PART TWO

Once it happened: Mulla Nasruddin was coming back, completely drunk, in the wee hours of the morning. As he was passing by a cemetery he looked at the signboard. On it was written in big letters, capital letters: RING FOR THE CARETAKER -- and that's what he did. Of course, so early in the morning, the caretaker was disturbed. He came out, staggering, angry, and when he looked at Nasruddin, absolutely drunk, he became even more angry. He asked, "Why? Why did you ring? Why did you ring for me? What is the matter? What do you want?" Nasruddin looked at him for one minute, silently, then looked at the signboard and said, "I want to know, why can't you ring that d***bell yourself?" It was written: RING FOR THE CARETAKER. Now how to interpret it? It depends on you. Don't interpret -- listen. And when you interpret you can't listen, because the consciousness cannot do two opposite things simultaneously. If you start thinking, listening stops. Just listen as you listen to music -- a different quality of listening because you don't interpret. There is no meaning in the sounds. This is also music. This Sosan is a musician, not a philosopher. This Sosan is not saying words, he is saying more -- more than the words. They have a significance but they don't have any meaning. They are like musical sounds.You go and sit near a waterfall. You listen to it, but do you interpret what the waterfall says? It says nothing... still it says. It says much, much that cannot be said. What do you do near a waterfall? You listen, you become silent and quiet, you absorb. You allow the waterfall to go deeper and deeper within you. Then everything becomes quiet and silent within. You become a temple -- the unknown enters through the waterfall. What do you do when you listen to the songs of the birds, or wind passing through the trees, or dry leaves being blown by the breeze? What do you do? You simply listen. This Sosan is not a philosopher, he is not a theologian, he is not a priest. He does not want to sell any idea to you, he is not interested in ideas. He is not there to convince you, he is simply blooming. He is a waterfall, or he is a wind blowing through the trees, or he is just a song of the birds -- no meaning, but much significance. You have to absorb that significance, only then will you be able to understand. So listen, but don't think. And then it is possible for much to happen within you, because I tell you: this man -- this Sosan about whom nothing much is known -- he was a man of power, a man who has come to know. And when he says something he carries something of the unknown to the world of the known. With him enters the divine, a ray of light into the darkness of your mind.Before we enter into his words, remember the significance of the words, not the meaning; the music, the melody, not the meaning; the sound of his soundless mind, his heart, not his thinking. You have to listen to his being, the waterfall. How to listen? Just be silent. Don't bring your mind in. Don't start thinking, "What is he saying?" Just listen without deciding this way or that, without saying whether he is right or wrong, whether you are convinced or not. He does not bother about your conviction, you also need not bother about it. You simply listen and delight. Such persons as Sosan are to be delighted in; they are natural phenomena. A beautiful rock -- what do you do with it? You delight in it. You touch, you go around it, you feel it, the moss on it. What do you do with clouds moving in the sky? You dance on the earth, you look at them, or you just keep quiet and lie down on the ground and look at them and let them float. And they fill you. Not only the outer sky -- by and by, the more you become silent, they fill your inner sky also. Suddenly you are not there, only clouds are moving, in and out. The division is dropped, the boundary is no more there. You have become the sky and the sky has become you. Treat Sosan as a natural phenomenon. He is not a man. He is God, he is Tao, he is a Buddha. Before we try to move into his significance, a few things have to be understood.Before we enter into his words, remember the significance of the words, not the meaning; the music, the melody, not the meaning; the sound of his soundless mind, his heart, not his thinking. You have to listen to his being, the waterfall. How to listen? Just be silent. Don't bring your mind in. Don't start thinking, "What is he saying?" Just listen without deciding this way or that, without saying whether he is right or wrong, whether you are convinced or not. He does not bother about your conviction, you also need not bother about it. You simply listen and delight. Such persons as Sosan are to be delighted in; they are natural phenomena. A beautiful rock -- what do you do with it? You delight in it. You touch, you go around it, you feel it, the moss on it. What do you do with clouds moving in the sky? You dance on the earth, you look at them, or you just keep quiet and lie down on the ground and look at them and let them float. And they fill you. Not only the outer sky -- by and by, the more you become silent, they fill your inner sky also. Suddenly you are not there, only clouds are moving, in and out. The division is dropped, the boundary is no more there. You have become the sky and the sky has become you. Treat Sosan as a natural phenomenon. He is not a man. He is God, he is Tao, he is a Buddha. Before we try to move into his significance, a few things have to be understood. They will give you a push. MIND IS A DISEASE. This is a basic truth the East has discovered. The West says mind can become ill, can be healthy. Western psychology depends on this: the mind can be healthy or ill. But the East says mind as such is the disease, it cannot be healthy. No psychiatry will help; at the most you can make it normally ill. So there are two types of illness with mind: normally ill -- that means you have the same illness as others around you; or abnormally ill -- that means you are something unique. Your disease is not ordinary -- exceptional. Your disease is individual, not of the crowd; that's the only difference. Normally ill or abnormally ill, but mind cannot be healthy. Why? The East says the very nature of mind is such that it will remain unhealthy. The word 'health' is beautiful. It comes from the same root as the word 'whole'. Health, healing, whole, holy -- they all come from the same root. The mind cannot be healthy because it can never be whole. Mind is always divided; division is its base. If it cannot be whole, how can it be healthy? And if it cannot be healthy, how can it be holy? All minds are profane. There is nothing like a holy mind. A holy man lives without the mind because he lives without division. Mind is the disease. And what is the name of that disease? Aristotle is the name, or if you really want to make it look like a disease then you can coin a word: ARISTOTLITIS. Then it looks exactly like a disease. Why is Aristotle the disease? Because Aristotle says, "Either this or that. Choose!" And choice is the function of the mind; mind cannot be choiceless. Choose and you are in the trap, because whenever you choose you have chosen something against something else. If you are for something, you must be against something; you cannot be only for, you cannot be only against. When the 'for' enters, the 'against' follows as a shadow. When the 'against' is there, the 'for' must be there -- hidden or not hidden. When you choose, you divide. Then you say, "This is good, that is wrong." And life is a unity. Existence remains undivided, existence remains in a deep unison. It is oneness. If you say, "This is beautiful and that is ugly," mind has entered, because life is both together. And the beautiful becomes ugly, and the ugly goes on becoming beautiful. There is no boundary; no watertight compartments are there. Life goes on flowing from this to that. Mind has fixed compartments. Fixedness is the nature of mind and fluidity is the nature of life. That's why mind is obsession; it is always fixed, it has a solidness about it. And life is not solid; it is fluid, flexible, goes on moving to the opposite. Something is alive this moment, next moment is dead. Someone was young this moment, next moment he has become old. The eyes were so beautiful, now they are no more there -- just ruins. The face was so roselike, now nothing is there -- not even a ghost of the past. Beautiful becomes ugly, life becomes death, and death goes on taking new birth. What to do with life? You cannot choose. If you want to be WITH life, with the whole, you have to be choiceless.