IS IT THAT THERE ARE ONLY TWO ALTERNATIVES BEFORE MAN -- A LIFE OF ABIDING SORROW AND SUFFERING OR ONE OF DIVINITY AND BLISS -- AND THIS CHOICE LIES WITH HIM? HOW IS IT THAT MOST HAVE CHOSEN THE PATH OF SORROW AND SUFFERING?

It is a very significant question, but very delicate also. The first thing to be understood is that life is very paradoxical, and because of that many things happen. These are the two alternatives: either man can be in heaven or hell. And there is no third possibility. Either you can be in deep suffering, or you can be without suffering and in deep bliss. These are the only two possibilities, two openings, two doors, two modes of being.

Then the question necessarily arises why man chooses to be in suffering. Man never chooses to be in suffering, man always chooses to be in bliss -- and there comes the paradox. If you choose to be in bliss, you will be in suffering, because to be in bliss means to be choiceless. This is the problem. If you choose to be in bliss you will be in suffering. If you don't choose, if you simply remain a witness, non-choosing, you will be in bliss. So it is not a question of choosing between bliss and suffering; deep down it is a question of choosing between choosing and non-choosing.

Why does it happen that whenever you choose you are in suffering? -- because choice divides life: something has to be cut and thrown away. You don't accept the total. You accept something in it and you deny something, that's what choice means. And life is a totality. If you choose something and deny something, that which you deny will come to you, because life cannot be divided. And that which you deny, just because you deny it, becomes a powerful thing over you. You really become afraid of it.

Nothing can be denied. You can only close your eyes to it. You can only escape. You can become inattentive towards it, but it is always there hidden, waiting for the moment to assert. So if you deny suffering -- if you say you are not going to choose suffering -- then in a subtle you have chosen it. Now it will always be around you. One thing.

Life is totality -- the first thing; and life is change -- the second thing. These are basic truths. You cannot divide life. Secondly: nothing is stagnant, and nothing can be. So when you say, `I am not going to suffer. I am going to choose a blissful mode of living,' you will cling to happiness. And whenever you cling to something, you want it, you hope it to be permanent. And nothing can be permanent in life. Life is a flux.

So when you cling to happiness, you are again creating suffering, because this happiness will pass away; nothing can remain. It is a river, and the moment you cling to a river, you are creating a situation in which you will be frustrated, because the river will move. Sooner or later you will find that the river has gone far away. It is not now with you: your hands are empty and your heart is frustrated.

If you cling to bliss, there will be moments of bliss, but they are going to pass away. Life is a flux. Nothing can be permanent here except you. Except you, nothing is eternal here, and if you cling to a changing thing, when it is gone you will suffer. And it is not only that when it is gone you will suffer; if you have the mind of clinging, while it is there you will not be able to enjoy it, because you will be constantly afraid that it is going to be lost.

If you cling you will miss the opportunity also. Later on you will suffer and right now you will not enjoy, because the fear is just around the corner -- sooner or later it has to go. The guest has come to your house, and you know he is a guest and tomorrow morning he will leave. You start suffering for the future -- tomorrow morning he will leave -- and that pain, that suffering, that anguish, comes upon you right now. You cannot be happy while the guest is in your home. While the guest is with you, you cannot be happy because you are already in anxiety and anguish that tomorrow morning he will leave. So while he is there you will not be happy, and when he is gone you will be unhappy. This is what is happening.

The first thing: life cannot be divided. If you divide, only then can you choose. And that which you choose is flux-like -- sooner or later ut will be gibe -- and that which you have denied will fall over you; you cannot escape it. You cannot say, `I will live only in the days and I will escape the nights.' You cannot say, `I will live only with the ingoing breath and I will not allow the outgoing breaths.'

Life is a rhythm of opposites. The breath comes in and goes out: between these two opposites -- ingoing and outgoing -- you exist. Suffering is there, happiness is there. Happiness is just like the ingoing breath, suffering is just like the outgoing breath; or day and night -- the rhythm of opposites. You cannot say, `I will live only if I am happy. When I am not happy, I will not live.' You can take this attitude, but this attitude will make you suffer more.

