(deel 2)

Now we will try to understand the sutra.

[To transcend duality is the kingly view.]

To transcend… not to win, but to transcend. This word is very beautiful. What does it mean to transcend?

It is just as if a small child is playing with his toys. You tell him to put them away and he becomes angry. Even when he goes to sleep he goes with his toys, and his mother has to remove them when he has fallen asleep. In the morning the first thing that he demands is where his toys are and who has taken them away. Even in his dreams he dreams about the toys. Then suddenly one day he forgets about the toys. For a few days they remain in the corner of his room, and then they are removed or thrown away; never again does he ask for them. What has happened?

He has transcended; he has become mature. It is not a fight and a victory; it is not that he was fighting against the desire to have toys. No, suddenly one day he sees this is childish and he is no longer a child; suddenly one day he realizes that toys are toys, they are not real life and he is ready for the real life. His back is turned toward the toys. Never again will they come into dreams; never again will he think about them. And if he sees some other child playing with toys, he will laugh; he will laugh a knowing laugh, a wise laugh. He will say, “He’s a child, still childish, playing with toys.” He has transcended.

Transcendence is a very spontaneous phenomenon. It has not to be cultivated. You simply become more mature. You simply see the whole absurdity of a certain thing, and you transcend.

One young man came to me and he was very worried. He had a beautiful wife, but her nose was a little too long. So he was worried and he said, “What to do?” Even plastic surgery was done. The nose became a little more ugly because there was nothing wrong, and when you try to improve something where nothing is wrong, it becomes more ugly; it makes more of a mess. Now he was more troubled and he asked me what he should do.
I talked to him about the toys and I told him, “One day you will have to transcend. This is just childish – why are you so obsessed with her nose? The nose is just a tiny part, and your wife is so beautiful and such a beautiful person – and why are you making her so sad because of her nose?” She had also become touchy about her nose, and her nose had become as if it was the whole problem of her life.

And all problems are like this! Don’t think that your problem is something greater; all problems are like this. All problems are out of childishness, juvenile, they are born out of immaturity.

He was so concerned with her nose that he would not even look at his wife’s face because whenever he saw her nose he would be troubled – but you cannot escape things so easily. If you are not looking at the face because of the nose, still you are reminded of the nose. Even if you are trying to avoid the issue, the issue is there. You are obsessed. So I told him to meditate on his wife’s nose.
He said, “What? I cannot even look.”
I told him, “This is going to help – simply meditate on her nose. In ancient days people used to meditate on the tip of their own nose, so what is wrong in meditating on the tip of your wife’s nose? Beautiful! Try it.”
He said, “But what will happen through it?”
“Just try,” I told him, “and after a few months tell me. Every day, let her sit before you and meditate on her nose.”
One day he came running to me and he said, “What nonsense I have been doing! Suddenly, I have transcended. The whole foolishness of it has become apparent, now it is no longer a problem.”

He had not become victorious because, in fact, there is no enemy there so that you can win, there is no enemy – this is what Tantra says. All life is in deep love with you. There is nobody who has to be destroyed, nobody who has to be beaten – nobody who is an enemy, a foe to you. All life loves you. From everywhere love is flowing.

And within you also, there are no enemies. They were created by priests, who have made you into a battleground. They say, “Fight this – this is bad! Fight that – that is bad!” And they have created many enemies, so that you are surrounded by enemies, and you have lost contact with the whole beauty of life. I say to you anger is not your enemy, greed is not your enemy; neither is compassion your friend, nor nonviolence is your friend – because friend or foe, you remain with the duality.

Just look at the whole of your being and you will find they are one. When the foe becomes the friend and the friend becomes the foe, all duality is lost. Suddenly there is transcendence, suddenly an awakening. And I tell you it is sudden because when you fight you have to fight inch by inch. This is not a fight at all. This is the way of the kings: the royal path.

Says Tilopa: [To transcend duality is the kingly view.]
- Transcend duality! Just watch and you will see there is no duality.

