If there is too much alfalfa then deer will start coming more and more from all over the place; if there
is less alfalfa, deer will disperse. But our deer are in a difficulty: they cannot go anywhere because
they cannot find a place where human beings will not be killing them. This much in three years they
have understood perfectly well.
They are far more intelligent than your attorney general; they know that these are the right people
to live with. They stand on the road, they don’t bother ... you may go on honking the horn – they
move with their ease and grace and beauty. They don’t bother; they understand that ”These are our
people,” so they are not going to leave. And they don’t have a built-in program where to stop, so they
go on eating.
I told that professor, ”Essence is a built-in program – and that’s where man is different. Man comes
as existence, and essence follows. You are not given a built-in program. You come open-ended,
with no directions, with no clear-cut idea of what you are going to be. You exist first – and this is a
great difference, the greatest possible difference.”
You exist first, and then you have to find who you are. The animals, the trees, the rocks, know first
who they are, then they exist; hence there is no spiritual enquiry. No animal bothers asking the
questions: Who am I? What is the meaning of my life? He knows it already; there is no question,
there is no doubt, no enquiry.
Man is a continuous enquiry, a continuous question. To the very last breath he goes on growing. To
the very last breath he can change his whole life pattern.
He can take a quantum jump.
There is no necessity for him to just go on following the path that he has followed. At the very last
moment he simply can step aside. There is nobody to prevent him, it is his freedom. Man is the only
animal in existence who has freedom – and out of the freedom is agony.”
Agony means: I don’t know who I am.
I don’t know where I am going and why I am going. I don’t know whether whatever I am doing I am
supposed to do or not. The question continuously remains; not even for a single moment does the
question leave. Whatever you do, the question is there: Are you sure? Is it the thing for you to do?
Is this the place for you to be?
The question leaves not even for a single moment. And this is as deep as anything can be in you,
at the very core of your being. This is the agony – that the meaning is not known, that the purpose
is not known, that the goal is not known. It seems as if we are accidental, that by some accident we
are born.
No other animal, no tree, no bird is accidental; they are planned. Existence has a whole program for
them. Man seems to be totally different.
Existence has left man utterly free.
Once you become aware of this situation then agony arises. And it is fortunate to feel it. That’s why
I say it is not ordinary pain, suffering, misery. It is very extraordinary, and it is of tremendous value
to your whole life, its growth, that you should feel agony, that each fiber of your being should feel the
questioning, that you should become simply a question. And naturally it is frightening. You are left
in a chaos. But out of this very chaos the stars are born.
If you don’t start stuffing out of fear, if you don’t start escaping from your agony .... Everybody
is trying to escape, finding ways: falling in love, doing this, doing that – somehow, somewhere
engaged. One thing is not finished, and you start doing another thing because you are afraid. If
there is a gap between the two and the question raises its head, and you start feeling agony, then it
is better to continue, to go on running; don’t stop. People start running from their birth till they die.
They don’t stop, they don’t sit by the side of the road under a tree.
To me the statues of Buddha and Mahavira in the East, sitting in a lotus posture under a tree, do not
mean anything historical. They mean something far more significant.
These are the people who have stopped running. These are the people who have stepped out of
the road on which the whole procession of humanity is going.
They are real dropouts, not the Californian type which within a few years drops in again. No, these
are real dropouts who never drop in again.
Sitting under a tree is just representative. You will be surprised to know that after Buddha’s death,
for five hundred years his statue was not made. Instead of a statue only a tree was made. For
five hundred years, in the temples that were made and dedicated to Buddha, there was only a tree
carved on the stone or marble, nothing else.
It was enough to remind one to step out of the road, because this has been for thousands of years
the tradition, to plant trees on both the sides of Indian roads – huge trees with big branches almost
meeting over the middle of the road so the road is completely covered with shadow. Even in the
hottest summer you can go on the road in coolness, in the shadow.
So the tree became the symbol of dropping out of ”the road.” The road is the world, where everybody
is going somewhere, trying to find something, and in fact basically trying to forget himself because
it hurts. To remember oneself hurts, and the only thing that everybody is doing is to get engaged,
concentrated – after money, after power, after this, after that. Become a painter, become a poet,
become a musician, become someone and go on becoming. Don’t stop, because if you stop you
become aware of your hurt; the wound starts opening up. So don’t give it a chance. This is the road.
For five hundred years they managed simply to have the tree. It was a beautiful symbol of stepping
aside. But as time passed, people started forgetting the symbol. The simple tree – they could not
understand what is supposed .... They started worshipping trees. It was at that time when Alexander
the Great visited India, five hundred years after Buddha. He had seen those temples with trees, and
he had asked people, but nobody knew what they meant, just tree worship. And all over India, even
today, trees are worshipped; it has remained.
