Peasant Wisdom_

"My Precious!"

Let me tell you a few anecdotes.

A Japanese high official confronted his daughter, 'I have been told that you are going out on dates with a foreigner. Furthermore, he is an American soldier, and what's more, he is Jewish.'

The girl shot back, 'What schmuck told you that?'

Now the word 'schmuck' tells everything. There is no need for anybody to say anything anymore.

The person who knows only the language of 'having' has a totally different quality to his being: the way he walks, the way he sits. the way he talks, the words that he uses, the words that he avoids using, the people he mingles with and the people that he avoids, the places that he visits and the places that he does not visit - everything indicates something. Even single, ordinary words indicate something. Even if he comes to a Master, a man who is always trying to have more and more and more can be seen, by the way he comes, by the desire with which he comes. Even if he surrenders, in his very surrender you can find his language.

A man came to see me. By the way he came, I could see that he was absolutely indifferent towards me. It was so clear, it was so loud. He was not flowing towards me, he had no flow in his being; he was a stagnant pool of energy.

I was surprised. I wondered why he had come to me. And then he started talking about God. The word 'God' was simply irrelevant on his tongue. It made no sense. He was speaking some language which he did not know how to use. I was waiting, because there must have been something else behind these words about Bod. He was saying, 'I want to realise God and I want to realise myself.' But by the way he was saying it and by the way he was expressing it, it was absolutely clear that he had not come for these things. Maybe just to be polite towards me or just to start a dialogue, he was using these props.

And then by and by he said, 'I will come one day and become a sannyasin also.'

So I said, 'If you have come, and you are a seeker, and you want to realise God, then why waste any more time? As it is, you have wasted enough already.' He must have been almost sixty-five. He said, 'That's right. But right now I am contesting the election.' There was a by-election going on. 'So I have come for your blessings.' I said, 'Then why did you waste so much time talking about God, talking about the soul, talking about meditation?'

Indians are very proficient about such things - just by tradition they have learned these words. These words are in the air, they have caught them. They don't have any roots in their being, they just float in their heads. These words exist in them without any roots, and unrelated to them.

I said, 'Why did you waste so much time talking about God and the soul? You should have said the real thing in the beginning.' He was a little embarrassed. And I told him, 'From the very beginning I was wondering why you have come to me - because you were coming towards me and yet you were not coming towards me. Your language was clear and loud. You were sitting here and yet you were not sitting here and I could see that your presence was false, only physical. And I could see the politician in you; in fact, you were talking about God as a political strategy. It was your politics.'

There are those people who say, 'Honesty is the best policy.' Even honesty they have made into a policy. Policy means politics. 'It pays to be honest,' they say. So honesty is also a useful instrument to earn more money, to earn more prestige, to be more respectable. But how can honesty be a policy? Just to say such things - that honesty is the best policy - is to utter a profanity. It is almost saying that God is the best policy, or that meditation is the best policy, or that love is the best policy.

If your language is of 'having', you can use God and meditation and things, but they will be just garbs, masks, and something else will be hidden behind them.

'I'm afraid it's bad news,' said the doctor to the husband of a nagging wife. 'Your wife has only a few hours left to live. I hope you understand there's nothing more to be done. Don't let yourself suffer!'

'It's all right, Doc,' said the husband. 'I've suffered for years - I can suffer a few more hours!'

People have different languages. Even if they use the same words they don't use them with the same meaning. Listen to the meaning and never listen to the words. If you listen to the words you will never understand people. Listen to the meaning - the meaning is a totally different thing.

Whenever you are listening, listen to the meaning. Whenever you are listening to a person, listen to his whole personality - and you will immediately be able to see whether the person lives in the dimension of 'having' or in the dimension of 'being'.

And that will be very helpful for your own inner growth and your own change of gears. Just watch people. It is easier to watch people than to watch yourself, in the beginning, because people are more objective, and there is a little distance between you and them. And you can be more objective about people because you are not involved in them. Just watch. Make it a point.

Buddha used to say to his disciples, "Watch everybody passing by; coming and going in the streets, watch people. See exactly what is happening - Don't listen to their words because they are very cunning, they have become very deceptive. When somebody is saying something, listen to his face, to his eyes, to his being, to the gesture, and you will be simply surprised how, up to now, you have lived only with words. A person may be saying, 'I love you' and his eyes may be simply denying it. A person may be smiling with his lips and his eyes may be ridiculing you, rejecting you. A person may be saying 'Hullo' and holding your hand, and his whole being may be condemning you."

