Recounted the story of a muslim emperor, abrahim, who left his throne and went to be initiated by a master. The master told him to immediately shed his clothes and run naked in the streets of his own town, beating his head with a shoe. One of the mystic's disciples protested on behalf of the king, saying this was being very hard on the poor man -- after all he was emperor and this was his very own capital. The mystic replied that when you take off your clothes you take off your defenses too, you become a nobody.... ] Have you observed this -- that when you are naked, you are nobody? When you are dressed in your particular dress, you are somebody. Can you make any distinction between a criminal and a high court judge if they are standing naked~ between the murderer and the president of a country if they are standing naked? Impossible to judge. But if they are in their regalia -- the king with the crown and the judge with his wig and black suit -- then of course one knows who one is. We know people through their clothes. Naked, a person simply becomes undefended. The mystic said, 'It is not hard. He has been a king. He has too many defenses that ordinarily people don't have; that's why I have to be hard on him.' The disciple asked, 'Why are you asking him to run around the town? You never asked us. And why this nonsense that he should beat his head with a shoe?!' The mystic said, 'I wanted him to feel humiliated. If it is not accepted, if it is not welcomed, then he will not be able to do it. He will simply refuse it. So it is a kind of a test.' If you accept something, even humiliation, it becomes humbleness and it is a beautiful quality. But if you resist, if you don't want it, then only does it look like humiliation. Humiliation is just an interpretation of the ego. So the first thing I would like to tell you is to take an interest in very small things which are not projects of the ego. Even if you do them well, nobody is going to award you a nobel prize. Howsoever clean you make the bathroom or the floor, and howsoever well you work in the canteen, you are not going to get any victoria cross. Nobody will ever know anything about you. Nobody will say, 'Heeren the great.' Nobody will ever hear your name. So, activity has to be allowed, and be as active as you can so that no energy remains pent up. Don't dam up the energy; let it flow. If you have nothing to do, go and run around koregaon park (the area in which the ashram resides). I will not be hard on you, and I will not say to be naked. But if it is needed, one day I will say it to you. And I am not going to give you a shoe right now, but one day, if you don't follow, you will have to do that too. You are a high-energy person. If the energy remains there it will create many troubles for you. It becomes sore, it becomes like a wound, it starts hurting. It recoils on yourself and becomes self-destructive. Start working and be completely involved. You are not going to make history, and people who are here with me are here on]y to know how to drop out of history, how to become nobodies. So don't preserve energy, because there is nothing else to do but these small things. This ordinary life is the only life there is. And this ordinary life needs no planning -- it is so simple. Only cunning things need planning because they are so complex. You have to rehearse many times, you have to think about this and that, and you have to manipulate many strings. And then too nobody can ever be certain that you will succeed because things are so complex, and for those complex things there are many competitors. If you want to be great in the eyes of the world, if you are seeking the good opinion of others, then you are in a very competitive madhouse. Many are doing the same. Whatsoever you do, you can never rely on it succeeding, and even if it succeeds, it brings nothing. It brings only more projects, more plans. If you earn money, by the time you have earned it the desire has arisen for more money, so you invest that money to earn more money and again you invest and go on investing. By the time death arrives you have much money and an unlived life. And the second thing: happiness is not something that happens to you. It is already happening -- you have just to be receptive. It is not that it happens sometimes and it doesn't happen sometimes. It is a decision on your part. Every morning when you get up, decide whether you want to be happy or unhappy today, and then insist for that the whole day. Just today I was reading about a man who received a bill from the plumber. The plumber said. 'Within three weeks, pay forty dollars for the work I have done for you. If it is not paid within three weeks you will have to pay five dollars more -- forty-five dollars.' The man was very angry, annoyed, and he showed that letter to a friend. The friend said, 'My plumber is very clever. He also writes the same thing but in a different way. If it were a letter from my plumber he would have written: "Pay me forty-five dollars -- that is the charge for my services -- but if you pay within three weeks, you can pay five dollars less."' Then one feels very happy because the choice is positive. One sufi mystic relates in his autobiography that when he was studying with his master, he and a colleague were both walking in the garden of the master. They were smoking and they felt guilty. The friend said, 'It would be good if we asked the master.' These few hours were given to them for a walking meditation; they had to walk in the garden and meditate as in vipassana. So they said, 'Yes, it is better to ask rather than feeling guilty.' So one went to the master and asked, 'Can I smoke while meditating?' The master said, 'Certainly not!' Next day when he came to the garden, the other was smoking. He said, 'Have you not been to the master?' The second replied, 'I have been and he said. "Yes, you can smoke."' The first said, 'This seems to be unjust. He denied me absolutely, in no uncertain terms. He said, "No, certainly not!" How is it that he allowed you?' The second said, 'I think we must have asked differently. I asked him "Can I meditate while smoking?" He said, "Certainly, of course!"' It is the same thing. Life brings the same thing to everybody, but if you have a wrong attitude, a negative attitude, or are asking a wrong question or knocking at the wrong spot, you go on missing. So as I see it, it is not that unhappiness happens to people -- they have decided to remain unhappy. Maybe it is not conscious, maybe it is unconscious and they have forgotten. So try this for three weeks, and stick with the decision. And once you know the knack, it is so simple... It is the simplest thing in the world to be happy or to be unhappy. And one is always the master. You may not know it, but one is always the master.
by
k.jagadeesh
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