Soon you will see in our meditation, even without tickling, people go mad! And I have said that if anybody sits silently like a buddha, everybody is allowed to tickle him. It is not the place for any spectators.

The master just tickles you to make you laugh. But he cannot create laughter by words; he creates devices. Tickling is just a name of a device. It says nothing. But the very presence of the master is itself a device. Without saying anything, he penetrates those who are receptive, who have opened the doors of their hearts.

But the poor monk is in the same situation as the whole world. Rather than asking, “Why can’t I receive? Why can’t I realize the unsayable?” he asks,

“Why didn’t I hear it, then?”
Nanyo answered, “You don’t hear it, but you should not prevent others from doing so.”

It is one of the misfortunes that the people who have no understanding are professors, priests. Almost half the world is communist and denies the very experience of religion having any validity – and none of them has ever meditated, none of them has ever explored in. Those who have gone in have always come with a smile; expounding, without saying a word, the blissfulness, the fragrance, the whispering silence.

Nanyo said, “You don’t hear it, but please don’t start telling other people, ‘Nanyo is mad, he says that the mind of a buddha is nothing but fences, walls and broken tiles. And he also says that they expound Buddhism always and busily.’ Please don’t do that. If you cannot hear it, keep it a secret.”

“Who hears it?” asked the monk.
“All the saints,” answered Nanyo.

To hear or to listen makes the whole difference. Everybody can hear sound, but if you want to listen, you have to be very close to your ears, alert and aware. In such a moment as this, you can hear it. If your mind is silent… That is the block; if it is removed – and if this silence cannot remove it, nothing else can remove it – then this bird chirping is teaching you the eternal truth of life; then this very silence becomes the teaching. Nothing is said, but a deep understanding starts arising within you.

“Who hears it?” the monk asked.
“All the saints.”