October 16, 1974
“You cannot put a large load in a small bag and you cannot get water from a deep well with a short rope.
Did you hear how the bird of the sea flew to the shore and landed near the capital Lu?
The prince ordered her to be honored, offered her wine in a sacrificial vessel, called musicians to play Shang's melodies, and slaughtered cattle to feed her. Tired of the melodies, the unfortunate bird of the sea died of despair.
How should you treat a bird? How about yourself or how about a bird? Should she not be allowed to nest in the thicket of the forest or fly among meadows and swamps? Should she not be allowed to swim in the river and pond, feeding on eels and fish, flying in a flock with other birds and resting in the reeds?
It is bad for a bird of the sea to be surrounded by people and be afraid of their voices! And that would be nothing - they killed her with music! Water is for fish, and air is for people. Nature changes, and with it needs. Therefore, the sages of antiquity did not establish one measure for everyone."
In general, there is no human nature - there are human natures. Each person is a universe in itself, and you cannot impose any general rules. All general rules become false. This must be remembered very well, because on this path there are many possibilities that you will become a rule follower, and if you become a victim of the rules, you will never remain an individual.
You can recognize yourself only in total freedom, and rules are prisons. They are prisons because no one else can make rules for you. He could discover the truth with these rules, but they were for him. Nature changes: although they helped him, they will not help you, on the contrary, they will hinder you.
So let understanding be the only rule. Learn, grow in understanding, but don't follow the rules. Rules are dead - understanding is alive: rules will become a prison sentence, understanding will give you an endless sky. And every person is burdened with rules, any religion becomes nothing more than rules. Because of that. what Jesus achieved, Buddha achieved, their life became a rule for everyone who follows them.
But no one is Gautama Buddha anymore, no one is Jesus Christ anymore, so at best you can become a decorated copy, but you can never become your true self. If you follow Jesus too much, you will become a Christian, but never a Christ - and that is the danger. Becoming a Christian and losing Christ is completely meaningless. You can become a Christian, but then Jesus cannot be your rule, only your own understanding will be the law.
Jesus didn't follow anyone. He has a master, John the Baptist, but he never followed any rule. He felt the master, he stayed with the master, he looked at the flame of the master, he absorbed the master, he was baptized by the master, but he never followed any rules. Other followers of John were against Jesus, they said: “This man is betraying you, he does everything his own way, he does not follow the rules exactly.”
No man of understanding can follow the rules exactly. Only those who are dead can follow the rules exactly, but for you there is no rule, you are your own rule. Understand, learn from others just to find your own rule, but remember: never impose this rule on anyone else, this is violence.
Your so-called mahatmas go on imposing rules on other people, because with the help of rules they kill and destroy, they enjoy violence. Their violence is very subtle, they don't kill you directly - they kill you in a very indirect way. If someone attacks you openly, you can defend yourself, but if someone attacks you indirectly, for your benefit, you become a defenseless victim, you cannot even defend yourself.
Many gurus are nothing but violence, but the violence is subtle, so if you approach a person who wants to impose his rules on your life, wants to give you a fixed image, wants to give you a window to look at the truth - run away from him, because there is danger.
A true master will not give you a window through which to look at the truth, he will take you into the open sky. He will not give you a pattern to live by, he will simply give you a feeling, an understanding, and the understanding will help you move: the understanding is free and it is your own.
Remember... you don't want to understand, because understanding is difficult and free, because understanding requires courage, because understanding requires transformation - and you simply become victims of those who want to give you rules. But rules are banners, and you can easily get them. You can easily make your life disciplined, but it will be false. You can act, pretend, but it cannot be true.
There is a Jewish story that I would like to tell you. Jesus must have heard her because she was older than him and in those days everyone knew the story. He must have heard it from his mother, Mary, or from his father, Joseph. The story is wonderful. You may have heard it too. She is like that.
