Tuesday, March 27, 2012

If You are living Joyously, You are a Holy Man.

  1. According to me, if you are living joyously, you are a holy man.
  2. That is the sign of wisdom: freedom from desire. Only fools desire. Wise people live and live joyously, but without desire. Either you can desire or you can live, you can’t do both. If you desire, you postpone living; if you live, who bothers about desiring? Today is enough unto itself.
  3. Life is purposeless. Don’t be shocked. The whole idea of purpose is wrong — it comes out of greed. Life is a sheer joy, a playfulness, a fun, a laughter, to no purpose at all. Life is its own end, it has no other end. The moment you understand it you have understood what meditation is all about. It is living your life joyously, playfully, totally, and with no purpose at the end, with no purpose in view, no purpose there at all. Just like small children playing on the sea beach, collecting seashells and coloured stones — for what purpose? There is no purpose at all.
  4. My effort here is to help you to worship life, to live so joyously, with such humor, that your life becomes a dance. I don’t want you to become sad and serious — sincere of course, but serious, never. I would like you to go deeper into existence. Dance with the flowers! Have dialogues with the stars! Look into people’s eyes and love and don’t hold back. The only unspiritual people are those who are holding back, who are living in a miserly way, who are living only partially, fragmentarily, who are not integrated.
  5. The miserable person cannot be graceful, cannot be really beautiful. His beauty can only be very superficial, skin-deep. But the person who has attained to bliss, who is living in his innermost core joyously, has a grace, has a beauty. He is a blessing to himself and to the world. That’s what a sannyasin has to be: a blessing to himself and to the world.
  6. These two things are of great importance living life as music, creating a harmony in everything that you do, in everything that you are, and out of that harmony not relaxing into an escape — which religious people have done down the ages. When you are in harmony the second thing is that your harmony has to be creative. You have to enrich the world, you have to leave the world a little better, a little more beautiful than you found it; only then does one feel contentment, only then does one live and die joyously.
  7. You don’t have to transcend anything. You have to live everything that is natural to you, and live it fully, without any inhibition — joyously, aesthetically. Just by living it deeply, a transcendence will come. You are not to transcend anything. Remember my words. A transcendence will come by itself, and when it comes by itself it is such a release and such a freedom.
  8. Meditation is the art of living with yourself. It is nothing else than that, simply that: the art of being joyously alone. A meditator can sit joyously alone for months, for years. He does not hanker for the other, because his own inner ecstasy is so much, is so overpowering, that who bothers about the other? If the other comes into his life it is not a need, it is a luxury.
  9. To be religious means to live a life full of love, joy, innocence, freedom, individuality, to the extent that even if life has to be sacrificed for the higher values of freedom, love, truth, then one sacrifices it joyously. It is worth! Freedom cannot be sacrificed, bliss cannot be sacrificed, love cannot be sacrificed, and life is significant only if these things are flowering, blossoming. The moment these things are sacrificed there is no point in living. Then life is simply vegetating.
  10. I don’t promise you anything. I don’t promise you the kingdom of God, I don’t promise you enlightenment — I don’t promise at all. My whole approach is of living moment to moment; enlightened or unenlightened, what does it matter? Living moment to moment joyously, ecstatically, living moment to moment totally, intensely, passionately…. If one lives passionately, the ego dissolves. If one is total in one’s acts, the ego is BOUND to dissolve. It is like when a dancer goes on and on dancing: a moment comes when only the dance remains and the dancer disappears. That is the moment of enlightenment.
  11. Live your today as fully as possible. From where is your tomorrow going to be born? It is in the womb of today. It is going to come from your life that you have lived today. There is no need to worry about it, it will be taken care of. By your living in the present without sacrificing a single moment for any ideal, I can guarantee you all the ideals that have haunted human imagination can be fulfilled — not by sacrifice, but by living as deeply, as fully as possible. If all people on the earth live joyously today — singing, dancing, praising the beauty of life and being grateful to existence — can tomorrow be different? It will be better. You will have become more alert to the beauty of living in the present.
  12. A really religious person will say yes to life joyously, dancingly. His whole being will be a celebration. He will not act out of fear, he will act out of love. He will not be worried about hell and heaven, he will not be worried at all. He will live moment-to-moment, but he will live each moment with utter totality. and that total living brings bliss, that total living is the path of bliss.
  13. If you understand meditation then that’s enough: sitting silently anywhere you can fall into meditativeness. Meditativeness is not action but a state of silence, a state of inaction when everything stops: time stops, all movement disappears, you are in total rest. And those are the moments when you know that you are immortal, that only the body will die; you are not going to die. Then all fear disappears because all fear is rooted in death. And to be fearless is the most fundamental thing for living life joyously.
  14. If you are living fully, joyously, there is no reason at all to think of the future. It does not arise at all in your being. And your contentment, moment to moment, goes on making you more and more fulfilled, so fulfilled that you could not have imagined, dreamed of it. With this fulfillment, if death comes you will live that death-moment too, with joy and ecstasy, because it will be opening a new door, a new possibility. You will be thrilled. It will be an adventure and a challenge. And you will not be afraid of death because what can death take from you? What can death disturb? What can death stop? But a person who has not lived, he is afraid of death, and trembling.
  15. I am not interested in the future at all. This moment is too much, too overwhelming. I am rejoicing in it. And this is my way of life: to live moment to moment. I am not a prophet, I have not come here to determine the whole course of humanity in the future — that kind of bullshit does not appeal to me at all. Who am I to decide the whole course of humanity in the future? I am living my moment joyously; that’s enough. And the people who will be coming will find their own ways to live. To suffer or to rejoice — it all depends on their intelligence.
  16. Sannyas means living life in a relaxed way, with no hurry, with no worry, as if nothing is serious, living life joyously, playfully, from moment to moment, not bothering about the past, not bothering about the future either, not bothering at all; whatsoever happens is good and whatsoever does not happen is also good. Taking things with such calmness and equanimity brings a restful spirit. Slowly slowly the whole turmoil settles and suddenly there is bliss, out of nowhere it starts welling up. You become flooded with light, with life, with love. Those are the three dimensions of bliss. It makes you more light-full, makes you more life-full, makes you more love-full. And when all these three L’s — these are the learned, one has arrived home.
  17. This is what I call sannyas: living joyously in infinite inconsistencies, without trying to choose, without trying to impose a pattern on life, living moment to moment, not with a plan but ad hoc. Whatsoever this moment demands accept the challenge and respond. Don’t say ‘I have to behave in this way’; there is no ‘have to’. You are free to behave in this moment as this moment requires you to… not according to the past, not according to any character, not according to any mind, not according to any plan.
  18. Everybody is capable of living joyously.
    It is the tomorrow that goes on poisoning you.
    Forget yesterdays, forget tomorrows.
    This is our day!
    Let us celebrate it and live it.

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