got tired and went to God and said, “It is ungrateful to complain, but there is a limit to everything. I have been harassed for millions of years, and I cannot conceive of any fault on my part. The sun goes on expelling me from everywhere. It is even difficult to take a rest without anxiety — the sun may be coming, the sunrise may be close. I have not slept for millions of years — the anguish would not allow it. The sun has been almost a continuous torture, and without any reason. I simply want to know: what have I done wrong?”

God said, “You should have come earlier. There was no need to wait so long. This is very ungentlemanly on the part of the sun. The sun should be called immediately.”

The sun was called. He asked the messenger, “What is the problem? — because I have never done anything wrong. I simply go on doing the same routine every day. Since God made me, I have not done anything else.”

But the messenger said, “God is very angry. You have been hurting, harassing a poor woman — darkness.”

He said, “My God, I have never heard of her. I have never met her. I am not interested in women at all — I am a born celibate. I am coming, I want to see who this woman is.”

And as the sun came to the house of God, darkness disappeared.
God said, “Where has that woman gone?” They searched everywhere; darkness was not found.

Millions of years passed again, and one day the woman appeared and she said, “You have not done anything; it is still continuing, the same torture.”
God said, “You are strange. When the sun was here, where did you go?”

She said, “You are behaving like a simpleton. If the sun is here, I cannot be here; if I am here, the sun cannot be here. We cannot stand each other. You will have to hear our story separately and then decide.”

God said, “That is not my way. You both have to be present here so I can be certain that nobody is lying.”
The woman said, “Then it is better I take my complaint back.”

Since then, the woman has not appeared again. Once in a while the sun comes to inquire, “What happened to the woman — because I want to clear it up, it has become a worry on my head that somebody is being hurt by me, perhaps unknowingly.”

God said, “You need not be worried. The problem is such that it cannot be solved. I cannot give any decision unless you are both present in my court together and I have listened to both sides in the presence of each other. But by the very nature of things, you cannot both be present. That woman is your absence. So of course you cannot be present and absent simultaneously. Drop your worry. You are doing perfectly fine, and that woman is not going to report against you again. The file in your case is closed.”

Exactly the same is the case with zorba and buddha. The moment buddha arrives with all his light and beauty, with all his awareness, with all his joy, zorba disappears, dissolves. Conflict is impossible. Conflict is possible only in your mind. You have been listening to me so you have made a concept of zorba and a concept of buddha; neither have you lived zorba nor have you lived buddha. These are only words in your mind.

Then conflict is very easy; then you can go on arguing within your mind: “How can zorba and buddha become one? They are antagonistic, they are enemies; harmony is not possible.”
Yes, in the mind it is not possible.

That’s why I am telling you constantly to go beyond mind, where it is possible — not only possible, it is already happening. Beyond mind, zorba is the buddha; there is no dividing line. All that is beautiful in zorba becomes even more beautiful when buddha arrives, everything becomes a thousandfold more glorified. And all that is wrong and ugly in zorba disappears like darkness. That which can be absorbed is absorbed, and that which is not worth absorbing is dissolved.

But don’t make it a mental problem. My approach is not of the mind, it is of meditation. It is an existential approach. The zorba loves singing, playing on his musical instruments, dancing. Buddha will make it perfect, absolute. Even silence will become a song, even stones will become sermons, and whatever you touch will become a musical instrument because your hands will now have the magic of the whole existence; they will have the grace, the beauty, the poetry….

Your life will not be a struggle between zorba and buddha, but a love affair — so deep that two lovers disappear into each other, never to separate again. The union, the harmony, the accordance is going to be eternal. But avoid the mind.
Mind knows only conflict. Even where there is no conflict, mind creates it; even where there is no problem, mind creates it. Mind cannot exist without problems; problems are its nourishment. Conflict, fight, disharmony — and the mind is perfectly at ease and at home. Silence, harmony — and the mind starts becoming afraid, because harmony, silence and peace are nothing but death to the mind.

So just shift your problem from the mind. Start living. And with me, it is easy; it has never ever in history been so easy, because I am not telling you to disown the zorba, I am telling you to live the zorba to its utmost. There is nothing to be afraid of. Only add one more thing, and that is meditation.

Meditation is the bridge between zorba and buddha. Once the bridge is complete and the buddha descends there will be a tremendous change in your zorba — all that is ugly will be gone, and all that is beautiful will be beautified tremendously.

The zorba is not going to lose anything. Without buddha, zorba is just a mundane existence. Without zorba, the buddha has no roots — only flowers. But how long can flowers live without roots? Roots are ugly; that’s why they remain hiding underneath the ground — but they are the source of life and juice. Those beautiful flowers cannot exist without those ugly roots underneath the ground; those roots are continuously nourishing them, giving their life to the flowers.

And this miracle is happening everywhere. But we are so blind that we cannot see. When you see a roseflower, you don’t see that in that roseflower is hidden the whole philosophy of life — the leaves are not red, nor are the thorns red nor are the roots red. Yet out of this green foliage comes a beautiful red rose. It is nourished by everything: by the roots, by the leaves — because the leaves are breathing constantly; otherwise, the rose would die. Branches are constantly doing a miracle — bringing juice and water from the depths in the earth upwards, against gravitation. And there is no pumping system.

In the beginning scientists were puzzled at how trees one hundred and fifty feet high managed to keep their leaves green — lush green, at a hundred and fifty feet high. Water goes against gravitation with no apparent mechanism. Miracles are all over; one just needs a sensitive heart, a perceptive eye, and you will see matter and spirit dancing together everywhere.