The so-called sage, almost a rabbi... I say “almost” because although he was a rabbi, it is difficult to be a true rabbi. To be a true rabbi means that you are enlightened. In reality he was just a sage, he never learned anything, but people thought that he was a sage... So, he was returning home from the nearest village. On the way, he saw a man carrying a beautiful bird. He bought it and began to think to himself: “I’ll eat it at home, it’s a beautiful bird!”
Suddenly the bird said: “Don’t think about such things.”
The rabbi got scared and asked: “What am I hearing you say?”
The bird said: “Yes, I am an unusual bird, I am also a rabbi in the world of birds, and I can give you three pieces of advice if YOU promise to let me go and give me freedom.”
The Rabbi said to himself, "This bird is talking. She must be the one who knows."
This is how we decide: if someone speaks, then he must know! It is so easy to speak, but so difficult to know - both have nothing to do with each other at all. You can speak without knowing and you can know without speaking. There is no relationship, but for us the speaker becomes the knower.
The rabbi said, “Okay, you give me three pieces of advice, and I’ll let you go.” The bird said, “The first piece of advice is never believe any nonsense, no matter who tells you about it. He may be a great man, known to the whole world, with prestige, with power, with authority, but if he says something absurd, don’t believe it.” The Rabbi said: "That's right!"
The bird continued, "Here's my second piece of advice: whatever you do, never try to do the impossible, because then you will fail. So always know your limit. He who knows his limit is wise, and he who goes beyond his limits becomes a fool." The Rabbi agreed and said: “That’s right!”
“And here’s my third piece of advice,” said the bird, “if you do something good, never regret it, only regret what’s bad.”
The advice was wonderful, so the bird was released. The joyful rabbi went home and thought to himself: “This is good material for a sermon. Next week in the synagogue, when I speak, I will give these three pieces of advice. And I will write them on the wall of my house, and I will write them on my desk so that I will remember them. These three rules can change a person.”
Suddenly he saw a bird sitting on a tree, and the bird began to laugh so loudly that the rabbi asked: “What’s the matter?”
The bird said, "You are a fool! There is a precious diamond in my stomach. If you killed me, you would become the richest man in the world."
And the rabbi regretted in his heart: “Indeed, I am stupid - I believed this bird!” He dropped the books he was carrying and began to climb the tree. He was already an old man and had never climbed a tree before. And the higher he climbed, the higher the bird flew to the next branch. Finally she reached the very top, and so did the old rabbi, and then the bird flew away. Just as he grabbed her, she flew away. He stumbled and fell from the tree, both legs broke, he started bleeding, he was half dead.
The bird again flew to the lowest branch and said: “So you believed me that there could be a precious diamond in the stomach of a bird. You are stupid! Have you ever heard of such nonsense! And then you tried to do the impossible - you have never climbed a tree, but if the bird is free, how can you catch it with your bare hands? You are a fool! And you regretted in your soul, thinking that you had done wrong, when you did good deed - released the bird! Now go home and write your rules, and next week go to the synagogue and preach them."
And that's exactly what all preachers do. There is no understanding, they just give rules, but the rules are dead. Understanding has no weight, you don't have to carry it - it carries you, it becomes your wings, it has no weight at all, you don't even have to remember it. If understanding is something you don't have to remember, it becomes your blood, your bones, it is you. Whatever you do, you will do it through this awareness, an unconscious phenomenon.
Rule is conscious, understanding is unconscious, and Zhuang Tzu is always on the side of the unconscious. The entire tradition of Tao is for the unconscious. Don't impose rules, just try to understand things. If you impose rules on yourself, you will not become enlightened and will remain ignorant on the inside, just decorated on the outside.
Jesus said, “I look at you and feel that you are like tombs, whitewashed tombs—dead on the inside, but whitewashed on the outside.” They may look beautiful and clean - all your rules may give you external cleanliness, but inside you will remain old fools. And remember: only fools follow the rules, the wise man tries to understand and forgets about the rules. The sage is free to move; a person who follows rules does not stop moving - he must always follow the rule.