Bodhidharma, one of the most rare jewels ever born, went to China. The king came to see him, and the king said, “Sometimes I am very disturbed. Sometimes there is much tension and anguish within me.”
Bodhidharma looked at him and said, “Come early tomorrow morning at four o’clock, and bring all your anguish, anxieties, disturbances with you. Remember, don’t come alone; bring all of them!”
The king looked at this Bodhidharma – he was a very weird looking fellow; he could have scared anybody to death – and asked, “What are you saying? What do you mean?”
Bodhidharma said, “If you don’t bring those things, then how can I set you right? Bring all of them and I will set everything right.”
The king thought, “It is better not to go. Four o’clock in the morning – it will be dark, and this man looks a little mad. With a big staff in his hand, he can even hit. And what does he mean that he will put everything right?”
He couldn’t sleep the whole night because Bodhidharma haunted him. By the morning he felt that it would be good to go because who knows, maybe he could do something.
So he went, grudgingly, hesitatingly, but he reached. And the first thing Bodhidharma said – he was sitting there before the temple with his staff, was looking even more dangerous in the dark, and he said – “So you have come! Where are the other fellows that you were talking about?”
The king said, “You talk in puzzles, because they are not things that I can bring, they are inside.”
Bodhidharma said, “Okay. Inside, outside, things are things. Sit down, close your eyes and try to find them inside. Catch hold of them and immediately tell me. Look at my staff – I am going to set them right!”
The king closed his eyes – there was no other way to do – he closed his eyes, a little afraid, looked inside here and there, watched, and suddenly he became aware the more he looked in, there was nothing – no anxiety, no anguish, no disturbance. He fell into a deep meditation. Hours passed, the sun started rising, and on his face there was tremendous silence.
Then Bodhidharma told him, “Now open your eyes. Enough is enough! Where are those fellows? Could you get hold of them?”
The king laughed, bowed down, touched the feet of Bodhidharma, and he said, “Really, you have set them right because I could not find them, and now I know what is the matter. They were not there in the first place. They were there because I never entered within myself and looked for them. They were there because I was not present inside. Now I know – you have done the miracle.”

And this is what happened. This is transcendence: not solving a problem, but looking to see whether there really is a problem in the first place. First you create the problem and then you start asking for the solution. First you create the question and then you roam around the world asking for the answer.

This has been my experience also, that if you watch the question, the question will disappear; there is no need for any answer. If you watch the question, the question disappears, and this is transcendence. It is not a solution because there was no question at all to solve. You don’t have a disease. Just watch inside and you will not find the disease; then what is the need of a solution?

Every man is as he should be. Every man is a born king. Nothing is lacking, you need not be improved upon. And people who try to improve you, destroy you, they are the real mischief makers. And there are many who are just watching like cats for mice: you come near them and they pounce upon you and they start improving you immediately. There are many improvers; that’s why the world is in such chaos, there are too many people trying to improve you. Don’t allow anybody to improve upon you. You are already the last word. You are not only the alpha you are the omega also. You are complete, perfect.

Even if you feel imperfection, Tantra says that imperfection is perfect. You need not worry about it. It will look very strange to say that your imperfection is also perfect, nothing is lacking in it. In fact, you appear imperfect not because you are imperfect but because you are a growing perfection. This looks absurd, illogical, because we think perfection cannot grow – by perfection, we mean that which has come to its last growth, but that perfection will be dead. If it cannot grow, then that perfection will be dead.

God goes on growing. God is not perfect in the way of having no growth. He is perfect because he lacks nothing, but he goes from one perfection to another; the growth continues. God is evolution: not from imperfection to perfection, it is from perfection to more perfection, to still more perfection.

When perfection is without any future, it is dead. When perfection has a future to it, still an opening, a growth, still a movement, then it looks like imperfection. And I would like to tell you: be imperfect and growing because that is what life is. And don’t try to be perfect; otherwise you will stop growing. Then you will be like a Buddha statue: stone, but dead. Because of this phenomenon – that perfection goes on growing – you feel it is imperfect. Let it be as it is. Allow it to be as it is. This is the royal way.

[To transcend duality is the kingly view.
To conquer distractions is the royal practice.]

Distractions will be there when you will lose your consciousness again and again. You meditate, you sit for meditation, a thought comes, and immediately you have forgotten yourself; you follow the thought, you have got involved in it. Tantra says only one thing has to be conquered, that is distractions. What will you do?

