We are taught that life is serious, and therefore must be done in an efficient way—but according to Euclidean ideas of efficiency. In ancient times, when people worked, they used to sing. Hardly anybody sings anymore except at a performance of some kind or something like that. Imagine a bank teller singing as they were counting out the money: “Oh, the king was in his counting house, counting out the money. 5, 10 and 20, 30, 40, 50.” You know? Why not? What would happen if you were confronted by a singing bank teller? You would complain to the management and say, “This is money! It’s very serious! You can’t sing about it. Everything will go wrong!” Can you imagine a stockbroker’s working song?
Supposing you were a bus driver. You know, most people, when they drive a bus through city traffic, they are cursing and swearing and being angry and fighting the clock all the way through town. Well, that’s a disaster! But imagine driving a bus with the idea that going from here to there—the point wasn’t to get there, but the point was to go! And dancing that bus through the streets with very, very skillfully accurate traffic dodging. And when you get to a stoplight and there’s a jam, you play a little tune on the horn, or you pass jokes to the cab driver near you, or you play with the passengers. See, anything can be turned into juggling; into playing with balls. That’s why we say: “Have a ball!” So this bus driver is swinging through the streets and he prides himself in the marvel of his terpsichorean art.
Work is not supposed to be pleasant, because you get paid for it. You’re not supposed to get paid for enjoying yourself. See, that’s what I do, because I think I’m smart. I talk to you not because I think I’m doing you any good, but because I like talking about these things. And if you pay me for it, then I make my living. It’s as simple as that. I’m a sort of philosophical entertainer. But that’s the point: that the transformation of work is swinging it.
Fundamentally, then, the question arises: where is “there”? Where’s your rush? Where are you going? To what are you progressing? Stop, look, and listen. Because you may be there already.
Do you know what the gate of heaven is? Hear about the “pearly gates”? People think it’s gates decorated with pearls—it isn’t. The gate of heaven (it says in the Book of Revelation) is one pearl. Of course, it’s got a hole through for the string. You’ve got to get through there. And you can’t get through if you’ve got a lot of baggage. So you’ve got to leave your past behind to get through.
So are you a head? Or are you just a tail? Do you move backwards or forwards? Which way are you going? See, if you’re leaving your past behind you, it doesn’t drive you. It wells up out of a mysterious present, ever new. This moment is the creation of the universe. It’s starting now!
You mustn’t let it out in church that God has a dark side as well as a light side. But it says so. Isaiah 45:7—“I am the Lord and there is none else. I form the light and create the darkness. I make peace and create evil. I, the Lord, do all these things.” Well, there’s your answer to the problem of evil.
St. Paul wrestled with this problem when he saw that the law of Moses made people conscious of right and wrong. “I had not known that there was lust except the law had said, ‘thou shalt not covet’.”
To try to play a no-lose game is impossible. We set ourselves an impossible task, and that makes us feel very frustrated. Always frustrated, because we’re trying to do what can’t be done. You want it good all the time. You want sunshine every day—okay, a desert for you. No, that’s not what you wanted, was it? Do you really want a world which is all positive? No, nobody really does. Only, we think we do and we think we ought to.
I cannot find an “I,” “myself” opposed to “they” or “it.” Because how could I have the one without the other? So that feeling that I had of deflation, of frustration, was simply the realization there is no such thing as a separate “I.” Now, if you don’t want to feel that truth, you will resist feeling it. But if you’re open, this logic of the opposites of the game of black and white will lead you ineluctably to the conclusion that you have no separate self apart from what is called “other.”
So there you are. You find that you are the vibration system, which is what’s going on. You are the undulation, the pulsation, called existence. That’s you. And it’s going womm womm womm womm womm womm womm womm womm womm in ever so many different ways. Well, you say, “Is that all?” What more did you expect? “Well, I don’t know what I wanted. Just a little something more.” You mean you want a surprise? I think we’re back where we were a little while ago.
It’s very important to be as egotistic as you are. Because the ambition to be less egotistic than you are is a very insidious form of egotism. And there is nothing more reprehensible than the ambition to be a saint.
Those things in life which are most pleasurable almost invariably happen unexpectedly. They are not contrived.
Many people, when traveling in foreign countries, see nothing because they see what they’re supposed to see. Somebody tells them, “When you go to India you’ve got to see the Taj Mahal.” “You must see the caves at Ajanta.” “You must see the burning ghats of Benares.” And so on. And they all go and see that so that they can say, “I’ve seen it.” And then they take these little black boxes (which are capturing devices for grabbing experience), and they fascinatedly go round, click, click, click, click, click, click, like this, and never see anything. They’re always looking at the aperture, figuring, and see that that’s right, and so on. And it’s an absolute drag, taking a camera! Especially if you are not a professional photographer. You know, you just have to preserve this memory of this one thing. Once in a lifetime! I got a chance to see the Taj Mahal! Click!
