Story Of Painting: Ajanta Cave

In the early 19th century (year 1819) some British soldiers were out hunting in the Deccan plateau. One of them suddenly saw, from a height, a horseshoe rock; His curiosity aroused by the entrance of a cave. The hunting party ventured across the ravine of the Waghur River. And they discovered several caves, against which bush, shrubs earth and stones had piled up. Goatherds for shelter were using a few.
The Government was informed about this finding and soon the Archaeologists began excavate them. Many experts have been restoring them during the last fifty years. The shock of discovery was worldwide.
All the rock-cut caves had paintings on verandahs, inner walls and ceilings, these revealed some of the most beautiful masterpieces of world art.
In the grottos were also symbolic Buddhist mounds called Stupas, and cells for monks called viharas. There were giant sculptures of Buddha's, Bodhisattvas (potential Buddha's), or Taras (female Buddhist divinities), as also dwarapalas (doorkeepers).
Later, an inscription was found of King Harisena ('moon among princes'), of the Vakataka dynasty of the 5th -6th century A.D. in cave No.17. It seems that the local Vakatakas had relations, thought marriage, with the great Gupta kings of the north.

The total numbers of caves are 28. Most of them were finished, A few were half finished, A pathway, scooped out from stone, runs as a crescent by the caves for pedestrians. From this, one can have a glorious view of the ravine below.

For many years, expert scholars and other learned men form all over the world, have visited the Ajanta caves. Millions of pilgrims and tourists have been there. Every one wonders why the caves were scooped out on this particular horseshoe rock, in the middle of the Deccan Plateau.
The great scholar, late Prof. D.D. Kosambi, suggested that all the caves in the caves in the Western Ghats, from shudhaghar, through Karla, Bhaja, Nasik, Pitalkhora, to Ajanta are located on the crests of an ancient trade route from the Arabian sea in to the Deccan. This may be one good reason, which can explain the carving in the Ajanta rocks, nearby were the Mandis or trade centers, of Deogiri and Jalgaon.
The second reason was clearly the texture of the granite rock. This was in layers, which could be easily cut with instruments available to the craftsman in those days.
The third reason is that the Buddhist monks always preferred to live in secluded spots. They went to collect alms from the village and small towns and trade centers, but came back for quiet contemplation in ravines and gorges, away from the crowds.

RELIGIOUS SIGNIFICANCE:
The painting and sculptures in the caves are of Buddhist origin; Gautama Buddha (600 B.C.) was against painting and Sculpture. He forbade image of himself. Also he was against the use of colorful clothes such as may excite desire he did not admit women to the order of nuns. He felt that all life was pain. The best way to attain salvation (Nirvana) was to suppress all for happiness.

After the death of the Buddha, many aboriginal and suppressed people accepted the faith of the 'Enlightened one'. It is well known that, with illiterate people, images come before ideas, these converts wanted to worship images of the Buddha and his incarnations, as the Hindus worshipped their gods. The Buddhist monks made up many stories of Gautama's previous incarnations. For instance, he was supposed to have been a lotus at one time in another birth, he was an elephant. In still another birth, he was prince; the monks painted these human stories. Also they were carved in reliefs near the symbolic Stupa or mound grave, over the Buddha's relics like his tooth or hair Neil. The pilgrims began to worship the symbolic painting and images. And then the monks raised this kind or worship into a holy ritual. The Hinayana or the phase of Buddhist denial of pleasure, thus slowly become Mahayana, the Buddhism of acceptance of desire - so long as men and women may remember the pain of existence.
To sum up the difference the Hinayana and the Mahayana phases of Buddhism, we may say:
The Hinayana Buddhism asked the people to rely on themselves and practice the eightfold path of right behavior. The Buddha was not like Hindu God, Whom the worshipper could ask for help.
The Mahayana made the Buddha almost into gods perhaps under the influence of Hinduism, by the time this more liberal faith emerged, Buddhism accepted women in the Sangha, or the order of monks and nuns, and promised to help people to attain Nirvana by practicing certain rites. By the time the Ajanta caves were carved, the Buddhists had evolved imagery almost parallel to the Hindus.

