... having more. Prayer in its truest sense is thankfulness, gratitude, but there is no way to say it. There is no need to say it. One of the greatest philosophers of this age, Ludwig Wittgenstein, used to say that that which cannot be said should not be said, because to say it is to profane it. To say it is to do violence to it. Saying it is destructive of it. Wittgenstein is not only a philosopher, he is...

... third is Shiva, the destroyer. These are the three aspects of existence: things are created, maintained for a while and then destroyed. And all processes of creation maintenance and destruction are divine; these are the three faces of God. Nothing is wrong about destruction. Destruction follows creation out of necessity, just as day follows night, night follows day. No other religion of the world has...

.... Now physicists will agree more with the Hindu idea than with the Christian trinity. They have discovered black holes, and black holes are nothing but the possibility from where things disappear into nothingness. And now they are discovering white holes - the other aspect of the black hole - from where things appear out of nothing. Shiva is the god of destruction, god of death, but even a god of...

... death is created, projected by human mind, and human mind is after all human. You can create beautiful philosophy but something of you is bound to be projected in it. Shiva's wife, Parvati, died. Now he is the god of destruction, death, but he could not accept the death of Parvati. You see the human element? He took the dead body of his wife, carried her on his shoulders for twelve years around the...

... Mohammed, uneducated, could see the foolishness of it - you make the statues, and then you worship them - so he destroyed all those three hundred and sixty-five statues. I am not in favor of his destruction. Instead... the same thing started again. He himself started it, because he found man is so much in love with his own misery that he cannot understand the idea of freedom - because to be free is to be...

... at the same time he was worshiping the SHRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA, the Hindu bible, which is the only book in the world which teaches violence. And I cannot conceive that he could not see the contradiction. Krishna, in the BHAGAVADGITA, says continually to Arjuna, "It is God's will that you should go to war and destroy your enemies." But because it was a family quarrel - they were cousin...

... postal system; He never speaks directly. The whole book of the BHAGAVADGITA is full of arguments for violence - even God is for violence. My puzzle has been that Mahatma Gandhi, teaching non-violence, continually carried the BHAGAVADGITA with him. He worshiped the BHAGAVADGITA; every morning a part of it was recited in the ashram of Mahatma Gandhi. And he never became aware of the fact that it is the...

... only book in the world which teaches so openly in favor of violence, and even drags God into it. Man's blindness seems to be unlimited. So for thousands of years, if you have been in chains, handcuffed, you must have started believing that these are ornaments, that this is the will of God. Your parents cannot be your enemies. If they take you to the church or to the temple, they take you there...

... the water die; that is violence. So he never took a bath. And he used to live naked - you know the Indian roads - he was walking because he was not using any vehicle, he could not according to his ideology. To ride on a horse is violence, to ride in a bullock- cart is violence. He had to walk, and without shoes, because shoes were made out of leather - that is violence. And twenty-five hundred years...

... ago... even NOW Indian roads are not contemporary, at least one thousand years behind. Twenty-five centuries ago, walking in Bihar - which is still very dusty - he must have been gathering dust in the hot summer, perspiring and gathering dust, layers upon layers of dust. He was not even ready to clean his teeth, he was against washing his mouth, rinsing his mouth. Always that violence - if you rinse...

... is qualitatively different, it has a grace. It comes not just as a commodity to be sold, it is a piece of art ... and the customers are no longer ordinary human beings. To the person of awareness the whole existence becomes divine. He cannot hurt even a tree. Out of this awareness comes a life of non-violence. Mahatma Gandhi was trying just the opposite way. He was trying to practice non-violence...

..., which goes against the whole science of meditation. You cannot practice non-violence. You can force yourself to be non-violent, but deep down you will remain violent, and it will show in small things. He never could attain the non-violence that comes naturally to the meditator, because he never knew anything about meditation. All that he knew about religion was the very ordinary religion practiced by...

... silence. But the laughter of a man of observation also has a different quality: you always laugh at others, he laughs at himself. Laughing at others is a little cruel -- there is some violence hidden in it -- but laughing at oneself is a great awakening. Ta Hui is giving his experiences as clearly as it is possible to give them in language. I agree with him categorically that every enlightened man has...

