Buddha says: Mistaking the false for the true and the true for the false, you overlook the heart and fill yourself with desire. Mind is desire, and you go on filling yourself with more and more desire, more and more ambition, more and more longing for power, prestige, wealth. And you completely forget that there is a heart beating within you which already lives in godliness, which is already part of the ultimate law – aes dhammo sanantano – which is already part of the inexhaustible, eternal law. You are joined from the heart to existence. Your hearts are the roots in the soil of existence.

Your hearts are still being nourished by existence, by truth, but you are not there. You have vacated the place. You live in your head. Day in, day out, you live in your head; you never descend from there. Even in the night while asleep you go on rumbling in the head: dreams, and dreams upon dreams. In the day, thoughts; in the night, dreams. They are not different.

The dream is only a translation of thinking into the language of sleep, and vice versa: thinking is nothing but a translation of dreaming into the language of the day. You go on moving between these two: dreaming and thinking. Both are desiring. What do you think? What is there to think except desire? And what do you dream except desire?

Buddha says the false appears to be true because you have become false to your own truth, to your own heart. Come back to the heart, and then you will be able to know the truth as the truth and the false as the false. That is enlightenment, that is coming home.

See the false as false…

But from where to begin? Begin from seeing the false as the false. That’s why all the buddhas appear to be negative, all buddhas appear to be destructive. They negate. Jesus negates. He says again and again: “It has been told to you in the past, but I say to you…” And he changes the whole standpoint.

For example, he says: “It has been told to you in the past that tit for tat is the law. If somebody throws a brick at you, react by throwing a rock. But I say unto you, if somebody hits you on one cheek, give him the other cheek too. And if somebody takes away your coat, give him your shirt too. And if somebody forces you to go one mile with him, go two miles.”

Mohammed is against all kinds of images of God, because his people were worshipping for centuries; they had three hundred and sixty-five gods – one god for every day of the year. The Kaaba of Mohammed’s days was one of the greatest temples on the earth – dedicated to three hundred and sixty-five gods. Mohammed destroyed all those idols. It looks negative…

Buddha says: “There is no truth in the Vedas, in the Upanishads. Beware of beautiful words, beware of philosophic speculation. Don’t waste your time with hairsplitting, with logic. Be silent! Throw the Vedas out of your head, only then can you be silent.” He looks negative, he looks nihilistic, he look dangerous – but that is the only way you can be helped.