Fist

Hopelessness

I am not for hope; I am not for hopelessness. I am against all extremism. All excess is futile. Buddha used to say, ‘My path is the middle path.’ That is the path of transcendence.

This watchfulness, this witnessing is the ultimate secret of creating a religious life, of creating a life of transcendence, a life of spirituality, of enlightenment, of buddhahood.

I teach you transcendence – neither positive nor negative. Be a watcher: witness both. When there is day, witness the day, and when there is night, witness the night – and don’t get identified with either. You are neither the day nor the night; you are the transcendental consciousness. Become more and more centered there in that transcendence. True religion is not positive, nor is it negative. It is neither via negativa nor via positiva; it is via transcendence.

Somewhere a deep balance is needed. Just between the two, exactly between the two, is transcendence.

Buddha used to call his path ‘the middle path’, MAJJHIM NIKAYA, because he said, “Everywhere, excess is prohibited. Always choose the middle.” The exact middle is the point beyond. If you can find the exact middle ground between two opposites, two rivals, you have gone beyond them, you have reached a transcendence. The transcendence opens just in the middle; the middle is the beyond.

I am not teaching you the positive way of living, I am not teaching you the negative way of living: I am teaching you the way of transcendence. All dualities have to be dropped: the duality of mind and heart, the duality of matter and mind, the duality of thinking and emotion, the duality of the positive and the negative, the duality of male and female, yin and yang, the duality of day and night, summer and winter, life and death… all dualities. Duality as such has to be dropped, because you are beyond duality. The moment you start moving away from both yes and no, you will have your first glimpses of the ultimate. Hence the ultimate remains absolutely inexpressible; you cannot say no, you cannot say yes.

Tathata means total acceptance: whatsoever the situation is, don’t fight with it. Accept it wholeheartedly, because it is through total acceptance that transcendence happens. If you fight with it you will be unnecessarily wasting your energy. Accepting it you preserve your energy. Accepting it you become capable of understanding it, because only one who accepts can understand; one who rejects cannot understand.

Right samadhi is a transcendence: you go beyond mind, but you are fully alert, aware. Only then is samadhi right – when it grows in awareness and when awareness grows through it. When you become enlightened you have to be absolutely awakened; otherwise you missed at the last step.

Every desire is the same. The objects differ, but not the quality of desiring. You desire money, somebody else desires God; you desire power, somebody else desires paradise. It is all the same. Hence there are no religious desires, remember. Non-desiring is religious. Desiring is worldly, desire is the world. Nondesire is transcendence.