/lit/ - Literature

The devotees of Krishna in India don’t call heaven by the same name as anyone else. Buddha calls it nirvana, Hindus call it moksha, Jainas call it kaivalya – beautiful names; kaivalya means absolute aloneness, moksha means freedom, nirvana means nothingness. But the followers of Krishna call their heaven golok, cow-land. Krishna seems to be the ancientmost cowboy; and they drink every day a certain thing they call panchamrit, five elixirs; and it is made of five things coming out of the cow – the urine of the cow, the cow dung, the milk, the curd, the butter. They mix all five every day and they drink it, and this is five elixirs; and those who drink these five elixirs are certain to reach to golok. I don’t know why one should want to go to golok. What are you going to do there?

So when I say these people are idiots, I have reasons to say so. Only idiots can think that cow dung and urine of the cow are something spiritual, and they will transform your consciousness. They have not transformed the cow. How they are going to transform human consciousness? And what is the point? Even if your consciousness is transformed and you reach to golok it was better here; at least you were human beings.

And I don’t think it a criticism when he calls me a scoundrel. I am. It is a compliment.

To all the religions I will appear as a scoundrel because I am destroying them so mercilessly. Nobody has been so hard – knowing that they have the same weaknesses as other religions, everybody was silent about other religions’ weaknesses. Because I don’t have any religion I don’t have any fear. I can expose everybody. They don’t have anything to criticize me with, they can only call me names.

"First, the teenagers should be honest and true, whatever the consequence. They should say to their parents whatever their feeling is -- not arrogantly, but humbly. They should not hide anything from their parents. That is what is making the gap: parents are hiding many things from the children, children are hiding many things from the parents, and the gap becomes bigger and bigger.

One day I went to my father and I told him, "I want to start smoking cigarettes."
He said, "What?"

I said, "You have to give me money for it because I don't want to steal. If you don't give me I will steal, but the responsibility will be yours. If you don't allow me to smoke, I will smoke but I will smoke in hiding. And you will be making me a thief; you will be making me hide things and not be honest and open. I see so many people smoking cigarettes that I want to taste. I want the best cigarettes available, and I will smoke the first cigarette before you."

He said, "This is strange, but your argument is right. If I prevent it, you will steal. If I prevent it you will still smoke, so my preventing you will create more criminal things in you. It hurts me. I don't want you to start smoking."

I said, "That is not the question. The desire has arisen in me seeing people smoking. I want to check whether it is worth it. If it is worth it, then you will have to constantly supply me with cigarettes. If it is not worth it, then I am finished with it. But I don't want to do anything until you refuse; then the whole responsibility is yours, because I don't want to feel guilty."

He had to purchase the best cigarettes possible in the town -- reluctantly. My uncles, my grandfather, were saying, "What are you doing? This is not done." They insisted...
But he said, "I know this is not done, but you don't know him as much as I know him. He will do exactly what he is saying, and I respect his truthfulness, his honesty. He has made his plan completely clear to me: `Don't force me and don't prevent me, because that will make me feel guilty."

I smoked the cigarette, coughed, tears came to my eyes; I could not even finish one cigarette, and I dropped it. I told my father, "This is finished. You need not worry now. But I want you to understand that about anything I feel I will tell you so that there is no need to hide anything from you. And if I hide even from my father then who am I going to relate with? No, I don't want to create any gap between me and you."

>>14911141
holy based...

So remember, the greatest barrier between you and God is your ego, and the ego feeds on knowledge, and the ego feeds on virtue, and the ego feeds on respectability - name, fame, power. Remember it, and don't feed the ego.

Become humbler: see your limitations, see your mistakes, see your errors and become humble. That very seeing will make you humble. In that humbleness prayer arises on its own accord, and great courage arises out of that humbleness. Humbleness is strong, ego is very weak. You will think this is a paradox. It only appears so: ego is weak. In fact, the ego is an effort of a weak person to protect himself. Ego is an armor: the person knows that deep down he is very weak. The ego is an effort to protect his weakness. The weakest person will have the biggest ego. They are complementary: the weaker you are, the bigger the ego you need to protect yourself. The really strong person doesn't need an ego. He needs no protection; he can live unprotected, he can live insecure, he can live vulnerable.

The scholar was a weak person. So was the Sayed. This prostitute had a strength, the strength of a roseflower - vulnerable, soft, delicate, yet so strong. Have you not watched a roseflower in the morning playing with the winds? So delicate yet so strong, having a love affair with the sun; so delicate, raising its head high, delicate and yet strong.

Lao Tzu calls it the strength of water. The ego has the strength of a rock; the humble person has the strength of water. And Lao Tzu says, "Become like water - the Watercourse Way." Become soft like water and you will win, finally. Remember, hardness brings defeat. Your very resistance to life sooner or later destroys you. It is your own hardness, your own ego, that becomes poison to you.

See a waterfall falling on a great rock, and the rock cannot even think that this humble water, soft, feminine, is going to destroy it. But a day will come when the rock will be gone, will have become sand, and the water will continue on in the same way. Rocks die out of their own hardness. The ego is like a rock, humbleness is like a roseflower. The ego seems to be strong - is not - and humbleness seems to be weak but is not. Don't be deceived by appearances.