If religion is decided by others, then there is no need to search. Your father says: God is. Your mother believes in heaven and hell, so you believe. The authority, the priest, the politician, says something and you believe it. You are avoiding; through belief you are avoiding trust. Belief is the enemy of trust. Trust life! Don’t believe beliefs – avoid them! Avoid beliefs – Hinduism, Islam, Christianity. Seek on your own. You may come to find the same truth. You will come, because the truth is one. Once you have found it you can say: Yes, The Bible is true – but not before. Once you have found it you can say: Yes, the Vedas are true – but not before. Unless you have experienced it, unless you become a witness to it personally, all Vedas and all bibles are useless. They will burden you, they will not make you more free.

In the pasture of this world,
I endlessly push aside the tall grasses in search of the bull.
Following unnamed rivers,
lost upon the interpenetrating paths of distant mountains,
my strength failing and my vitality exhausted,
I cannot find the bull.
I only hear the locusts chirring through the forest at night.

The search is difficult because the truth is unknown. The search is difficult, because the truth is not only unknown – it is unknowable. The search is difficult, because the seeker has to risk his whole life for it.

Hence Kakuan says: Following unnamed rivers…. If you are following scriptures you are following named rivers. If you are following a certain religion, a sect, a church, then you have a map – and there cannot be any map for the truth. There cannot be any map because truth is private and not public. Maps become public; they are needed so that others can also follow. On the map, super highways are shown, not small footpaths; and religion is a footpath, not a super highway. You cannot reach God as a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan. You reach as you, authentically you, and you cannot follow anybody’s path.

Following unnamed rivers,
lost upon the interpenetrating paths of distant mountains,
my strength failing and my vitality exhausted,
I cannot find the bull.

And there comes a moment in the search when one feels completely exhausted, tired. One starts thinking it would have been better if he had never started his search. One feels so frustrated that one starts feeling jealous about those who have never been bothering about such things. This is natural, but that is exactly the moment when the real search starts.

This exhausted energy, this tiredness, is of the mind. The mind feels tired because the mind is always happy in following maps. With the known, the mind remains the master; with the unknown, the strange, the mind is completely at a loss. The mind cannot figure it out, what is going on – the mind feels tired, the mind feels exhausted. The mind says: What are you doing? Why are you wasting your life? Move back! Come to the world, be as other people are! Follow the crowd, don’t try to be individual.