This moment, here and now, is the time to taste life.
Death is the ultimate mystery. That gift is given only to those who have lived really intensely, who have burned their torch of life from both the ends together. Only then it happens sometimes that in a single moment of intensity the whole life is revealed. In a single moment of total intensity, the whole eternity opens its doors to you, you are welcomed by God.
Life is an absurdity — it is a mystery. You need not search for meaning, you have just to live it, enjoy it.
Life is not a fasting, it is a continuous feast — a celebration, a festival of lights. Love transforms your life into a festival of lights. And unless your life becomes a feast and a festival, remember: you have not done the thing you have come for on this earth.
Life should not be taken as a problem. Once you start that way you are lost. Once you think life is a problem it can never be solved. That’s how philosophy moves — and that’s how philosophy always moves wrongly. There are no right philosophies: there cannot be. All philosophies are wrong. Philosophizing is wrong, because philosophy takes the wrong basic step of thinking of life as a problem. Once life is a problem there is no solution to it. Life is not a problem but a mystery, which is how religion takes it.
Life knows only one moment, and that is the present. Life knows only one space, and that is here. Now and here: these two words are the most significant words in the human language; they represent reality.
Everything that is of authentic value in life has arisen out of meditation. There is no other way. Meditation is the mother of art, music, poetry, dance, sculpture. All that is creative, all that is life-affirmative, is born out of meditation. All that is life-negative — hate, anger, jealousy, violence, war — is born out of the mind. Man has two possibilities: mind and meditation.
To make everything certain is a deep urge in the mind because mind is afraid of life. Mind creates science just to kill every possibility of life. Mind tries to find explanations once an explanation is found, the mystery is dissolved.
Look for the mysterious in life. Wherever you look — in the white clouds, in the stars in the night, in the flowers, in a flowing river — wherever you look, look for the mystery. And whenever you find that a mystery is there, meditate on it. Meditation means: dissolve yourself before that mystery, annihilate yourself before that mystery, disperse yourself before that mystery. Be no more, and let the mystery be so total that you are absorbed in it.
A man of meditation simply enjoys the flowers, the birds, the trees, the rain, the sun, the moon, the people. It is good that we are all engulfed in a mysterious whole. Life will be utterly boring if every mystery is decoded.
When I say ‘to die’ I really mean: live intensely; I really mean: live passionately. How can you die unless you have lived totally? In total life there is death, and that death is beautiful. In a passionate, intense life, death comes spontaneously — as a silence, as a profound bliss. When I say ‘to die’, I am not saying anything against life; in fact, if you are afraid of death you will be afraid of life also.
Move with life with a deep trust, wheresoever it leads. Don’t create your own goal; if you create your own goal you will become false. Life has no goal; if YOU have a goal you are against life. Life moves not like a business, it moves like poetry; life moves not from the head, it moves from the heart — it is a romance. Trust is needed, doubt won’t be helpful. Life is not scientific, it is irrational. Life doesn’t believe in Aristotles and the logicians, it believes in love, in the poets, it believes in the mystics. It is a mystery to be lived, not a riddle to be solved — it is not a puzzle, it is not a problem. The secret is open, only you are closed. It is revealed everywhere: in each tree, in each leaf, in every ray of the sun it is revealed — but you are closed.
All that is needed is a certain deepening of your consciousness, and that happens through meditation. Then all your actions, your behavior, your life starts changing on its own accord; you start seeing things clearly. Right now you see things through such smoke that nothing seems to be clear.
Religion is nothing but a science to attain wisdom, understanding, to know what life is, and to live it in utter celebration. And you can live life in celebration only if you know there is no death. If you know that it is going to be eternal, that there is no beginning and no end, only then can you live without misery.
No society wants individuals so powerful in themselves. Every society wants you to remain dependent on it. Your independence is being curtailed in every possible way. And because your independence, your individuality is being curtailed, death comes before meditation comes. Life has been a wastage. Unless you attain to meditation, you have not really lived.
Life is immediate, life is always now and here. And live it with all the frailty of a human being, with all the frailty of a rose flower, and you will come to know the greatest splendor in the moment — not in eternity. It is always now and it is always here! Don’t condemn the momentary, rejoice in it, rejoice to abandon.
It is up to you to make whatsoever you want out of your life. An enlightened consciousness makes even death beautiful. An unenlightened consciousness makes even life ugly. For an enlightened consciousness, only beauty exists — only beauty; only bliss exists — only bliss.
Live here now! Living in hope is living in the future, which is really postponing life. It is not a way of living, but a way of suicide. There is no need for any hope and there is no need to feel hopeless. Live here now. Life is tremendously blissful, it is showering here and you are looking somewhere else. It is just in front of your eyes, but your eyes have moved far away, they look at the horizon. It is within you, but you are not there.
The future is just your hope, expectation. And when this life is not fulfilling you start looking further, beyond death. All these are fictions just for you to survive somehow. But this survival is not how you are supposed to be. Existence has not given you birth just to live in hopes. You can be really ecstatic this moment, and there is no other moment. Meditation is, Zen is living now and here.
Now and here put in your total energy, and you will be enlightened. Enlightenment is your nature, so you are not to find it somewhere else. You don’t have to go on any pilgrimage. You don’t have to go to any holy place. You don’t have to believe in any theology, in any religion. You just have to dig deeper into yourself, in the present moment, and suddenly the whole of life springs up.
Look at people’s faces. They carry life as a burden — boring, with no meaning. It seems that everything is just a nightmare, a very cruel joke, that somebody is playing a trick, torturing them. Life is not a celebration, it cannot be. With a mind burdened by memory life cannot be a celebration. Even if you laugh, your laughter carries boredom. Look at people laughing: they laugh with an effort. Their laugh may be just to be mannerly, their laugh may be just etiquette.
Just live your life with as much joy and celebration, as a gift of God. Dance with the trees in the sun, in the rain, in the wind. Neither do the trees have any scriptures, nor do the animals have any scriptures; neither do the stars have any scriptures, nor do they have any saints. Except man, nobody is obsessed with the dead. This obsession I call one of the greatest mistakes which has been committed over thousands of years. It is time it should be stopped completely.