NOTES OF A MADMAN


Om Mani Padme Hum

IT IS AN AMAZING THING that all religions of the world agree on the sound of the soundless sound, OM. That's the only agreement between all religions, and there are three hundred religions. Why? Why do they all agree only on this point? They agree because when you come to such a height you hear it... it resounds all over... vibrates... OM....

Om Mani Padme Hum

Om is the most significant sound ever uttered by man.

Om Mani Padme Hum
Om Mani Padme Hum....

I love this mantra. I love no other mantra like it because there is none parallel to it. There cannot be. No other people have touched these heights continuously for hundreds of years. Don't look at my legs, and my toe....

The foolish toe,
what does it know;
it is not the Tao
it is only a toe.

I know the worry is because of your love for me. But don't take indications from toes. Listen to the whole. I cannot be harmed. I am beyond harm. Nothing can be taken away from me. I cannot lose anything. What a grandeur! To be in a state of not losing anything because you don't have anything. I live like a king; in fact no king has ever lived like me. I can truly say what I mean and mean what I say. I am beyond the clouds, in open sky,

unlimited,
unbounded.

I am not saying anything of the ego. It is just a joy. I rejoice in my people, that's what I mean when I say I am proud. I am not comparing with anything, because there are not other people on the earth to whom my people can be compared. It is a rare moment in the history of humanity that only my people are the religious people.

The bureaucracy, the government, the politics, the stupidity... they are synonymous in my language. They may not be synonyms in the dictionary, but I don't have a dictionary any more. For the past few months now I have not read any book. I have stopped reading for the simple reason that what is beautiful has already been understood. Now it is pointless to read. I don't even read the Vedas, the Bible, the Koran. There is nothing that can be added to my experience, so I have stopped. Why waste your vision, your eyesight? It is not worth it.

When my doctors started saying that if I still wanted to study I would have to use spectacles, I said, "To hell with all books, because I hate spectacles." I hate all kinds of specs because they obstruct, they come in between. I want things face to face, directly, immediate. So I have stopped reading books. And the library is so rich, and so big, containing all that is great. But it no longer matters to me, I have gone beyond the words.

I am not silent because I don't want to say anything to you, but because what I see is really spellbinding. It is really... this is the moment when one says, "Aahhh!" and this is the meaning of Om. But you have to experience it; you have to live it. There is no other way to know it. To be is to know. To be is the only way -- Tao, the way. Tao does not mean anything else, it simply means the way to be poetic again, to be a singer again, a Baul, a dancer, a mad dancer -- because if when you dance you take care of your steps, then it is not a real dance. When all is forgotten, the steps and all, when only the dance remains, the whirling -- the whirling Jalaluddin Rumi knew -- just the whirling....

Twelve hundred years ago Rumi created the whirling dervishes, the dancing Sufis. He himself danced for thirty-six hours!

I am a simple man. This is so beautiful.... Basho where are you? Come write again... paint... Basho, again say:

The ancient pond
A frog jumps
and the silence... Om
Om Mani Padme Hum.

This is beauty...

Beauty,
and beauty is God.
I am facing God.
I am touching him.
So immensely vast.
Om Mani Padme Hum
Om Mani Padme Hum

At this moment I can create Tolstoy... Dostoevsky... Leonardo... Turgenev... Lao Tzu... Chuang Tzu... Buddha... Mahakashyap... Bodhidharma... Kabir... Jesus ....

The silence is so beautiful.
There are beauties and beauties
on every plane,
on every level.
Even in the mud a lotus can flower.



Om Mani Padme Hum.

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