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His shirt was rather short

and the man behind him pulled it lower,

thinking it looked unseemly.

Nasruddin immediately pulled the shirt of the man

in front of him.

What are you doing? asked the man in front.

Don’t ask me, ask the man behind – he started it,

said Nasruddin.

258. Love.

The real religious experience

cannot be organized, taught or transmitted.

To systematize it is to kill it.

It is so living and moving and dynamic

that to impose a pattern on it is impossible;

and the experience is always so unique and individual

that it cannot be put into any category –

although it happens when the individual is not.

It cannot be followed,

for everyone has to find it for himself,

and that is the beauty of it,

and also its freedom and virginity.

It is not new in the sense of any opposition to the old,

it is new in the sense of timelessness –

that is, eternally fresh and innocent –

as every flower is new

and every sunrise is new

and every love is new.

It is not borrowed from the past,

it is not based on any tradition,

it is not derived from without,

it happens within,

without any causality.

It happens unconditionally.

It is not continuous with the mind,

it is a discontinuous explosion.

There are clouds in the sky

and the sky cannot be seen,

but there is no causal chain.

The clouds have gone

and the sky is clear

but there is no cause-and-effect relationship.

The sky has not even known the clouds!

It has not been affected by them in any way whatsoever.

259. Love.

Life becomes more authentic

in the direct encountering of death.

But we always try to escape the fact of death,

and so life becomes pseudo and phony.

Even death, when authentic, has a beauty of its own

while pseudo-life is just ugly.

Meditate on death

because there is no way to know life

unless you stand face to face with death.

And it is everywhere;

wherever life is death is also.

They are really two aspects of one and the

same phenomenon,

and when one comes to know this, one transcends both.

Only in that transcendence is the total flowering of consciousness

and the ecstasy of being.

260. Love.

Man adds everything to his ego –

while everything goes on without him.

He is nothing,

but he thinks himself everything.

Mulla Nasruddin was walking past a well

when he had the impulse to look into it.

It was night, and as he peered

into the deep water

he saw the moon’s reflection there.

I must save the moon! the Mulla thought,

otherwise she will never wane

and the fasting month of Ramadan

will never come to an end.

He found a rope, threw it in and called down:

Hold tight! Keep bright, help is at hand!

The rope caught in a rock inside the well

and Nasruddin heaved as hard as he could.

Straining back he suddenly felt the rope give way

as it became loose and he was thrown on his back.

As he lay there panting

he saw the moon riding in the sky above.

Glad to be of service, said Nasruddin.

Just as well I came along, wasn’t it?

261. Love.

Are you really aware of what anger is?

Are you really aware of it when it is present?

I ask these questions

because man is never present in the present.

Man lives in the past

and only becomes aware of anything

when it has become a part of his memory.

One becomes aware of anger and sadness

only when they are all over,

and then awareness is just pseudo-awareness;

it is not awareness but remembering,

and remembering leads nowhere

because it is running in a circle.

Then one can fight with anger

but can never understand it,

and fighting with anger is anger –

of course more subtle

and therefore more strong and more poisonous.

So do not think about anger or sadness or happiness

and do not understand remembrance to be awareness

but be aware when anger is present.

Be totally conscious of it,

live it consciously and do not escape from it

and then you will know what it is.

To understand it is to transcend it.

Then you will find a silence descending on you

which passes all understanding.

262. Love.

Never to have seen the truth

is better than to have seen it

and not to have acted on it.

263. Love.

One should never be afraid of rising thoughts or desires

but only of the delay in being aware of them.

264. Love.

The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace;

and the brook would lose its song if we removed the rocks.

265. Love.

Be empty and you will know.

Be empty and you will be the mirror.

Only total nothingness is capable of knowing all!

I have heard that the nun Chiyono studied for years

and meditated for years on the ultimate questions

of existence

but was unable to find the light.

The thinking was filling her so much

that she could not be a passage for the divine.

She was so filled with herself

that she could not be a host to the divine guest,