What is the meaning of life?

Life in itself has no meaning. Life is an opportunity to create meaning. Meaning has not to be discovered: it has to be created. You will find meaning only if you create it. It is not lying there somewhere behind the bushes, so you can go and you search a little bit and find it. It is not there like a rock that you will find. It is a poetry to be composed, it is a song to be sung, it is a dance to be danced.

Meaning is a dance, not a rock. Meaning is music. You will find it only if you create it. Remember it. Meaning comes out of creativity.

Meaning comes through participation. Participate in life! Participate as deeply, as totally, as possible. Risk all for participation. If you want to know what dance is, don’t go and see a dancer -- learn dancing, be a dancer. If you want to know anything, participate! That is the true and the right way, the authentic way, to know a thing. And there will be great meaning in your life. And not only one-dimensional -- multi-dimensional meanings. You will be showered by meanings.

Don’t allow your life to become just a dead ritual. Let there be moments, unexplainable. Let there be a few things which are mysterious, for which you cannot supply any reason. Let there be a few doings for which people will think you are a little crazy. A man who is a hundred percent sane is dead. A little bit of craziness by the side is always a great joy. Go on doing a few crazy things too. And then meaning will be possible.

One World

The collective is a very dangerous word. In the name of collective, the individual, the real has always been sacrificed. Nations have been sacrificing individuals in the name of nation – and “nation” is just a word. The lines that you have drawn on the map are not any where on the earth. They are just your game! But on those lines that you have drawn on the map, millions of people have died – real people, dying for unreal lines. And you make them heroes, national heroes! If we want really a world of freedom, then we have to understand that in the name of collectivity so much massacre has happened that now it is time to stop it.

Wisdom and Philosophy

Philosophy, the very word, means love for wisdom, and they have nothing to do with wisdom at all. Wisdom happens only through meditation; it never happens by collecting information. It happens by going through a transformation. Wisdom is the flowering of your consciousness, the opening of the one-thousand-petaled lotus of your being. It is the release of your fragrance, the release of the imprisoned splendor. Real philosophy has nothing to do with thinking; on the contrary it has everything to do with transcending thinking, going beyond and beyond thinking, going beyond mind, reaching to the pure space of no-mind. Out of that space something flowers in you. You can call it Christ-consciousness, Buddhahood, or whatsoever you like. That is true philosophy.

Accept Yourself

Accept yourself as you are. And that is the most difficult thing in the world, because it goes against your training, education, your culture. From the very beginning you have been told how you should be. Nobody has ever told you that you are good as you are.

Don't be obsessed with yourself -- but a natural self-love is a must, a basic phenomenon. Only then out of it, you can love somebody else. Accept yourself, love yourself.

Nobody else has ever been like you and nobody else will ever be like you; you are simply unique, incomparable. Accept this, love this, celebrate this -- and in that very celebration you will start seeing the uniqueness of the others, the incomparable beauty of the others. Love is possible only when there is a deep acceptance of oneself, the other, the world. Acceptance creates the milieu in which love grows, the soil in which love blooms.

Conditioning

Parents should be aware of what they are conditioning their children -- and the children should be given every freedom to experience the good, the bad, so they can decide on their own. Let them find their way. You simply watch carefully that they don't fall in a ditch. Never say anything to your children that is not your existential experience. Accept your ignorance. That will give more respect to you, more trust in you, but the parental ego wants to pretend that they know everything. Be respectful to the child. Parents expect respect from the children, but they forget that this is something mutual. You respect the children and they will respect you. You trust the children and they will trust you. And then there is a possibility of communication.

Ecology

We are all guests, but don't use this beautiful planet as a railway-station guest house. It is not a waiting room. It is our home for the time being and it will remain the home for somebody else. Don't be so miserly that, "I will be gone -- after ten minutes my train is coming, so who cares if I leave the waiting room dirty?"

Leave this earth a little more beautiful, a little more fragrant, for those unknown guests who will be following you.

Ecstasy

Ecstasy is our very nature; not to be ecstatic is simply unnecessary. To be ecstatic is natural, spontaneous. It needs no effort to be ecstatic; it needs great effort to be miserable. That's why you look so tired, because misery is really hard work; to maintain it is really difficult, because you are doing something against nature.

You are going upstream -- that's what misery is. And what is bliss? Going with the river -- so much so that the distinction between you and the river is simply lost. You are the river. How it can be difficult? To go with the river no swimming is needed; you simply float with the river and the river takes you to the ocean.

The river is already going to the ocean. Life is a river. Don't push it and you will not be miserable.