| |
start again! I am watching you! I give you only this much gap, so you cannot start your taxi again; otherwise you will run against the red light, and create more chaos.
So my speaking is not oratory; it is not a doctrine that I am preaching to you. It is simply an arbitrary device to give you a taste of what silence is, and to make you confident that it is not a talent -- that it does not belong to any specially-qualified people, that it does not belong to long austerities, that it does not belong to those who call themselves virtuous. It belongs to all, without any conditions; you just have to become aware of it. And that's my whole purpose in speaking to you.
Once you are certain that you can be silent, then your whole focus will change. It is not a question of discipline, it is not a question of being prayerful, it is not a question of believing in God and all kinds of nonsense. It is a question of feeling your own possibility, and once you have known the possibility and become confident about it, the whole religion in your vision will have a different color.
It is a question of silence and consciousness and blissfulness -- it has nothing to do with sins and virtues and confessions. Existence does not bother about your sins -- what sin can you commit? What punishment should be given to poor human beings? Religions have been giving, for small things, eternal hell. One has to be a little just also.
Bertrand Russell has counted all the sins that he has committed, and all the sins that he has thought to commit but he has not committed, and all the sins that he has committed in his dreams. He has given the whole list and has asked the Christian theologians... and he has remained unanswered for more than half a century. Now he is dead; fifty years he waited for the answer. He was asking, "These are all that can be counted as sins: these things I have committed, these things I have only thought, these things I have only dreamt. How much punishment can be given to me on these grounds? The strictest judge cannot give me four and a half years of jail, and Christianity is going to throw me into eternal hellfire!"
To be punished for eternity
|
|
|