We have become accustomed to misery. Miseries give you a sense of being. If you have nothing to complain about, you feel that you are no more. That’s why people are complaining every day with everyone. They are talking about their miseries and they are very happy when they talk about them. Look at a person when he talks about his miseries. He feels that he is something. The more he talks, the more he exaggerates his miseries, the greater he becomes. Look at a man’s face when he is talking about his miseries. He looks ecstatic.

If you go to a doctor and you think that you have cancer or you have TB or something big, and the doctor says “It’s nothing, this ordinary medicine will do,” you feel very disheartened: such a deep misery and he is saying that it is nothing, just an ordinary illness, and it will disappear using an ordinary medicine! You feel as if you have been dethroned. You were sitting on the throne of cancer and he says “This is just an ordinary disease, an ordinary medicine will cure it.” You talk about your miseries, you diseases, illnesses, you magnify them. With their magnification, you feel that you are magnified.

That’s why the mind, the ill mind, asks “Why meditate?” The very question, the why, the very why, means that you need meditation. A person who is not in need of meditation never asks why. Really, he stops asking, because all asking is part of anxiety. If you are silent within, peaceful, blissful, you don’t ask.

Philosophers are the most miserable men. They go on asking “Why this? Why that?” That constant why is an inner disease. Look at it in this way: only when something goes wrong do you ask why. When everything is okay, you never ask why. You ask why there is misery, you never ask why there is bliss. You ask why there is death, you never ask why there is life. You ask why there is hate, you never ask why there is love. When there is love, there is no question about it. You accept it totally. When there is hate, the question arises. When you are in bliss, no questioning, no inquiry, no philosophy arises out of it. When you are in anguish, suffering, you ask “Why this suffering? Why am I suffering? Why is the whole world suffering?” Only when something goes wrong does the question arise. When everything is okay, there is no questioning. You accept existence in its totality.

So remember this: if you have a “Why?” you need meditation, because without meditation the why will not disappear. And the answer comes only to those who have stopped questioning, because the answer can only be understood by those who are not in the mood to question. A questioning mind is not in the mood to hear. It goes on questioning.

Questions are created in the mind, just like leaves grow on a tree. If your mind is ill, questions will come out of it. If your mind has disappeared, and inner wholeness and health has been gained, questions will stop.

And when there is no question, you have got the ultimate answer. That ultimate answer is not in words. It is existential. You live it, you become it.

Now get ready for our morning meditation.