Only one thing: when a thought comes, remain a witness. Look at it, observe it, allow it to pass your being, but don’t get attached to it in any way, for or against. It may be a bad thought, a thought to kill somebody – don’t push it away, don’t say, “This is a bad thought.” The moment you say something about the thought you have become attached, you are distracted. Now this thought will lead you to many things, from one thought to another. A good thought comes, a compassionate thought. Don’t say, “Aha, so beautiful! I am a great saint. Such beautiful thoughts are coming to me that I would like to give salvation to the whole world. I would like to liberate everybody.” Don’t say that. Good or bad, remain a witness.

Still, in the beginning, you will be distracted many times. Then what to do? If you are distracted, be distracted. Don’t be too worried about it, otherwise that worry will become an obsession. Be distracted! For a few minutes you will be distracted, then suddenly you will remember, “I am distracted.” Then it is okay, come back. Don’t feel depressed. Don’t say, “It was bad that I was distracted.” Again you are creating a dualism: bad and good. Distracted, okay – accept it; come back. Even with distraction you don’t create a conflict.

That’s what Krishnamurti goes on saying. He uses a very paradoxical concept for it. He says if you are inattentive, be attentively inattentive. That’s okay! Suddenly you find you have been inattentive, give attention to it and come back home. Krishnamurti has not been understood and the reason is that he follows the royal path. If he had been a yogi he would have been understood very easily. That’s why he goes on saying there is no method – on the royal path there is no method. He goes on saying that there is no technique – on the royal path there is none. He goes on saying no scripture will help you – on the royal path there is no scripture.

Distracted? The moment you remember, the moment this attention comes to you that, “I have been distracted,” come back. That’s all! Don’t create any conflict. Don’t say, “This was bad”; don’t feel depressed, frustrated that you have been distracted again. Nothing is wrong in distraction, enjoy it also. If you can enjoy the distraction, it will happen less and less to you. And a day comes when there is no distraction – but this is not a victory. You have not pushed the distracting trends of your mind deep into the unconscious. No. You allowed it also. It too is good.

This is the mind of Tantra: that everything is good and holy. Even if there is distraction, somehow it is needed. You may not be aware why it is needed; somehow it is needed. If you can feel good about everything that happens in you, only then are you following the royal path. If you start fighting with anything whatsoever, you have fallen from the royal path and you have become an ordinary soldier, a warrior.

[To transcend duality is the kingly view.
To conquer distractions is the royal practice.
The path of no-practice is the way of all buddhas.]

Nothing has to be practiced because practice creates habits. One has to become more aware, not more practiced. The beautiful happens through the spontaneous, not through the practiced. You can practice love; you can go through some training. In America they are thinking to create a few training courses for love because people have even forgotten how to love. It is really strange! Even birds, animals, trees don’t ask anybody, they don’t go to any college, and they love.

And many people come to me… Just a few days ago one young man wrote a letter to me, and he said, “I understand – but how to love? How to proceed? How to approach a woman?” It seems ridiculous but we have completely lost the natural, loose way. Not even love is possible without training. And if you are trained you will become absolutely ugly because then everything you do will be part of the training. It will not be real; it will be acting. It will not be real life; it will be just like actors. They create love, they act in a loving way, but have you noticed actors are the greatest failures as far as love is concerned? Their love life is almost always a failure. This should not be so because twenty-four hours a day with so many women, with so many stories, in different ways they are practicing love. They are professional lovers, they should be perfect when they fall in love, but when they fall in love they are always failures.

The life of actors and actresses, their love life, is always a failure. What is the matter? Practice is the matter; they have practiced it too much; now the heart cannot function. They simply go on making impotent gestures: they kiss, but the kiss is not there, only lips meet. Only lips meet. The inner energy, the transfer of inner energy is not there; their lips are closed, cold. And if lips are cold, closed, and energy is not being released through them, the kiss is an ugly thing, unhygienic. It is just a transfer of millions of cells, germs, diseases – that’s all. A kiss is ugly if the inner energy is not present. You can embrace a woman or a man – only bones meet, bodies clash – but there is no jump of the inner energy. The energy is not there. You are just moving through an impotent gesture. You can even make love, you can move through all the gestures of love, but that will be more like gymnastics and less like love.

