1969

1969

53. Love.

Your letter has come.

Love has not to be asked for –

it is never obtained by asking.

Love comes through giving –

it is our own echo.

You feel my love pouring on you

because you have become a river of love

flowing towards me,

and when your love flows like this towards all

you will find the whole world

flowing in love towards you.

To respond with unconditional love towards all,

towards that which is,

is the God-experience.

54. Love.

Can two people ever meet?

It is just not possible on this earth,

communication seems impossible –

but at times the impossible happens.

The other day it did.

Being with you, I felt meeting is possible,

and also communication,

and without words, too.

Your tears answered me.

I am deeply grateful for those tears.

Such response is very rare.

I have seen your Madhu Shala,

seen it again and again.

If I could sing

I would sing the same song that is there.

I call that sannyas the real sannyas

which accepts the world with joy.

Aren’t sansara and moksha really one?

Duality exists in ignorance,

in knowledge there is only one.

Oh, can that really be religion

which cannot sing and dance the songs of bliss and love?

P.S. I hear you are due to come here.

Come, and come soon.

Who can trust time?

Look – it is morning and the sun rises.

How long will it be before it sets?

55. Love.

I am one with all things –

in beauty, in ugliness,

for whatsoever is, there I am.

Not only in virtue

but in sin too I am a partner;

and not only heaven but hell too is mine.

Buddha, Jesus, Lao Tzu –

it is easy to be their heir.

But Genghis, Taimur and Hitler?

They are also within me!

No, not half – I am the whole of mankind!

Whatsoever is man’s is mine –

flowers and thorns,

darkness as well as light.

And if nectar is mine, whose is poison?

Nectar and poison – both are mine.

Whoever experiences this I call religious,

for only the anguish of such experience

can revolutionize life on earth.

56. Love.

I have received your letter.

I was very glad indeed to get it,

more so since you have sent a blank sheet.

But I have read in it all that you have not written

but wanted to write.

Besides, what can words say?

Even after writing,

what you had meant to write remains unwritten.

So your silent letter is very lovely.

As it is, whenever you come to see me you are mostly silent,

but your eyes tell all, and your silence too.

Some deep thirst has touched you,

some unknown shore has called you.

Whenever God calls he calls this way –

but how long will you go on standing on the shore?

Look! The sun is out

and the winds can’t wait to fill the boat’s sails!

57. Love.

I have received your letters –

but they are not just letters really, they are poems born out of love,

out of love and prayer, for where there is love there is prayer.

So it is possible to get glimpses of God through another

whom one loves –

love providing the eyes that can see God.

Love is the door through which he appears.

So when one loves all he can be seen in all things.

Part and whole in fact are not in opposition:

deep love for even one other finally spreads to all

because love dissolves the self, leaving the no-self.

Love is like the sun, the individual like frozen ice.

Love’s sun melts the icebergs, leaving a limitless ocean.

So the search for love is really the search for God,

because love melts, and also destroys;

because love only melts and only destroys.

It is both birth and death.

In it the self dies and the all is born.

So there is certainly pain –

in the birth as well as in the death.

Love is the deep anguish of birth as well as death.

But the poetry flowering in you shows that you

have begun to experience the joy that lies in love’s anguish.

58. Love.

Your letter has filled my heart with joy.

You are at the threshold of a great revolution;

now, even if you want to run away I will not let you.

You will certainly have to perish in it

so that you can be reborn.

Gold has to pass through fire – only then is it purified.

Love is fire for you, and I pray to God

that your ego burns in it.

Then if love comes, prayer can come too;

without love prayer is not possible.

Remember that body and soul are not two.

The part of the person that can be seen is the body,

the part that cannot be seen is the soul.

The same holds true for God and matter:

God made visible is matter, and what cannot be seen is God.

Take life easily and naturally, just as it comes.

Welcome it in its endless forms with an attitude of complete acceptance.

And do not impose yourself on life;

life has its own discipline, its own wisdom,

and those who are ready to live totally

have no need for any other discipline or wisdom.

But you have always been afraid of life

and therefore you are afraid of love.

Now life has begun penetrating you,

breaking your walls of security.

So, God’s infinite grace showers on you!

Don’t run from it now, accept it gratefully

and my good wishes are always with you.

59. Love.

Be aware in the waking state,

don’t try to become aware in sleep or dreams.

If you become aware in the waking state

awareness in dreams and sleep comes easily –

but you don’t have to do anything for it.

Doing only creates difficulties.

Sleep reflects the waking state:

what we are when awake we are in sleep.

If we are asleep in the waking state only then is sleep really sleep;

the stream of thoughts during the waking state becomes the web

of dreams in sleep.

Being aware in the waking state will begin to reflect itself in sleep too,

and if there are no thoughts in the waking state

dreams disappear altogether in sleep.

Everything else is fine.

My regards to everyone there.

60. Love.

I was overjoyed to receive your letter –

as pure and innocent as your heart.

You want to write that which cannot be written

so you send an unwritten letter.

This is good, for it is better to remain silent about that which cannot

be expressed.

But beware, silence also speaks,

it speaks and speaks so much!

Silence can speak even where words fail.

The void envelops even that which lines cannot contain.

In fact what can resist the embrace of the great void?

Nothing is left unsaid by silence.

Where words fail, silence is full of meaning.