My Painting- Mahishasura Mardini: Kanchan Bagari

My Painting- Mahishasura Mardini: Kanchan Bagari

Don't be afraid of Death

You think about death and you become disturbed by small things. Maybe you don't know what death is; maybe you have only heard the name. And you have seen people dying, but you yourself have never seen death. In fact, when a person dies you see him Lying in repose -- silent, relaxed, with no discomfort. You think death is not a discomfort? You are seeing only a dead person; you have not seen his inner misery, you have not seen his inner conflict. You have not seen his inner struggle with death. You have not seen his inner anguish and turmoil. You just see the dead body -- painted, dressed well, washed, cleaned.

Only a person who has enjoyed his life becomes capable of enjoying his death. And if you are capable of enjoying your death, you have defeated death. Then there is no more birth for you and no more death for you -- you have learnt the lesson. Live deeply, live totally, live wholly, so when death comes and knocks at your door you are ready -- ready like a ripe fruit to drop. Just a small breeze comes and the fruit drops;
The secret is, start living more fully, more totally. Be more alert so that you can find within yourself something that is unreachable by death. Our soul is immortal.

When death knocks at your door, all your certainties will be simply riddles and foolish. Don't cling to any certainty. Life is uncertain -- its very nature is uncertain. And an intelligent man always remains uncertain. A man of realization knows there is no death. Death is a fiction, you have never died. Yes, you have changed your form many times. You have changed your house many times, many times. But you have never died. Have you ever seen yourself dying? It is always somebody else who dies. The whole function of the master is to create such energy, such a magnetic force that you are pulled in and slowly, slowly start disappearing. And a point comes when you have become one with existence. This I call real death.

Birth and death are simply devices, because neither birth is true nor death is true. We have been before birth, so how can birth be true? And we will be after death, so how can death be true? Only one thing is true: the consciousness that comes with you through birth and goes with you through death — perhaps birth is a door, and death too! Perhaps they are the same door, just your direction is different. At the moment of death all your knowledge of the world will be lost into thin air. Only one thing will go with you, and that one thing is being constantly ignored — that is your self-knowledge, your self-realization. In fact, this is the only ignorance — ignoring yourself.
Life is spread out over a long time -- seventy years, one hundred years. Death is intense because it is not spread out -- it is in a single moment. When we enjoy Life and accept every thing which Life gives then why we afraid when Death come?

You have known life, now you want to know death also. You have lived life, you have enjoyed it. A great trust has arisen in you about life -- and you know death is the culmination of life, the crescendo. It must be beautiful! When the whole journey has been beautiful, why not the goal? There is no reason to be afraid. When the whole journey has been such a tremendous joy, why not the end? It is the culmination. You have come home. You welcome, you are ready to embrace death. You relax, you simply slip into death.

And that's the moment! If you can die without any fight, you don't die -- and you are never born again. You have simply slipped out of the body confinements -- of the world. You live! -- you live eternally. But then you live as an unembodied existence, with no limitations, with no boundaries. Body gives you a boundary. Death takes away all boundaries from you. Body gives you a definition, makes you a man or a woman, makes you ugly or beautiful, makes you intelligent or unintelligent, makes you this and that -- body gives you definition. Death takes all definitions away. It simply leaves life undefined.

Life undefined is what God is. But to know this death you will have to know life well. So if you can accept my suggestion: next time when a beautiful moment passes by, think in terms of life -- "What a beautiful moment to live and dance and be alive!" Then one day when death comes, you will say the same to death: "What a beautiful moment to die!"

Art and Creativity - Kanchan Bagari

There are many people who say many things about Art and Creativity. For me Art is related to God. The really creative person is not interested in dominating anybody. He is so utterly rejoicing in life — he wants to create, he wants to participate with God. Creativity is prayer. And whenever you create something, in those moments you are with God, you walk with God, you live in God. The more creative you are the more divine you are. To me, creativity is religion. Art is just the entrance to the temple of religion. A really spiritual person will live life as an art, will create a deep harmony between the body and the consciousness. And this is the greatest art there is. His life will be a joy to see. An intelligent man, a man who has a little meditative consciousness, can make his life a beautiful piece of art, can make it so full of love and full of music and full of poetry and full of dance that there are no limitations for it. Life is not hard. It is man’s stupidity that makes it hard. Life is not hard at all. Life is beautiful, we must enjoy every second of Life.