... fundamental rule is: do not interfere. That is real non-violence. If you go to Lao Tzu and you say that somebody is a thief, he says, 'So what! Somebody is a thief. Let it be so.' Lao Tzu is unworried about reality. If somebody is mad. Lao Tzu will say, 'So what! Let it be so. If that's how the whole wills it then that is how it has to be. Who are you'. Who has given you the authority to change anything, to...

... transform it? Leave reality to itself and everything goes beautifully. rhythmically. Interfere, and everything is disturbed.' You have heard about the non-violence of Mahavir, you have heard about the non-violence of Buddha, but they are nothing compared to Lao Tzu. In their non-violence there is a subtle violence still: the violence of interference. The good has to be brought in, the bad has to be...

... phenomenon of slapping the child say that the first slap comes as a shock, because the child is very delicate. For nine months he has lived in a very protected environment - that slap is like a great shock. With a shock his life starts. Then there are even more cruel people. Jews will do a circumcision - it is a great shock to cut the foreskin of the genital organs. You have started violence, you have...

... death? Brutality, violence, insensitivity is taught only then can millions of people be turned into slaves. You think you are free people? Slavery has just become more sophisticated, that's all. Slavery still exists. No society up to now has ever been a free society. All societies have been slave societies. Yes, one thing is certain: slavery changes its forms. First it was very gross, now it is very...

... responsible for the great Indian war, MAHABHARATA. Jains judge everything by the criterion of violence or nonviolence. Krishna was responsible for this whole violence. Arjuna was going to be a saint; he was just escaping from the war, and this man Krishna persuaded him to fight. So the responsibility for the violence goes directly to Krishna - he becomes responsible. Jains have put Krishna into the seventh...

... hate, violence, aggression; it is afraid of love. And once love explodes in the world this so-called society is going to disappear, so there is going to be a great clash. For example a loving person cannot be persuaded to go to war; it is impossible. The different states cannot exist if the person is loving, because where will they find their armies? From where will Adolf Hitler find his Nazis and...

.... And all these groups that are being run here are basically meant for that. So in some groups I even allow fighting. Anger has to be expressed. It has to be vomited out, because if you don't vomit it out, it will remain in your system, it will poison you. Now that becomes a problem. People go on asking me, 'Why is violence allowed?" It is not violence - it is catharsis. But society forces you to...

... repress. It is as if you go to the hospital and you say to the doctors, "Why do you take pus out of people?" What can the doctors do? - the pus is there, it has to be taken out. It hurts when the pus is taken out but it has to be taken out, otherwise it will go on growing: it will become cancerous. So anger, violence has to be thrown out. Devices have to be found so all that the society has...

... think in terms of helping other people to understand, and that is an impossible job. The world is so big, and people are so full of violence that it seems the calamity is not coming from outside, but it is the accumulated violence in people themselves that is going to explode this earth. But don't think in terms of helping. Then you will not feel helpless and you will not feel tense. I don't feel...

... those two cities completely. He destroyed those two cities completely - and it is very strange that those two cities had the same population as Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed by man, but the OLD TESTAMENT story is that God destroyed those two sexually perverted cities. What I am going to tell you is a Hassidic story based on the OLD TESTAMENT version of the destruction...

... Baal Shem invented the story or whether he was telling the true story, I am with him. In the first place a God who believes in destruction is not a God. A God who cannot transform people from their perversions is not a God. Baal Shem is not only saving those two cities, he is also saving God's godliness: his compassion, his love, his understanding. Kaveesha, forget all about the world. You become the...

... attention. In my opinion, an unavoidable symptom of mental health is an ambition-free life. Ambition is a disease and, therefore, it is destructive. Diseases are always fellow-travellers of death. Ambition is destruction. It is violence. It is hatred coming from a diseased mind; it is jealousy. It is a chronic struggle between man and man. It is war. Even the ambition for salvation is destructive. That is...

