Dream

Use Any Opportunity

Use any opportunity to be alert

A Zen master will throw you out of the window and shout from behind: “Be aware!” You have been thrown out, you are in between, you are just passing through the window –  and he cries: ‘Be aware!’ You have fallen onto the ground; your face must change – now the situation is quite different. You have come to ask some metaphysical question, and he has done something absolutely non-metaphysical – he has thrown you out of the window. You were asking whether the truth is or not.

It is absolutely irrelevant to throw one through the window. But he says, ‘Be aware!’ in the exact moment when you were changing faces, changing a state. When you are in between, passing through the window, it is not only your body that is passing through a change. Your state of consciousness will be passing through a change. And the teacher knows exactly when it changes. At that exact moment he will cry: ‘Be aware!’ And if you can hear him for a moment you will be at the center – thrown out of the periphery.

So, whenever there is any changing situation, be careful to look inside. There is no traveling. There is only a jump from the periphery to the center, and from the center to the periphery. The behavior is just like the electron, or just like dreams. Deepen this awareness. This is all that you can ‘do.’ This is negative, because awareness is not a – doing. Awareness is not an act.

Whenever you are aware, there will be no action. Action will be withheld whenever you are aware. If you become aware, then there will not even be a breath. If I hold a dagger toward you, even the breath stops. You become so aware that everything stops. You are thrown to the center. Awareness is not action. The addiction with action is only the escaping of awareness. And we all have become addicted: one must do something, one must go on doing something. This addiction is helping the continuity.

Use any opportunity to be alert – any opportunity. And there are thousands and thousands of opportunities every day. Be alert, and you will feel the jump from the periphery to the center. When this being at the center becomes easy for you, when this being at the center becomes as easy as coming into the house, or going out of the house… You are outside the house: it has become hot; you come in. Whenever you feel like coming in, you come in. Whenever you are feeling like going out, you go out. There is no difficulty. When this movement from the periphery to the center has become just like this, then you will have the explosion.

Be Aware of Yourself

Whatsoever you are doing, go on doing one thing inside continuously: be aware of yourself doing it. You are eating: be aware of yourself. You are walking: be aware of yourself. You are listening, you are speaking: be aware of yourself. When you are angry, be aware that you are angry. In the very moment when anger is there, be aware that you are angry. This constant remembering of the self creates a certain energy, a very subtle energy in you. You begin to be a crystallized being.

Ordinarily, we are just a loose bag. No crystallization, no center really, just a liquidity, just a loose combination of many things without any center, a crowd, constantly shifting and changing, with no master inside. By awareness is meant, be a master. And when I say ‘be a master,’ I don’t mean to be a controller. When I say ‘be a master,’ I mean be a presence, a continuous presence. Whatsoever you are doing or not doing, one thing must be constantly in your consciousness: that you are.

This simple feeling of oneself, that one is, creates a center: a center of stillness, a center of silence, a center of inner mastery, an inner power. And when I say ‘an inner power,’ I mean it literally. That’s why this sutra says the fire of awareness. It is a fire. It is a fire. If you begin to be aware, you begin to feel a new energy in you, a new fire, a new life. And because of this new life, new power, new energy, many things which were dominating you just dissolve.