Whether you create, or you observe an objective piece of creativity, meditation should be the key. Without it, mind can only spread on the canvas its nightmares. Most of the paintings of the great painters like Paul Gaugin or Picasso are almost like vomit. They could not contain their agony and suffering — it was so much they threw it on the canvas to get relief. The real objective art is not a relief; it is not a sickness that you want to get rid of. It is a blissfulness that you want to share. And by sharing, it grows; you have more of it, the more it is shared. All people who are creative are close to religion. Religion is the greatest creativity because it is an effort to give birth to yourself, to become a father and mother to yourself, to be born again, to be reborn through meditation, through awareness. Poetry is good, painting is good — but when you give birth to your own consciousness, there is no comparison. Then you have given birth to the ultimate poetry, the ultimate music, the ultimate dance. This is the dimension of creativity. On the rung of creativity, religion is the last. It is the greatest art, the ultimate art.

Modern art is childish — not childlike, remember, childish; not innocent but stupid, insane, pathological. We have to get rid of this trend. We have to create a new kind of art, a new kind of creativity. We have to bring to the world again what Gurdjieff calls objective art. The modern painter is insane. He is painting out of his insanity. If you look at a Zen painting, a silence oozes out of it, suddenly something beautiful surrounds you. You are transported to another consciousness. The painting carries something of the touch of the Master. The painting has been done in deep meditation; the painting has been done by one who has arrived. Gurdjieff used to call such art “objective art”. When somebody who has attained to consciousness does something, that something becomes objective art. Looking at that thing, you will have some glimpse of the Master. The Master may have been dead for three thousand years, that doesn’t matter. The painting, the statue, the carving will represent him, and through it you can again become connected to him. If you know how to meditate with a painting, it will be easier.

Be creative in that sense and your creativity will become an offering to God. God has given you so many gifts, Garima; something HAS to be done just in deep thankfulness. But remember: with no motive, not as a means but as an end unto itself. Art for art’s sake, and creation for creation’s sake, and love for love’s sake, and prayer for prayer’s sake. Remember from this very moment: always choose that which is good for you and good for others. Choose creativity. Become a blessing to existence, because that is the only way that we can persuade God to become a blessing to us. That’s the only true prayer: becoming a blessing to everyone — to people, to animals, to trees, to life in all its forms. If one remains consciously alert, slowly slowly the art is learned; slowly slowly it becomes just natural.

The art of life begins with meditation. And by meditation I mean silence of the mind, silence of the heart, reaching to the very center of your being and finding the treasure that is your reality. Once you have known it, you can radiate love, you can radiate life, you can radiate creativity. Your words will become poetic, your gestures will have grace; even your silence will have a song to it. Even if you are sitting unmoving, you will be in a dance. Each breath coming in, going out, will be a joy, each heartbeat so precious because it is the heart beat of the universe itself — you are part of it.

What does Love mean?

LOVE has different meanings for all. To writers, love is words. To artists, love is color. To a comic, love is laughter. To a baby, it is mother. To bees, it's nectar. To flowers, it is sunshine. And to cows, it is a lot of bull.

It all depends on you what love is going to mean. Love is a ladder with many rungs. At the lowest it is physiology, biology, chemistry. It is nothing but a play of hormones. A man is attracted towards a woman, a woman is attracted towards a man. They think they are falling in love, but if hormones could laugh they must be laughing inside you -- you are befooled. What you are calling love is nothing but attraction between male and female hormones. It is pure chemistry; at the lowest point it is not more than that. It is animal, it is lust.

And millions of people know only love at its lowest. Because of these people there has arisen a great tradition of renouncing love. The people who think that lust is love have created great religions in which love has to be renounced. Both are wrong, because both have accepted the lowest rung as if it is the all. It is not so. If you go a little higher, a man's love for music is not chemistry, it is not hormonal, it is not physiology; it is psychological. A man's love for flowers cannot be reduced to sexuality. A man's love for painting... there have been painters who have sacrificed their whole lives just to paint.

