Mounam stutih.

Silence is the prayer.
Silence is the prayer. By prayer we always mean a communication, something said to the divine. But the Upanishads say that whatsoever you may say will not be prayer. Prayer is not something to be done. You cannot do it. It is not an act. It is not your doing. So, really, you cannot do prayer, you can only be a prayer. It is not related with any of your doings. It is a certain state of your being.
So the first thing to be understood is: man has two dimensions in existence. One is his being, the other is his doing. Prayer is not part of the second. You cannot do it. And a prayer that is done will be false, inauthentic. You can be – prayer belongs to the dimension of being.
The body cannot do prayer, cannot be in a prayer. The mind cannot do prayer, cannot be in prayer. The body is meant to do something; it is the vehicle of action. The mind is also a vehicle of action. Thinking is doing, it is action. So you cannot do anything with your body which can become prayer, neither can you do anything with your mind which can be called prayer, because these are both parts of the dimension of doing, action. Beyond body and mind, prayer happens. So if your body is in total inactivity, passive, and your mind is nullified, empty, only then is prayer possible.
This sutra says: Silence is the prayer. When mind is not working, when body is not active, there is silence.
Second thing to be understood: silence is not part of mind. So whenever we say, “He has a silent mind,” it is nonsense. A mind can never be silent. The very being of mind is anti-silence. Mind is sound, not silence. So when we say, “He has a silent mind,” it is wrong. If he is really silent, then we must say that he has no mind.
“Silent mind” is a contradiction in terms. If mind is there, it cannot be silent. And if it is silence, it is no more. That’s why Zen monks use the term “no-mind” never “silent mind.” No-mind is silence! And the moment there is no-mind you cannot feel your body, because mind is the passage through which body is felt. If there is no-mind, you cannot feel that you are a body. The body disappears from consciousness.
So in prayer there is neither mind nor body, only pure existence. That pure existence is indicated by silence, moun. How to attain to this prayer, to this silence? How to be in this prayer, in this silence?
Whatsoever we can do will be useless; that is the greatest problem. For a religious seeker this is the greatest problem, because whatsoever he can do will lead nowhere – because doing is not relevant. You can sit in a particular posture: that is your doing. You must have seen Buddha’s posture. You can sit in Buddha’s posture; that will be a doing. For Buddha himself this posture has happened. It is not a cause for his silence but, rather, a byproduct.
When the mind is not, when the being is totally silent, the body follows like a shadow. The body takes a particular posture, the most relaxed possible, the most passive possible. But you cannot do it the other way round. You cannot take a posture first and then make silence follow. Because we see Buddha sitting in a particular posture, we think that if this posture is followed then the inner silence will follow. This is a wrong sequence. For Buddha the inner one has happened first, and then this posture has followed.
Look at it through your own experience. When you get angry, the body takes a particular posture: your eyes become blood-red, your face takes a particular expression. Anger is inside and then the body follows. Not only outwardly: inwardly also the whole chemistry of the body changes. Your blood runs fast, you breathe in a different way, you are ready to fight or take flight. But anger happens first, then the body follows. Start from the other pole: make your eyes red, take fast breaths, do whatsoever you feel is done by the body when anger is there. You can act, but you cannot create anger inside.
An actor is doing the same thing every moment. When he is acting a role of love, he is doing whatsoever is done by the body when love happens inside, but there is no love. And an actor may be doing better than you, but love will not follow. He may be more angry, apparently, than you are in real anger, but it is just false. Nothing is happening inside.
Whenever you start from without, you will create a false state. The real always happens first in the center, and then the waves reach to the periphery. That’s why this sutra says prayer is silence. This is the innermost center in prayer. Start from here. But that’s very difficult. The difficulty arises for so many reasons.
The first: we have never known silence, so the word is meaningless really. We have heard the word, we know what it means, but we don’t know really what the experience of silence is, so it connotes nothing. The word falls on our ears, we believe that we understand, nothing is understood. The very word is unknown to us as far as experience is concerned. Only the sound of the word is known.

Mulla Nasruddin was practicing silence in a mosque with three other friends. It was a religious day and they had taken a vow to be silent for twenty-four hours. This was to be their prayer. Silence is prayer: they had heard it.
Just five or ten minutes after they started, the first man said, “I wonder whether I have locked my house or not!”
The second one said, “What are you doing? You have broken the silence and now you will have to start again!”
The third one said, “You fool! You have also broken it.”
Mulla Nasruddin was the fourth. He said, “Praise be to Allah! I am the only one who has not broken his silence yet.”

