Transcription
You sit down to meditate, and you notice how many thoughts arise. They arise more than when you are not meditating, when you are engaged in a thousand things for 24 hours. Those thoughts do not trouble you. If you sit with your eyes closed for an hour, with your legs crossed in a posture, you become utterly astonished, wondering what is going on. What were the thoughts waiting for? They were waiting for you to say, "Meditate, children, meditate." Then they would tell you everything. They would fall upon you from all sides, attack you from all directions, as if they were waiting. As soon as you start meditating, all sorts of thoughts come: thoughts of money, lust, work, politics, this and that, all the garbage. They fly in. After a short while, you pick them up and think, "Even when I am engaged in work, I have fewer thoughts." You set out to become thoughtless, and you fall into a tempest of thoughts. Why does this happen? It happens because your mother is protecting you. Your mother says, "Where are you going? You have no idea of the goal, where you have never been, which has no taste. What mirage are you chasing? Be practical. Hold onto what is known, what is tested." This is why blessings are needed. The meaning of a blessing is: "We are on this shore." [Music] Someone from that shore says, "Don't worry, I have arrived. Come. Just as you are afraid, I was also afraid. Don't be afraid. I had to reach. Look, I have arrived." What else is the meaning of seeking the company of elders? It is to be with someone who can say from experience, "I have arrived. I am the witness." These three states: believing, knowing, being. Believing is very far. It is a person standing on this shore who believes. He doesn't know. Like a blind person believes in light, thinking, "There must be light. So many people say it, so it must be there." But he will always have doubts because he hasn't known, he hasn't seen. He doesn't know if people are lying. What trust can you place in people? Without your own experience, how can you know? How can you even believe? So, belief is also limited. All respect and all beliefs are just beliefs. Then there is a person whose eyes are open and who has seen. Now he has seen that yes, there is light. He has seen the sun, the moon, the stars. He has seen the sky filled with stars. [Music] And the state when a person doesn't just know, but becomes light, when he himself becomes the embodiment of light. That is why we call Buddha God, Mahavir God. They didn't just know, they became. They became what they knew. They are seeing the light. We are standing. Slowly, slowly, that is the supreme knowledge. If you receive the blessing of such a person, your heart fills with enthusiasm and joy. Faith begins to sprout. Emotion is generated. Someone has arrived, so we can also arrive. Someone has arrived, so there is another shore. Therefore, like flowers, when they bloom, there is a fragrance. It is not in paper flowers. Paper flowers never bloom. Real flowers have fragrance. Ordinary people don't have fragrance. Their true face is not revealed. What is it? And it's not that you don't know. They themselves don't know. They themselves don't know their true face. Buddha constantly said, "Search for your true face." That face that was yours before birth and will be yours after death. Search for that face. The faces that life has given you, put them aside. All these faces are lies. When a child is born, he is neither Hindu nor Muslim. Then a face is hung on him: "This is Hindu, this is Muslim." They go in search of diseases upon diseases. The true face will not be known. When he was born, he didn't even know if he was male or female. He didn't know anything then. All these faces are bought. They are sold in markets, schools, colleges, universities. Faces are sold everywhere. Now it is deleted. Here in this ashram, you will find many people with PhDs. They have taken off their masks. You won't even be able to recognize them. They have put aside their masks. What is their intention? He said, "I just want to sweep. I don't want to tell anyone that I have a PhD in medicine. I don't want to be a doctor. The hospital is necessary. I have come from so far just to sweep here." People take sannyas, and they say, "It's strange. An uneducated person doesn't ask this. What will an educated person ask?" India is very strange. They say, "He doesn't look very spiritual." You haven't met them. You meet them on the train. They ask, "What do you do? What do you get from above?" Asking about salary is insulting. You should never ask someone's salary because perhaps their salary is low, and they would feel embarrassed to eat, and they would have to lie. Their job might be small, like a primary school teacher. Now, if you ask them, either they tell the truth, which seems insulting, or they lie, and you are encouraging them to lie. Then they ask, "What do spiritual people get in the end? Do they get anything from above too?" If they get something from above, then it's a good job. What is the meaning of getting something from above? It's theft, dishonesty, bribery. There are no faces. Paper flowers have no fragrance. Your real flower is dying. Your rose is withering. Paper flowers have surrounded it from all sides. It has no room to breathe. Your rose has no opportunity to breathe, to rise in the light, to open its petals. There is no space, no leisure. All spaces are filled with paper flowers. Buddha has fragrance. The lamps have been lit. Buddha means one who has found his true face. He has become like he was before, like an innocent child, a child of the first day. No definition, no limit. He has become limitless. In this simplicity, there is fragrance. Besides this simplicity, there is no fragrance. In this naturalness, there is