Quotes

"One has to reach to the absolute state of awareness: that is Zen. You cannot do it every morning for a few minutes or for half an hour and then forget all about it. It has to become like your heartbeat. You have to sit in it, you have to walk in it. Yes, you have even to sleep in it."

"Any mundane activity can become meditative. Digging a hole in the garden, planting new roses in the garden — you can do it with such tremendous love and compassion, you can do it with the hands of a buddha. There is no contradiction … I say unto you, your every act should be a ceremony. If you can bring your consciousness, your awareness, your intelligence to the act, if you can be spontaneous, then there is no need for any other religion: life itself will be the religion."

"Nature has come to a point where now, unless you take individual responsibility, you cannot grow. More than this nature cannot do. It has given you life, it has given you opportunity; now how to use it, it has left up to you. Meditation is your freedom, not a biological necessity."

"If you believe in any religion you cannot meditate. Religion is an interference in your meditation. Meditation needs no God, no heaven, no hell, no fear of punishment, and no allurement of pleasure."

"Ecstasy is our very nature, not to be ecstatic is simply unnecessary. To be ecstatic is natural, spontaneous. It needs no effort to be ecstatic, it needs great effort to be miserable. That's why you look so tired, because misery is real hard work; to maintain it is really difficult, because you are doing something against the nature."

"Remain in wonder if you want mysteries to open up for you. Mysteries never open up for those who go on questioning. Questioners sooner or later end up in a library. They end up with scriptures, because scriptures are full of answers. And answers are dangerous, they kill your wonder."

"Man has nothing else to do but surrender — in deep trust, in deep love. Don't be a doer, just surrender. Let there be a let-go."

"Just before twenty-first March, 1953, seven days before, I stopped working on myself. A moment comes when you see the whole futility of effort. You have done all that you can do and nothing is happening... In sheer helplessness one drops all search. And the day the search stopped, the day I was not seeking for something, the day I was not expecting something to happen, it started happening."

"And my grandparents became very aware of one thing—that I enjoyed my aloneness."

"Mind is a beautiful servant, a dangerous master."

"Witnessing is the art of watching your mind without judgment, without evaluation, without condemnation."

"Silence is not the absence of sound. Silence is when the mind stops chattering."

"My whole teaching consists of two words, meditation and love. Meditate so that you can feel immense silence, and love so that your life can become a song, a dance, a celebration. You will have to move between the two, and if you can move easily, if you can move without any effort, you have learned the greatest thing in life."

"Nobody can teach you love. Love you have to find yourself, within your being, by raising your consciousness to higher levels. And when love comes, there is no question of responsibility. You do things because you enjoy doing them for the person you love. You are not obliging the person, you are not even wanting anything in return, not even gratitude. On the contrary, you are grateful that the person has allowed you to do something for him. It was your joy, sheer joy. Love knows nothing of responsibility. It is natural."

"Love with freedom—if you have it, you are a king or a queen. That is the real kingdom of God—love with freedom. Love gives you the roots into the earth, and freedom gives you the wings."

"I trust in the individual categorically. Nobody up to now has trusted in the individual in such a way."

"Just a few days ago a man came to see me and he said, "I am a humble man. I am just like the dust on your feet..." And on and on he went. Every sentence started with I... You are filled too much. There is no room, no space for God to enter in you."

"You must have heard about the beautiful Sufi legend of Majnu and Laila. It is not an ordinary love story. The word majnu means mad, mad for God. And laila is the symbol of God. Sufis think of God as the beloved; laila means the beloved. Everybody is a Majnu, and God is the beloved. And one has to open one's heart, the eye of the heart."

"Qualities like love, around which no church can be created, like awareness, qualities which are nobody's monopoly, like celebration, rejoicing, and maintaining childlike fresh eyes. I want people to know themselves, not to be according to someone else, and the way is in."

"If you love a person, you give him total freedom. You give him the right to be himself."

"Relationship is a mirror. Every relationship is a mirror in which you can see your face, your real face."

"Unless one is rebellious, one is not religious. Rebellion is the very foundation of religion."

"It is not decided by votes what is true; otherwise we could never come to any truth, ever. People will vote for what is comfortable — and lies are very comfortable because you don't have to do anything about them, you just have to believe. Truth needs great effort, discovery, risk, and it needs you to walk alone on a path that nobody has traveled before."

"Anybody who gives you a belief system is your enemy, because the belief system becomes the barrier for your eyes, you cannot see the truth. The very desire to find the truth disappears."