They have heard the word silence. They have heard silence is prayer. Why did this happen? When someone else was breaking his silence everyone was aware, but when someone was himself breaking it he was not aware. Why? Because to them, to talk, to utter something, was breaking the silence. Really, you never hear whatsoever you say. When someone else says it, you hear it. You are so accustomed to your own sound and voice you don’t know what you are saying, that you are talking.
Another difficulty is: we are constantly talking inside, so when you utter something outwardly there is no difference for you. Inwardly, you were already talking. Now you have uttered something outwardly. As far as you are concerned nothing has changed, nothing has happened. But when someone else utters something, for you something new has happened. He was silent before and now he has uttered something. You yourself are talking within, so when you utter something you will not be aware. Someone else may become aware that now you have broken silence.
We are aware of others because inwardly we are constantly talking with ourselves. A monologue, a continuous monologue is there. Awake or asleep, we are continuously talking. This continuous talk has become such a habit that you have not known any interval when you were not talking inwardly. When you are talking with others, you feel relieved, relaxed, because when you are talking with others you are relieved of the duty of talking to yourself. And that is such a boring thing, to talk with oneself. You already know what you are going to say, and still you have to continue.
No one else can be such a bore to you as you yourself are. You have told these things to yourself millions of times, and again and again you are telling them. We are not very inventive. We go on in circles saying the same thing again and again. Watch – watch for twenty-four hours and note down what you are saying to yourself. Then you will just feel a very weird feeling, strange, that this you have been saying continuously your whole life. Even in one day, you go on repeating yourself.
This has become just a habit, deep-rooted. And when something becomes a habit, deep-rooted, you are not aware of it. It becomes automatic. The robot part of your body takes it and continues it. That’s why silence is very difficult, because silence really means breaking the monologue within. It is not a question of not talking to someone else. Moun, silence, is not really concerned with others; deep down it is concerned with your own monologue.
Don’t talk with yourself. This is very difficult, so we will have to find out reasons why we talk with ourselves. Why in the first place – why do we go on talking with ourselves? If you observe, then you can find out the cause.
The cause is that nothing is complete in our lives; everything is incomplete. You were eating, and then you were thinking about your office. So eating will not be satisfied, it will not be fulfilled, you will not feel content. It remains incomplete. Hastily you eat, you fill up your belly, and you run to your office. A process has remained incomplete.
Then when you are in your office, you begin to think about your wife, about your children, and a thousand things. Then you are not in the office. The whole day you have been there, and still you were not there. The work in the office has remained incomplete. Now you have come to your house, and you are thinking about your office. You are with your wife, but you are not. You are absent.
It is a rare phenomenon that a husband is present with his wife – rare! And it hurts very much because the wife can feel it. The husband also feels that the wife is not present. No one is present. Everything is incomplete. The mind has to continue the thing which you have left incomplete. And so many things are incomplete, so the mind goes on continuously in circles completing things you have left incomplete.
Do you remember anything which you have completed? Do you have any moment in your life, any experience, of which you can say, “It is complete, total”? If you have any experience which is complete, the mind will never go back to it. There is no need. There is no need – it is absolutely useless. The mind simply tries to complete everything. The mind has a tendency to complete. And this is necessary, otherwise life will be impossible.
So this constant monologue within is really part of your wrong living, incomplete living. Nothing is finished and you go on starting new things, you go on making new beginnings. Then the mind goes on being piled up with incomplete things. They will never be completed, but they will create a burden on the mind, a constant burden, a growing burden, an increasing burden. And that creates the monologue.
That’s why the older you grow, the more the monologue grows with you. And old men begin to talk aloud. Really, the burden is so much that the control is lost. So look at old men: they will be sitting, and their lips will be working, and they are talking, and they will be making gestures. What are they doing? You think they have gone crazy, that they are old and now they have become stupid. No, that is not the case. They have had a long, incomplete life, and now death is coming nearer and the mind is in a haste, trying to complete everything. And it seems impossible.
