Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
Words are not just words. They have moods, climates of their own. When a word settles inside you, it brings a different climate to your mind, a different approach, a different vision. Call the same thing a different name and see: something is immediately different.
So one of the most important things to remember is, if it is possible, live an experience and dont fix it by any word, because that will make it narrow. You are sitting... it is a silent evening. The sun has gone and the stars have started appearing. Just be. Dont even say, This is beautiful, because the moment you say that it is beautiful, it is no longer the same. By saying beautiful you are bringing in the past, and all the experiences that you have said were beautiful have colored the word. Your word beautiful contains many experiences of beauty but this is totally new! It has never been so, and it will never be so again. Why bring in the past?
The present is so vast, and the past is so narrow. Why look through a hole in the wall when you can come out and look at the whole sky? So try not to use words but if you have to, then be very choosy about them because each word has a nuance of its own. Be very poetic about it. Use it with taste, love, feeling.
There are feeling words and there are intellectual words. Drop intellectual words more and more. Use more and more feeling words. There are political words and there are religious words. Drop political words. There are words which immediately create conflict. The moment you utter them, argument arises. So never use logical, argumentative language. Use the language of affection, of caring, of love, so that no argument arises.
If one starts feeling this way, one sees a tremendous change arising. If one is a little alert in life, many miseries can be avoided. A single word uttered in unconsciousness can create a long chain of misery. A slight difference, just a very small turning and it makes a lot of change. One should become very, very careful and use words when absolutely necessary. Avoid contaminated words. Use fresh words, noncontroversial, which are not arguments but which are just expressions of your feelings.
If one can become a connoisseur of words, ones whole life will be totally different. Your relationships will be totally different because ninety-nine percent of a relationship is through words, gestures and those are also words. The same word has created so many troubles for you and again you blurt it out. If a word brings misery, anger, conflict, argument, drop it. What is the point in carrying it? Replace it by something better. The best is silence. Next best is singing, poetry, love.
A
ABSTINENCE
You can be a celibate, but to be a celibate does not mean to go beyond sexuality. Sexuality has already penetrated. The moment you were in the womb of your mother you became a sexual being. There is no way to avoid it. So all that you can do is repress it. You will become unnatural, and your whole life will be a perverted life. Repression is possible, but transcendence is not.
I have heard:
Ellen and Dolph had been married thirty years and never missed a night of connubial bliss. One day Ellen visited her doctor and was told that she must have complete rest and quiet for six months or she would not live.
Ellen and Dolph decided they should stay completely apart during this period. She moved into an upstairs bedroom and he remained downstairs.
After three months of complete abstinence and solitude, his will power collapsed, and Dolph started for her bedroom. As he started to climb the stairs, he saw her coming down.
Dear, she said, I was just coming down to die.
Im glad, honey, he said, because I was just going up to kill you.
Dont be mad, let things be simple. There is no need to kill or die. Repression will make things very complicated in your life; you will become split, schizophrenic just celibate on the surface, and deep down just the opposite of it.
ABSTRACTIONS
It is always simple to love abstract things. It is simpler to love humanity than human beings, because in loving humanity you are not risking anything. A single human being is far more dangerous than the whole of humanity. Humanity is a word, there is no corresponding reality to it. The human being is a reality, and when you come across a reality there are going to be good times, bad times, pain, pleasure, ups and downs, highs and lows, agonies and ecstasies. Loving humanity, there will be no ecstasy and no agony. In fact, loving humanity is a way of avoiding human beings: because you cant love human beings you start loving humanity just to deceive yourself.
Avoid abstractions.
ABSURDITY
Everything beautiful is absurd. Joy is one of those experiences that are not utilitarian. Love, peace, enlightenment all are absurd, absurd in the sense that they have no meaning beyond themselves. Their meaning is intrinsic.
Beauty is absurd. Joy is absurd. Laughter is absurd.
Collect as many absurdities in your life as possible. People collect strange things postal stamps! Collect absurdities; and the more absurdities you have, the richer you are.
ACCEPTANCE
Just for twenty-four hours, try it total acceptance, whatsoever happens. Someone insults you, accept it, dont react, and see what happens. Suddenly you will feel an energy flowing in you that you have not felt before. Somebody insults you: you feel weak, you feel disturbed, you start thinking of how to get your revenge. That man has hooked you, and now you will move round and round. For days, nights, months, even years, you will not be able to sleep, you will have bad dreams. People can waste a whole life over a small thing, just because someone insulted them.
Just look back into your past and you will remember a few things. You were a small child and the teacher in the class called you an idiot, and you still remember it and you feel resentment. Your father said something your parents have forgotten, and even if you remind them they will not be able to remember it. Your mother looked at you in a certain way and since then the wound has been there. And it is still open, fresh; if anybody touches it, you will explode. Dont help this wound to grow. Dont make this wound your soul. Go to the roots, be with the whole. For twenty-four hours just twenty-four hours try not to react, not to reject, whatsoever happens.
If someone pushes you and you fall to the ground fall! Then get up and go home. Dont do anything about it. If somebody hits you, bow down your head and accept it with gratitude. Go home, dont do anything, just for twenty-four hours, and you will know a new upsurge of energy that you have never known before, a new vitality arising from the roots. And once you know it, once you have tasted it, your life will be different. Then you will laugh at all the foolish things you have been doing, at all the resentments, reactions, revenges, with which you have been destroying yourself.
Nobody else can destroy you except you; nobody else can save you except you. You are the Judas and you are the Jesus.
ACCIDENTS
Because life goes ahead and your mind is past-oriented, mind and life never meet. Mind goes backwards, lives backwards. Mind is a rearview mirror. Use it when the occasion arises. Yes, the rearview mirror in the car has some important function to fulfill. But if you become obsessed with the rearview mirror, and you only look into the rearview mirror and drive the car looking always into the rearview mirror, then there is going to be danger. Then there are going to be accidents and accidents and nothing else.
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