The ordinary mind always wants business. Any kind of business is okay. Give it business. Have some target, some goal: money, power, prestige. And if you are tired of all that, then meditation, god, paradise, truth. But again you are substituting old goals with new goals, old ambitions with new ambitions. Nothing radically is changed. You remain the same, your gestalt remains the same, just the object is changed. And because of the change of object you can feel very spiritual, very holy.

The mind is cunning. Be aware that it can exist only when you are in business, when you are busy. When you are not busy it evaporates, it cannot exist without business. Hence people are busy even without business.

The co-ed was lying with her boyfriend and was trying to make an impression on her eager young date. “So you’re named Tom. I know George means lover of horses, and Philip means beloved, and Don means chief. Do you know what Tom means?”

“Business, baby, business.”

But that’s exactly what the mind means: constant business, day in, day out. If you are awake there is business, if you are asleep there is business. You may be dreaming, but it is business.

Mind does not leave you even a few moments of open sky, unclouded, so that you can see the reality as it is. It keeps your eyes clouded, full of dust: the dust of desire, the dust of thought, the dust of memory, imagination. And these layers and layers of dust have completely covered your mirror-like consciousness which is capable to reflect all.

It always keeps you somewhere else. It never allows you to be herenow, because to be herenow means to be unoccupied. That is the second lesson to be learned.

Hence the insistence of all the buddhas to live in the present, to be present to the present. Mind can only remain occupied either in the past or in the future. How can it become occupied in the present? It is impossible. The present simply destroys the ego. Present takes away all the rubbish from your mind, all junk. It simply leaves you open, available, vulnerable, receptive. Thrilled, ecstatic, of course, but not occupied.

Whenever you are here and now, you are not. Let me repeat it: whenever you are here and now, you are not. God is, buddhahood is…. Because here and now your small mind cannot exist. It melts, it disappears.

The mind can exist only with the nonexistential. A rare phenomenon, a contradiction on the surface: the mind can exist only with the nonexistential – because the mind itself is nonexistential, it feeds on the nonexistential.

Two things are the most nonexistential in the world: one is the past, which is no more. Another is the future, which is not yet. Mind exists on these two props: the “no more” and the “not yet.” And between the two is the small interval, the atomic interval. It is so small that unless you are absolutely alert and aware you are bound to miss it.

To be in the present means not to be. And not to be is the door to god, the door to truth, the door to reality.