So if you really want to break this monologue, which means silence, then try to complete everything that you are doing. And don’t start new things – you will go crazy. Finish whatsoever you are doing, very small things.
You are taking a bath: make it complete. How to make it complete? Be there. Your presence will do it. Be there, enjoy it, live it, feel it. Be sensitive to the water falling on you, be saturated. Come out of your bath doing it completely, totally. Otherwise the bath will follow you, it will become a shadow, it will go with you.
You are eating, then eat. Then forget everything else. Then nothing exists in the world except your present act. Whatsoever you are doing, do it so completely, so unhurriedly, so patiently, that the mind is saturated, becomes content. Only then leave it.
Three months of continuous awareness about doing acts completely will give you some intervals in your monologue. Then, for the first time, you will become aware that this monologue was a byproduct of incomplete living.
Buddha has said “right living.” He has shown an eightfold path; of those eight principles, one is “right living.” Right living means total living, wrong living means incomplete living. If you are angry, then be really angry. Be authentically angry. Make it complete! Suffer it! There is no harm in suffering, because suffering brings much wisdom. There is no harm in suffering, because only through suffering does one transcend it. Suffer it, but be authentically angry.
What are you doing? You are angry and you are smiling. Now the anger will follow you. You can deceive the whole world, but you cannot deceive yourself, you cannot deceive your mind. The mind knows very well that the smile was false. Now anger will continue inside. That will become a monologue. Then whatsoever you have not said you will have to say within. Whatsoever you have not done you will imagine doing. Now you will create a dream. You will fight with your enemy, or with the object of your anger. The mind is helping you to complete a certain thing. But that, too, is impossible because you are doing other things.
Even this can be helpful. Close your room – you were not angry; the situation was such that you could not be – close your room and now be angry. Don’t continue the monologue, act it out. There is no necessity to act it out on someone; a pillow will do. Fight with it, act your anger out, express it, but let it be authentic, let it be real. And then you will feel a sudden relaxation inside. Then the monologue will break. There will be an interval, a gap. That gap is silence.
So the first thing: break monologues. And you can do it only if your living becomes a right, complete living. Many things incomplete create the inner madness. And our situation is a whole life – not only one whole life, but many whole lives – incomplete.
When you love, you are doing a thousand things simultaneously. Then love becomes false. Now psychologists say that if you are loving someone and a thought crosses your mind, you have missed love. You are far away from your love object. There is a gap, the communion is broken.
When two lovers are really in love, there is nothing else, simply love – nothing else. They are playing with each other’s bodies, absolutely absorbed in it. The whole world has dropped out of their consciousness; nothing else is there. Then love is complete. And then they will not become sex maniacs. Then their minds will not be perverted minds.
Psychologists say the Don Juans like Byron and others, who go on changing their love objects every day…. It is reported that Byron loved sixty women in his life, and his life was very short. And these are the known cases; no one knows how many really. He was expelled from society because everyone became afraid. And he was such a beautiful person, but why this madness?
One may think that he was a great lover. That is not the case. He was not a lover at all; psychologists say he was not a lover at all. He was a maniac, just a perverted mind. He couldn’t complete any love. And before any love could be consummated, completed, he had started another.
It is reported that he was forced to marry a girl. Of course, he was forced because he was not ready. How could he marry? – because the next day he would be running after another woman. When he was forced and he was coming out of the church – the bells were ringing and the guests were still there – he was coming down the steps with his wife’s hand in his hand, suddenly he stopped, left the hand. A woman was crossing the street. His eyes followed the woman and he said – he was an honest man in a way – he said to his wife, “Now you don’t mean anything to me. That woman has become everything to me.”
He suffered, because love is a growth. Love is a long growth. It grows. And the more it grows, the deeper it goes. Butterfly minds cannot grow in love. That is impossible because the love never grows roots. Before the love can grow roots, they have moved. This type of mind will suffer, because he cannot love and he cannot get love. Nothing is ever completed, nothing becomes ripe ever. Then the whole life will just be wounds, incomplete wounds. And this happens in everything.
You have never loved, you have never been angry, you have never acted spontaneously. You have not really eaten, you have not slept totally. You have not done anything with your total being in it, total involvement. You have always been doing something else also.