Life changes every moment, it continues to change from moment to moment, it does not wait for you or your rules. Every moment is new, and if the rule is old, you will always stumble and always be at odds with life. When there is a person who follows the rules, he will be in trouble always and everywhere, because life continues to blossom, and he is pinned to the rule.
As far as I see you, you are all pinned down to the rules. As a child you were given rules and then you became stuck with them. From that time on, you never moved: you pushed in place, but did not move. You may have aged 70 years, but deep down you remain pinned down.
The whole effort for enlightenment is how to break away, how to move, how to become a flow again and not be frozen. Don't be like ice, frozen, - become like water, like a river, flowing. The rules will never allow you to do this. Remember that life continues to renew itself, and only understanding can answer it.
Mulla Nasrudin always spoke in negative terms, so I told him: “Be more positive. Why look at life with such negative eyes? Then you will find only thorns and no flowers in it.”
Then he replied: “Okay, now I will make it a rule for myself to always be positive.”
The next day, his wife went to the market to do some shopping and asked him to look after the children. When she returned, she immediately felt that something was wrong. Everyone in the house was sad, the children did not rush around the house - not a sound. She was full of forebodings. Fearing, she asked: “Nasreddin, don’t tell me anything bad, tell me only good things.”
Nasreddin replied: "I made a vow not to be negative at all, so you don't need to remind me of that. You know our seven children. Six of them didn't get hit by the bus!"
That's how he became positive.
You may change the words, but deep down you will remain the same. The truth about how to change your essence is not your behavior, not your words, not your clothes, but how to change your essence. The man of rules changes himself on the periphery. A person of understanding changes himself, then the periphery changes automatically. When the center changes, the periphery changes automatically, it must change. But when the periphery changes, there is no need for the center to change along with it.
What can the rules do? They can tell you what to do and what not to do, but they cannot change you, they can only change your actions, and actions are not you. Actions come from you, but you are deeper than your actions. Rules can change your behavior—behavior means how you treat others—but they cannot change you. Only in your complete solitude are you your essence, but not in a relationship. And then Chuang Tzu says that nature varies.
One person came to me. He did sirshasana, yogic pose, head standing. The books say that it is very favorable. so he did it for a very long time. Now he was in such inner chaos that he almost went crazy. And he asked, "What is wrong?" He was a man of rules, he followed Patanjali word for word: diet, sleep on time - everything is exactly as it should be. He was a very "regulated" person. He couldn't understand what was wrong?
I asked him to tell everything in order. He did sirshasana for an hour in the morning and an hour at night. And he expected that enlightenment could happen at any moment. It didn't happen, on the contrary, he went crazy, he was insane.
Sirsasana is suitable for some people, and the more idiotic the person is, the more suitable it is. For a reasonable person it is dangerous, and the higher the intelligence, the more dangerous it is, because it is not just a pose, it changes the chemistry of the whole body. Man has achieved reason, but no animal has achieved it. Why? Because a person stands on two legs - that's the whole point. If a child continues to walk on all fours, he will never become human. He will never reach reason.
When your back is parallel to the ground, the blood washes the whole body equally: it goes to the legs in the same quantities as to the head, and then the subtle nerves cannot develop in the head, the head cannot receive a subtle nervous system. Your brain mechanism is very delicate - it is the most delicate thing in the world. Your brain weighs only one and a half kilograms. Even if it is the brain of Einstein, the great genius, it still weighs one and a half kilograms. It has 70 million cells, and each cell can carry millions of bits of information.
