Beloved Buddha,
Once, after Daiji had become an enlightened master, he said to his monks, “I’m not going to explain any more debates; you know, it’s just a disease.”
At this, a monk stood up from the assembly and came forward; Daiji went back to his room.

On another occasion, when Daiji was sweeping the ground, Joshu asked him how to manifest prajna.
Daiji repeated, “How can we manifest prajna?” At this, Joshu gave a great laugh.
The next day, seeing Joshu sweeping the ground, Daiji asked him, “How can we manifest prajna?” Joshu put down his broom and laughed aloud, clapping his hands.
Daiji went back to his room.

My Friends and my Fellow Travelers,

I would have loved to use the Urdu words for the same, because they have a depth and a poetry…even the very sound of them rings bells in the heart. The ordinary meaning is the same: my friends, my fellow travelers. But I have a very insistent feeling within me to give you the most pregnant words.

Those words are:

Mehre hamsafar, Mehre hamdham, Mehre dost.

Mehre hamsafar means “my fellow travelers.” Mehre hamdham means “my heart.” Mehre dost means “my friend.” But such a vast difference….

English has become more and more prose and less and less poetry, for the simple reason that it has been serving scientific and objective technological progress. It has to be definite, it cannot be poetic.

You cannot write mathematics into poetry; neither physics, nor chemistry. Because of this predominant factor of science and technology, English has lost its glamour, its splendor, its music. It has to gain it back, because the objective side of life is not enough. Unless your heart is moved, the words are not very much pregnant with meaning and significance.

These five days have been of immense significance. It can be said that almost never in the history of man has such a phenomenon happened. This has been the deep search of meditators for thousands of years, that once a man becomes enlightened, once a man becomes full of light and knows his own eternity, he disappears into the ultimate, into the cosmos. He cannot come again through the womb of a woman. He has no desires, he has no longings. He no longer has any of the passions which drag human souls again and again to the birth and death cycle.