I tell you a story-

Vincent van Gogh, one of the greatest painters, sacrificed himself totally just to paint: painting was far more important than life itself. Because of the painting he could not work; he was continuously painting so there was no time to work. His brother used to give him just enough money to live by, because nobody was interested in his being a painter. And he was a strange painter too, a very great genius. Whenever there is a genius it takes hundreds of years to recognize him. He was not a traditional painter. He was bringing to painting something new, a new vision.

So nobody was able to appreciate his paintings, they were not selling. You will be surprised to know that not even a single painting was sold while Van Gogh was alive; now each of his paintings is worth millions of dollars. Only a few paintings have survived, two hundred at the most -- he painted thousands. All are lost, because nobody cared to preserve them.

He used to give his paintings to friends just free, because nobody was interested in his paintings; not only were they not interested, they were not even courageous enough to put his paintings in their sitting rooms because people would laugh at them. His approach towards life and nature was so new. His brother used to give him enough money weekly just to live on. He would eat for only three days in the week; four days he would save money to paint. Now how long can you live in this way?

By the time he was thirty-seven, only thirty-seven, he committed suicide. And the note that he has left is of tremendous significance. He has written that "I am committing suicide not against anybody -- I have no complaint against anybody or life -- life has been a great fulfillment to me. I am committing suicide because all that I wanted to paint I have painted; now there is no point in living. I have done what I had come to do; my work is finished."

He wanted to paint the sun in all its possible faces. For one year he was continuously painting the sun. He was continuously standing in the open under the sun. His stomach was empty, he was hungry, and the hot sun... and he was continuously painting because there was not much time left. The sun drove him mad, it was too much. And then he committed suicide, because he had painted the sun from the sunrise to the sunset, all the faces, all the colors, all possible clouds. He had done his work. He died contentedly.

Now, this love for painting, this love for art, is something higher -- higher than biology, higher than chemistry, higher than physiology. It is not lust, you can't call it lust. It is as passionate as lust or more so, because very few people die for a woman and very few people die for a man. But this man died for his paintings. This is psychological; this is far better.

So when you find that you have no selfish feeling towards your LOVE, when you find that you love to enjoy to giving something to your LOVE and expect nothing from him or her...On that day you realize What is real LOVE.

"Art of Let Go"

You are not to do anything to be happy. In fact you have done too much to become unhappy. If you want to be unhappy, do too much. If you want to be happy, allow things, allow things to be. Rest, relax, and be in a letgo. Letgo is the secret of life. Letgo is the secret of religion. Letgo is the greatest secret. When you are in a letgo many things, millions of things, start happening. They were already happening but you were never aware. You could not be aware; you were engaged somewhere else, you were occupied.

We are so tense, not only because there are circumstances which make us tense, but basically we have completely forgotten how to relax. So if even if there are no circumstances to make you tense, you will stil be tense. We are tense. We have forgotten completely relaxation, the art of letgo. This must be taught. Relaxation is the language which is not being taught — that is the forgotten language. The whole of education, the whole of society is teaching everybody to be tense — because it pays to be tense. Just two small things: meditation and let-go. Remember these two key words: meditation and surrender. Meditation will take you in, and surrender will take you into the whole. And this is the whole of religion.

A man who trusts himself comes to know the beauty of it — comes to know that the more you trust yourself, the more you bloom; the more you are in a state of letgo and relaxation, the more you are settled and serene, the more you are calm, cool and quiet. When you are seeking too much you are closed; the very tension of seeking and searching closes you. When you are desiring too much, the very desire becomes such a tense state of affairs that happiness cannot penetrate you. Happiness penetrates you in the same way as sleep; contentment comes to you in the same way as sleep: when you are in a letgo, when you allow, when you simply wait, they come.

Relax, let go. But remember only one thing: You are a witness.

Meditation is a surrender, it is not a demand. It is not forcing existence your way, it is relaxing into the way existence wants you to be. It is a let-go.

"Birth was the beginning of Death"

Your birth was the beginning of death. Since then you have not been doing anything except dying — every day, continuously — although the process is very slow. It may take seventy years or eighty years to reach your grave, but you have been moving towards it since you left your cradle… consistently… never taking a single holiday, never going astray. There is no way of going astray! Whatever you do, wherever you go, you are going towards the graveyard. One day you were not… one day you are again not — although you existed for seventy years.