Bokuju was asked, “What is your sadhana? What are you doing here in this lonely forest? What are you doing?”
Bokuju said, “I have no sadhana, I have no method. When I feel hungry, I go to beg. When I don’t feel hungry, I fast. When I feel that the hut has become cold, I move out into the sun. When the sun is too much to bear, I move in the shadows of the trees. But wherever I am, I am total. When I feel sleepy, I drop down into sleep. This is all I am doing here.”
The man said, “But this is nothing. Everyone is doing the same!”
Bokuju said, “If everyone is doing the same, the world will be quite a different place – silent, peaceful, loving. Then there will be no need to ask for liberation. This very world will be moksha.”

No one is doing that! Bokuju’s answer seems simple – it is not. It is very arduous, very difficult, just to sleep and not dream, because dreaming means an incomplete day is now being completed in the dream. Whatsoever you have left incomplete in the day will be completed in the dream.
So if you have been a good man, if you have tried to be a good man and the goodness was not natural to you, not something spontaneous but something forced, then in the dream you will move to the other extreme. If you have been honest with effort, then in the dream you will deceive someone. Then everything is complete.
Now psychologists say that if dreaming stops you will go mad, because dreaming is releasing much nonsense that you have left incomplete. And unless it is completed, it cannot evaporate – it cannot evaporate from your being. They say dreaming is the daily catharsis. So if you have not slept well, you feel uneasy. It is not because you have not slept, it is because you couldn’t dream.
Now they say sleep is not so essential. A man can live without sleep for many days, even for months and years. They say it is not so necessary. Dreaming is necessary, and you cannot dream without sleep. That’s the problem. That’s why sleep is needed. So sleep is needed only for dreaming.
But why is dreaming needed? You wanted to kill someone and you have not killed him – you will kill him in your dreams. That will relax your mind. In the morning you will be fresh; you have killed. I am not saying to go and kill so you don’t need any dream. But remember this: if you want to kill someone, close your room, meditate on the killing, and consciously kill him. When I say, “Kill him,” I mean kill a pillow; make an effigy and kill it. That conscious effort, that conscious meditation, will give you much insight into yourself.
Remember one thing: make every moment complete. Live every moment as if there is no other moment to come. Then only can you complete it. Know that death can occur any moment. This may be the last. Say, “If I have to do something, I must do it here and now completely.”

I have heard a story about a Greek general. The king was somehow against him. There was a court conspiracy, and it was the general’s birthday. He was celebrating it with his friends. Suddenly, in the afternoon, the king’s messenger came and he said to the general, “Excuse me, it is hard to tell you, but the king has decided that this evening, by six o’clock, you are to be hanged. So be ready by six o’clock.”
Friends were there, music was there. They were drinking, eating and dancing. It was his birthday. This message changed the whole atmosphere. They became sad, but the general said, “Now don’t be sad, because this is going to be the last part of my life. So let us complete the dance we were dancing and let us complete the feast we were having. There is no more possibility now, so we cannot make it complete in the future.
“And don’t send me off in this sad atmosphere, otherwise my mind will long again and again. This stopped song and this stopped festivity will become a burden on my mind. So let us complete it. Now there is no time to stop it.”
Because of him they danced, but it was difficult. Only he danced more vigorously, only he became more festive. But the whole group was just not there. His wife was weeping, but he continued to dance, he continued to talk with his friends. He was so happy that the messenger went back to the king and he said, “That man is rare. He has heard the message, but he is not sad. He has taken it in a very different way – absolutely inconceivable! He is laughing and dancing and he is festive. And he says, ‘Because these moments are the last and there is no future now, we cannot waste them, we must live them!’”
The king himself came to see what was happening there. Everyone was sad, weeping. Only the general was dancing, drinking, singing. The king asked, “What are you doing?”
The general said, “This has been my life’s principle – to be aware continuously that death is possible any moment. Because of this principle, I have lived every moment as much as was possible. But, of course, you have made it so clear today. I am grateful because I was thinking death is possible any moment, but it was just a thinking. Somewhere, lurking behind, the thought was that, ‘It is not going to be just the next moment. There is a future,’ but you dropped the future completely from me. This evening is the last. Life now is so short, I cannot postpone it.”
The king was so happy he became a disciple to this man. He said, “Teach me. This is the alchemy. This is how life should be lived, this is the art. So I am not going to hang you, but be my teacher. Teach me how to live in the moment.”