And the cell is so thin that if the blood flows too fast, the cell dies. The blood should not rush to the head too quickly, otherwise it will wash out the delicate mechanism. So if someone is stupid, idiotic, imbecile, then sirshasana is the best thing because it cannot cause any harm and the person will feel good because the blood will flow to the head, and when the blood drains, everything will relax and he will feel very good. Just as good as taking a bath. But if you are very intelligent, then it is dangerous, then you can get caught up in it and your delicate mechanism will be destroyed. You may feel good physically, but spiritually it will definitely be devastating.
So if an unreasonable person does this, he may become healthier, and if a very intelligent person does this, he may go mad. And there is also the question of time: how long to do this? For a few seconds this will be good for a reasonable person: only a few seconds - a surge, and then back: then nothing will be destroyed, everything will only become more alive in the brain. But this must be decided by the master, not by you: you cannot do this with the help of books. Only a living master can decide how many seconds are enough for you, otherwise you will be in danger.
The human mind is infantile. If something goes wrong with your watch, your first instinct will be to open it to see what's wrong and do something about it. Please do not do anything, otherwise much more will be damaged: after all, the watch is a delicate mechanism, and only those who know it should open it. You can't repair it, you can do so much damage that it becomes impossible to repair it.
But a watch is nothing compared to a brain. Don’t do anything based on books; books won’t help. You need someone who can look after you, your mind, your brain system, who can feel how your inner brain functions. Only he can decide how many seconds are needed and whether it will be good or bad.
This is just an example. Many people continue their studies from books. Life is very complicated, books can only give you dead rules, and you follow them, but you are entering the danger zone. It's better to do nothing at all than to do something wrong. It is better to remain ordinary, to remain in ordinary life. If you can't find a living master, if you can't trust him, then don't do it. In the end you will stay healthy, otherwise you will go crazy.
The internal system of your bioenergy is very complex, the whole universe is nothing compared to it, since the whole universe moves along very simple lines. Man is the most complex creature: no lion can go mad, but man is always on the verge: almost at any moment you can go mad. This is such a complex phenomenon that one must move with the greatest vigilance. And what is needed is understanding, not rules. Through books, scriptures, rules you can gain knowledge, but not understanding.
Every personality is different from others: a man is different from a woman, every individual is different from another. And not only that. Every day you are different compared to the previous day: yesterday you were one person, today you are someone else, tomorrow you will be someone new. A very deep understanding is required, and rules cannot replace it. Now we will begin the sutra.
Symphony for a bird of the sea
"You can't put a big load in a small bag, and you can't get water from a deep well with a short rope."
But that's exactly what a great man does: he tries to carry a big load in a small bag. You never care about the bag or what its capacity is. The first thing is to know your limitations, then think about your achievements. What is your capacity? What are you capable of? What is your internal capacity? Nobody is concerned about this.
If a person who has no ear for music tries to become a musician, his whole life will be wasted, since musicians are born, not made. A person who has no feeling tries to become a poet or an artist. If a person without eyes tries to become an artist, his attempts will end in failure, since artists have a very special type of eyes - almost a third eye.
When you look at trees, all you see is green; when an artist looks, he sees a thousand types of green. Each tree has its own "greenness". And he feels colors, color has its own vibration in him. The whole world is nothing but color.
Hindus say that the whole world is sound. It so happened that those people who wrote the Upanishads were poets, musicians: they had an ear for sound. Then the whole universe became sound - omkar, anahata. A person who has never been in love with music tries to act with the mantra AUM, but nothing happens. He goes to this master and that master, but he never thinks about his abilities.
If you have an ear for music, if you have a heart that can understand music - and not only understand, but also feel - then the mantra will help, because then you can become one with the inner sound and then you can move with these sounds to more and more subtle levels. Then a moment comes when all sounds cease and only the universal sound remains. This is AUM. This is why Hindus say that the world is made of sound. This is not so, this is not the absolute truth, this is the musician’s truth.
Remember that there are no absolute truths. Any truth is individual: it is your truth. There is no such truth as objectivity. Your truth may not be the truth for me and vice versa, since truth is not objective. I am there, included in that, my truth answers me, and yours answers you.