Birth and death are simply devices, because neither birth is true nor death is true. We have been before birth, so how can birth be true? And we will be after death, so how can death be true? Only one thing is true: the consciousness that comes with you through birth and goes with you through death — perhaps birth is a door, and death too! Perhaps they are the same door, just your direction is different.

At the moment of death all your knowledge of the world will be lost into thin air. Only one thing will go with you, and that one thing is being constantly ignored — that is your self-knowledge, your self-realization. In fact, this is the only ignorance — ignoring yourself.

Remember, if the fear of death disappears then all other fears disappear automatically, because all other fears are nothing but by-products of the main, basic fear — the fear of death. Go into any of your fears and ultimately you will come to the rock-bottom, and that will be the fear of death. You are afraid of losing money? Go deep into it and you will find that money somehow gives you a feeling that you are more protected, that you can resist death more than the poor man; hence you are afraid of losing money. If you are powerful, politically powerful, it gives you an appearance, as if you have conquered death.

The true death is known only by the devotee who comes to a point when he CANNOT live without God, it is impossible to live without God. When this impossibility arises, that one cannot live without God… this is what Jesus means, by ‘carrying your own cross’. Of course, nobody else can carry it for you. This death is so deep that nobody can help you. This death is so much of the interior that nobody can approach it from the outside. You cannot be murdered, you can only commit suicide — about THIS death, about THIS internal disappearance, about THIS subjective annihilation, cessation.It happens to every meditator: the more you meditate the more your inner voice says, “Let the ego die.” The more you meditate, the more you become aware that a certain death is going to happen. And you know only one kind of death, so naturally you misinterpret; you think, “I am going to die.” You are not going to die, only the ‘I’, the ego, the personality is going to die, is going to disappear.But each time somebody dies, something in you becomes shaky. Each death is a small death to you. Never send somebody to ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee. Each death is your death. Even when a dry leaf falls from the tree, it is your death. Hence we go on protecting ourselves

What Is Happiness?

If you want to know what is happiness, then always remember one thing- It is not that you are happy because of something. You are simply happy. Happiness is your nature.Unhappiness is something nurtured, you have learned it. Every credit goes to you for all your misery, but for happiness, you cannot have any credit. It is natural. You were born happy. You were happy in your mother’s womb….

If you want to happy in your life- Don’t choose. Accept life as it is in its totality. You must look at the total: life and death together, love and hate together, happiness/unhappiness together, agony/ecstasy together. If you look at them together, then what is there to choose? If you see they are one, then from where can choice enter? If you see agony is nothing but ecstasy, ecstasy nothing but agony; if you can see happiness is nothing but unhappiness; love is nothing but hate, hate is nothing but love — then where to choose? how to choose? Then choice drops.

Remember this. This is the difference between happiness and bliss. Your happiness is caused. Sometimes a friend has come and you are happy. How long are you going to be happy with the friend? A few moments — and then you will be happy when he leaves. What type of happiness is this? It is caused, and the cause disappears. Sooner or later you become fed up and it disappears. Bliss is a happiness uncaused. Simply as you are, you are happy. There is nothing to say about why you are happy.

Just look: happiness, unhappiness, sadness, joy, they come and go, they are beggars around you. The witnessing remains the very center, uncaused, unchanging, one. Seek that within you and then everything becomes clear. When you are clear within, everything is transparent. The truth is everywhere around you, only you have to become one. Once you know the inner riches, then there is nothing which is comparable from the outside world. Once you know the inner bliss, then enjoyment is foolish, then all that goes on in the name of entertainment is foolish, stupid. It just falls down once you know the inner ecstasy. Then all that is known as happiness, joy, is nothing but deception. But not before — unless you have known the inner happiness you cannot say that, and if you say that then you will be in a greater deception.Happiness needs no cause. It is your simple nature, you are intrinsically happy. No cause, no purpose, no goal is needed. Life is in itself enough. It needs nothing else to complete it. It is complete! It is entire! It is already what it has to be. So there is no purpose in existence and no goal in existence.

All unhappy individuals resemble each other; only happy individuals have a uniqueness. Happiness, growing towards blissfulness, makes you unique in a world which is full of misery.