... towards destruction ultimately be comes suicidal. If the taste for destruction develops, ultimately it destroys the self. There is not much difference between the killer and the self-killer. The extremity of violence changes into violence against the self. I knew that person who was murdered at night, and I also knew the man who had murdered him. They were old enemies and for years they were searching...

... few! Not love but hatred itself has become the basis of life: and then it should be only natural that one finds a hidden pleasure in death and our life should find a helpless anxiety and attraction for destruction. Individuals are not attracted without reason to violence, and nation to wars. What is this hatred? It is not a revenge on others for not being able to take one's own life to the summits...

... killer has taken up the cover of non-violence; and the minds filled with hatred talk the language of love. This self-deception is very easy. When has acting in dramas been difficult? Then, in the market of culture, the good looking toys have always been sold at cheap rates; but may it be remembered that a bargain which is cheap on the surface proves very costly in the long run, because he who hides...

... violence against self. It becomes enmity with the self itself. Worldly ambition is violence against others; ambition for salvation is violence against the self. Where there is ambition there is violence. It is another matter whether it is outward or inward. Violence in every state and form is always destructive. Therefore, only those realizations can be creative which are free from healthy and calm minds...

...;There are many types of clothes. There are many types of self-deceptions. You should beware of whatever can be put on as a cover. Whatever covers the reality of the self should be for self-deception. To them alone I am giving the name of 'clothes'. If a man is a sinner, he puts on the clothes of virtue; if a man is violent, he puts on the clothes of non-violence; if a man is ignorant, he stuffs...

... in the neighbourhood. Every body was busy talking about it. There was sensation in the air and the eyes of men which were normally lustreless, were shining at that time. Neither any one had pain nor sympathy; only a diseased and undesirable feeling was visible. Can death and murder also give pleasure? Can destruction also bring happiness? May be it is so. Otherwise, public mind could not be so much...

... enthused in wars. When the current of life cannot proceed on the path of creation then all of a sudden it gets busy in destruction; then, for its manifestation, the only alternative is destruction. He who does not make himself creative, changes the direction of his life to destruction in spite of himself. In individual, in society, in nations, there is all over an anxiety for destruction. His progress...

... and full of feeling; and as deep as the pride is, so deep does the heart loose its simplicity and feeling. What is religion? When some one asks me I say: "Dharma is simplicity of heart, the feeling power of heart". But what is current in the name of religion is the manifestation of pride in its very subtle and intricate forms. Pride is the root of all violence. "I am" - this very...

... feeling is violence. Then "I am something" is a bigger violence. A violent mind cannot find the true beauty; because violence makes oneself harsh. Harshness means closing the doors of the self and how can one who has closed within himself be related to all? There was a saint Hasan. He had been hungry for several days. He stayed outside a village. Some of his companions were also there. They...

... after dying myself. For finding an entry in true life one has to die in the false life. To gain existence in the supreme, one has to loose the atom. But what is death on one side becomes life on the other. Death of ego is the life of the soul. That is not destruction. That is existence. Those who cannot understand this truth remain devoid of life. Friend, the ocean is not the life of river; it is its...

... own thing. From the other side Mahavira says the same thing: 'Don't interfere with anybody's thing. Let him do his karma, let him fulfill it. Don't interfere. Interference is violence; when you interfere with somebody's karma you are doing a violence, you are throwing that man from his own path. Don't interfere.' A beautiful thing! But how things can go wrong, even beautiful things! The terapanth...

... violence is the greatest sin. They have their own valuation -- violence is the greatest sin, untruth comes next. But Hindus say no, untruth comes first, so let him be true; he has to tell the truth and let things happen, whatsoever happens. Gandhi said -- Gandhi had his own answer about this -- HE said, 'I cannot choose between these two because both are supreme values, and there is no choice. So I will...

... violence happen, or if you feel, 'That man is worth more than me,' stand in between. Millions of possibilities will be there. Don't fix it beforehand. Just be aware and alert and let things happen. You may not wish to say anything. Why not be silent? Don't tell any untruth, don't help the man in violence, don't force the murderer to commit two murders. Why not be silent? Who is forcing you? But let the...