Remember: practice kills life. Life is more alive when unpracticed. When it flows in all directions without any pattern, without any forced discipline, then it has its own order and discipline.

[The path of no-practice is the way of all buddhas.
He who treads that path reaches buddhahood.]

Then what to do? If no-practice is the path, what to do? Then just live spontaneously. What is the fear? Why you are so afraid to live spontaneously? Of course there may be dangers, there are hazards, but that is good! Life is not like a railway track, with trains moving on the same track again and again, shunting. Life is like a river; it creates its own path. It is not a channel. A channel is not good – a channel means a life of habits. Danger is there, but danger is life, it is involved in life. Only dead persons are beyond danger. That’s why people become dead.

Your houses are more like graves. You are too concerned with security, and too much concern for security kills, because life is insecure. It is so; nothing can be done about it, nobody can make it secure. All securities are false; all securities are imagined. A woman loves you today – tomorrow, who knows? How can you be secure about tomorrow? You may go to the court and register, and make a legal bond that she will also remain your wife tomorrow. She may remain your wife because of the legal bond, but love can disappear. Love knows no legality. And when love disappears and the wife remains the wife and the husband remains the husband, then there is deadness between them.

Because of security we create marriage. Because of security we create society. Because of security we always move on the channelized path. Life is wild. Love is wild. And God is absolutely wild. He will never come into your gardens; they are much too human. He will not come to your houses; they are too small. He will never be met on your channelized paths. He is wild.

Remember, Tantra says that life is wild. One has to live it through all the dangers, hazards. And it is beautiful because then there is adventure. Don’t try to make a fixed pattern of your life. Allow it to have its own course. Accept everything! Transcend duality through acceptance and allow life to have its own course and you will reach; you will certainly reach. This certainly I say, not to make you secure – this is a fact, that’s why I say it. This is not your certainty of security. Those who are wild always reach.

[Transient is this world,
like phantoms and dreams, substance it has none.
Renounce it and forsake your kin,
cut the strings of lust and hatred,
meditate in woods and mountains.

If without effort
you remain loosely in the natural state,
soon Mahamudra you will win,
and attain the nonattainment.]

The non-attainable… This sutra has to be understood very deeply because misunderstanding is possible. There has been much misunderstanding about this sutra of Tilopa. And all those who have commented before me have missed the point. There is a reason.

This sutra says: [Transient is this world…]

This world is made of the same stuff as dreams are made of. There is no difference between dreams and this world. Waking or asleep you live in a dream world of your own. Remember there is not one world; there are as many worlds as there are people; everybody lives in his own world. Sometimes our worlds meet and clash, sometimes merge, but we remain enclosed in our own worlds.

[Transient is this world...]
– mind created...

[...like phantoms and dreams, substance it has none.]
This is what physicists say also: […substance it has none.]

Matter has disappeared completely from the vocabulary of the physicist within just thirty, forty years. Seventy, seventy-five years ago, Nietzsche declared: “God is dead.” And he said it to emphasize that only matter exists – and the century was not even complete. Just twenty-five years after Nietzsche died – Nietzsche died in 1900 – in 1925, physicists came to understand that we don’t know anything about God, but one thing is certain: matter is dead. There is no material thing around you, everything is just vibrations; crisscrossing vibrations create the illusion of matter.

It is the same when you watch a movie, there is nothing on the screen – only crisscrossing electric lights, and they create the whole illusion. Now there are three-dimensional films, they create the complete illusion of three-dimensionality. The whole world is exactly like a movie film on the screen because it is all an electric phenomenon. Only you are real, only the witness is real, and everything is a dream. And buddhahood means that when you transcend all these dreams and there is left nothing to be seen – only the seer sits silently, there is nothing, no object to be seen, only the seer is left – then you have attained to buddhahood, to reality.

[Transient is this world,
like phantoms and dreams, substance it has none.
Renounce it and forsake your kin...]

These words [Renounce it and forsake your kin…] have been misunderstood. There was a reason why. They were all renouncers, and they thought that Tilopa was saying what they believed. Tilopa could not say it because it was against Tilopa’s whole trend.