Never forget that money can’t buy happiness. If you are compassionate to someone, you feel a joy of being compassionate — that is its reward. If you are angry at someone, you are first burning inside yourself. Even before you have acted on your anger, you have suffered the punishment. In my vision every action has its intrinsic reward or punishment. So a man of intelligence soon starts finding what are the acts which bring you happiness, joy, blissfulness, and what are the actions which create misery, suffering. There is no need to wait for the last judgement day, there is no need to wait after death — you will be thrown into hell or into heaven. Each moment completes itself.

That is the simple secret of happiness. Whatever you are doing, don’t let past move your mind; don’t let future disturb you. Because the past is no more, and the future is not yet. To live in the memories, to live in the imagination, is to live in the non-existential. And when you are living in the non-existential, you are missing that which is existential. Naturally you will be miserable, because you will miss your whole life.

Whenever you feel happy, you were not looking for it. That is the first basic thing about happiness: it happened when you were looking for something else. For example, you have heard the story of Archimedes: he was in search of a scientific truth. He worked, experimented, thought, pondered over it many days and nights. He forgot himself. Then suddenly, when he was in his bath one day, lying down in his tub, it happened, it bubbled up — he realized. He was naked, but he forgot that he was naked. When you are happy you forget yourself; if you cannot forget yourself you are not happy. Happiness means you are no longer there; it happens only when you are not. Be happy when alone. Let happiness be your quality. And when you move from aloneness into involvement, into communication, relationship, carry that quality of happiness which was in loneliness — carry that.

Why is man unhappy? No animal is so unhappy, no bird is so unhappy, no fish is so unhappy as man. Why is man so unhappy? Because man desires happiness, and the birds are happy right now; the trees are happy right now. Man desires happiness; he is never happy here and now. He always desires happiness and goes on missing it. Happiness is here. It is happening all around you. Allow it to enter within. Be part of existence. Don’t move into the future. Existence never moves into the future; only mind does. This is call meditation: to be here, to not move into the future. Be nonambitious, kill all desire for life, don’t desire happiness and then you will be happy and no one can destroy your happiness. Then it will be impossible for you to be unhappy. And then you will be deathless and eternal life will have happened to you. In fact, it has already happened but you are not aware of it.

The more you ask for happiness, the more you will be in suffering. The suffering is a shadow. The greater the desire for happiness, the greater will be the shadow. Ask for happiness and you will never get it. You will only suffer frustration. Why? Because there is only one way to be happy, and that is to be happy here, now. Happiness is not a result. It is a way of life. Happiness is not the end result of desire. It is an attitude, not a desire. You can be happy here and now if you know how to be, but you will never be happy if you don’t know how to be and you go on desiring it. Happiness is an art. It is a way of life.

What Is Friendship?

Friendship is possible between equal human beings, totally free from all bondage of society, culture, civilization, only living true to their authentic nature.

Friendship can turn into enmity, and enmity can become friendship. You all know — happiness can turn into sadness, and sadness can change into happiness. Although they are polar opposites, they are almost like twins, very close. Just a slight change in circumstances and one disappears …the other was just behind it. So remember the transcendent — existence belongs to the transcendental. Don’t divide it; otherwise you will be continuously tortured by the duality.

A man who seeks friendship, love, companionship, out of loneliness is not going to find it. In fact, with whomsoever he will associate he will feel cheated and he will make the other feel cheated. He will feel tired and bored, and he will make the other feel tired and bored. He will feel sucked and he will make the other feel sucked, because both will be sucking on each other’s energies. And they don’t have much in the first place. Their streams are running very thin; they are like summer streams in a desertland. You cannot take any water out of them. But if you seek friendship and love and companionship out of aloneness, you are a flooded river, a river in the rains. You can share as much as you want. And the more you share, the more you will have.

In this ambitious world, friendship cannot bloom, love is almost impossible, compassion cannot exist. We have created such an ugly mess, and the root is that we think that there is something to achieve.The proverb is: A friend in need is a friend indeed. But deep down that is greed! That is not friendship, that is not love. You want to use the other as a means, and no man is a means, every man is an end unto himself. Why are you so worried about who is a real friend?