When Buddha reaches, when Jesus or Chuang Tzu reaches, they have reached the same universal source, but their interpretations are different. Buddha is not a musician at all; he did not find any sounds there. He is not an artist, he would not find any flowers there. He is a very silent person, silence is his music, that is why he found formless emptiness - punya. Everything is empty - that is his truth.
He came to the same source, the source is the same, but the people who come are different. They look, they see, they feel differently. That's why there are so many philosophies, so many religions. When Mira came to the same source, she began to dance. You cannot imagine Buddha dancing, you cannot imagine Jesus dancing! Mira began to dance - she came to her beloved. A woman's heart, a feeling of love - and then the source becomes the beloved.
She came to her lover. The source is the same, the ultimate truth is the same, but the moment someone talks about it, it is different. And remember: no one's truth is yours - you must discover it.
The first thing to remember is your ability, but you are so confused that you cannot feel what your ability is. Therefore, you need a master who can keep his hand on your pulse and who can feel your abilities.
You can continue efforts in the wrong direction, but the result will be nothing. You can only achieve on a certain path, you can only achieve through yourself.
"You can't put a big load in a small bag and you can't get water from a deep well with a short rope."
Know your capabilities, that's the first thing. If you know your capabilities correctly, then the first step is taken and the last is not so far away. If the first step is not right, then you can go and go for many lives, but you will not get anywhere.
“Did you hear how a bird flew from the sea to the shore and landed near the capital Lu?”
A beautiful parable: a bird from the sea landed near the capital Lu, a beautiful bird. The prince ordered to honor her, since a prince is a prince, and he thought that the prince had flown among the birds, and this bird was so beautiful that it should be received with the same honors with which other princes are received. But how to adopt a bird? The prince had his own way.
“The prince ordered to honor her, offered the seabird wine in a sacrificial vessel, called musicians to play Shang’s melodies, and slaughtered cattle to feed her. Tired of the music, the unfortunate seabird died of despair.”
Although everything was done to welcome the guest, no one cared about who the guest was. The guest was received according to hospitality, but not according to the guest, and this killed the poor bird.
Many of you are simply dead because of hospitality. Nobody is looking at you. A child is born, and parents begin to think about what to do with him. They start thinking even before he was born.
I was staying at a friend's house. A friend is a professor at a university, and his wife is also a professor. They are both very intelligent, with gold medals and Ph.D.s. I saw their daughter - they had an only daughter - playing the piano, crying and sobbing. I asked her mother, "What's the matter?" The mother said: “I always wanted to become a musician, but my parents did not allow me to do this. This will not happen to my daughter - she must become a musician. I suffered so much because my parents did not allow me to do this - they forced me to become a professor. I do not force my daughter to be a professor, she will be a musician!”
And the daughter cried and sobbed!
You are so confused about others: your mother wants you to be one thing, your father another. This is how it should be - because they never agree with each other.
Mullah Nasrudin's son told me: "I would like to become a doctor, but my mother insists that I become an engineer, so what can I do?"
I said, "Do one thing. Spread the word that your father wants you to become an engineer."
And now he is a doctor!
They are always opposites, father and mother, and their opposite penetrates deep into you, it becomes an inner conflict. Your father and mother may already be dead, they may no longer be in this world, but they remain with you in the unconscious - and are still at enmity. They never leave you alone. Whatever you do, your father says to do it, and then your mother says not to do it.
Your internal conflict is the conflict of your parents. And then there are uncles and brothers and sisters and many relatives, and you are alone among so many well-wishers. And they all want you to be someone according to their ideas. They destroy you, and then your whole life becomes a complete confusion - you don’t know who you would like to be, you don’t know where you would like to go, you don’t know what you are doing and why you are doing it. Then you feel unhappy. Unhappiness arises and you cannot grow into a natural being if you cannot grow according to yourself.