No one chooses suffering, remember. You ask why man has chosen to suffer. No one has chosen to suffer. You have chosen not to suffer, you have chosen to be happy, and you have chosen strongly. You are doing everything to be happy and that's why you are in suffering, why you are not happy.

So what is to be done? Remember that life is total. You cannot choose -- the whole life has to be lived. There will be moments of happiness and there will be moments of suffering, and both have to be lived; you cannot choose. Because life is both -- otherwise the rhythm will be lost, and without rhythm there will be no life.

It is just like music. You hear some music: there are notes, sounds, and after each sound there is silence, a gap. Because of that gap, that interval of silence, and the sound -- because of both the opposites -- music is created. If you say, `I will choose only sounds and I am not going to take the gaps,' there will be no music. It will be a monotonous thing, it will be dead. Those gaps give life to sound. This is the beauty of life -- that through opposites it exists. Sound and silence, sound and silence -- that creates music, the rhythm. The same is with life. Suffering and happiness are two opposites. You cannot choose.

If you choose you have become a victim; you will suffer. If you become aware of this totality of the opposites and the way that life functions, you don't choose -- the first thing. And when you don't choose there is no need to cling, there is no meaning in clinging. When suffering comes you enjoy the suffering, and when happiness comes you enjoy the happiness. When the guest is at home you enjoy him, when he has gone you enjoy the suffering, the absence, the pain. I say enjoy both. This is the path of wisdom: enjoy both, don't choose. Whatsoever falls upon you, accept it. It is your fate, it is how life is, and nothing can be done about it.

If you take this attitude, there is no choosing. You have become choiceless. And when you are choiceless, you will become aware of yourself, because now you are not worried about what happens, so you are not outgoing. You are not worried about what is happening around you. Whatsoever happens you will enjoy it, you will live it, you will go through it, you will experience it, and you will gain something out of it, because every experience is an expansion of consciousness.

If there is really no suffering you will be poor for it, because suffering gives you depth. A man who has not suffered will always remain on the surface. Suffering gives you depth. Really, if there is no suffering you will be saltless. You will be nothing, just a boring phenomenon. Suffering gives you tone, a keenness. A quality comes to you which only suffering can give, which no happiness can give. A man who has remained always in happiness, in comfort, who has not suffered, will not have any tone. He will be just a lump of being. There cannot be any depth. Really, there cannot be any heart. The heart is created through suffering; through pain you evolve.

If a man has only suffered and he has not known any happiness, then too he will not be rich, because richness comes through opposites. The more you move in opposites, the higher, the deeper you evolve. A man who has simply suffered will become a slave. He who has not known any moments of happiness will not be really alive. He will become an animal; he will just exist anyhow. There will be no poetry, no song in the heart, no hope in the eyes. He will settle down to his pessimistic existence. There will be no struggle, no adventure. He will not move. He will be simply a stagnant pool of consciousness, and a stagnant pool of consciousness is not conscious -- by and by he will become unconscious. That's why if there is too much pain you fall unconscious.

So just happiness will not be of much help, because there will be no challenge. Just pain will not be of much growth, because there will be nothing to struggle, to hope, to dream; there will be no fantasy. Both are needed, and life exists between both as a very delicate tension, a subtle tension.

If you understand this, then you don't choose. Then you know how life functions, how life is. This is the way, this is the way of life -- it moves through happiness, it moves through suffering and gives you tone, and gives you meaning, and gives you depth. So both are good.

I say both are good. I don't say choose between the two -- I say both are good, don't choose. Rather, enjoy both; rather, allow both to happen. Be open without any resistance. Don't cling to one and don't resist the other.

Let no-resistance be your motto: I will not resist life. Whatsoever life gives to me, I will be ready to take it, available, and I will enjoy it. The nights are also good and beautiful, and suffering has a beauty of its own. No happiness can have that beauty. Darkness has its own beauty; day has its own beauty. There is no comparison and there is no choice. Both have their own dimensions to work in.

The moment this consciousness arises in you, you will not choose. You will be just a witness, and you will enjoy -- this choicelessness will become bliss. This choicelessness will become bliss. Bliss is not contrary to suffering; bliss is a quality which you can bring to anything whatsoever -- even to suffering.

