He was rich, he had everything that it was possible to have. He became very unhappy. One day he escaped from his palace, left all the riches, his beautiful wife, his newly born child – he escaped. He became a beggar. He started seeking for happiness. He went to this guru, to that guru; he asked everybody what to do to be happy – and of course there were a thousand and one people ready to advise him and he followed everybody’s advice. And the more he followed their advice, the more confused he became.

Buddha tried whatsoever was said to him. Somebody said: “Do hatha yoga” – he became a hatha yogi. He did yoga postures and he did them to the very extreme. Nothing came out of it. Maybe you can have a better body with hatha yoga, but you cannot become happy. Just a better body, a more healthy body, makes no difference. With more energy you will have more energy at your disposal to become unhappy – but you will become unhappy. What will you do with it? If you have more money, what are you going to do with it? – you will do that which you can do. And if a little money makes you so miserable, more money will make you more miserable. It is simple arithmetic.

Buddha dropped all yoga. He went to other teachers, the raja yogis, who teach no body postures, who teach only mantras, chantings, meditations. He did that too, but nothing came out of it. He was really in search. When you are really in search then nothing can help, then there is no remedy.

Mediocre people stop somewhere on the way; they are not real seekers. A real seeker is one who goes to the very end of the search and comes to realize that all search is nonsense. Searching itself is a way of desire – that he recognized one day. One day he had left his palace, he had left his worldly possessions; after six years of spiritual search, he dropped all search. The material search was dropped before, now he dropped the spiritual search. This world was dropped before, now he dropped the other world too.

He was completely rid of desire…and that very moment it happened. That very moment there was benediction. When he was completely rid of desire, when he had lost all hope, the future disappeared – because the future exists because of your hope. Future is not part of time, remember. Future is part of your hope, desire; future is part of your greed. Future is not part of time.

Time is always present. Time is never past, never future. Time is always here. The now is infinite. The time never goes anywhere and never comes from anywhere. It is already here and always here. It is your greed, it is your desire, it is your hope that some way, in some situation, you are going to be happy.

All desire dropped, all hope dropped, all hope abandoned, suddenly Gautama Siddhartha became a buddha. It was always there but he was looking somewhere else. It was there, inside, outside. It is how the universe is made. It is blissful, it is truth, it is divine.

Man remains miserable because man goes on missing this fundamental truth about his desiring. This has to be understood, then these sutras will be very simple.