And new things start happening to you. They are just the opposites of what mind was creating. Instead of agony, you have ecstasy; instead of misery, you have tremendous blissfulness; instead of despair, you are utterly at ease; instead of feeling a meaninglessness, for the first time you see the significance and the beauty and the glory that has been bestowed upon you by existence. And without any effort on your part a tremendous urge arises to thank the whole, to be grateful, to dance in gratitude, to sing in gratitude.

To me, the only true prayer is that which comes out of gratitude, not addressed to any god, not addressed to get anything, but addressed to the whole of existence for all that it has already given to you. It is so much. You suddenly see that you don’t deserve all this. You have never earned anything of it: all this beauty, all these blessings, all this ecstasy. You cannot conceive that it is your earning. It is simply a gift from the beyond. You can only bow down to it – not to anybody in particular, just to the whole that surrounds you. As a fish is surrounded by the ocean, you are surrounded by the whole.

You are saying, “During the awareness walk in the Vipassana group today, I observed that my speed was slowing down and had stopped. There seemed no need for moving. To where, for what? There was simply no goal anymore.” There is certainly no goal. Existence is enough unto itself: a goal is needed only for those who are feeling empty. Once you know your fullness, you don’t have any space for any goal left within you. You are not only full, you are overflowing. And the question of going anywhere does not arise, because wherever you are, you are in the whole, wherever you are, you are in the same ocean.

Hence a tremendous transformation arises in you. All your past lives…continuous movement, from one body to another body, from one life to another life. But the same desires, the same greed, the same anger, the same violence, the same competition, the same jealousy.

The Eastern word for the world is sansara. And sansara means the wheel. You go on moving on a wheel. It is the same wheel. It goes nowhere, you are just clinging to some spoke of the wheel, and the wheel goes on moving. You think you are reaching somewhere; you are not reaching anywhere. But because you continuously think that you are reaching somewhere, you never look inwards to find you are already there where you want to be.

The home that you are searching for is within you. And the god that you have been seeking is within you. You are the greatest treasure of consciousness in this whole existence. The moment you realize your glory and splendor, you see yourself as an Everest high in the sky, you cannot conceive that anything more can be added to you. Your fulfillment is so complete that there comes an absolute stop and this stop becomes the explosion of enlightenment, of awakening, of your buddha nature.