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Enlightenment is not a goal

It is one of the most significant moments in the life of man, when he feels that he has run out of ambitions and is simply waiting, not knowing for what.

This is the moment when enlightenment is nearest.

Enlightenment is not a goal. It is not there, far away, that you have to reach to it. You cannot make an ambition of enlightenment: that is the sure way to miss it.

Enlightenment happens in this gap, when all your ambitions are finished, you don't know what to do, where to go. In this silence -- because there is no turmoil of desire, no hankering for ambition -- enlightenment happens of its own accord. It is a by-product, not a goal.

And that's why you are feeling sad, unfulfilled; although all the ambitions are finished... why should one feel unfulfilled? There must be something in life which is not part of the ambitious mind, without which one cannot feel fulfilled. You can fulfill all your desires, all your ambitions -- still you will feel unfulfilled.

In fact you will feel unfulfilled more than those who are still running after desires, because at least for them there is hope that tomorrow they will reach the goal. Today may be empty, but the illusion, the hallucination of tomorrow keeps today in a certain way hidden from them. But now for you there is nothing which can hide your reality. You are unfulfilled.

So one fundamental thing is very clear: that even if all the ambitions are fulfilled, man is not fulfilled. There is something which is not an ambition, and unless you achieve it -- and it is not an achievement -- unless it happens to you, the unfulfillment will make you sad.

This situation happens to very fortunate people; otherwise everybody is running after desires, and there are so many things in life to do. There is no time to feel unfulfillment, there is no time to feel sadness. The hope for tomorrow dispels all sadness.

But now you don't have any hope for tomorrow. Only today is with you, and it is good that you are waiting, not knowing for what. If you are waiting knowingly for something, that is desire, then the mind is playing a game with you. If you are simply waiting, you have come to the end of the road. There is nowhere to go, what can you do except wait? But wait for what?

If you can answer, "I am waiting for this or that," you will miss enlightenment. Then your waiting is not pure. Then it is not simply waiting. If you can be clear about it, that it is a pure waiting which is not addressed to anything, to any object, it is the right situation in which enlightenment happens.

So you are in a beautiful state, unaware of it, because pure waiting and sadness... one cannot see what is beautiful about it. Only the awakened ones can see what is beautiful about it. This is the situation in which, as a by-product, you wake up. Otherwise life remains a spiritual sleep. All desires and ambitions are nothing but dreams in this sleep.

So Chuang Tzu, one of the most absurd but one of the most significant mystics, has a beautiful parable. One morning he wakes up very sad. His disciples ask him what has happened. He said, "Something has happened, and I don't think any of you will be of any help -- but still I will tell you; you can try to help me.

"In the night I dreamed that I have become a butterfly." They all laughed.

They said, "There is no need to worry about it. It was only a dream."

Chuang Tzu said, "First listen to the whole thing, that is only the half part. Now I am awake, and wondering perhaps if the butterfly has gone to sleep and is dreaming that he is Chuang Tzu. My problem is whether I am Chuang Tzu who dreamed to be a butterfly, or I am a butterfly who is dreaming to be Chuang Tzu."

They all fell silent. Logically there seems to be no way. Chuang Tzu's chief disciple, Lieh Tzu, was out. As he came in people were sitting sadly, the master was sitting sadly. He enquired of a disciple, "What is the matter? What has happened?" The disciple told him the story; he said, "Don't be worried, I will put him right."

And he went close to him and threw a bucket full of cold water into his eyes. And Chuang Tzu said, "That's perfectly right, that's the answer. But if you were not here.... Today I was lost. Now I know that I am Chuang Tzu; you need not bring another bucket, the water is too cold."

Lieh Tzu said, "When I am out you should not do any such thing. These people don't understand you. They were all puzzled, and they were all sad that their master is sad, and all that is needed is cold water so you wake up, whoever you are -- a butterfly or Chuang Tzu does not matter -- wake up! From any point, either from being a butterfly or from being a Chuang Tzu. All that is needed is WAKE UP! Who cares who you are? We care... your wakefulness, that is our concern."

A sadness, a deep unfulfillment, ordinarily will not look something glorious, not something to be proud of, but I say to you that it is something to be proud of. Just remain in your sadness. Don't try to change it into something else. Remain in your waiting -- don't try to give it an object.

A pure waiting attracts the ultimate experience we call enlightenment to it. One has not to go to enlightenment as a goal.