That's what happened to that seabird, and that's what happens to all seabirds: you are all seabirds. One day you land in the heartland, in the capital, and are greeted with great pomp and noise. The astrologers decided what needed to be done, the musicians greeted you with music, your parents with their love. And all together they made you just crazy and nothing else.
The sage does not accept you according to himself. he accepts you according to you. The seabird was killed by the musicians and their beautiful symphonies, and the prince did everything right: this is how a guest should be greeted.
"How should you treat a seabird? Like yourself or like a bird?"
Always give the other the opportunity to be themselves - this is understanding, this is love. Don't force yourself on others. Your intentions may be good, but the outcome will be bad. Good intentions by themselves are not enough: they can be toxic. The truth is not your good intentions, the truth is that. to give freedom to another to be himself.
Let your wife be herself. Let your husband be himself. Let your child be himself. Don't force them.
We are all seabirds, unknown to others, strangers. Nobody knows who you are. At best, all we can do is help you be that. who you already are. And the future is unknown, it cannot be forced, and there is no way to know it - no astrology will help, all these are stupid methods. People depend on them because people are stupid.
Astrologers still exist because we all want to know about the future in order to plan. Life cannot be planned, it is an unplanned flow. And it’s good that it’s not planned, otherwise everything would be dead and annoying. It is good that no one is able to predict the future, it is good that the future remains unknown - this is all freedom. If the future becomes known then there is no freedom, then you move like a predictable machine, but that is what we want or what we are trying to do.
If you have a little understanding, give others around you freedom and don't let anyone restrict your freedom. Do not make anyone your slave and do not become a slave to anyone. This is what sannyas is. This is my meaning of sannyas: it is a person who has decided not to be a slave to anyone and not to enslave anyone. This is what sannyas is: a person who has decided to remain truly true to himself, and wherever the truth leads, he is ready to go there.
This is courage because it can lead you to insecurity, and you would like to be very safe, so you listen to others, and then their symphonies kill you. They have already killed you. Why do you listen to others? Because you feel like they know more than you.
I heard a five-year-old child ask his ten-year-old brother: “Go to your mother and ask her permission to go to the theater.” The elder said: “But why not you? Ask.” The younger one said, “You’ve known her longer than I have.”
This is an old problem. You listen to your mother because she has known this world longer than you. But don't you think that being here for a long time is enough for someone to learn something? Do you think time brings understanding? Do you think seniority is wisdom? Then go to government offices and look at the senior citizens there. Seniority may be wisdom for government agencies, but not for life.
Life does not become understandable with the help of time, it becomes understandable with the help of meditation. She goes inside. Time is external movement, time on the periphery. A man can live a thousand years and remain stupid. In fact, it becomes more stupid as it grows, and if you have the mirror of stupidity in you, in a thousand years you will become such a spreading tree that millions of stupid people can rest in your shade. Everything in you grows, nothing is static - everything grows. Therefore the fool becomes more foolish, the wise becomes more wise, but time has nothing to do with understanding.
Understanding is not temporary, it is not a greater experience. It is not the quantity of experience that makes you wiser, but the quality of it. A single experience can give you more wisdom than you can gain in many lifetimes if you bring to it the quality of consciousness. A man can make love to many women, thousands of times. Do you think he knows what love is? This is the quantity! Ask Byron, Don Juan - this is quantity! Don Juans write down and count how many women they have won. This is quantity, but did they know love?
One single love can give you wisdom if you bring quality to it. The quality must be contributed by you. What is quality? Quality is consciousness. If you make love to a single woman once with your whole being, completely, alertly, you have to know what love is, otherwise you will go on and on. It will become repetitive and then you don't have to do anything - the wheels turn themselves, it becomes automatic.
Wisdom is something that happens when you bring awareness to any experience. The meeting of consciousness and experience is what wisdom is. Experience plus consciousness is wisdom. With experience and more and more experience, quantity is achieved, but there is no quantity that can make you free and knowledgeable.