fragrance. That's why Buddha's kuti was called Gandha Kuti. The flower of humanity bloomed there. Remember, you are also a flower. Or perhaps you are buried in the branch of some tree, or perhaps you haven't even been born as a tree yet, you are in a seed. But you are also a flower, and you have to find your fragrance. The song that lies within you has to be sung. What lies within you has to be danced, sung, played. Only in that fulfillment, in that satisfaction, is there a fragrance. Just as there is an inner eye, so the fragrance cannot be detected. Around Gandha Kuti, jasmine flowers bloomed. Buddha told the monks, "Monks, do you see these jasmine flowers?" One flower is Buddha's bloom. You cannot see anything yet. So, it is a compulsion. And Buddha had to say, "Monks, look at these jasmine flowers. In these flowers, many kingdoms are found. You can also be such a flower. Such fragrance can be yours. One who wants to grasp life will always remain unhappy. Don't grasp life. It cannot be held. It flows. Understand this flow. This is the basis of meditation. What is the suffering in your life? The fundamental suffering in your life is that you want to stop what will not stop. The fundamental suffering in your life is that you want to do what will not happen, what cannot happen. For example, if you are young, you want to remain young forever. So, you are going to be unhappy. No one is giving you suffering; you are creating your own suffering. A young person must grow old. There is nothing wrong with it. It is the flow. Old age has its own beauty. And if old age appears ugly to you, there is only one reason: this old person is still trying to grasp youth, which has slipped from his hands. Therefore, he cannot fully enjoy old age. Youth has its own beauty, and old age has its own beauty. And remember, the beauty of old age is the greatest beauty because it comes last. That is why in this country, we give respect to the elderly. All elders deserve respect. We give it even knowing this. The inner belief is that if a person has lived his childhood fully, and when childhood is gone, he doesn't look back, not a single tear falls, then he will live his youth fully. When youth is gone, he doesn't look back. Such a person will live his old age fully. His old age will have wisdom, understanding, comprehension. A child, however innocent, is still ignorant. In his innocence, there is a kind of ignorance. His innocence is a synonym for ignorance. Youth is a kind of intoxication. Youth has great speed, great haste, and great energy. But it is very undeveloped. In old age, the passion of youth is gone, the ignorance of childhood is gone. All the experiences of life refresh and refine the elderly. They become pure. No lust arises within, no childhood ignorance is entangled in toys, no youth. But our trouble is that very few people become old. How can they become old? Those who are old are still thinking about youth, thinking about childhood. They say, "Oh, those days were amazing." A person who says, "The days that have passed were amazing," understand that this person has not grown. He has not matured. Because if those days were amazing, then these days should be even more amazing, as they stand above both. And if these days are not amazing, then those days could not have been amazing either. If there is no beauty in old age, how could youth have been beautiful? If the Ganges is not near the sea when it falls into the ocean, how could it have been the Ganges at Gangotri? Such a person will enter death with as much joy as he entered childhood. Because the fear of old age is, "What if I become old?" That fear is that after old age, the last step is death. So, a young person wants to stop in youth, to freeze and stand somewhere. This river current that is carrying everything away, it leaves me as an exception. So, there will be suffering. Suffering comes to whom? Happiness comes to him who has no demands from life. He accepts whatever life does. That is happiness. Youth is youth. Old age is old age. If he receives love today, then love. And if love is gone tomorrow, he is equally calm. If he had a palace today, fine. If he has a hut tomorrow, fine. But in the world, there are two types of moods. If he has a hut, he wants a palace. It's very difficult. Man is not where he is. If he has a hut, he says, "I won't be happy until I get a palace." And if he gets a palace, but you don't live where you are, in the moment you are, in the place you are, as you are, live that moment completely. Don't demand anything else. When that moment passes, and a new moment arrives with a new life, there is a new moment. So, in flowers, there is this message, and in flowers, there is also this message: this life is not meant to last forever. It is here today, gone tomorrow. Therefore, this is a journey, not a destination. Don't build a home here. Emperor Akbar built the city of Fatehpur Sikri. He never found a city to live in. By the time the city was built, Akbar's end was near. He couldn't go to the city. What words should be written on the city gate? Akbar thought about it for years. What words should be written to welcome? Then he chose Jesus' famous saying. The saying is: "This world is a bridge. Cross over it. Don't build a home on it." This is the message in the flowers: everything here will pass. Don't build a home. He who builds a home in life is a householder. And he who does not build a home. It is not necessary to renounce. The habit of building a home needs to be abandoned. What is today will go tomorrow. Life is fleeting like this. It is here, it is not here. Keep these flowers in mind, monks. This memory is the boat that will take you across the fleeting. Why? Because if you want to grasp the fleeting, a storm of thoughts will arise within you. What are