The bureaucracy, the government, the politics, the stupidity…they are synonymous in my language. They may not be synonyms in the dictionary, but I don’t have a dictionary anymore. For the past few months now I have not read any book. I have stopped reading for the simple reason that what is beautiful has already been understood. Now it is pointless to read. I don’t even read the Vedas, the Bible, the Koran. There is nothing that can be added to my experience, so I have stopped. Why waste your vision, your eyesight? It is not worth it.

When my doctors started saying that if I still wanted to study I would have to use spectacles, I said, “To hell with all books, because I hate spectacles.” I hate all kinds of specs because they obstruct, they come in between. I want things face to face, directly, immediate. So I have stopped reading books. And the library is so rich, and so big, containing all that is great. But it no longer matters to me, I have gone beyond the words.

I am not silent because I don’t want to say anything to you, but because what I see is really spellbinding. It is really…this is the moment when one says, “Aahhh!” and this is the meaning of Om. But you have to experience it; you have to live it. There is no other way to know it. To be is to know. To be is the only way – Tao, the way. Tao does not mean anything else, it simply means the way to be poetic again, to be a singer again, a Baul, a dancer, a mad dancer – because if when you dance you take care of your steps, then it is not a real dance. When all is forgotten, the steps and all, when only the dance remains, the whirling – the whirling Jalaluddin Rumi knew – just the whirling….

Twelve hundred years ago Rumi created the whirling dervishes, the dancing Sufis. He himself danced for thirty-six hours!

I am a simple man. This is so beautiful…. Basho where are you? Come write again…paint…Basho, again say:

The ancient pond

A frog jumps

and the silence…Om,

Om mani padme hum.

This is beauty…

Beauty,

and beauty is God.

I am facing God.

I am touching him.

So immensely vast.

Om mani padme hum

Om mani padme hum.

At this moment I can create Tolstoy…Dostoyevsky…Leonardo…Turgenev…Lao Tzu…Chuang Tzu…Buddha…Mahakashyapa…Bodhidharma…Kabir…Jesus….

The silence is so beautiful.

There are beauties and beauties