Two Nazi soldiers were standing and talking in the concentration camp in Auchwitz, when a Jew walked up to them and said, “I’m not going to follow your orders anymore.”
One of the soldiers promptly pulled out his pistol and shot the man until he was dead.
“Why did you do that?” asked the other soldier.
“It’s routine,” he replied.
Let Your Action Become Prayer
When the soldier replied – It’s routine. His answer reveals his unconsciousness. Not only he we all are unconscious towards ourselves.
To understand the soldier replied we need to look into our routine life – You see advertisements – they work, but they need constant repetition. A certain brand of cigarette… you have to read it in the newspaper, you have to see it on television, you have to hear it on the radio, you have to see it on the street on the billboards, you have to see it in the movie house, it has to be repeated continually.
A certain brand… you don’t take any note of it. You simply read it and you forget about it, but it is going to make a mark inside you. And when you go to purchase cigarettes, suddenly you will find yourself asking for that brand.
But it is a long process. Up to now, advertising has been a lengthy process.
You are watching the movie and you will not be aware that something has happened; you will go on seeing the movie. The story is going on and in just a flash – so short that you will not be able to detect with your eyes that something has passed on the screen – you feel very thirsty and you need a Coca Cola. You have not read “Coca Cola”, but even though you have not read it, your memory has simply got the idea.
And they have found that on that night, in that movie house the sales of Coca Cola rose by seventy percent. The people who ask for Coca Cola don’t know why they are asking for Coca Cola – they feel thirsty. They are not feeling thirsty, they don’t need Coca Cola, but a subliminal impact….
This is dangerous. It is taking away your freedom. You are not even free to choose, you are simply being ordered – and in such a way that you are not even aware that you have been ordered to purchase Coca Cola.
You have made man a robot, twenty-four hours a day geared to work, and geared to do whatever kind of work you want. It is not his free will.
These people have brought these beautiful words like discipline, work, obedience, to such a distasteful state that it is better for a few days to abandon them completely.
Work is beautiful if it comes out of your love, if it comes out of your creativity. Then work has some spiritual quality. It will become Prayer.
Discipline is good if it comes out of your learning, your disciplehood, your dedication, your devotion – then it is something that is growing in you like a beautiful flame, directing your life in its light.
If you will just wake up towards yourself before taking any action then your action will become prayer, you will act in gratitude. You will be responding and not reacting.
Learning from the story It’s Routine: Let Your Action Become Prayer
Experience Learning
PRAYER IS AN EXPERIENCE OF RESURRECTION, A REBIRTH, the birth of a new vision, a new dimension, a new way of looking at things, and a new way of being. Prayer is not something that you do: prayer is something that you become. It is a state of being. It has nothing to do with the words that you utter in the temples, mosques, churches. It is a silent dialogue with existence. It is to be in tune with the total with the whole. To fall in harmony with the whole is prayer .
The experience is so enormous that it is impossible to be exact about it. It is indefinable. All definitions fall short. Each definition says something about it, but only something. Much remains unsaid.
And prayer is such a vast experience that it contains contradictions. So one can say: Prayer is silence – and he is right, absolutely right. And another can say: Prayer is a dialogue – and he is right too, because prayer is a dialogue in silence. Now, dialogue and silence seem to be contradictory. In dialogue you speak, in silence you hear. In dialogue you communicate, in silence you are simply there – there is nothing to say.
What can be said to God? He knows all that you can say in the first place. You can bow down. You can celebrate. But still your bowing down, your celebration, your festivity, your thankfulness, your gratitude, they are still ways of speaking. You are trying to say something without words, because words are very small and the heart really wants to say something.
So it is a dialogue, although silent. It is a communication in a sense, because you are there and the whole existence becomes your beloved, the whole existence becomes a ’thou’. And yet there is no ‘I’ and there is no ‘thou’ – both disappear. Both meet and merge into one unity, one organic whole. Just as the dewdrop disappears in the ocean, you disappear. There is no separation between you and existence, so how can there be a dialogue?
Both the definitions are true. Those who say prayer is a dialogue – Christians say that, Jews say that, Hindus say that – they are right. But they are talking only about one fragment of the enormous experience called prayer. Buddhists say: There is no dialogue. Jainism says: There is no dialogue – because there is no ‘I’ and no ‘thou’. There is absolute silence. They are also right, but then it is very difficult to be exact about prayer.
It HAS to remain vague. It has to remain incomprehensible. You can have only glimpses of it, fleeting glimpses, but you cannot have the whole of prayer in your hands. It can’t be reduced to a simple definition. Just as science gives definitions, religion cannot give them. You ask science: science is exact. You ask “What is water?” and it says ”H20.” So simple! Nothing is left behind H20 – all is said, because water is an object. It can be analyzed.
Prayer is subjectivity. It is not an object that can be analyzed. In fact, you cannot show your prayer to anybody. And if somebody insists that “I don’t see any prayer in you,” you cannot prove it either. It is like love – less like water, more like love. That’s why Jesus says: God is love. Love is also indefinable.
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