A Buddha cannot suffer, but that doesn't mean that suffering doesn't happen to him. Remember, suffering happens as much to Buddha as it happens to you, but he cannot suffer because he knows the art of enjoying it. He cannot suffer because he remains blissful. Even in suffering he remains festive, meditative, alive, enjoying, open, non-resistant. Suffering happens to him, but he is not touched. Suffering comes and goes, just like a breath coming in and going out. He remains himself. The suffering cannot push him aside. The suffering cannot push him off his feet. Nothing can push him -- neither suffering nor happiness. You exist like a pendulum: everything pushes you -- everything. You cannot even be really happy, because happiness will also kill you. You get so involved in it.

I remember, once it happened that a poor schoolmaster -- very old, poor, retired -- won a lottery. The wife was afraid and she thought, `This is going to be too much for the old man. Five thousand dollars is too much for him. Even a five dollar note gives him so much happiness, so five thousand dollars may kill him.'

She ran to the church, to the nearby church, and went to the priest and told him what had happened. She said, `The old man is out, but he is just coming back, this is his time to return, so do something. Five thousand dollars -- just the news will kill him!'

The priest said, `Don't be afraid. I know the human mind and the way it functions. I know the psychology. I will come.'

So the priest came to the house. The moment they arrived the old man also arrived, so the priest started. He said, `Suppose you won a lottery of five thousand dollars -- what would you do?'

The old man thought about it, pondered over it, and he said, `I would give half of the money to the church.'

The priest fell down dead. It was too much.

Even happiness will kill you, because you get so involved. You cannot remain out of anything. Suffering or happiness, whatsoever comes to your door, you get so involved in it you are just pushed off your feet. You are no more there. Just a breeze comes in the house and you are no more there.

What I am saying is that if you don't choose, if you remain alert and aware that this is how life is -- days and nights come and go, suffering and happiness -- you just witness. There is no clinging to happiness, no hankering for happiness, and no escape from suffering. You remain in yourself -- centered, rooted. This is what bliss is.

So remember, bliss is not something opposite to suffering. Don't think that when you become blissful there will be no suffering -- nonsense. Suffering is part of life. It ceases only when you are not. When you completely disappear from the body, suffering ceases. When there is no birth, suffering ceases. But then you are lost in the totality, then you are no more -- just a drop has fallen into the ocean and is no more.

While you are, suffering will continue. It is part of life. But you can become aware: then suffering happens somewhere around you, but it never happens to you. But then happiness also never happens to you. Don't think that happiness will go on happening to you and suffering will not happen -- both will not happen to you. They will just happen around, just on the periphery, and you will be centered in yourself. You will see them happening, you will enjoy them happening, but they will happen around you; they will not happen to you.

This becomes possible if you don't choose. That's why I said this is delicate, subtle. Because of the paradoxical life, you choose happiness and you fall in suffering. You try to escape from suffering, and more and more suffering is invited. So you can take it as an ultimate law: whatsoever you choose, the opposite will be your fate. say it as an ultimate law: whatsoever you choose, the opposite will be your fate.

So whatsoever is your fate, remember, you have chosen it by choosing the opposite. If you are suffering, you have chosen your suffering by choosing happiness. Don't choose happiness and suffering disappears. Don't choose at all. Then nothing can happen to you, and everything is a flux except you. That has to be understood very deeply.

Only you are the constant factor in existence, nothing else. Only you are the eternity, nothing else. Your awareness is never a flux. Suffering comes, you witness it. Then happiness comes, you witness it. Then nothing comes, you witness it. Only one thing remains constant -- witnessing -- and witnessing is you.

You were a child.... Or, if you move even further backwards, once you were just an atomic cell. You cannot even imagine it -- just an atomic cell in your mother's womb, not even visible to the naked eyes. If that cell comes before you and you encounter it, you will not be able to recognize that once you were that. Then you were a child, then you became young, and now you are old, or lying on your deathbed. Many things happened. Your whole life has been a flux; nothing remained the same for even two moments.

Heraclitus says you cannot step twice in the same river -- and this he says for the river of life. You cannot have two similar moments. The moment that has gone cannot be repeated. It is gone forever; you cannot have it again. The same cannot exist. In such a great flux, only one thing within you remains the same -- the witnessing.

