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in misery and in madness.
But if you look, if you watch deeply, you will be surprised. You are not! Not that you have to dissolve! Simply you are not. It is just a false notion that you have been carrying, the notion that you are. Any moment of silence and you will suddenly see there is emptiness within you, nothingness within you. Buddha has called this nothingness ANATTA, nonbeing, SHUNYA, nothingness. If you look within, you will not find yourself. That's why people don't look within; they are afraid.
Once it happened I was travelling with Mulla Nasrudin in a train. Came the ticket collector and Nasrudin became very hectic. He looked in his suitcase, he turned over all the things, he looked in the bed, turned over everything, he looked in his many pockets, and he started perspiring and he could not find the ticket. I saw that he had not looked in one pocket, so I told him, "Nasrudin, you have not looked in that pocket." He said, "Don't mention that." I said, "But why? The ticket may be there." He said, "Don't mention it at all. If I look in it and the ticket is not found, I will fall dead. I will drop dead! I cannot look in that! If the ticket is not there, then finished. There is a hope that it may be there."
That's why people don't look inside: a hope one may be there. The day you look in, you are not. The day you look in, suddenly there is vast emptiness... and it is tremendously blissful, beautiful, peaceful. You are not there; then there is no noise.
That's what Hui-neng means when he says, "There is no mirror of the mind. Where can the dust gather? To know this is to know all."
Look within. People think "We are bad" but you are not, so how can badness gather? People think "We are good," but how is it possible? You are not there; how can you be good? People think "We are moral and immoral and this and that," but everything hangs on the idea of "I". To be good the "I" is needed first, to be virtuous the "I" is needed first. To be a sinner or to be a saint the "I" is needed first. Without the "I" you will not have anything to hang anything upon. Where will you hang your goodness, your sin or your saintliness?
That's
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