Why do we live in frustrations? How do we manage to live in so many frustrations? We have become experts in creating frustrations although we don’t do it intentionally. We don’t do anything intentionally; our whole lives are accidental. In sleep, your life is bound to be just accidental, at the mercy of the winds. We are just as straws in the wind or dry leaves in the wind. We don’t know who we are, we don’t know where we are going, we don’t know from where we are coming. We don’t know anything about our being – and we know great information about facts, figures which are utterly meaningless.
Unless you know yourself, no knowledge is of any meaning. At the very center of your being there is darkness; no light from the outside can dispel it.
The greatest problem in the world is how to commune your awakening with those who have never tasted it. They are bound to misunderstand. Misunderstanding is almost inevitable.
The color TV was invented in the USA. News of this beautiful new toy arrived up to the kingdom of God. God, being very curious, sent one of his archangels down to the earth to get one.
As God sat in front of his new color TV set with the archangel sitting beside him, he pressed the first button. Immediately, the image of naked, tired, sweating people appeared on the screen. They were working incredibly hard in a Johannesburg diamond mine.
Upon seeing this, God shouted, “Ah Christ, holy shit, what the hell are they doing down there?”
Saint Peter replied, “They are being good and working hard, my Lord, just as you wanted.”
“No, no, no, that is not what I meant! They have missed the whole point!” screamed God at the top of his thunderous voice.
Then he pushed another button. The image changed to the glorious Vatican in all its pomp and splendor, with his holiness the pope, dressed in gold. He was surrounded by luxuriously dressed nobles and velvet-cloaked cardinals with massive crowns on their heads.
God turned to Peter, shouting, “And who are they?”
Saint Peter humbly replied, “These are the ones who did not miss the point….”
In fact, everybody misses the point; it is bound to be so. Coming from the peaks of awakening to the dark valleys of sleep one cannot expect that it will be understood rightly.
Hence Buddha insisted, he always emphasized to his disciples, “Before you start trying to understand what I am saying and what I am doing, be silent at least for two years, utterly silent, thinking nothing. When you have attained to stillness, then you will be able to communicate with me. Then if you have any questions you can ask, and then it will be possible for me to pour my heart into your heart.”