If you could have witnessed in your mother's womb, the quality of consciousness would have been the same. If you could have witnessed when you were a child, the quality of witnessing would have been the same. Young or dying, while just dying on your bed, if you can witness, the quality of consciousness will be the same.

The only one thing deep down within you is your witnessing self, your consciousness -- that remains the same; everything else changes. And if you cling to any object of the world of change, you will suffer. Nothing can be done about it. You are trying to do the impossible, that's why you suffer. I know you never choose, but that is not the point. If you suffer, you have chosen it indirectly.

Once you become aware of this indirectness of life, this paradoxical quality of life, you will stop choosing. When choice falls, the world has disappeared. When choosing falls, you have entered the absolute.

But that is possible only when the choosing mind disappears completely. A choiceless awareness is needed and then you will be in bliss. Rather, you will be the bliss. And I will repeat again: suffering will continue to happen, but now nothing can make you suffer. Even if you are suddenly thrown into hell, just by your presence there, for you it will be a hell no more.

Someone asked Socrates where he would like to go, so Socrates said, `I don't know whether there is a hell and a heaven. I don't know whether they are there or not, but I will not choose between them. My only prayer will be this: allow me to be alert wherever I am. Let me be fully aware wherever I am. Whether it is hell or heaven, that is irrelevant.' Because if you are fully alert, hell disappears -- hell is your being not aware. If you are fully aware, heaven appears -- heaven is your being fully aware.

Really there are no such geographical places as hell or heaven. And don't go on thinking in childish terms that someday you will die and God will send you to heaven or hell according to your doings, according to whatsoever you have done on earth. No, you carry your hell and heaven within you. Wherever you move, you carry your hell or heaven with you.

Even God cannot do anything. If suddenly you meet him, he will look like a hell. You carry your hell within you; you project it wherever you are. You will suffer. The encounter will be just death-like, intolerable. You may become unconscious. Whatsoever happens to you, you carry within you. The seed of consciousness is the seed of the whole existence.

So remember, if you suffer you have chosen it: consciously, unconsciously, directly, indirectly, you have chosen it. It is your choice and you are responsible. No one else is responsible.

But in our mind, in our confused mind, everything is upside-down. If you suffer, you think you suffer because of others. You suffer because of you. No one can make you suffer. That is impossible. And even if someone makes you suffer, it is your choice to be in suffering through him. You have chosen him and you have chosen a particular type of suffering through him. No one can make you suffer -- it is your choice. But you always go on thinking that if the other changes, or if the other is doing something else, you will not suffer.

I have heard. Mulla Nasrudin was filling out a report because he had crashed his car into a parked car. He was filling out a report, and many things were asked. When he came to the part where it was asked what the driver of the other vehicle could have done to avoid the accident, he filled it, `He should have parked the car somewhere else. The car was parked there; he should have parked it somewhere else -- because of him the accident has happened.'

And this is what you are doing. Always the other is responsible: he should have done something or other and there would have been no suffering. No, the other is not responsible at all. You are responsible, and unless you take this responsibility consciously upon you, you will not change. The change will become possible, easily possible, the moment you realize that you are responsible for it.

If you have suffered, it was your choice. This is what the law of karma is, nothing else: you are wholly responsible. Whatsoever happens -- suffering or happiness, hell or heaven -- whatsoever happens, ultimately you are totally responsible. This is what the law of karma is: total responsibility is with you.

But don't be afraid, don't be scared by it, because if the total responsibility is with you, then suddenly a door of freedom opens -- because if you are the cause of your suffering, you can change. If others are the cause, then you cannot change. Then how can you change? Unless the whole world changes, you will suffer. And there seems to be no way to change others -- then suffering cannot end.

But we are so pessimistic that even such beautiful doctrines as the law of karma we interpret in such a way that they don't free and liberate us, but rather, on the contrary, they make us more burdened. In India the law of karma has been known for at least five thousand years or even more, but what have we done? It is not that we have taken responsibility upon ourselves; we have thrown all the responsibility on the law of karma -- that it is happening because of the law of karma and we cannot do anything, nothing can be done; because of the past lives this life is such.