When a child is born, if the mother loves him, if the father loves him, they will not force themselves on him, because at least they will know this: they have failed, so why give the child the same goals? Why destroy another life again? But look at their stupidity: they would like the child to follow their path, but they have achieved nothing and deep down they know that they are empty, false, but they force the child to move again along the same path, to reach the same emptiness in the end.
Why? Because it's nice to know that "my child is following me." You may not achieve anything, but if your son follows you, it makes you feel good. The son follows you as if you have achieved. And if you are unhappy with your son, then you can collect followers, disciples. And there are many who are always ready to fall into the trap set by anyone - because people are so dissatisfied that they are ready to follow the advice of anyone.
But the problem is that they are not satisfied because of the advice of others. And they keep asking for advice again and again. The mind is a vicious thing. You are so empty and false because you have followed the advice of others, and yet you are again looking for others to advise you. When do you realize that you are missing out mainly because you did not follow your inner voice?
So the master cannot give you rules. If a master gives you rules, know well that he is a pseudo-master. Run away from him! A master can only give you understanding and show you how to understand yourself - then rules will come, but they will come from your understanding.
“How should you treat a seabird? How should you treat yourself or a cook with a bird? Don’t let it nest in the thicket of the forest or fly among swamps and meadows? Don’t let it swim in a river or pond, feeding on eels and fish, fly in a flock with other water birds and rest in the reeds?
It’s not good for a seabird to be surrounded by people and be scared by their voices! And that would be nothing. — they killed her with music! "
Everyone is killed by music. This music comes from good wishes, from good wishers, from virtues. Everything seems so absurd and crazy. If you plant a thousand trees and only one of them blooms and the rest die, will anyone call you a gardener? Will anyone praise you for one tree that bloomed? They will say that it blossomed in spite of your efforts, since you killed 999. You will not be praised for one tree - it simply escaped somehow, it had to escape from your skill, your experience, your wisdom.
Out of a million people, one becomes a Buddha and blossoms. What's happening? Why should so many trees live without flowers?
And look at the trees when there are no flowers on them, when flowers never appear: this is sadness that has settled on the tree. It cannot laugh, it cannot sing, it cannot dance. To dance you need flowers. How can you dance? Even if I tell you “dance!”, how can you dance? After all, dance is an overflowing pleasure, so that every cell of the body begins to dance, you become a dancing cosmos. How can you do this? Energy is not flowing, no energy is flowing towards you.
You somehow carry yourself, drag yourself. How can you dance? Flowers appear when the tree has so much within itself that it can give. Flowers are a gift, they are something to be shared. The tree says to the whole universe: “I have more than I need.” This is a song. The tree says: “Now I go to the world of luxury, my needs are satisfied.” The tree has more than it needs, and then flowering occurs.
But you are dissatisfied, you don't even have what you need. How can you dance? How can you sing? How can you meditate? Meditation is the ultimate flowering, the ecstasy that comes only when you are flowing, when you have so much energy that you cannot sit, you can only dance; you have so much energy that you can do nothing but share and invite guests to share with you your energy and enjoyment, your singing and your dancing.
It so happened that one of my university teachers came to see me. He said, "You must remember that I was your teacher." And I said to him, “Yes, I remember, how could I forget? It is because of you that I am who I am. With me you did not succeed. You tried, and I will always be grateful to you that you failed and could not succeed.”
He really loved me and tried by any means to force me into a life in the academic world. He loved me so much and cared about me so much that when there were exams, he would come pick me up in the morning by car and take me to the exam hall. because I was always afraid that I might not come or that I might meditate. Before exams, he would come and tell me: “Read this. Read this, read this.” It worked, since I'm a bookworm. And again and again he reminded me: “Have you read this or that?” And he knew well that I was a paper worm and that it sprouts. He was always afraid that I wouldn't listen to him.
He loved me, your kind
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru