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then prayer has a beauty of its own: it is without fear, without greed. You are not asking for anything; it is not beggarly. You are simply feeling a thankfulness to the unknown source of all, to the ultimate source of all. And now you have something to feel grateful for -- you cannot complain.
Dostoevsky lived in misery. For his whole life he was a miserable man. He lived in all kinds of nightmares, he was really a tortured soul. He represented the modern consciousness in all its naked anguish, in its ugliest form. He suffered -- it is natural that he was angry. The same was true about Friedrich Nietzsche; he was also suffering very much. They were unable to find any way because Christianity had become almost hocus-pocus. After Jesus died Christianity became a dead phenomenon.
Nietzsche was right when he said that the first and the last Christian died two thousand years ago on the cross -- the first and the last, he said. After Jesus there has only been a long queue of stupid of people, of all kinds of superstitious people. But this has happened to almost every religion more or less; the difference is only of quantity.
I don't want to give any belief, any dogma, any creed. I trust only in experience. So while being here with me and becoming a sannyasin, this has to be your goal: to become more blissful. We create our misery, hence it is not difficult to be blissful. It is just because we don't understand how we go on creating our misery; once we understand the mechanism of how we go on doing it, we can stop doing it. And the same energy starts moving into different directions. It starts becoming a totally new phenomenon: it becomes bliss, and then prayer follows.
That prayer is neither Christian nor Hindu nor Mohammedan. That prayer is simply prayerfulness. That prayer is not addressed to any particular god -- Christian, Jewish, Mohammedan -- it is not really addressed to anybody in particular. It is simply a heartfelt joy, a thankfulness for the whole existence: for the trees, for the clouds, for the stars, for all that has been, is, and will be.
-- What is the meaning of your name, Kiffy? -- I don't know. --
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