Then the Buddhist monks who could understand started making statues of Buddha. But five hundred
years had passed; there was no photography possible in those days, so they had not even any idea
of how Buddha looked.
is less alfalfa, deer will disperse. But our deer are in a difficulty: they cannot go anywhere because
they cannot find a place where human beings will not be killing them. This much in three years they
have understood perfectly well.
They are far more intelligent than your attorney general; they know that these are the right people
to live with. They stand on the road, they don’t bother ... you may go on honking the horn – they
move with their ease and grace and beauty. They don’t bother; they understand that ”These are our
people,” so they are not going to leave. And they don’t have a built-in program where to stop, so they
go on eating.
I told that professor, ”Essence is a built-in program – and that’s where man is different. Man comes
as existence, and essence follows. You are not given a built-in program. You come open-ended,
with no directions, with no clear-cut idea of what you are going to be. You exist first – and this is a
great difference, the greatest possible difference.”
You exist first, and then you have to find who you are. The animals, the trees, the rocks, know first
who they are, then they exist; hence there is no spiritual enquiry. No animal bothers asking the
questions: Who am I? What is the meaning of my life? He knows it already; there is no question,
there is no doubt, no enquiry.
Man is a continuous enquiry, a continuous question. To the very last breath he goes on growing. To
the very last breath he can change his whole life pattern.
He can take a quantum jump.
There is no necessity for him to just go on following the path that he has followed. At the very last
moment he simply can step aside. There is nobody to prevent him, it is his freedom. Man is the only
animal in existence who has freedom – and out of the freedom is agony.”
Agony means: I don’t know who I am.
I don’t know where I am going and why I am going. I don’t know whether whatever I am doing I am
supposed to do or not. The question continuously remains; not even for a single moment does the
question leave. Whatever you do, the question is there: Are you sure? Is it the thing for you to do?
Is this the place for you to be?
The question leaves not even for a single moment. And this is as deep as anything can be in you,
at the very core of your being. This is the agony – that the meaning is not known, that the purpose
is not known, that the goal is not known. It seems as if we are accidental, that by some accident we
are born.
No other animal, no tree, no bird is accidental; they are planned. Existence has a whole program for
them. Man seems to be totally different.
Existence has left man utterly free.
Once you become aware of this situation then agony arises. And it is fortunate to feel it. That’s why
I say it is not ordinary pain, suffering, misery. It is very extraordinary, and it is of tremendous value
to your whole life, its growth, that you should feel agony, that each fiber of your being should feel the
questioning, that you should become simply a question. And naturally it is frightening. You are left
in a chaos. But out of this very chaos the stars are born.
If you don’t start stuffing out of fear, if you don’t start escaping from your agony .... Everybody
is trying to escape, finding ways: falling in love, doing this, doing that – somehow, somewhere
engaged. One thing is not finished, and you start doing another thing because you are afraid. If
there is a gap between the two and the question raises its head, and you start feeling agony, then it
is better to continue, to go on running; don’t stop. People start running from their birth till they die.
They don’t stop, they don’t sit by the side of the road under a tree.
To me the statues of Buddha and Mahavira in the East, sitting in a lotus posture under a tree, do not
mean anything historical. They mean something far more significant.
These are the people who have stopped running. These are the people who have stepped out of
the road on which the whole procession of humanity is going.
They are real dropouts, not the Californian type which within a few years drops in again. No, these
are real dropouts who never drop in again.
Sitting under a tree is just representative. You will be surprised to know that after Buddha’s death,
for five hundred years his statue was not made. Instead of a statue only a tree was made. For
five hundred years, in the temples that were made and dedicated to Buddha, there was only a tree
carved on the stone or marble, nothing else.
It was enough to remind one to step out of the road, because this has been for thousands of years
the tradition, to plant trees on both the sides of Indian roads – huge trees with big branches almost
meeting over the middle of the road so the road is completely covered with shadow. Even in the
hottest summer you can go on the road in coolness, in the shadow.
So the tree became the symbol of dropping out of ”the road.” The road is the world, where everybody
is going somewhere, trying to find something, and in fact basically trying to forget himself because
it hurts. To remember oneself hurts, and the only thing that everybody is doing is to get engaged,
concentrated – after money, after power, after this, after that. Become a painter, become a poet,
become a musician, become someone and go on becoming. Don’t stop, because if you stop you
become aware of your hurt; the wound starts opening up. So don’t give it a chance. This is the road.
For five hundred years they managed simply to have the tree. It was a beautiful symbol of stepping
aside. But as time passed, people started forgetting the symbol. The simple tree – they could not
understand what is supposed .... They started worshipping trees. It was at that time when Alexander
the Great visited India, five hundred years after Buddha. He had seen those temples with trees, and
he had asked people, but nobody knew what they meant, just tree worship. And all over India, even
today, trees are worshipped; it has remained.
Then the Buddhist monks who could understand started making statues of Buddha. But five hundred
years had passed; there was no photography possible in those days, so they had not even any idea
of how Buddha looked.
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