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“One of the mystics in India, Kabir, was a weaver. He had thousands of followers and still he continued to weave clothes. Even kings were his followers. The king of Varanasi asked him, "Master, it doesn't look good, it makes us feel embarrassed. We can take care of you. There is no need for you to weave clothes and every week on market day, go into the market to sell your clothes. Just think of us: people laugh at us." Kabir said, "I can understand your problem but I have only one talent and that is to weave beautiful clothes. If I stop doing it, who will do it? And God comes in different faces, in different bodies, to purchase clothes every week in the marketplace." He used to address every customer, "Lord, be very careful of the cloth. I have been weaving it, not just like any other weaver -- my songs are in it and my soul is in it. I have poured my whole being in it. Be careful, use it with tenderness and love and remember: Kabir has woven it especially for you, Lord." And it was not something that he was addressing to anybody in particular -- any customer! This was his contribution. He used to say to his disciples, "What else can I do? I am doing my best: I can weave, I can sing, I can dance -- and I am immensely contented." Whatever you are doing, if there is contentment and a feeling that this whole existence is nothing but the manifestation of godliness, that we are traveling on holy earth, that whomever you are meeting, you are meeting God -- there is no other way; only faces are different, but the inner reality is the same -- all your tensions will disappear. And the energy that is involved in tensions will start becoming your grace, your beauty. Then life will not be just an ordinary, routine, day-to-day existence, but a dance from cradle to grave. And existence will be immensely enriched by your grace, by your relaxation, by your silence, by your awareness.”

“..in existence everything moves eternally -- the summer comes, the rains come, the winter comes, and the summer again; everything moves like a wheel -- life is not an exception. Death is the end of one wheel and the beginning of another. Again you will be a child, and again you will be young, and again you will be old. It has been so since the beginning, and it is going to be so to the very end -- until you become so enlightened that you can jump out of the vicious circle and can enter into a totally different law. From individuality, you can jump into the universal. So there was no hurry, and there was no clinging. ..you have lived many times, and you will live many times more. Hence, live each moment as totally as possible; there is no hurry to jump to another moment. Time is not money, time is inexhaustible; it is available to the poor as much as to the rich. The rich are not richer as far as time is concerned, and the poor are not poorer. Life is an eternal incarnation. ..there is nothing to be afraid of in death. It is a beautiful sleep, a sleep that is needed for you to move into another body, silently and peacefully. It is a surgical phenomenon; it is almost like anesthesia. Death is a friend, not a foe. Once you understand death as a friend, and start living life without any fear that it is only a very small time span of seventy years -- if your perspective opens to the eternity of your life -- then everything will slow down; then there is no need to be speedy.”

“God is like the sky, like the empty sky. It has no boundaries so it cannot be defined. You cannot say where it begins and where it ends. It is eternal, it is infinite -- yet it is right in this place, just in front of you. If you are relaxed it is there; if you become tense it disappears. Life cannot be possessed because life is God. Existence cannot be possessed because existence is God. YOU CANNOT TAKE HOLD OF IT. -- remember -- BUT YOU CANNOT LOSE IT. Yes, you cannot possess it, but there is no way to lose it either. It is there. It is always there. You have to drop your rush, your hurry, your ideas to go somewhere, to reach, to become, to be this and that. You have to stop becoming. And it is there; you cannot lose it. There is no competition, there is nobody blocking your way, there are no competitors. You need not be in a hurry. You need not make any effort to grab. There is nobody competing with you and there is nobody standing in front of you -- only God, only God. You can relax. You need not be afraid that you will miss it. You cannot miss it in the very nature of things. You cannot lose him. You relax. There is no hurry because God is not something in time -- relax. There is nowhere to go because God is not distant in some star -- relax. You cannot miss in the very nature of things -- relax. relax. Don't seek, don't search, don't ask, don't knock, don't demand -- relax. If you relax, it comes. If you relax, it is there. If you relax, you start vibrating with it. God is so big, so huge, so enormous. It is the totality of existence -- who can exhaust it? There is no struggle, no competition. And there is eternal time available. Don't be in a hurry and don't be serious.”

“If you want enlightenment to happen ever, you have to be ready to wait for it. Even if it comes in eternity you are ready to accept it, you are not in a hurry. Then it can come instantly too. A man who is ready to wait forever is very relaxed, knows no tension, no anxiety, no anguish. In that relaxed moment, satori, samadhi, enlightenment is possible. You attain to enlightenment only when there is no ego to demand - there is no demand, there is no demander. Time creates the ego. The ego does not exist in animals because they are not conscious of time. The ego does not exist in children because they are also not conscious of time. When you become conscious of time you become conscious of many things. First, the consciousness of time creates the fear of death. You immediately become conscious of death. Time and death, they are not separate at all. The moment you become alert about time you become alert about death because time is running out fast, death is coming, death is there and you have to do something before death grabs you. Then fear, anxiety.... In that fear and anxiety, in that impatience, you can go on searching but you will not find. It is not that you have to find God, it is that you have to allow him to find you. So you have to be in a receptive mood, in a non-desiring, non-demanding mood, utterly at ease, as if it has already happened. There is no need for it to happen, it is as if it has already happened. With this silence, this peace, with this non-tense state, it happens.”

“God is not a goal, nirvana is not a goal, enlightenment is not a goal, it is not an achievement -- just the contrary. When you have forgotten ALL goals, when you have dropped the whole achieving mind, enlightenment is -- enlightenment is a state of no-mind. And enlightenment is nothing special. It is the most ordinary, natural phenomenon. It looks special because you make a goal out of it. You will have to learn ways of relaxing in the present. Enlightenment is not an effort to achieve something. It is a state of effortlessness. It is a state of no-action. It is a state of tremendous passivity, receptivity. and you are suddenly at home. Nothing is being missed. You are part, an organic part of this tremendous, beautiful whole. You are relaxed in it, surrendered in it. You don't exist separately -- all separation has disappeared. A great rejoicing happens, because with the ego disappearing there is no worry left, with the ego disappearing there is no anguish left, with the ego disappearing there is no possibility of death any more. This is what enlightenment is. It is the understanding that all is good, that all is beautiful -- and t is beautiful as it is. Everything is in tremendous harmony, in accord. The stars are in accord with the grass leaves, the earth is in accord with the sky, the rivers are in accord with the mountains. Everything is in such accord that existence is an orchestra. Everything is rhythmic, in tune. Existence is music. That experience is enlightenment. And you are not separate from it like an observer, like a spectator. The observer and the observed are one, the seer and the seen are one -- you are it! It is a great participation. You have fallen into she whole and the whole has fallen into you. The drop has dropped into the ocean and the ocean has dropped into the drop. It is impossible to say anything more about it. It is impossible to say, in fact, anything about it. It can only be experienced.”