I see Buddha Hall with all my people…just for a moment like a flash, so many moments of communion. It is not just a gathering; it is not a church. People do not come to it formally. People come to me, not to it. Whenever there is a master and a disciple – it may be only the master and just one disciple, that does not matter – communion happens. It is happening right now, and there are only four of you. Perhaps with my eyes closed I can’t even count, and it is good; only then can one remain in the world of the unaccountable…and tax free too! If you can count, then taxation comes in. I am unaccountable, nobody has ever taxed me.

I was a professor in a university. When they wanted to raise my pay, I said, “No.” The vice chancellor could not believe it; he said, “Why not?”

I said, “Beyond what I am getting now I would have to pay taxes, and I hate taxation. I would rather remain with the pay I am getting right now than get more and be bothered by the income tax department.” I never went beyond the limit which was allowed to remain tax free.

I have never paid any income tax; in fact there is no income. I have been giving to the world, not taking anything from the world. It is outcome, not income. I have given out of my heart and my being.

It is good that flowers are allowed to be tax free, otherwise they would stop flowering. It is good that snow is allowed to be tax free, otherwise it would not snow, believe me!

I must tell you that after the Russian revolution something happened to the Russian genius; Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Maxim Gorky – they all disappeared. Yet in Russia today, the writer, the novelist, the artist, is the most highly paid and honored person. So what happened? Why don’t they create any more books like Brothers Karamazov, Anna Karenina, Fathers and Sons, The Mother, or Notes From the Underground? Why? I want to ask a thousand times, why? What happened to the Russian genius for writing novels?

I don’t think any other country could compete with Russia. If you count only ten novels of the world, just out of necessity you will have to include five Russian novels, leaving only five for the whole remaining world. What happened to this great genius? It died! Because flowers cannot be ordered, there are no ten commandments for them. Flowers flower, you cannot order them to flower. Snow falls – you cannot issue a commandment, you cannot make a date with it. That is impossible. And that is so with the buddhas. They say what they want to say, when they want to say it. They will say, even to a single person, something which the whole world would have liked to hear.

Now, you are here, perhaps only four. I say “perhaps” because my mathematics are poor, and with closed eyes…you can understand…and with tears in my eyes, not because only four are present but for this beautiful morning, for the sunrise.

Thank God. He thinks of me; although he does not exist, still he thinks of me. I deny him, and yet he thinks of me. Great God. Existence seems to take care. But you do not know the ways of existence; they are unpredictable. I have always loved the unpredictable.