Ordinary Mind

Be Ordinary

Just to be ordinary – and then suddenly what you call trivia is no longer trivia, what you call profane is no longer profane. Everything becomes sacred. Carrying wood becomes sacred. Fetching water from the well becomes sacred.

When every act becomes sacred, when every act becomes meditative and prayerful, only then are you moving deeper into life – and then life opens all the mysteries to you. Then you are becoming capable. Then you are becoming receptive.

The more receptive you become, the more life becomes available.

This is my whole teaching: to be ordinary, to be so ordinary that the very desire to be extraordinary disappears. Only then can you be in the present; otherwise you cannot be in the present.

Zen Master Montaigne has written: “We seek other conditions because we know not how to enjoy our own, and go outside of ourselves for want of knowing what it is like inside of us. So it is no use raising ourselves on stilts, for even on stilts we have to walk on our own legs, and sitting on the loftiest throne in the world we are still sitting on our backs.” Wherever you are – fetching wood or sitting on the throne as a king or as a president or a prime minister – makes no difference. Wherever you are, you are yourself.

If you are miserable in carrying wood, you will be miserable in being a president because outside things can change nothing. If you are happy being a beggar, only then can you be happy being an emperor. There is no other way.

Your happiness has something to do with your quality of consciousness. It has nothing to do with outside things. Unless you become awake, everything is going to make you more and more miserable. Once you are awake, everything brings tremendous happiness, tremendous benediction. It does not depend on anything else; it simply depends on the depth of your being, on your receptivity.

Carry wood, and when carrying wood just carry wood – and enjoy the beauty of it. Don’t go on thinking of something else. Don’t compare it. This moment is tremendously beautiful. This moment can become a satori. This moment can become the moment of samadhi.

Fetching water, be so totally in it that nothing is left outside. Fetching water, you are not there; only the process of fetching water is there. This is what nirvana is, enlightenment is.

Be ordinary, but bring a quality of awareness to your ordinary life. Bring God to your ordinary life, introduce God into your ordinary life. Sleep, eat, love, pray, meditate, but don’t think that you are making or doing something special – and then you will be special.