All the best things on any journey I’ve ever taken were unscheduled. And most of the scheduled things were a disappointment because of the big build up of expectations, and then flop! So therefore, the essential principle of the positive side of the pursuit of pleasure, you see, is the unscheduled life. Now, of course, for the convenience of other people, some schedule is always necessary. But it’s best to make it a kind of humdrum habit thing and don’t get uptight about it. Because it is nothing more just as the skeleton is a framework for the flesh, so a schedule is bones for wiggles. Snakes on ladders. And we need some bones, you see? Otherwise everything gets too gooey. But don’t take your bones too seriously. Always allow for the unexpected.
Life isn’t something on the one hand happening to you on the other, or being done by you on the one hand to it on the other. The whole thing—you and it—is a spontaneous occurrence.
You can see that you might be just rubbing around in some ash, and it becomes perfectly obvious that that’s the whole point of the universe. Incredible! I mean, it’s all there. Infinity in the grain of sand, and everything. That’s it! And you look at other people rushing around. People’s noses, when they’re in that state of rushing around, are more pointed, somehow, than they would be otherwise. The nose seems to be leading out, the eyes wildly searching. And people going about their business every day, serious: “Ugh! I’m gonna get there! I’m going to make this thing!” And they’re quite mad. You feel sorry for them, you don’t feel angry at them—but they’re quite mad. They don’t realize that now is it. That’s where it’s all going, as well as where it all comes from. The alpha and the omega is now.
All these are the great spontaneous virtues that cannot be contrived. We can try to produce barakah by finding some scientific process for artificially and antiquing things: for putting patina on bronze and five minutes, for pre-aging wine, or something like that. I mean, none of it works. It’s all phony. Because this thing can only come in the process of growth. So you say, “Well, do I have to wait?” But the whole thing is in the waiting. I don’t mean the virtue of patience, I mean waiting when there is nothing to do but wait. And when you see there is nothing to do but wait, then it happens. But it won’t be hurried. Because the minute you’re trying to hurry it, that introduces the one thing that stops it. The miracle, the magic thing, is happening all the time. But you can’t see it when you’re trying to get it, and you can still less see it when you’re trying to get it fast. So there is no alternative but to go through the point of: you can’t get it at all. You are going to be you. The same slob you’ve always been. See? You can’t change it. And all your good resolutions are just bombast. And then you start to be real.
It is the big happening which is neither voluntary nor involuntary, which is neither free nor determined. All these are mere ideas about it. You’ve abandoned all that. You’ve abandoned philosophy totally. Because you see it’s just a net designed for catching water. And when all that’s gone and that whole attempt to clutch life, to capture the pleasure, has disintegrated—there it is. And you needn’t feel anxious about: will it stay? It’s a gorgeous thing to feel you’ve no longer got to worry whether it will stick around. Because you know that if you do worry, you’ll shoo it away.
You may be living a very weird life, but I could say—speaking sort of from a Hindu point of view—that that’s your trip this round. If the generation of māyā (of the world illusion) is the play of the Godhead, then he will play the villains as well as the heroes, the fools as well as the sages, and the sinners as well as the saints. And that’s why I’m not out to convert anybody or win souls. Because it’s as if I would go and talk to a pig and say, “My dear pig, you should be a cow,” or to a giraffe and say, “Your neck is too long,” or to an elephant and say, “You are too heavy.”
The Mahayana form of Buddhism has spread a kind of warm glow all over northern Asia. It’s such an urbane, such a sophisticated religion. It doesn’t harass you with preachments, it doesn’t pursue you, it doesn’t make a busybody nuisance of itself. And yet it fosters the arts, it fosters compassion and concern—but not of the kind of concern for people that shoves what is good for them down their throats.
We have begun, first of all, you see, with the understanding that religion is not an acquisition, and therefore there’s nothing you can do to acquire it. You begin from the point of recognition that you are what you are. You can’t improve yourself—because if you try to, you’ll only make yourself more tied up and then messed up. See? You have to recognize that, because there’s no alternative. And then you’re in a position to be very simply and ingenuously aware of life without trying to do anything to it. You let it happen. And then it begins to show its color. And then you feel intensely the marvel and magical nature of the world, so that whatever you do by way of a religious practice is an art form (like singing) to express the marvelous feeling that comes out of this. Not to secure yourself, not to acquire anything, any reward, but simply to live it up.