The law of karma was to free you. It was giving you total freedom towards yourself. No one else can make any suffering for you -- this was the message. If you are suffering you have created it. You are the master of your fate, and if you want to change it, immediately you can change it and the life will be different. But the attitude....

I have heard, once two friends were talking. One was a bonafide optimist, the other a bonafide pessimist. Even the optimist was not too happy about the situation. The optimist said, `If this economic crisis continues and these political catastrophes continue and the world remains the same as it is, immoral, then we are going to be reduced to begging soon.'

Even he was not too hopeful about it -- the optimist. When he said, `We are going to be reduced to begging,' the pessimist said, `From whom? From whom are you going to beg if this condition continues?'

You have a mind, and you goon bringing your mind to everything. Really, you transform the quality of every teaching and doctrine. You defeat Buddhas and Krishnas so easily because you convert the whole thing; you color it in your own way.

You are totally responsible for whatsoever you are and for whatsoever world you are living in. It is your creation. If this goes deep in you, you can change everything. You need not suffer. Don't choose, be a witness, and bliss will happen to you. Bliss is not a dead state. Suffering will go on continuing around you. So it is not a question of what happens to you; it is a question of how you are. The total ultimate meaning comes from you, not from the happening.

Question 2

LAST NIGHT YOU TALKED ABOUT BOREDOM. HOW CAN WE HOPE FOR AN ENLIGHTENED SOCIETY WHEN IN ORDER TO MAINTAIN SOCIETY MOST PEOPLE MUST PERFORM BORING, MONOTONOUS AND REPETITIVE TASKS?

Again: nothing is boring, nothing is repetitive and monotonous -- you are, and you bring your quality to everything that you do. No act is boring in itself, and no act can be non-boring in itself -- it is you who make it boring or non-boring. And the same act can be a boredom to you this moment and the next moment it may become a blissful thing. Not that the act has changed; your mood, the quality you bring to the act, has changed.So remember, you are not bored because repetitive acts have to be done. Rather, on the contrary, you are bored -- that's why they appear repetitive.

For instance, children want to repeat things. They go on playing the same game again and again. You get bored. What are they doing? The same game again and again? They go on asking for the same story. They enjoy it again and again, and they say, `Tell me that story again.'

What is the matter? You cannot conceive it. It looks stupid. It is not. They are so alive that nothing is repetitive for them. You are dead and everything is repetitive for you. They go on repeating the same game. The whole day they can go on, and if you stop them they will scream and cry and they will resist you, saying, `Don't destroy our game.' And you cannot understand what they are doing the whole day.

They have a different quality of consciousness. Nothing is repetitive for them. They enjoy it so much that the very enjoyment changes the quality, and then they enjoy it again -- and they enjoy it more, because now they know the know-how. The third time they enjoy it even more, because now they are acquainted with everything. They go on enjoying; their enjoyment goes on increasing. Your enjoyment goes on decreasing.

What is the matter? Is the act itself boring, or is something wrong with your mode of being, your mode of consciousness?

Look at it from another angle. Two lovers will go on repeating the same acts every day. They will kiss and they will hug -- they are the same acts. And they would like to go on doing that ad infinitum. If you give them time, they will go on repeating to the very end of existence. Looking at two lovers, you will get bored. What are they doing? -- the same thing every day? And if you give them the whole day, they will go on hugging, loving, embracing, kissing. What are they doing?

Lovers have again become children. That's why love is so innocent -- it makes you a child again. Now they are enjoying the game. They are again children. The whole nonsense of maturity they have thrown. They are planing with each other's body, and to them nothing is repetitive. Each kiss is something absolutely new, unique. It was never so before, it will never be the same again. Each moment of love has its own individual existence, non-repetitive; that's why they goon enjoying.

The economic law of diminishing returns doesn't apply to it. For love, there is no law of diminishing returns; rather, increasing returns. That's why economists cannot understand love, mathematicians cannot understand love. All those who are efficient in calculation cannot understand love, because this is absurd: it defies all laws, all mathematics -- it goes on increasing.

When I was a student, when my teacher of economics explained to us about the law of diminishing returns, I asked him about love, `What do you say about love?' He became disturbed, and when I said that just the contrary -- the law of increasing returns -- applies to love, he said to me, `You go out of the class. You cannot understand economics.' He said, `This law is universal.' I said,`Don't say it is universal, because what about love?'

