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you will understand even THAT which cannot be said through words.
Even through words there may be glimpses. Once you can feel my silence, my words will take another significance. Then they will not be just words, just sounds -- no. Then they become a flowering. It is a very difficult job: to talk about silence.
In Zen they say it is like selling water by the river. The river is flowing, but you are blind and I have to sell water. And, of course, you pay for it -- and the river is absolutely free. It is like watering the garden when the rain is falling. Or, as in old Indian scriptures it is said: 'It is putting legs on a snake to help him walk!' Foolish, stupid -- because the snake walks perfectly well without any legs. In fact, legs will hinder. But what to do? The snake goes on saying: 'Help me.' Or as it is said in old Taoist scriptures: 'To talk about truth is as if to put a hat on a man who is already wearing one.' To put another hat on top of the hat -- useless.
So what am I doing here? I am just giving you patience, the capacity to wait, watch. It is an effort to be with me; in the beginning it is like an effort, but one day suddenly it happens and it is no more an effort. Effortlessly you are here. Then you understand me -- whether I say something or not. Then you will understand me -- whether I am here in this chair or not, whether I am in this body or not. But before that happens, that supreme flowering of your silence, I have to go on beating the bush, around and around.
And the second thing about the first question: I am not a serious man. I look like one but the appearance is deceptive. I'm not a serious man; I'm absolutely non-serious -- and that is the only way the enlightened consciousness can be.
Seriousness is mundane, it is of the marketplace. You find it in the churches -- in fact, too much -- because your churches are nothing but part of the marketplace, part of the world of commodities.
I have heard one Jewish joke: a Jew came to the synagogue with a dead cat, and he asked the rabbi if he could bury it in the Jewish burial ground. The rabbi was aghast, horrified. He said: 'What! You, a good Jew, and
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