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Ah-ha! said Ummon. I see you are not deaf!

Then he asked the monk

if he understood what all this to-do was about.

The monk said he did not.

Ah-ha! said Ummon. I see you are not dumb!

193. Love.

Meditation does not require any application of the mind

or use of effort.

It descends upon you as effortlessly as sleep.

You cannot try to sleep,

nor can you try to meditate.

On the contrary,

every effort hinders its smooth and silent coming.

There is no place in it for action or aggression –

and action is always aggressive.

Meditation is passive receptivity.

Mind is aggressive,

meditation is passive.

Be passive

and receptive

and open

and vulnerable

and wait.

The real miracle happens through waiting.

The moment that waiting is total

there is a happening,

and – the explosion.

194. Love.

The problem of life is not philosophical,

it is existential.

You cannot solve it from the outside;

you cannot just be a spectator of it –

you are in it, you are it.

And moreover, what is philosophy?

At the worst a linguistic misunderstanding,

or at best a linguistic analysis.

And even at its best it leads nowhere

because the problem is existential

and it cannot be solved through

language analysis and grammar.

One dark night a dervish was passing a dry well

when he heard a cry for help from below.

What is the matter? he called down.

I am a grammarian,

and I have unfortunately fallen,

due to my ignorance of the path, into this deep well,

in which I am now all but immobilized,

responded the other.

Hold on, friend, and I’ll fetch a ladder and a rope, said the dervish.

One moment please! said the grammarian.

Your grammar and diction are faulty.

Be good enough to amend them. If that is so much more important

than the essentials, shouted the dervish, you had best stay where you are

until I have learned to speak properly.

And he went his way.

195. Love.

Don’t think about surrender at all

because that which thinks about it is the only barrier.

And therefore no one can surrender;

it is not a doing at all, it happens.

You cannot go to it,

it comes to you.

And any effort on your part will hinder its coming.

Be open and effortless, relaxed and passive,

and it will come – it always comes.

I am a witness of it.

196. Love.

Mulla Nasruddin was searching for something on the ground.

What have you lost, Mulla? someone who saw him searching, asked.

My key, said the Mulla. So they both went down on their knees

and looked for it.

After a time the other man asked: Where exactly did you drop it?

In my house, said the Mulla.

Then why are you looking here?

There is more light here than inside my house.

I ask you also – where are you looking for the key?

Inside the house?

Or out there, where there is more light?

197. Love.

There is no end to man’s self-deception, because whatsoever he is

going to do he can rationalize it.

One day one man boasted in the bar

that he was a man of iron will,

and now he would prove it

by not touching wine again in his life.

But not even that day could pass by.

In the evening he came to the bar

and said loudly for all to hear –

I am stronger than my willpower.

I fought the whole day and finally conquered

my damn willpower!

A double scotch, please!

198. Love.

The way of meditation is above the self;

its base is surrendering.

Surrender the self to your own no-self;

be as if you are not.

Oh, the benediction

when one just leaves everything to the no-self!

Buddha called this phenomenon anatma or anatta

(no-selfhood).

One must turn oneself into a puppet

in the hands of the no-self,

and then everything begins to flow naturally

and spontaneously

just like a river flowing to the sea

or like a cloud wandering in the sky.

Lao Tzu says this is doing by non-doing.

One ceases to be one’s own master

and becomes an instrument of the unknown –

and what nonsense it is to be one’s own master

because there is no one to be so!

Do not search and you will continue to believe in it.

Search and it is nowhere to be found.

The self exists only in ignorance.

It is ignorance.

In knowing there is no self

because there is no knower.

Then knowing is enough unto itself.

199. Love.

There is conflict in the mind – always,

because the mind cannot exist without the conflict.

It gets strengthened through conflict;

even warring against conflict is conflict

and struggling to go beyond the mind is mind.

See this deeply and immediately

without motive,

just as if you have come across a snake in the street

– and the jump.

Then it is not that you jump

but – the jump.

The jump happens spontaneously,

without effort and without conflict.

When this happens there is no-mind

and no-mind is the door to the divine.

200. Love.

In meditation, enjoy doing nothing.

Be in a state of perfectly quiet passivity –

then you are in harmony with the world.

The thought-forms dissolve automatically

because they cannot exist with total passivity:

they are forms of an activity-addicted mind,

and with them dissolves the ego –

because it cannot exist without thought-forms.

The ego is nothing but a whirlpool center

of constantly revolving thought-forms.

Remain in passivity,

that is, in the state of absolute doing-nothingness,

and meditation deepens to the depths where there is no meditator.