A small story:
Lord Vishnu and Goddess Lakshmi were in a very relaxed mood and having a chat. Suddenly, Vishnu got up from His seat and ran a few yards, then took a u-turn and came back to take His seat. Lakshmi was perplexed and asked Him, 'Lord, why did you begin to run and then why did you return immediately?' Vishnu replied, 'I saw a man in the process of stoning one of my devotees. I ran to help him. But I saw my devotee picking up stones to retaliate. Then I decided that he did not need my help.'
Not from my intellectual knowledge, but from my experience, I am asking you to trust Existence. If you believe me, if you trust my words, when you trust Existence and relax from your tensions, headaches, worries and problems, be sure that you will be taken care of. Miracles will happen in your life. When you put your energy on trust totally, something happens in you. Alchemy starts taking place in you.
But we are continuously ready to defend. The truth is that we are fearful, and hence our defensive behaviour offends others. Any country increasing its army, claims that it is for defense purposes. Every army calls its army defensive. Then, who is really offending? Our very fear, our insecurity, makes us enter another's boundary offensively.
Whenever we trust, even if we live without comforts, I promise, you will live like God on this Earth. Sharada Devi opened a charitable hospital in Calcutta. There were two counters there; one for the poor where medicines were given free, and one for people who could afford to buy their medicine. One of the employees of the hospital complained to Sharada Devi, 'Mother, even the rich people are standing in the counter for the poor, and availing of free medicine. What should we do about this?' Sharada Devi replied, 'Don't bother. When a rich man stands in the line for the poor, be assured that he is also poor. Just give him the medicines. Even if he has money, he is a poor man.'
She makes a beautiful statement, 'If you live with trust, even if you are exploited, even if you lose your comforts of the outer world, you will live like a God on this planet Earth. You will float, never walk. You will become a divine person.'
In a Zen monastery, if a person is to be ordained as a monk, he has to pass a certain test. He has to live in a small room surrounded by grass on all four sides for a month. He has to walk in a particular line everyday whenever he leaves the hut. At the end of the month, if he has not created a path in the line that he walked, if the grass in that line has not died, he is eligible to become a monk.
This may be strange but it is true. Only when man walks on grass, it dies! It never happens with any other animal. I think not only plants, planets will also die if man walks on them; that is why he has not been allowed to walk on other planets! Since he is allowed to walk on planet Earth, we are in continuous danger. We have piled up atomic weapons which can destroy Earth a hundred times over. So if there is war, it is going to be one last war, not the next war.
Once I went on a safari, on an elephant ride in a forest in Tamil Nadu. There, you are taken on a particular path into the forest and brought back on another particular path. I noticed that where the mahout had walked, the grass had died but where the elephant had walked, the grass was alive. Strange but true! The elephant is so much heavier than man. Yet, where the elephant had walked, the grass was green and where man had walked, the grass was dead and a patch had been created. This is not because of physical weight but because of negativity.
We feel so insecure that we continuously defend ourselves; we continuously offend others. The defensive mechanism in us offends everybody. People who always say, 'I am innocent; people are using me, are taking me for granted,' are the ones who will always offend others by saying such things.
People who never defend themselves will never offend others. It is our mind, our being, which never trusts others and sends out negativity. When a cow eats grass, it will grow again but if a man even walks on it, the grass dies! That is why in Zen monasteries, whenever a man walks on the same path and a patch is not created, they accept him as a man who can be trusted, a man who can't hurt anybody, a man who is established in ahimsa (non-violence).
One more thing: if we defend ourselves because of our insecurities, we will not only offend others, but we will also miss the joy of living on this planet Earth. If we trust, even if we are exploited, how much will we lose? All that we possess is nothing more than a sand castle.
According to the Hindu epic, the Puranas, Vyasa lived the longest possible life a man could live. When someone asked him why he didn't build an ashram, he replied, 'After all, I am going to live for a few years. Why should I build a house? Why should I waste my time?' Even in our lives, if we analyze deeply, we will realize that most of our problems are nothing more than fantasies.
When we go to God, He is not going to ask us how much we possessed. He will ask us how we lived. Our wealth and relationships are not going to accompany us. But the way we lived our life will come with us.
A Zen koan goes, 'Children build sandcastles on the beach till the evening. When they leave for home, they break them without a care.' We build castles with costly things' but we take them so seriously. Children have intelligence, not seriousness.
So, there are two choices: we can live offending and defending continuously, where even if we have physical comfort, our being will have nothing more than a wound, or we can lead a totally relaxed life with utter freedom and complete trust in Existence. We can have physical, mental, emotional and psychological freedom – LIBERATION!
The moment we start living with trust, we are liberated; nothing hurts us anymore. If we live with trust, we even live our deaths. If we live without trust, we will be killed by the fear of death itself. Every moment, we will be dying. With trust, even in our death, we will be living.
Trust may or may not give us comfort, but we will have tremendous bliss. Without trust, we will have a deep wound. With trust, we will flower; we will have bliss.
Part 3: You are no Sinner