Where form ends, the formless begins.

Where knowledge (veda) ends,

transcendental knowledge (vedanta) begins.

When knowledge dies, the beyond begins.

Freedom from the word is truth.

61. Love.

How can I describe how happy I am

to have received your letter?

Whenever I saw you,

only one question arose in my mind –

How long are you going to keep away from me?

I knew you had to come closer to me, it was only a matter of time,

so I kept waiting and praying for you.

To me, prayerful waiting is love.

I also knew you were going through the pangs of a new birth

and that rebirth is very near –

for only this can give soul to your songs.

Words are the form and form has its own beauty,

its own melody, its own music.

But this is not enough, and he who considers this enough

remains discontented forever.

The soul of poetry lies in silence.

To me, prayerful waiting is love, and the void

is the door to the divine temple.

You have come to me and I want to take you to the Lord

for how can you come close to me

without first coming closer to him?

In fact without coming close to him you cannot come close

even to yourself.

Then as soon as you come near him you attain that life

for which you have gone through so many lives.

To come close to oneself is to be reborn –

the principle of being twice born is just this.

And remember, not even the pebbles lying on the road are just pebbles;

they too await a new birth, for that second birth turns them

into diamonds.

P.S. To run after desires is to run after a mirage.

It is a journey from one death to another.

In the illusion that is life

man dies this way time and time again.

But those willing to die to their desires discover that death itself

dies for them.

62. Love.

Where is truth?

Do not search for it, for when has truth

ever been found through seeking?

For in seeking, the seeker is present.

So don’t seek but lose yourself.

He who loses himself finds truth.

I don’t say: Seek and you will find.

I say: He who loses himself, finds.

63. Love.

I was happy to receive your letter.

The drop doesn’t have to become the ocean.

It already is the ocean,

it just has to know it.

What is,

however it is –

to know it as it is,

is truth.

And truth liberates.

64. Love.

Life is an infinite mystery, therefore those who are filled

with knowledgeare deprived of life.

Life becomes known only to the innocent,

to those whose intuition is not covered with the dust of knowledge.

65. Love.

Do not seek nirvana as something opposed to life,

rather, turn life itself into nirvana.

Those who know, do this.

Dogen has these beautiful words to say:

Do not strive after moksha (liberation);

rather, allow all your actions to become liberating.

This happens.

I can tell you this from my own experience;

and the day it happens

life becomes as beautiful as a flower in full bloom

and brims with fragrance.

66. Love.

I received your letter on my return.

Just as the seed within the soil waits for the rains so you wait for God.

Prayerful, wholehearted surrender is the door

leading to him.

Let yourself go completely,

just like a boat floating on the river.

You do not have to row the boat, just let it go loose.

You are not to swim, just to float, then the river itself takes you

to the ocean.

The ocean is very near – but only for those who float

but do not swim.

Do not be afraid of drowning because that fear makes you swim –

and the truth is that he who drowns himself in God is saved forever.

And do not have a goal,

for he who has a goal begins to swim.

Remember always –

wherever one reaches, that is the destination,

therefore he who makes God his goal goes astray.

Wherever the mind is free from all goals –

there alone is God.

67. Love.

I say: Die, so that you can live!

When the seed destroys itself, it becomes the tree;

when the drop loses itself, it becomes the ocean.

But man – man refuses to lose himself.

How then can God manifest in him?

Man is the seed, God is the tree.

Man is the drop, God is the ocean.

68. Love.

Leave the old track –

only the dead walk on trodden paths.

Life is the continuous quest for the new.

Only he who has the knack of being new

every moment truly lives.

Die to the old every moment

so that you are forever new –

this is the crux of the transformation of life.

69. Love.

Truth is like the sky: eternal, everlasting, boundless.

Is there a door to enter the sky?

Then how can there be one to enter into truth?

If our eyes are closed, the sky exists not.

The same holds good for truth.

Opening the eyes is the door to truth; to close the eyes

is to close that door to truth.

70. Love.

Where to find truth?

Well, it has to be sought within one’s own self,

within one’s own self

within one’s own self

within one’s own self.

It is definitely there.

One who seeks it elsewhere loses it.

71. Love.

I am extremely grateful for your loving letter.

I take life as a whole and I am incapable of viewing it in bits and

pieces; it is already the whole but because it has been viewed

in fragments for so long it has become perverted.

There is no politics, no morality, no religion;

there is life, there is God, whole and unfragmented.

It has to be sought, recognized and lived in all its forms,

therefore I shall continue to speak on all its forms.

And this is only the beginning.

Answering journalists is just preparing the ground.

All paths lead to one end – certain friends might take some time

to understand this truth.

As things are, this delay in understanding the truth is unavoidable,

but seekers of truth won’t be afraid – courage is the first condition

in the search for truth.

Remember, as long as spirituality does not become a philosophy

of the whole life it proves impotent,

and only escapists will take shelter behind it.

Spirituality has to be turned into a force,

spirituality has to be turned into a revolution,

only then can spirituality be saved.

My regards to all.

72. Love.

Man becomes a slave because he is afraid to be alone,

so he needs a crowd, a society, an organization.

Fear is the basis of all institutions,

and how can a frightened mind know the truth?

Truth requires fearlessness and fearlessness comes from sadhana,

not from societies.

That is why all religions, institutions and organization

bar the path of truth.

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