"I believe and trust absolutely in existence. If there is any truth in what I am saying, it will survive. The people who remain interested in my work will be simply carrying the torch, but not imposing anything on anyone, either by sword or bread."

"I don't want anybody to stand between the individual and existence. No prayer, no priest... you alone are enough to face the sunrise, you don't need somebody to interpret for you what a beautiful sunrise it is."

"When I am gone I hope there may still be courageous people in the world to criticize me, so that I don't become a hindrance on anybody's path. And those who will criticize me will not be my enemies; neither am I the enemy of those whom I have criticized. The working of the enlightened masters just has to be understood."

"The Christian priest is not interested in God: he is interested in creating a business. He has to claim that Jesus is the only way, that all other ways are wrong. He is in search of customers."

"I am not a teacher. A teacher tells you what to do; I simply show you what is. The difference is tremendous."

"The society wants you to be obedient. I teach disobedience—not against others, but against your own conditioning."

"Belief is a barrier. Trust is a bridge. Belief means you have already decided; trust means you are open."

"Explanation is not needed — only exclamation, a wondering heart, awakened, surprised, feeling the mystery of life each moment. Then, and only then, you know what truth is. And truth liberates."

"Be realistic: Plan for a miracle."

"You say that in heaven there is eternal beauty. The eternal beauty is here and now, not in heaven."

"Look for the mysterious in life. Wherever you look — in the white clouds, in the stars in the night, in the flowers, in a flowing river — wherever you look, look for the mystery. And whenever you find that a mystery is there, meditate on it. Meditation means: dissolve yourself before that mystery, annihilate yourself before that mystery, disperse yourself before that mystery. Be no more, and let the mystery be so total that you are absorbed in it. And suddenly a new door opens, a new perception is achieved."

"I do not ordinarily make prophecies, but about this I am absolutely prophetic: the coming hundred years are going to be more and more irrational, and more and more mystical."

"The longer a person has been dead the greater is the tradition … If Buddha is alive you can barely tolerate him. … Alive, you crucify him; dead, you worship him."

"Whenever I meet prostitutes, they never speak of sex. They inquire about the soul, and about God. I also meet many ascetics and monks, and whenever we are alone they ask about nothing but sex."

"Life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived."

"Dance as if nobody is watching. Love as if you have never been hurt. Sing as if nobody is listening."

"Creativity is the natural outcome of a meditative mind."

"Tantra is a great yea-sayer; it says yes to everything."

"Don't say this is good and that is bad. Drop all discrimination. Accept everything as it is."

"Liberation cannot be desired because desire is the bondage. When you are desireless, you are liberated."

"Tantra accepts everything, lives everything. That's why tantra never could become a very accepted ideology. It always remained a fringe ideology."

"The tantra masters are simply wild flowers, they have everything in them."

"The ordinary society is like a paperweight on you: it won't allow you to fly."

"Accept yourself as you are. And that is the most difficult thing in the world, because it goes against your training, your education, your culture."

"Tantra is not technique but prayer. It is not head-oriented but a relaxation into the heart."

"Don't fight with your sexuality. Accept it. The moment you accept it, it starts transforming."

"All the Buddhas of all the ages have been telling you a very simple fact: Be — don't try to become. Within these two words — being and becoming, your whole life is contained. Being is enlightenment, becoming is ignorance."

"Find moments when you are not, and those will be the moments when you will be for the first time...really. So I am the white cloud, and the whole effort is to make you also white clouds drifting in the sky. Nowhere to go, coming from nowhere, just being there this very moment — perfect."

"Only a ripe fruit falls to the ground. Ripeness is all. An unripe ego cannot be thrown, cannot be destroyed."

"When you are no more, only then for the first time will you be."

"If you really want to know who I am, you have to be as absolutely empty as I am. Then two mirrors will be facing each other, and only emptiness will be mirrored."

"Tao mystics never talk about God, reincarnation, heaven, hell. No, they don't talk about these things. These are all creations of human mind: explanations for something which can never be explained, explanations for the mystery. In fact, all explanations are against God because explanation de-mystifies existence."

"Jesus is a rebel, just as Buddha or Lao Tzu is. When the church starts establishing itself it starts destroying the rebelliousness of Jesus, Buddha, because rebellion cannot go with an establishment."

"The moment you become a disciple, you have already missed. The master is not there outside you; the master is your own future, your own possibility."

"Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water."

"The empty boat is hit by another boat. You are angry—until you see the boat is empty. Then there is nothing to be angry about."