Listen to the language of the body, the language of the gesture - the language behind the language. Listen to that meaning.

And first become alert about it in others. Let everybody who comes to you be an experiment of awareness. Then by and by you will become able to watch yourself. Then turn your whole flood of life upon yourself; then use the same with yourself. When you say to somebody 'I love you' listen to what you really are saying - not these words. Words are almost always fake.

Language is very tricky and can garb things so beautifully that the container becomes very important and you lose sight of the content. People have become very sophisticated as far as their surface is concerned but their innermost core remains almost primitive. Listen to the centre of the circumference. Go into each word.

First others have to be watched, then watch yourself. And then by and by you will see that there are a few moments when you also move into the dimension of 'being'. These moments are the moments of beauty, the moments of happiness. In fact, whenever you see that you are feeling very happy, you have come in contact with the dimension of 'being' - because there is no other happiness possible.

But if you don't observe it accurately, you may misunderstand it. You are sitting with a woman you love, or with a man you love, or with a friend, and suddenly you feel a deep well-being arising in you, a deep joy - for no reason at all, for no visible cause. You are just aglow. Then you start finding causes outside: you think maybe it is because the woman is sitting by your side and she loves you so much. Or it is because you have met the friend after so many years. Or it is because the full moon is so beautiful. You will start finding causes.

But those who have become alert in listening to their heart, to their real meanings, will not be looking for causes outside. They will look inside. They have come in contact with their being. Maybe the woman you loved functioned as a situation, as a jumping-board, and you jumped into yourself.

It is difficult to jump into yourself when there is some antagonism outside. You have to be outside then. When somebody loves you, you can drop all defense measures, you can drop all your strategies, you can drop your politics, you can drop your diplomacy. When somebody loves you, you can be vulnerable; you can trust that he or she is not going to take advantage of you, that you can be defenceless and you will not be killed and crushed, that you can be defenceless and the presence of your friend will be soothing, it will not be poisoning you. Whenever there is a situation where you can leave yourself defenceless and you can drop your strategies and your armours, suddenly you are in contact with your being - you have moved from the dimension of having to the dimension of being. Whenever it happens, there is happiness, there is joy, there is rejoicing. Even if it is only for a split second, suddenly the doors of heaven are open. But again and again you lose it because you are not aware. It happens only accidentally.

Remember, a religious person is one who has understood this accidental happening and who has understood the innermost key of it. And now he does not move into his dimension of being only accidentally, he has the key - and whenever he wants to move, he opens the door, he unlocks the door and goes into it.

This is the only difference. In ordinary happiness and the happiness of a religious person, the only difference is this: that the religious person has become capable of moving any time, any place, into his 'being'. Now he knows the direct route and he does not depend on outside props.

You depend too much on outside props. Sometimes you are in a beautiful house; it feels good. You are travelling in a beautiful car - the car is humming and everything is going beautifully - it feels good. In that feeling you start coming closer to your 'being'. But you misunderstand; you think it is because of this car so you have to possess this car. Maybe the car functioned as a situation but the car is not the cause. Maybe a beautiful house functioned as a situation but it is not the cause.

If you think it is the cause then you move into the world of 'having'; then you must have the most beautiful car - you have to have it. Then you have to have the best house, you have to have the best garden, you have to have the best woman and the best man. And you go on collecting and collecting and collecting and one day suddenly you recognise or realise that your whole life has been a wastage. You have collected much but you have lost all sources of happiness. You got lost in collecting things. The basic logic was that with whatever you felt good and happy, that thing had to be possessed.

Listen to me...that thing need not be possessed. You just watch what is happening inside you and you can start having that happening without any outside help. That's what a sannyasin does. It is not that you have to have all, that you have to possess all, but you have to remain alert that you cannot possess ANYTHING in this world. All that you possess can function only as a situation - it is not the cause. The cause is inside. And you can open the door without any outside prop, at any time, in any place, and you can go in and you can rejoice.

You are no longer attached. You can use things, they are useful....I am not against things, remember. Neither are the Hasids against things, remember. Use things but don't believe that things can cause you happiness. Use things, they have a utility, but don't believe that they are the goals. They are not the ends, they are only the means. The goal is within you, and the goal is such that one can move directly into it without any outside help. Once you know it, you become a master of your being.

 

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