When you have been sick and you just have to lie in bed, there’s nothing else to do while everybody else in the world goes about their business. And you’re left with almost nothing to do except listen. And you hear all the funny little noises that you don’t normally notice, of not only people, but also animals and birds and things going about their daily business. And it suddenly occurs to you that this is an unheeded symphony that’s going on. You notice sunlight leaving curious patterns on the painted walls—maybe of a hospital room where there are patches of damp and cracks in the ceiling. And because you are in a condition of complete receptivity and passivity, all this starts to come to life. Because, of course, passivity is the root of life. Activity is the end of it, but passivity is the beginning. It’s the womb from which creation starts.
When you are at the point of which I am speaking, where you are simply not doing anything—even not trying to do nothing, because you can’t—then you are sitting, and you are as aware as can be of every tip of a hair. And you’ve got nowhere to go. You’re not in a hurry. There is a period of forty minutes, an hour, or whatever it is, where is it only required of you that should be.
You’ve got this extraordinary feeling of the amazing nature of looking at reality, at life, without doing anything to it, without any sense of hurry, without any wish to improve it. Just let it happen.
Hermits, for example (and people who live solitary lives and meditate a great deal), are doing an enormous amount for the world. Just the very suspicion that people exist like that is marvelous for everybody! Because it says to all of us: Where do you think you’re going? Why are you raising so much dust? Because you think you’re going somewhere and you’re already there.
To know that there are hermits deep in the forest is like knowing that there are still streams and flowers which no one has ever seen.
I remember once watching a midnight mass in New York. I never saw anything go so fast! I don’t know if any of you ever remember a story by Alphonse Daudet called Les Trois Messes Basses—The Three Low Masses—with a play on basses; low. It was about the three masses of Christmas being celebrated in one hell of a hurry because the priest and the acolytes all wanted to get to dinner. And they gave themselves such indigestion at the dinner that they died and their ghosts were compelled to celebrate three masses through all eternity. Well, this mass was just like that. I’ve never seen anything like those—the people at the altar, the acolyte suddenly went up, genuflected, and vanished. And it reminded me of that passage in the book of Genesis, where it says, “And Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.” He just disappeared! I mean, PFFEEYONG! There was nothing stately about it. There was no rhythm, no sense of a dance. It was: “Let’s get this thing ground out as fast as possible! Damndest , you know? HAAAAAILmaryfullofgrace-thelordiswiththee-blessedblewbbleblwebble-blhwebbleblebbl-ourDEATH! You know? I can understand that being done because somebody digs a kind of yooing yooing yooing yooijng yooing yooing yooing yooing yooing yooing yooing yooing yooing yooing yooing yooing yooing yooing sound, you see? But this isn’t done that way, it’s done to get it over with. So nobody digs it. This ritual is just a magic to be done as fast as possible.
We need to be delivered from utilitarian religion altogether and come to the realization that the highest form of religion is perfectly useless.
Doing any simple action with delight looks ritualistic. If you watch a very skilled craftsman at work, or a surgeon, or a good dentist, or a shoemaker, or a potter who thoroughly loves the work, you notice their caressing hands, the delight, the dance they do; to do this thing. The doing of it is more important than the done-ing of it. You see, they look ritualistic in their action. It’s a ceremony, and you think he’s worshiping some kind of a God. That’s because he’s turned the rat race into the mandala. So you can do that with everything if you’re not in a hurry. And you’re not in a hurry if you know there’s nowhere to go! I mean, here’s the end of the line, and there’s a place called death and a tombstone on it that says, “Well, he did it once.” We write his name on the tombstone. That’s the end. That’s where you’re going.
What is proper behavior for a Buddha? Supposing you are as rich as rich can be (and you are; the whole universe is yours), supposing you got all the time you need (and you do have; now’s enough): what to do, you see? Well, of course: live it up! Take delight in all the ordinary things that are to be done instead of trying to get them out of the way so that you could do something else, which is supposed to be better or more rewarding. You’ll see the reward is everywhere because there’s no hurry.
If you can see the dissolution of this world, the end of the human race, as the Kali Yuga that Hindus talk about—the cosmic cataclysm which comes at the end of every 4,320,000 years; every kalpa—and realize that this ecological disaster is simply the periodical death of a world system, and therefore, there’s nothing especially tragic about it. It’s the way things go. Just like the death of every individual. You would think that such a realization would make a person cold, indifferent. But no! If you understand that, and you’re not fighting it, you are not afraid of it. And if you’re not afraid of it, you can handle it. But you have to show that the preservation of the planet and of life is not a frantic duty. It’s a pleasure. And you won’t convince everybody it’s a pleasure if you go and scream in the streets or start throwing rocks.