We are postponing. That postponing becomes an inner monologue. Don’t postpone. Live right here and now. And the more you live in the present, the less you will need this constant minding, this constant thinking – less you will need. This is because of postponing, and we go on postponing everything. We always live in the tomorrow which never comes, and which cannot come. It is impossible. That which comes is always today.
We go on sacrificing today for tomorrow which is nowhere. Then the mind goes on thinking of the past, which you have destroyed, which you have sacrificed, for something which has not come. And then it goes on postponing for further tomorrows. That which you have missed, you go on thinking you will catch somewhere in the future. You are not going to catch it.
This constant tension between past and future, this constant missing of the present, is the inner noise. Unless it stops, you cannot fall into that silence which is prayer. So the first thing: try to be total in every moment.
The second thing: your mind is so noisy because you always go on thinking that others are creating it, that you are not responsible. So you go on thinking that in a better world – with a better wife, with a better husband, with better children, with a better house, in a better locality – everything will be good and you will be silent. You are not silent because everything around is wrong, so how can you be?
If you think in this way, if this is your logic, then that better world is never to come. Everywhere this is the world, everywhere these are the neighbors, and everywhere these are the wives and these are the husbands and these are the children. You can create an illusion that somewhere heaven exists, but everywhere is hell. With this type of mind, everywhere is hell. This mind is hell.

One day Mulla Nasruddin and his wife came to their home, to their house, late in the night. The house had been burgled, so the wife began to scream and cry. And the wife said to Mulla, “You are at fault! Why didn’t you check the locks before we left?”
By then the whole neighborhood had come around. It was such a sensation. “Mulla’s house has been burgled!” And everyone joined in the chant.
One neighbor said, “I was always expecting it. Why didn’t you expect it before? You are so careless.”
The second said, “Your windows were open. Why didn’t you close them before you left the house?”
The third one said, “Your locks appear to be faulty. Why didn’t you replace them?” And everyone was piling faults on Mulla Nasruddin.
Then he said, “One minute, please! Am I alone at fault?”
So the whole neighborhood said in a chorus, “Then who do you think is at fault if you are not?”
The Mulla said, “And what about the thieves? What about the thieves?”
The mind goes on throwing the blame on someone else. The wife is throwing it on Mulla Nasruddin, the whole neighborhood is throwing it on Mulla Nasruddin, and the poor man cannot throw it on anyone present – they are all stronger now, particularly in this situation – so he says, “What about the thieves?”

We go on throwing the blame on others. This gives you an illusory feeling that you are not wrong. Someone else somewhere is wrong, X, Y, Z. And this attitude is one of the basic attitudes of our so-called mind. In everything someone else is wrong. And whenever we can find a scapegoat, we are at ease. We are at ease – then the burden is thrown.
For a religious seeker this mind is of no help. This is the hindrance. This mind is the hindrance. One must realize that whatsoever the situation is, whatsoever the case is with you, you are responsible, no one else. If you are responsible, then something is possible. If someone else is responsible, then nothing is possible.
This is a basic conflict between the religious mind and the nonreligious mind. The nonreligious mind always thinks something else is responsible. Change the society, change the circumstances, change economic conditions, change the political situation, change something, and everything will be okay. We have changed everything so many times, and nothing is okay.
The religious mind says that whatsoever the situation, if this is your mind, you will be in hell, you will be in misery. You cannot attain to silence.
Put the responsibility on yourself. Be responsible because then something can be done, because only you can do something with yourself. You cannot change anyone else in this world; you can only change yourself. That is the only revolution possible. The only transformation possible is one’s own. But that becomes conceivable only when we feel that we are responsible.
Why are you so noisy within? Why so much anxiety within? You are responsible. This is the first step. Then we can go and change the causes. But the cause must be within, only then can it be changed.
In a similar situation someone else may not be uneasy at all. A buddha in the same situation will pass differently, unscratched. Why? Why are you just destroyed by a certain situation? You were ready. You were just waiting for the situation. Someone is angry at you – you also get angry. You say, “It is because he did something. He created the stimulus; I only reacted. I was not angry: he made me angry.”
But the religious analysis is different. Religion says anger is always yours. Anger was there to be stimulated. He stimulated it, of course, but something was within you – the energy, the tendency, the habit to be angry was there. That’s why he could stimulate it. If there had been no energy, no stored up anger, no repressed anger, no habit, then whatsoever he was doing would not have touched you at all. It touched you because you were ready to be touched. You were ready to explode. He simply created the situation and helped you. He was your helper! If there had been no one to create the situation, you would have created it yourself. You needed it – you needed it very badly.
Remember this when you get angry again: analyze the whole thing, meditate on it, and then you will know that you were already getting ready. You were prepared and you were waiting, and this man simply gave you a chance.