If they are like dreams, what is the meaning of renouncing them? You can renounce reality, you cannot renounce dreams; it will be too foolish. You can renounce a substantial world; you cannot renounce a phantom world. In the morning do you say, declare, go to the housetop and call everybody around and say, “I have renounced the dreams! Last night there were many dreams and I have renounced!” They will laugh, they will think you have gone crazy – nobody renounces dreams. One simply awakes; nobody renounces dreams.

A Zen master woke up one morning and he asked one of his disciples, “I had a dream last night. Would you interpret it for me, what it means?”
The disciple said, “Wait! Let me bring a cup of tea for you.”
The master took the cup of tea and then asked, “Now what about the dream?”
The disciple said, “Forget about it because a dream is a dream and needs no interpretation. A cup of tea is enough of an interpretation. Awake!”
The master said, “Right, absolutely right! If you had interpreted my dream I would have thrown you out of my monastery because only fools interpret dreams. You did well; otherwise you would have been thrown completely out, and I would not have looked at your face again.”

When there is a dream, you need a cup of tea and be finished with it. Freud and Jung and Adler would have been very worried had they known this story because they wasted their whole lives interpreting others’ dreams. A dream has to be transcended. Simply by knowing it is a dream, you transcend. This is the renunciation.

Tilopa has been misunderstood because in the world there are so many renouncers, condemners. They thought he was saying to renounce the world. He was not saying that. He was saying, know that it is transient, and this is renunciation. Renounce it… he says, means know it, know that it is a dream.

[…forsake your kin…]

It has been thought that he is saying, “Leave your family, your relations, your mother, your father, your children.” No, he is not saying that; he cannot. It is impossible for Tilopa to say that. He is saying renounce the inner relationship with people. You should not think somebody is your wife. That “yourness” is a phantom; it is a dream. You should not say, “This child is my son” – that “myness,” that mine, is a dream. Nobody is yours; nobody can be yours. Renounce these attitudes that somebody is yours: husband, wife, friend, enemy; renounce all these attitudes. Don’t bridge with mine, thine – these words, drop them!

Suddenly, if you drop these words, you have renounced your kin: nobody is yours. That doesn’t mean that you escape, you run away from your wife because the running away will show that you think she is substantial. Running away will show that you still think she is yours, otherwise why are you running?

It happened…

A Hindu sannyasin, Swami Ramteerth, came back from America. He was staying in the Himalayas; his wife came to see him; he became a little disturbed. His disciple, a very penetrating mind, Sardar Poorn Singh, was sitting beside him. He watched, he felt that he was disturbed. When his wife went, Ramteerth suddenly threw off his orange robes.
Poorn Singh asked, “What is the matter? I was watching; you were a little disturbed. I felt you were not yourself.”
Ramteerth said, “That’s why I’m throwing off these robes. I have met so many women, and I was never disturbed. Nothing is special about this woman – except that she is my wife. That my is still there. I am not worthy to wear these robes. I have not renounced the mine, I have renounced only the wife. And the wife is not the problem. No other woman has ever disturbed me; I have walked all over the earth, but my wife comes – she is as ordinary a woman as any – and suddenly I am disturbed. The bridge is still there.”
He died in ordinary clothes; he never again used the orange. He said, “I am not worthy.”

Tilopa cannot say renounce your wife and children and your kin. No. He is saying renounce the bridges; drop them. That is your affair; it is not concerned with the wife. If she continues to think about you as her husband that is her problem not yours. If the son continues to think of you as his father, that is his problem; he is a child, he needs maturity. I say to you that Tilopa means renouncing the inner dreams and bridges, the inner worlds.

[…meditate in woods and mountains.]

And that too – he is not saying to run away to the mountains and the woods. It has been interpreted like that, and many have escaped from their wives and children and gone to the mountains. That is absolutely wrong. What Tilopa is saying is deeper; it is not so superficial because you can go to the mountains and remain in the market. Your mind is the question. You may sit in the Himalayas and think of the market and your wife and your children and what is happening to them.

