Thoughts can create such a barrier that even if you are standing before a beautiful flower, you will not be able to see it. Your eyes are covered with layers of thought. To experience the beauty of the flower you have to be in a state of meditation, not in a state of mentation. You have to be silent, utterly silent, not even a flicker of thought - and the beauty explodes, reaches to you from all directions. You are drowned in the beauty of a sunrise, of a starry night, of beautiful trees.
Never belong to a crowd; Never belong to a nation; Never belong to a religion; Never belong to a race. Belong to the whole existence. Why limit yourself to small things? When the whole is available.
Understanding transforms, it does not sublimate. If you understand, anger disappears and the same energy becomes compassion. Not that you sublimate: anger simply disappears, and the energy that was involved, invested in anger, is released and becomes compassion. When you understand hate, hate disappears and the same energy becomes love. Love is not against hate -- it is absence of hate.
You become so intense that you are not there, because if you are there then the intensity cannot be total; then two are there. If you love and the lover is there, then love cannot be intense. Love so deeply, so totally, that the lover disappears. Then you are just an energy moving. Then you will know love, you will know life, you will know death.
Happiness happens when you fit with your life, when you fit so harmoniously that whatsoever you are doing is your joy. Then suddenly you will come to know: meditation follows you. If you love the work that you are doing, if you love the way you are living, then you are meditative.
Celibacy can only be spontaneous, there is no other type of celibacy. If it is not spontaneous, it is not celibacy. You can force it. you can control your sexuality, but that is not going to help. You will not be celibate, you will be only more and more sexual. Sex will spread all over your being. It will become part of your unconscious. It will move your dreams, it will become your motivation in dreams, it will become your fantasy. In fact, you will become more sexual than you ever were before. You will think more about it and you will have to repress it again and again.
But everybody is afraid of death; that too is contagious. Your parents are afraid of death, your neighbors are afraid of death. Small children start getting infected by this constant fear all around. Everybody is afraid of death. People don't even want to talk about death.
If you are angry you will share anger, if you are greedy you will share greed, if you are full of lust you will share your lust. We can share only that which we have, we cannot share that which we don't have. This has to be the fundamental thing to be remembered; hence the first step is meditation and the second step is compassion.
Life is such a mystery, no one can understand it, and one who claims that he understands it is simply ignorant. He is not aware of what he is saying, of what nonsense he is talking. If you are wise, this will be the first realization: life cannot be understood. Understanding is impossible. Only this much can be understood - that understanding is impossible.
1.If you can bring your consciousness, your awareness, your intelligence to the act, if you can be spontaneous, then there is no need for any other religion, life itself will be the religion.
Unless a person decides that `Whatever the cost, I want just to be myself. Condemned, unaccepted, losing respectability - everything is okay but I cannot pretend anymore to be somebody else`... This decision and this declaration - this declaration of freedom, freedom from the weight of the crowd - gives birth to your natural being, to your individuality. Then you don`t need any mask. Then you can be simply yourself, just as you are. And the moment you can be just as you are, there is tremendous peace that passeth understanding.