Two lovers appear to us as if they are repeating. To them, they are not repeating. But to a prostitute the law of economics will apply, because for her, love is not love, it is a commodity -- something to be sold, something which can be purchased. So if you go and kiss a prostitute, for her it is boredom, repetition, and some day she will say. `This is nonsense. I am bored of being kissed and kissing the whole day. It is intolerable.' She will say that it is a repetitive act.

That's what I want to show you -- the distinction. For a lover it is not repetitive; for a prostitute it is repetitive. So, really, the act itself is not repetitive; it is your quality that you bring to it. Whatsoever you do, if you love it, it will never be repetitive. If you love your doings, your acts, there will be no boredom. But you don't love.

I go on talking to you every day. I can goon ad infinitum. I love it. It is not repetitive for me. From eternity to eternity I can goon talking with you. Communication, to communicate with your heart, is love to me. It is not a repetitive act, otherwise I would get bored.

I have heard, one small child went with his father and mother to the church one Sunday, and then the next and the next. On the third Sunday this little child asked his father, `The God must be getting bored, because there are the same faces every day in the church. For three Sundays we have been coming here -- the same faces! The God must be bored, seeing them turning up again and again every Sunday.'

But the God is not bored.The whole existence has been repeating continuously. It looks like repetition to us, but if there is a being, a total being, something like a God, he is not bored. If he is bored there is no need to continue. He can stop. He can say, `No more!' He can say, `Finished!' But he is not bored. Why?

He loves -- whatsoever is happening is his love. He is a creator, not a worker, not a laborer. He is a creator.

A Picasso is not bored, he is a creator. If your act becomes creation, you will not be bored. And your act becomes creation if you love it. But the basic difficulty is that you cannot love whatsoever you do because you hate yourself -- that's the problem. So whatsoever you do, you hate it, because basically you hate yourself.

You have not yet accepted yourself, you have not yet thanked existence for your existence. From your heart there is no thank-you towards God. Really, you have a grudge -- `Why have you created me?' Deep down you go on asking. `Why have I been thrown into existence? What is the purpose?' Think, if suddenly God meets you, what will be the first question you will ask? You will ask, `Why have you created me? To suffer? To be in agony? To be unnecessarily wandering through lives and lives? Why did you create me? Answer!'

You have not accepted yourself so how can you accept your acts? Love yourself. Accept yourself as you are. Because action is secondary -- it flows from your being. If I love myself then whatsoever I do, I love it. And if I don't love it, I stop it. What is the need to continue?

But you don't love, and the source is unloved so the products of that source cannot be loved. Whatsoever you do -- you may be an engineer or you may be a doctor or a chemist or a scientist -- whatsoever you do, you will bring hate to it. Your hate makes it repetitive. You hate it, and you go on finding excuses for why you are doing it. You say, `I am doing it for my wife, for my children.' And your father was doing it for you, and his father was doing it for him, and your children will do it for their children, and no one will enjoy life.

These are tricks. You are simply a coward. You cannot escape from it, because it gives you security, safety, income, bank balance. Because you are a coward, you cannot stop doing it and you cannot start doing that which you love. Then you go on putting everything on your children, on your wife, and they are also doing the same.

Ask the child. He is going to the school, he is bored. He says, `I am going for my father. He feels happy. If I don't go he feels very miserable.' And your wife? -- she is doing everything just for you and the children. No one is really existing for himself. No one loves himself enough to exist for himself. Then everything goes wrong. The source is poisoned, and then all that comes out of that source is poisoned.

And don't think that if you change your job, you will love it. No, you will bring your quality to the new job also. In the beginning it may be a sensation, something new, but sooner or later you will settle down and it will be the same. Change yourself, love yourself, and love whatsoever you do; howsoever small it makes no difference.

I am reminded of an anecdote. It happened that when Abraham Lincoln became President, on the first day when he was inaugurating the senate, someone who was very jealous of his power, his prestige, his success, stood and said to Abraham Lincoln, `Lincoln, don't forget that your father was a shoemaker.'

