You know nothing of God nor of his will, but you go on repeating clichés. You have heard these things and you start repeating them like gramophone records. You don’t see the absurdity of it. If it is your understanding, the question cannot arise. The question is absolutely meaningless if it is your understanding. But it is not your understanding; somebody else has planted it in you. And all parents are doing it. and I am not saying that they are doing it knowingly; they are as unconscious as you are. These ideas have been planted in them by others, their parents, and so on and so forth. But you have to jump out of this vicious circle.

Renata, your name is so beautiful – it means rebirth. Being here with me you have to go through a process of being reborn, and the first step will be to drop all the ideas that have been imposed upon you. The roses are beautiful because they are not carrying the idea that they have to be as big as the lotus flowers; otherwise they will be miserable, they will stop growing – they will shrink in shame, ashamed of themselves. They are beautiful, fragrant, for the simple reason that whatsoever they are, they are. The marigold flowers are not worried why they are not roses. Even the blades of grass are not at all ashamed of not being big trees like the cedars of Lebanon. They are perfectly happy as they are.

A man came to a Zen monk and he asked, “Why are you always so blissful? Why am I not so blissful?”

The master said, “Wait. When everybody else has left, then I will answer your question.”

The man waited and waited because people were coming and going and there was not a single moment of aloneness. He was getting tired and impatient and many times he thought to leave, because “When is this thing going to stop? People are still coming.”

But by the evening when the sun was setting, everybody had left and he was alone with the master. He reminded him, “Now please tell me.”

He said, “Look outside the window. You see this big tree?”

He said, “Yes, I see it.”

And he said, “You see that small bush by the side?”

He said, “Yes, I see that too.”

The master said, “I have never heard the bush saying to the big tree, ‘Why are you so big and I am so small?’ That’s why both are happy. The tree is big and the bush is small, but so what? Both are unique. They don’t compare themselves – and they are standing side by side. And for fifteen years I have been trying to find out why they don’t compare themselves. They are perfectly happy; both are happy.

“You are unhappy because you are comparing, you are living in comparison. And I am happy because I have dropped all comparison; I have simply accepted myself as I am. That is my simple secret.”

And you are constantly comparing. Somebody else is more beautiful than you, somebody else has more beautiful eyes than you, somebody else has more beautiful hair than you, somebody else is more strong than you, somebody else seems to be more intelligent than you, somebody else has something else, and so on and so forth…there is no end to it! You will become more and more miserable.