thoughts? They are attempts to grasp. Thoughts are the bricks for building a home. Therefore, for one who does not want to grasp the fleeting, thoughts naturally diminish. What is the point? When everything is going to pass, what is the use of so much thinking? What is the meaning of making so many plans? Meditation arises. Meditation is what will take you there. We will be freed from attachment. Flowers, you be our witnesses. God said, "Your vision is going. Blessed are you that your heart is filled with the taste for practice." "Sadhu, sadhu," saying this, he showered his disciples with flowers. Monks, practicing Vipassana of Dharma well. No one becomes peaceful by remaining silent. No one becomes peaceful by speaking. No one becomes peaceful by sleeping. You can sit like a stone statue from the outside, and if thoughts are running inside, then being a stone statue will achieve nothing. A young man went to a great master to take initiation. He was living in a Buddhist temple. So, the master asked him, "Have you learned anything before?" He said, "I learned from a yogi before. I can quickly switch to Padmasana and sit. There is too much noise in this temple. There is too much trouble. But I can see the entire market inside you." What will happen by sitting in Padmasana? What will happen by doing Shirshasana? The market inside must be closed. That is the only real posture. The real question is that. Only then can one practice Dharma Vipassana. Vipassana means looking back. What Patanjali called Pratyahara in his scriptures, what Mahavir called Pratikraman. Pratikraman means going outward. Only then can you look back. He attains a superhuman state. He attains a state that is beyond humanity. What I have called from sexual union to samadhi, that is what Buddha calls the superhuman state. Man and woman meet. They meet, or there is an illusion. At least there is another union. When your consciousness falls into its own source. When you meet yourself. There is one union with another, and there is one union with yourself. When you meet yourself, that is samadhi. There is a glimpse of samadhi in sexual union. There is the fullness of samadhi in samadhi. As one contemplates the origin and destruction of consciousness, mental formations, and consciousness, one attains the nectar of the love and joy of the wise. Thank you. Thank you. Therefore, when you love someone, it's because being alone is not enjoyable. Being alone brings sadness. Being alone brings nervousness. You need someone's company. Someone's company is necessary for you. But your heart fills with so much joy that you want to give it to someone. What is the love of an ignorant person like? The love of an ignorant person is like a beggar asking his wife for something, "I am very sad alone, give me some joy." And the wife is asking the other for something. Neither is ready to give. So, the quarrels between husband and wife are a game. The root cause of that quarrel is not any fault of the husband or wife. It is the love of the ignorant. Both are asking. Two beggars stand on the road. Imagine blind beggars. So, they cannot even see. [Music] What have they received? They think that perhaps if they found your wife, they would get something. I heard that a young man came to a Jewish priest and said, "Forgive me. Absolutely forgive me. But let me know what it is. Just forgive me. This sin is such that I cannot say it." But the priest said, "You can tell me. Don't hide it. I also have thoughts about your wife." Imagine standing before any emperor. Search for the emperor. But the way to search for an emperor is to be an emperor. So, it's a big problem. A beggar will not even get entry into the royal palace. The way to search for an emperor is to be an emperor. If you want the company of elders, become meditative. Slowly, your emperor will be born within. Then shower love. Love also increases love, just as you attain Vipassana, and just as you see that everything in the world is fleeting, nothing here will last. So, you attain the nectar of the love and joy of the wise. And when the art of giving comes, and the capacity to give comes, then there is happiness. Because when you give, you get a kind of happiness. Give even a little, and when you take, there is a little slavery behind it. In taking, you become indebted. Therefore, [Music] you will be repaid. Therefore, it often happens that people say, "We did good deeds, and we got repaid." There is a reason for this. Throw it into a well, and then it will cut your throat because you have made it indebted. A man came, and you gave him ₹100. And a feeling of great charity arose in you. "Look what a great thing I am doing. I am giving this man ₹100." You are doing a great thing. What is that man going through? He is thinking, "Okay, if I get a chance, I'll see. Today I am in trouble. Okay, I had to extend my hand before you. Okay." He will always pray for a day when you also have to extend your hand before him. Only then can he forgive you. Otherwise, he cannot forgive. He has become your enemy. You can give in such a way that the receiver doesn't know. That is why the glory of secret charity is that the giver stands there proudly and enjoys giving. Give humbly, with your head bowed. Give in such a way that the receiver's hand is raised, so that the receiver feels that you have bestowed grace upon him, shown him favor. Then you will never get repaid for your good deeds. He within whom the capacity to give arises, whose vessel is filled with love, he experiences Pramod. Pramod is the joy of giving, the greatest joy in this world. The greatest thing to give in this world is meditation. Second is love. The one who is full of service, hospitality, and is skilled in conduct will end with joy, like jasmine shedding its flowers. [Music] [Music]