It was absolutely irrelevant, absurd, and the man who said this added, `Your father was a shoemaker, and he used to make shoes for my family. Don't forget him.'

It was just to insult him, and the whole senate laughed because everyone was jealous. Deep down everyone was feeling, `This chair belongs to me, and this man has usurped it.' Of course, whenever someone succeeds, he succeeds in some cunning way; only you succeed rightly. This is how we adjust to others' successes -- it was cunning, by some wrong techniques somehow he has reached. This is how w can tolerate it and console ourselves. So the whole senate laughed.

But Abraham Lincoln said something which is beautiful. He said, `It is so good of you to remind me of my father. I know he was a shoemaker -- but I have never seen such a shoemaker. He was unique, he was a creator, because he loved shoemaking. And I cannot think myself as successful as he was, because I don't love this presidency as much as he loved shoemaking. He enjoyed it, he was blissful. I will never be as blissful in this presidency as he was just as a shoemaker.

`But why have you remembered him this moment? I know,' said Abraham Lincoln, `that my father was making shoes for your family, but they never complained, so I hope the shoes were alright. But you remember him in this moment, without any relevance -- I feel some shoe is still pinching. I am his son, I can repair it.'

If you love yourself, if you love your work, you live in a different milieu. In that milieu nothing is repeated. Repetition appears only to a bored mind. Don't say that you are bored because of repetitive acts. Acts appear repetitive because you are bored -- then whatsoever you do will appear repetitive.

But look at life -- life enjoys repetition. The seasons move in a circle. The sun moves in a circle -- every day, every morning, it arises. And the summer comes and the winter comes and the rains come and they go on moving. In a deep way the whole existence is repetitively moving. It seems creation is just like a child's play. The trees are not bored, and the sky is not bored. The sky never says, `Now, again the clouds?' For so many many millennia the sky has been seeing the clouds -- every rainy season the clouds come and they start moving. Look at life? It is repetitive.

The word is not good; the word `repetitive' is not good. Rather it will be better to say it goes on playing the same game. It enjoys it so much that it wants to repeat it again. And it goes on increasing; it goes on moving towards a climax. Why does man get bored with repetition? Not because repetition is boring, but because you are so bored that everything will be boring.

Once it happened that Sigmund Freud was asking a patient questions; just the preliminary basic questions that he asked before the psychoanalysis could start. He asked, `Look at the book-case, and what does it immediately remind you of?'

The man looked at the books, not really looking at all, and he said, `It reminds me of a woman, a beautiful woman.' This was good for Freud, because it was falling under his theory that everything is sexual, so he said, `Okay.' Then he took his handkerchief and said, `Look at this. What does this remind you of immediately? Whatsoever comes to your mind.''

The man laughed and said, `A beautiful woman.'

Freud was overjoyed. Really that was his theory -- that every man is basically concerned with sex and nothing else. Man thinks of woman, woman thinks of man, and that is all thinking. So he said, `Look at the door.' There was no one at the door, there was no one even moving in the street. He said, `Look, there is no one. This absence -- what do you feel? What do you immediately remember?'

The man said, `A beautiful woman.'

Now even Freud was a little disturbed whether this man was just deceiving him or not, so he said, `It seems too much. Everything makes you remember a woman~'

The man said, `That is not the point. Whether it is a bookcase or a handkerchief or an empty door is not the point. Really, I never think of anything except of women. I never think of anything else, so whatsoever you say is irrelevant. I think only of women. It is not that everything reminds me of them; I am thinking only of women -- it is not a question of any reminding.'

So really it is not a question that this act makes you bored or that act makes you bored, or repetition or monotony or tedious jobs make you bored. The real thing is that you are bored whether you do something or not. If you are simply relaxing in a chair you will be bored. Not doing anything you will be bored. You will say, `There is nothing to do and I am bored. Nothing to do -- I am bored.' The whole week you are bored because of the tedious job, and on the week-end you are bored because there is nothing to do. The whole life you are bored because of doing a repetitive job in a factory, in an office, in a shop. Then when you retire you are bored, because now there is nothing to do.

It is not a question of anything else. Something is not creating boredom in you; you are bored, and you go on bringing your boredom to everything that you touch. You have heard of King Midas -- whatsoever he touched became gold. You are also a King Midas -- whatsoever you touch becomes boredom. You have an alchemical touch: you can change everything into a boredom; everything, I say.

