GoldFish

Equality

Everybody is equal in the eyes of existence. But remember, equality does not mean similarity. Everybody is equally unique.

Equality is possible only when comparison disappears from the world.

And never compare. Comparison is a disease, one of the greatest diseases and we are taught from the very beginning to compare. Your mother starts comparing you with other children, your father starts comparing you with other children. The teacher compares you: ‘Look at Johnny, how well he is doing, and you are no good at all! Look at others!’ From the very beginning you are being told to compare yourself with others. This is the greatest disease; it is like a cancer that goes on destroying your very soul – because each individual is unique, and comparison is not possible. I am just myself and you are just yourself. There is nobody else in the world you can be compared with.

Do you compare a marigold with a rose flower? You don’t compare. Do you compare a mango with an apple? You don’t compare. You know they are different – comparison is not possible….

There has never been any individual like you before and there will never be again. You are utterly unique. This is your privilege, your prerogative, existence’s blessing – that it has made you unique. Don’t compare. Comparison will bring trouble.

Don’t compare, there is no need. Comparison is one of the greatest calamities that has fallen on humanity. You are perfect as you are. Learn to love yourself, respect yourself. If you are not going to respect yourself, who is going to respect you? If you are not going to love yourself, who is going to love you? People don’t respect themselves and expect everybody else to respect them. They don’t love themselves and want the whole world to fall in love with them. Now you are asking impossibilities – these things cannot happen. Love yourself, respect yourself, and a person who respects himself never compares. Comparison is a disrespect.

A man who understands the uniqueness of everybody can be religious, can only be religious because he feels immense gratitude for whatsoever life has given to him. If you don’t compare, then you are neither bigger nor smaller, neither ugly nor beautiful, neither intelligent nor stupid. If you don’t compare, you are simply yourself. And in that state of simply being yourself spring comes, flowers come, because a deep acceptance of life and a deep gratitude to existence helps to bring the spring.

God has given you this life, this tremendously valuable gift, and you cannot even appreciate it. You cannot welcome it, you cannot feel any gratitude for it. On the contrary, you are complaining and complaining and complaining. Your heart is full of grudges, not gratitude.

The Baul lives in tremendous gratitude. He sings and dances – that is his prayer. He cries. He simply wonders why, for what has life been given to him, for what has he been allowed to see the rainbows in the sky, for what has he been allowed to see flowers, butterflies, people, rivers and rocks? For what? Because life is so obvious you tend to forget the tremendous gift hidden in it.