Be Still and Know

Great truths take time to sink in. And this is the greatest of all, that you all are potentially buddhas. It is impossible for your mind to accept it. You can accept somebody far away, a Siddhartha Gautam being a Buddha, a Jesus Christ, a Zarathustra, a Lao Tzu. They are so far away, millions of light years away; they have become mythological. They are no more thought to be real persons. They have lost all substance, they have become pure shadows ― pure poetry with no words, pure silence with no sound. You can imagine them, but you cannot feel them.

Hence, although I go on repeating again and again that you can become a buddha...in fact you are a buddha, unaware of the fact. On the circumference maybe there is a great storm, just as on the surface the sea is stormy ― sometimes more, sometimes less, but there are always waves, bigger or smaller; there is always turbulence, disturbance. But at the depth there is not even a ripple: all is silence.

You are the center of the cyclone, but you are not aware of your center. And down the ages priests have condemned you so much that it has become almost impossible for you to conceive of yourself as a buddha. The priests have condemned you according to your circumference; they know only your circumference. In fact they are interested only in condemning you, so whatsoever they can condemn they see very predominantly in you. They choose that which can be condemned, because through condemnation you are reduced to slaves: slaves of religion ― Catholic, Protestant, Hindu, Jaina, Buddhist; and slaves of societies, cultures, civilizations, political ideologies ― communist, fascist, Gandhian.

The only way to reduce you to a slave is to condemn you so badly that you lose all self-respect. And it can be done because your circumference is there, and you also are aware only of the circumference. You are fast asleep snoring at the center. Only at the circumference are you a little bit awake, and that too because of the disturbance, noise. In the marketplace you are a little bit more alert.

When you sit silently in your meditation room you start falling asleep, because the only kind of alertness that you know is that which is created by the noise around you. You know only one kind of awareness, which is pathological because it is out of disturbance, not out of stillness.

That's why it is one of the basic experiences of all meditators that the moment they start meditating they start falling asleep. Hence the Zen master has to walk amongst his disciples with a stick in his hand: whenever he sees somebody asleep, he hits him immediately. The hit you can understand, because it is on the circumference. Suddenly the energy rushes upwards in your spine, and you are awake, alert. The Zen tradition says that when the master hits you, bow down to him in deep respect. He has obliged you; he has taken great trouble to hit you.

You know only one kind of alertness ― when you are hit, when you are in some danger, when you are in some accident. It is because of this that people go mountain climbing, because when they are climbing mountains and the danger is great they become a little alert. It is because of this that people compete in car races, because the speedier the car goes, the more danger is close by: death can happen any moment, you have to become alert.

Danger has an attraction. The only attraction of danger is that you become a little alert, but this is a superficial kind of alertness.

Real alertness has to happen at the center, otherwise you can remain alert on the circumference because of the noise, disturbance, but it is coming from others, it is not your own, and your center can go on sleeping.

I go on telling you this again and again. Why do I say it again and again? So that it can sink in and can reach your center. It takes time, and it takes a right moment.

If you look deep down, everybody is simple. The society makes you complex, but you are born simple and innocent. Everybody is born a buddha; the society corrupts you.

And the function of a master is to take away all the corruption that the society has worked on you. the function of the master is to undo that the society has done to you, and you will be a buddha again.

The child when he is born functions from the center; we teach him how to function from the circumference. That is our whole educational system all over the world: teaching the child how to function from the circumference. We pull him away from his center, we make him more and more accustomed to the circumference, to living on the circumference...twenty-five years of conditioning, education: good names we have given to ugly things. We call it education ― it is not education, nothing can be a greater mis-education.

The very word "education" means drawing something out, to draw something out. When you draw water out of the well it is education. Just like that, when something is drawn outwards from your center it is education. But this is not what is going on in the name of education; it is forcing things upon you. It is not bringing your center to function. It is not sharpening your center; it is dulling it, making it more and more sleepy, dozy.

The society succeeds the day your center goes into a coma and your circumference remains functioning. Then you are a robot, a machine, no more a man.

Because we function from the circumference buddhas look so unreal ― of course, because they function from a totally different center. That's why I say that unless you are in contact with a living buddha, you will never believe that you can become a buddha.

But a living buddha also, slowly slowly, appears far away. It is because of your mind working; it is a strategy of the mind to save itself from going through that revolution. So you create a distance ― it is imaginary.

Lao Tzu is simply saying there is no need to be a great genius to know God. God is available to all, unconditionally to all, categorically to all. You do not have to fulfill certain conditions, you do not have to rise to a certain level. God is available to you as you are, because God has become you. There is nobody else inside you. Just a look....

So it is beautiful in a commune, because when you live in a commune you live with people not knowing whether this man is going to become a buddha; then one day suddenly the lotus opens: that man has become a buddha. It gives you great courage. You know this man, he is just like you. You have been drinking tea with him, gossiping with him, reading the same newspaper, listening to the same radio, looking at the same TV, you have been to the same movie. You know him, inside and out; he was just like you. If he can become a buddha, then why not you? In fact, his becoming a buddha becomes the greatest uplifting force in your life.

That is the beauty of a commune, because many many people with whom you were working will one day become buddhas. Somebody was working under you ...for example, one day Deeksha finds that the man who has been washing the pots has become a buddha! Then Deeksha can believe that: "Although I am an Italian, and nobody has ever heard of any Italian becoming a buddha, still I can become one."

Have you ever heard about any Italian...? At least I have not heard of it. But it is going to happen here, because this commune is ninety percent Italian: you eat Italian food, you drink Italian water ― everybody is turning ninety percent Italian. My effort in creating a commune is simply to make you alert and aware that one day the cobbler of the ashram becomes enlightened, another day the guard becomes enlightened, and people go on blossoming. Each blossoming brings new courage, new inspiration, and in that courage and inspiration your spring comes closer to you. A great self-respect arises, and a trust: And it is going to be sooner than later ― because if so many people start flowering, then the season has come and it is time not to resist. It is time not to fight any more, but to be in a let-go.