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story.
"It is this girl I have been going with," he said. "I suspected she was fast, but I never dreamed she was a sex maniac. Every night now for weeks and weeks on end, I keep trying to break off the romance, but I haven't got the will power. What can I do? My health just can't stand the pace."
"I see," said the doctor grimly. "Tell me just what happens; you can trust me."
"Well, every night I take her driving in my car. We park in some secluded street. Then she asks me to put my arms around her. And then, every night, she reaches over and holds my hand."
"And then?"
"What do you mean 'and then'?" gasped the youth. "Is there more?"
That's what has happened to religion. The moment the word "religion" is uttered you remember the serious long faces in the churches, the very sad-looking priests, the very serious theologians, trying to split hairs, chopping abstract words, nobody knows why, for what. Religion is broke. The religion of the philosophers is bankrupt. The religion of the intellectuals is relevant no more; it has lost all relevance.
The old religion is dead! And it is good that it is dead. The old God is dead! And it is good that it is dead because now the door opens and we can search for a new God, a God more real, not conceptual, more existential, not philosophical, a God who can be seen, loved, lived, a God who can transform your life, a God who is really life and nothing else.
A totally different kind of religion is needed in the world, a gut-level religion, a religion which has blood, life, a religion whose heart still beats. The old religion is simply dead, and people are worshiping the corpse. And people carrying the corpse, by and by, become just like the corpse they are carrying.
The first principle means a gut-level religion, a religion that you can experience in your innermost core, in the interiority of your being. You are the shrine for the first principle. No Bible, no Koran, no Veda. You are the shrine for the first principle. So the only way to reach to the real is to go within, is to go in. Turn in.
That's what meditation is all about. That's why Zen is not interested
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