| |
moment you ask for something, you are saying that what you deserve has not been given to you, that what is your birthright has not been fulfilled. You are throwing the responsibility upon existence. Rather than being grateful for what has been given to you, you are showing ungratefulness out of what your greed demands, your ambition demands, out of what your desires are manipulating you towards. The prayers in the so-called temples of God are not true prayers. They are full of your greed, desire, lust.
The authentic prayer arises only to the meditator. It is not addressed towards a god -- which is only a hypothesis; there is no proof for any God. Yes, there is absolute proof for godliness: a quality of divineness in the sun rising in the morning, in the starry night, in the beautiful flight of a bird on the wing, in the flowers, in the trees, in the oceans.
All this vast universe is enough unto itself. It needs no God -- God is only a consolation for the ignorant. The meditator encounters existence itself. His own being becomes the experience of godliness. He knows that in his own inner being he is part of eternal life. There is no death, there has never been any death. Experiencing this, there arises a dance so subtle... there arises a deep gratitude, not addressed to anybody in particular but simply addressed to the whole cosmos. To the stars, to the trees, to the earth, to the moon, to the animals, to people... it is an unaddressed gratefulness.
And unless you experience an unaddressed gratefulness, you don't know exactly the meaning of prayer. The word `prayer' gives a wrong connotation; it should be changed into prayerfulness, just as I am changing `God' into godliness.
H.G. Wells has written one of the most important histories of the world. And when he comes to write about Gautam Buddha he has a tremendous statement to make. He says Gautam Buddha was the most godless person, yet the most godly. Gautam Buddha did not believe in any god, but he believed that everybody can become a god. To be a god is nothing but the realization of your total potential. Your seed is carrying within itself, in its womb, the ultimate flowering of the
|
|
|