It happened…

A man renounced his wife, children and family, and came to Tilopa to be initiated as his disciple. Tilopa was staying in a temple outside the town.
The man came. He went inside alone and Tilopa was alone. Tilopa looked around him and said, “You have come, that’s okay, but why this crowd?”
The man looked back because there was no one. Tilopa said, “Don’t look back! Look in! The crowd is there!”
And the man closed his eyes and the crowd was there: the wife was still there crying, the children were weeping and sad; they were standing there. They had come to leave him at the boundary of the town: friends, family, others, they were all there.
And Tilopa said, “Go out, leave the crowd! I initiate persons, not crowds.”

No, Tilopa cannot mean that you renounce the world and go to the mountains. He is not so foolish. He cannot mean it; he is an awakened man.

What he means is this: if you renounce the dreams, the bridges, and the relationships, not the relations; if you renounce your mind, suddenly you are in the woods and in the mountains. You may be sitting in the market but the market has disappeared. You may be sitting in your house; the house has disappeared. Suddenly you are in the woods and in the mountains. Suddenly you are alone. Only you are there, nobody else. You can be in the crowd and alone, and you can be alone and in the crowd. You can be in the world and not of the world. You can be in the world, but you belong to the mountains and the woods.

This is an inner phenomenon. There are inner mountains and inner woods. Tilopa cannot say anything about the outer mountains and woods because they are also dreams. A Himalaya is as much a dream as the marketplace in Pune, because a Himalaya is as outer a phenomenon as the marketplace is. The woods are also a dream. You have to come to the inner; the reality is there. You have to move deeper and deeper, into the depths of your being, then you will come to the real Himalayas, then you will come to the real woods of your being, peaks and valleys of your being, heights and depths of your being. Tilopa means that.

[If without effort
you remain loosely in the natural state...]

And he has to mean that because he is for a loose and natural state. To escape from the wife and the children is not natural, and it is not loose at all. A man who leaves his wife and children and friends and the world, becomes tense; he cannot be loose. In the very effort of renouncing, tension comes in.

To be natural means to be there where you are. To be natural means to be wherever you have found yourself. If you are a husband, good; if you are a wife, beautiful; if you are a mother, right; it has to be so. Accept wherever you are and whatsoever you are and whatsoever is happening to you, only then you can be loose and natural. Otherwise you cannot be loose and natural.

Your so-called monks, sadhus, people who have escaped from the world, in fact, cowards sitting in their monasteries, cannot be loose and natural – they have to be uptight. They have done something unnatural, they have gone against the natural flow. Yes, to a few people it can be natural. So I am not saying force yourself to be in the marketplace because then you will commit the other extreme, and you will again do the same foolishness. To a few people it may be absolutely natural to be in a monastery; then they have to be in a monastery. To a few people it may be absolutely natural to move into the mountains; they have to be in the mountains.

The thing to be remembered as a criterion is being loose and natural. If you are natural in the market, beautiful – the market is also divine. If you feel loose and natural in the Himalayas, beautiful – nothing is wrong in it. Remember only one thing: Be loose and natural. Don’t strain, and don’t try to create a tension within your being. Relaxed.

[…soon Mahamudra you will win…]

Remaining loose and natural, soon you will come to the orgasmic peak with existence.

[…and attain the nonattainment.]

And you will attain that which cannot be attained. Why? Why say it cannot be attained? It cannot be attained because it cannot be made a goal. It cannot be attained by a goal-oriented mind. It cannot be attained by an achieving mind.

Here many people are of the same trend of the achieving mind. They are uptight because they have made it a goal, and it cannot be made a goal. It happens to you. You cannot attain it, you cannot reach for it; it comes to you. You can only be passive, loose and natural, and wait for the right time because everything has its own season. It will happen in its own season. What is the hurry? If you are in a hurry then you will become uptight, then you will be constantly expecting.

That’s why Tilopa says:
[…and attain the nonattainment.]

It is not a goal. You cannot make a target out of it: “I am going to attain it.” You cannot reach to it like an arrow, no. The mind which is arrowed toward a goal is a tense mind. Suddenly it comes, when you are ready. Not even the footsteps are heard. Suddenly it comes. You are not even aware that it is coming. It has bloomed. Suddenly you see the blooming; you are filled with the fragrance.

Enough for today.