The real question has to be: Am I friendly to people? Do you know what friendship is? It is the highest form of love. In love, some lust is bound to be there; in friendship, all lust disappears. In friendship nothing gross remains; it becomes absolutely subtle.

Friendship becomes a relationship, fixed; friendliness is more flowing, more fluid. Friendship is a relationship, friendliness is a state of your being. You are simply friendly; to whom, that is not the point. If you are standing by the side of a tree you are friendly to the tree, or if you are sitting on the rock, you are friendly to the rock. To human beings, to animals, to birds, you are simply friendly. It is not something static; it is a flow, changing moment to moment. Friendship is so valuable that whatsoever the consequence, remain friends even with your wife, even with your husband, and allow absolute and total freedom to each other.

EVERYBODY is your enemy! Even those who are your friends are your enemies, because they are also fighting for the first place as you are fighting. How can you be friendly? With the ego there is no possibility of friendship. Then friendship is just a mask. The real nature of life is that of the jungle: the big fish goes on eating the small fish. Even if you pretend to be friendly, that is just show, strategy, diplomacy. Nobody can be a friend here unless the ego disappears. Once the ego disappears the whole life has a quality of friendship, of love. Then you are friendly, simply friendly — and to everybody, because there is no problem. You are not trying to be the first, so you are not more a competitor. this is real dropping out.

What is Life?

What is Life? We always think about it. Life is a mystery. The more you understand it, the more mysterious it becomes. The more you know, the less you feel that you know. The more you become aware of the depth, the infinite depth, the more it becomes almost impossible to say anything about it.

The whole of life is a preparation to be aware in death. That’s what a sannyasin should do, that’s what a seeker should do: be ready! Don’t lose a single moment, because once lost it cannot be regained. And the only richness that you can get out of it is by being more aware. Do whatsoever, but do it with alertness, awareness. Your lives may be different but your inner search cannot be different; it is the same. Everything is mysterious: it is better to enjoy it rather than trying to understand it. Ultimately the man who goes on trying to understand life proves to be a fool, and the man who enjoys life becomes wise goes on enjoying life, because he becomes more and more aware of the mysterious that surrounds us. The greatest understanding is to know that nothing can be understood, that all is mysterious and miraculous. To me this is the beginning of religion in your life.

The mind always tries to avoid things which it cannot comprehend, and death is one of the most incomprehensible mysteries. There are only three mysteries: life, death and love. All these three are beyond mind. So mind takes life for granted; then there is no need to inquire. That is a way of avoiding. You never think, you never meditate on life; you have simply accepted it, taken it for granted. It is a tremendous mystery. You are alive, but don’t think that you have known life..Life is a mystery. There is no why, no purpose, no reason. It is simply here. Take it or leave it, but it is simply here. And when it is here, why not take it? Why waste your time in philosophizing? Why not dance and sing and love and meditate? Why not go deeper and deeper into this thing called “life”? Maybe at the ultimate core you will know the answer. But the answer comes in such a way that it cannot be expressed.

Life is just a preparation for dying, and only those are wise who learn in their life how to die. If you don’t know how to die you have missed the whole meaning of life: it is a preparation, it is a training, it is a discipline.You have to learn how to be alert and meditative; otherwise, you won’t get anything, no orgasmic experience. Because the experiencer will be in a coma. The whole life is a preparation for death, and you should be able to be so conscious in life that when you are making love, there are not only two persons, but four persons. Two persons making love, and two consciousnesses watching, witnessing. Or you are walking on the road, you have to walk with watchfulness, alertness, so that you can see your own body walking.

If you take life easily, if you enjoy life, if your life by and by becomes a fulfillment, the same will be your death. What are we doing? We are not enjoying life, we are only preparing to enjoy it — and life is here and now, no preparation is needed. I see people always preparing — they are preparing to live a great life somewhere in the future. They will be afraid of death because in the future death is waiting. And your life is also in the future. You are making a house, purchasing a car, and this and that, accumulating things; just getting ready to live. You will never be ready, and by the time you are ready, death will knock at your door. That’s the fear: that death may come before you are ready. A man of understanding lives life here and now, every moment he lives it. For him there is no death because there is no future life. He exhausts the moment, he lives it totally, he enjoys it, he thanks God for it, he is grateful.

Incredible INDIA & Kanchan Bagari