Don't think of changing j obs, actions; think of changing the quality of your consciousness. Be more loving to yourself. The first thing to remember is to be more loving to yourself. The moralists have poisoned the whole world. They say, `Don't love yourself. This is selfishness.' They say, `Love others, don't love yourself. The love of the self is sin.'

And I say to you that this is absolute nonsense -- and not only nonsense; it is dangerous nonsense. Unless you love yourself you cannot love anybody, it is impossible, because a man who is not in love with himself cannot be in love with anybody. If you are in love with yourself, only then can your overflowing love reach somebody.

A man who has not loved himself will hate himself, and if you yourself hate yourself, how can you love anybody? You will hate others also. You can only pretend. And when you cannot love yourself, how do you expect others to love you? Everyone is condemned in his own eyes. The whole moralistic teaching gives you only one thing: techniques of self condemnation -- how to condemn yourself, how you are bad, a criminal, guilty, a sinner.

Christianity says that your being a sinner is not a question of what you do/ you are born a sinner. It is not a question of whether you do some sin or not; no, you are a born sinner. Man is born in sin. Adam, the first man, committed the sin, and you are descendants. The sin has been committed, nothing can be done. Now it cannot be undone, and you are born into sin -- Adam's sin.

If you are born in sin, how can you love yourself? If your very being is guilt, how can you love yourself? And if you cannot love yourself, you cannot love anybody. The love must happen at home first -- you are the home -- and only when it overflows can it reach to others. And when it overflows, it overflows into your acts, into whatsoever you do. Whether you paint or make a shoe or anything -- just cleaning the street -- whatsoever you do, if you are in deep love, if you are in deep love with yourself, it flows into everything you do. It flows even when you are not doing anything. It goes on flowing, it becomes your very existence, and then nothing is boring.

People come to me; sometimes very sympathetically some friends ask me, `The whole day you are sitting in one room, not even looking out of the window. Don't you get bored?' I am with myself. Why should I get bored? They say, `Just sitting alone, don't you get bored?'

If I hate myself I will get bored, because you cannot live with a person you hate. You get bored with yourself. You cannot be alone. Even if you are alone for a few moments you get fidgety, you get uncomfortable, an uneasiness comes into your being. You long to meet someone, because you cannot remain with yourself. The company is so boring -- your own company. You cannot look at your own face. You cannot touch your hand lovingly; no -- impossible.

They ask me -- and their asking is relevant to their own reference, because they will get bored if they are alone -- they ask me, `Don't you go out sometimes?' There is no need. Sometimes they ask me, `People come to you with the same problem again and again. Don't you get bored?'

Because everyone has the same problem. You are so unoriginal you cannot even create an original problem. Everyone has the same problem. Some are related with your love, with your sex, with your peace of mind, with your confusion, or something else -- some psychology, some pathology, something -- but man can be easily divided into seven categories, and there are the same questions, the seven basic questions, and people go on asking them. So friends ask me, `Don't you get bored?'

I never get bored, because each individual is unique to me, and because of the individual, the problem he brings is not a repetition because the context is different, the individual is different. You come with your love problem, another comes with his love problem: both look similar but they are not, because two individuals are so different -- their difference changes the quality of the problem.

So if you categorize, you can categorize into seven categories, but I never categorize. Each individual is so unique that he cannot be put with anyone else. No category can be made. But then you have to have a very keen awareness to penetrate to the very root where the individual is unique. Otherwise, on the surface everyone is alike.

Just on the surface everyone is alike, with the same problems, but if you penetrate deep, if you are alert and ready to move with the person to the deeper core of his being, the deeper you go, the more original, individual and unique a phenomenon comes into being. If you can see to the very center, this person before you is unrepeatable. He has never been before, he will never be again. He is just unique. And the mystery then overfills you -- the mystery of the unique person.

Nothing is a repetition if you know how to penetrate, how to be loving and alert. Otherwise everything is repetitive. You are bored because you have a consciousness which creates boredom. Change the consciousness, and there will be no boredom. But you go on changing objects -- that will not make any difference.