Zorba and buddha are never separate. There is just one possibility: buddha can be asleep; then zorba has to live a mundane life. Or, under the stupid influence of the past, you can disown your body, become destructive of your body and try to achieve the impossible — living like a buddha without having anything to do with zorba.

I want you to be a zorba and a buddha together; then whatever is ugly in zorba will disappear on its own accord — you are not to renounce it. And whatever is beautiful will be absorbed in the new consciousness, in the new awakening. But don’t make it a mind problem.

BOSS is ALWAYS RIGHT - A Small Story.

Mulla Nasruddin is appointed as the prime minister of a king because he was known to be very wise; somewhat weird was his wisdom, but still, wisdom is wisdom. The first day when they went to have their dinner together, a certain vegetable called bindhi was made by the cook, stuffed with Eastern spices. It is a delicacy.

The king appreciated the cook, and after that Mulla said, in appreciation of the bindhi, “This is the most precious vegetable in the world. It gives you long life, it keeps you healthy, it gives you resistance against diseases,” and so on and so forth.

The king said, “I never knew that you know so much about vegetables.”

The cook heard about it, so he thought if bindhi is such a thing that our king can live long and healthy and young… Next day again bindhi was made, and again Mulla praised it, going even higher than the first day. The third day bindhi was made and Mulla went still higher. The fourth day bindhi was made and Mulla was going higher and higher. The fifth day Mulla even said that bindhi is a divine food — God eats only bindhi.

But the king was bored. He threw the plate of bindhi and told Mulla Nasruddin, “You are an idiot. Bindhi… and God eats bindhi every day? You will drive me mad!”

Mulla said, “Lord, you are getting unnecessarily hot. I am your servant; you said bindhi was good, I simply followed you, and when I do something I do it perfectly. I am not a servant to bindhi, I am your servant. The truth is that bindhi is the worst thing in the world — even devils don’t eat it. You did well that you threw it.”

He threw his plate farther away than the king. 

He said, “You should always remember that I am your servant, and you are always right. And I am a consistent man; I will remain consistently your servant, whatever happens.”

A Game

J. Krishnamurti's statement that "You are the world" simply emphasizes the fact that every individual, wherever he is, whatever he is, should accept the responsibility of creating this world that exists around us. If it is insane, you have contributed to that insanity in your own way. If it is sick, you are also a partner in making it sick.

And the emphasis is important -- because unless you understand that "I am also responsible for this miserable and insane world," there is no possibility of change. Who is going to change? Everybody thinks somebody else is responsible.

ONE OF INDIA'S GREAT EMPERORS was AKBAR. There is an incident in his life recorded in Akbar Namaz -- "The Biography of Akbar."

One day he was just chit-chatting with his friends.... And he had around him the very best, wisest, most creative people chosen from every part of the country. His court jester was standing just by his side....

By the way, you should understand it: in all the courts of all great emperors there used to be a jester, whose whole function was to keep the court from becoming too serious, to keep the court light, playful -- once in a while, an explosion of laughter. It was a great insight to have a court jester, and he used to be one of the wisest men of those days -- because it was not an easy phenomenon. Birbal was Akbar's court jester. And as they were discussing, Akbar slapped Birbal -- for no reason at all. Now you cannot slap the emperor back, but the slap has to go somewhere -- so he slapped the person who was standing next to him.

Everybody thought, "This is strange!" There was no reason in the first place. Suddenly, as if a madness had got hold of Akbar, he slapped poor Birbal. And that man is also strange. Rather than asking, "Why have you slapped me?" he simply slapped the man who was standing by his side! And that man, thinking perhaps this was the rule of the court, slapped the next person. In a chain, it went all over the court.

And you will be surprised: that night, Akbar's wife slapped him! And he said, "Why are slapping me?" 

She said, "That is not the question; a game is a game." 

He said, "Who told you that this is a game?" 

She said, "We have been hearing the whole day long that a great game has started in the court. The only rule is you cannot hit the person back, you have to find somebody else to hit. And somebody has hit me -- so your slap has come back to you, the game is complete!"

In this big world, thousands of insane games are going on, and you are all participants -- of course in very small measures, according to your capacity. But remember, the slap is going to come back to you sooner or later. Where else will it go?

Whatever comes to you, remember, it is your doing.

Perhaps you have forgotten when you started it. The world is big, it takes time. But everything comes back to its source -- that is one of the fundamental rules of life, not a rule of a game.

DYING AND MEDITATION

Once you know that you are doing to die within days, immediately this world--the money, the bank, the business, this and that--becomes useless. Now everything is no more than a dream, and you are already awakening.

Once someone learns that he is going to die within a certain time period-the person is already dead in a way, and he starts thinking about the future-then meditation is possible.

Once a person knows he is going to die, he will drop much rubbish of his own accord. Immediately his whole vision is transformed. If you have to leave tomorrow, you start packing your suitcases and you are no longer worried about this room in the hotel. In fact you are no longer here; you are managing your suitcases and things, and you are thinking about the journey.

The same happens to a person when you tell him that he is going to die, that death is certain and cannot be avoided and he should not go on fooling around; now the decisive moment has come and he has already wasted enough life.

Immediately the person turns his back on the world and starts peeking into the darkness of the future. At that moment, if you tell him about meditation he will be willing
to do it--and that can be one of the greatest gifts.