Enlightenment comes to you when you are ripe, and this is the kind of ripeness which is necessary.

In the West it is happening to many people, but they do not know, because in the West Lieh Tzu has not entered yet. They are sad, in deep anguish; they are drowning themselves in alcohol, in drugs, in perverted sexualities -- they are trying to forget their sadness in all kinds of things. They are trying to find ways somehow to make an object for their waiting.

Perhaps they may become religious, and they may start looking for God; but remember, all those who are waiting for God are waiting for Godot.

I used to think that Godot must be a German word -- it sounds German. It hits like a German word. I used to think it must be German for God and that was exactly the message in the book WAITING FOR GODOT. Nobody has seen Godot, nobody knows about him. Two persons are waiting, but just to wait for nothing is the most difficult thing in the world.

So they have imagined themselves... and they have helped each other, and one says to the other, "I think he must be coming."

He says, "I also think. It is already late." And nobody knows about whom they are talking, but nobody wants to bring up the question, "About whom you are talking?" -- because they are both afraid that if the question is raised then their wound will be opened, that there is only waiting and it is for no one, and it will be very sad.

So it is good. And they go on talking...

"This is not right, this is not gentlemanly -- promising and then not coming." And finally one gets up and says, "I am fed up with this waiting. I am going to look for him -- where is he? What is preventing him from coming?"

The other says, "Where are you going, leaving me alone here? I am also coming with you."

The whole dialogue starts with no base, but they both get engaged in it. So I thought it can only be God. I asked my German sannyasin, the oldest German sannyasin, Haridas, "Is `Godot' the German word for God?" He said, "No! the German word for God is `Gott'."

I said, "Even better -- already got! No question of waiting. In Godot there is some possibility to wait. God is a faraway goal, but Gott...?" Only Germans have got it. Nobody else has the guts to say that.

A few will become religious and start waiting for Gott. A few may start philosophizing, that life is meaningless, that life is nothing but anguish, that it is nausea. And the beauty is that Jean-Paul Sartre, who was continuously saying, "Life is meaningless, just anxiety, anguish, nausea" -- he also wrote a book titled NAUSEA -- he lived long. Then why go on living if life is just nausea -- to write a book about it? If it is meaningless, to argue about it? To get a Nobel Prize for it?

That reminds me of Zeno, one Greek philosopher, a very sharp logician. He has left puzzles which have not been solved in two thousand years. And I don't think there is any way to solve them. The man has a tremendous mind for looking at things in such a way that he will find puzzles everywhere.

And he preached before Jean-Paul Sartre, two thousand years before him, that life is meaningless, but he was more logical. He said, "Suicide is the only logical conclusion." Many of his disciples committed suicide, and he himself lived for ninety years! And when he was dying, somebody asked, "This is strange. You preach suicide and many of your closest followers have committed suicide when they were young, and you have lived to ninety." And in those days to live to ninety was very rare. "What is your answer?" He said, "I had to live, to preach my philosophy, to teach people that life is nothing, and the only way out is to commit suicide. It was such a burden, but a duty has to be fulfilled. I could not commit suicide, because that would have been destructive to my philosophy and its propagation."

He is saying he lived just to teach people that they should commit suicide.

Many intelligent people are committing suicide. Those who cannot gather courage to commit suicide go mad. Either there are drugs or madness or suicide or a superstitious religion and creating a bogus idea of God far away, just to give you something to wait for; otherwise it seems like an open wound, and there is no way for it to be healed. Jay, what I am saying is totally different from what is happening in the West. What I am saying is what has happened in the East in the past ten thousand years, whenever a man has come to such a point that all ambitions are useless -- he has lived them, and found that it was not worth it; he reached the goal that he wanted and then found that there was nothing to be found, that it was only a hallucination, an oasis that looked to be real from far away -- but as he came closer and closer, it disappeared, and there was only desert.

The East has used it in a different way. Not a single philosopher has preached for suicide. Not a single man in this state has gone mad, or has turned towards drugs. But for centuries it has been accepted as the most potential moment in life. If you can just wait, without waiting for anything; just wait -- pure waiting.... Let the sadness be there, let the unfulfillment be there -- they cannot stop your enlightenment.

Only one thing can stop your enlightenment, and that is if you make some object for your waiting. If the waiting is pure, enlightenment is going to happen, and with its happening there is fulfillment, and there is great rejoicing and life has come to its flowering.

The Transmission of the Lamp
# 15

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