| |
what is the point? Then you can go on reading it like a mechanical thing and you can go on thinking a thousand and one other thoughts. Then it is futile. Then it is just boring. Then you will not be rejuvenated by it. You will become dull. That's why, out of a hundred, ninety-nine religious persons are dull. Their intelligence is not sharp -- almost stupid. It is very difficult to find a religious man and not stupid, because they are repeating the same ritual every day -- but the wrong is in their minds, not in the rituals. You can do the same thing absolutely new, there is no need to repeat it.
You love a woman, then the woman is new every day. Reading the Gita or Koran is just like a love affair: every day new. Maybe the words are the same, but the same words can carry different meanings. The same words can penetrate into your being from different doors. The same words in a certain moment can have a certain significance which they will not have in any other context. The meaning depends on you, not on the words you read. You bring meaning to the Gita, or Koran, or Bible, not vice versa.
Of course, after twenty-four hours you are more experienced. You have lived life twenty-four hours more. In fact, you are not the same person. The Gita is the same -- you are not the same person. After twenty-four hours, how much water has flowed in the Ganges?
One day you are in a mood of love. Another day you are in the mood of sadness. One day you are overflowing, another day you are a miser. Different colors and shades of moods, and in different shades and colors you will be reading the same book. Again and again, and the Gita becomes millions of doors. You can enter it from so many ways, from so many doors, and you bring the meaning. The meaning is yours.
One day when your mind has stopped functioning completely and you are just a flow -- when I say mind has stopped functioning completely, I mean you don't bring the past at all; mind is the past -- if you don't bring the past at all and you can read and listen, then your reading has become a meditation. Yes, reading can be helpful, but ordinarily it proves to be harmful, because the way you behave
|
|
|