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then where is the difficulty in dropping them? With the recognition that they are stones, one will not have to drop them, they will simply drop from our hands on their own.
Let the stones of words fall away, then meaning will arise. In the realm of religion, meaning does not arise from words, meaning arises from no-word. Remove words, and the stream of no-word flows.
The river that flows through Poona gets covered with leaves and vegetation; greenery spreads all over so that the water is not visible. Your mind is just like that. Remove the leaves, and there is the flowing river beneath. Remove the words, and the river of meaning is hidden beneath.
The story is not the same in all dimensions. When I say tree, you understand the meaning in an instant, and likewise when I say river or house or ocean, just hearing the word you catch the meaning. But when I say God or soul or enlightenment, you hear the word only; you do not know the meaning. I only have to say the word tree and you understand, because the tree is your experience too. The word indicates, and your own experience of it gives you understanding. I say ocean, and from your own experience you understand.
But imagine a man far away in the desert who has never seen the ocean, not even a picture of the ocean, and we say 'ocean' to him; now he has not the slightest idea what we mean. He hears the word, even tries to understand its meaning intellectually. We can even explain to him that just as this is a vast expanse of sand, so there is a vast expanse of water -- this gives him an idea, he forms a concept, but still the experience of the ocean by a man who has seen it standing on its shores, who has entered the ocean and swum in it, who has been surfing in it, cannot be matched by any concepts of this man from the desert.
When I say God, what does it mean to you? You have never stood on God's shore, you have never floated on his waves; neither have you been one with his waves, or dissolved into the music of his waves. You as a drop have remained as a drop. The drop is afraid that if it goes into the ocean, it will disappear. This fear is true, but it is also false. The drop will
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