There was a case against Mulla Nasruddin in the court. Suddenly, without any reason, he had beaten his wife and run out of the house. So the magistrate asked, “What was the reason? Why suddenly? There was no fight, there was nothing. Why suddenly did you do this?”
The Mulla said, “I was standing by the door, and the door was open, and the street was vacant, and there was no traffic. The stick was just handy, and the wife was looking towards the house, and I thought I should not miss the opportunity.”

You will create opportunities. If they are not given to you, still you will not miss them. You will create them.
If one becomes aware of this phenomenon, then something can be done. Then it is within your control to do something. If you go on projecting causes outside – the source is within, but you go on projecting it outside – then you cannot do anything. Then you are helpless. Then what can you do if someone stimulates you, creates anger in you? What can you do? You are just a helpless victim.
Second thing: remember, you are responsible for whatsoever you are. Even if someone gives you a chance, he gives you a chance to express yourself. It is always you who are ultimately, finally, responsible.
Why this emphasis on one’s own responsibility? Because if I am responsible, I will stop reacting. You do something, I react. Reaction is really slavery. You are manipulating me. You can make me happy, you can make me miserable. You are my master, I am a slave. If you smile at me, I am happy. Just a glance, an angry glance at me, and I am miserable. You are my master.
If I think that you are responsible, then you remain my master and I will remain a slave. If I am responsible, then you may go on smiling or you may do whatsoever you like, but I will not react according to you. I will act according to me.

Mulla was sitting at a prayer-meeting in a mosque. His shirt was rather short and the man behind him thought it looked unseemly, so he pulled it down. Suddenly, immediately, Mulla pulled the shirt of the man in front of him. The man asked, “What are you doing?”
He said, “Don’t ask me. This man behind me started the whole thing. I am not responsible. I have simply reacted. If this is the way in this mosque prayer is done, I have to follow.”

You go on doing things because someone is doing them to you. You go on passing them on. You may not be aware of it. Are you aware when you are telling something to your children that you are simply repeating whatsoever was told to you by your father? This is Mulla Nasruddin! Are you aware? The way you are behaving with your wife is the way you saw your father behaving with your mother. You are just passing things on. You are no one – just a passage. What are you doing?
When you are with your servant, have you observed the way you behave? Is this not the way your boss behaves with you in your office? What are you doing? You are just a part of a long chain. Then you cannot be silent. How can you be silent? You are being pulled and manipulated from everywhere, and you are just vulnerable to everything, every nonsense. If someone is angry you say, “I should be angry. Why was he angry with me? Why?” He was angry – it is his business. How are you related? But now you feel it a duty and you will do the same, religiously, as whatsoever is being done to you.
Remember, you are not a slave. And no one has imposed this slavery on you. It is self-imposition. Throw it! Be a master! Only then can you be silent. Only a master can be silent. And when I say “a master,” I mean a person who acts from within, who is not reacting. We are always reacting; there is no action in our lives. The moment you can act, you will feel a deep silence within – because now you have become a master. No one can disturb you. Now you are not helpless.

Buddha is passing by. Someone abuses him. He listens to it, then he turns to Ananda and he says, “Ananda, this was an old debt – now it is paid. In some life I must have abused him. Now there is no more chain. Thank you, friend,” Buddha says to that man. “Now the account is closed. I am not going to react.”
Buddha says, “Reaction is rebirth. If you react, you will have to be born again and again, because you are in a chain. Accounts are not closed, everything is open.”
The day Buddha died, he gathered all his monks. Ten thousand monks were there, and he said, “Now this body is to drop, so do you want to ask anything? Because now no more can I be. No more will I be in this world!”
So someone asks, “But why? Why are you leaving us?”
Buddha says, “Now everything is paid. The whole account is closed. I was waiting only for this account to be closed completely. Now nothing is left. I am a master. I have transcended the chain. Now I am no more amidst you.”

This is the third point: become a master. Whatsoever you are doing, do it as an act, never as a reaction. Resist the temptation to react. That is the only evil, the only sin – to react. Laugh if you are feeling to laugh, but don’t laugh as a reaction. Weep if you are feeling to weep, but don’t weep as a reaction. Stop reactions! Act!
If these three things are there, you will drop into silence which is prayer. This sutra says: Silence is the prayer. Mounam stutih.
When you are silent, with no monologue within, no anxiety within, no reactions within, nothing incomplete, suspended, everything complete and finished, you become a space, just a space – infinite. Because all these boundaries are your reactions, all these boundaries are your anxieties, all these boundaries of your being are just your madnesses. When you are silent, you are infinite space.
But why does this sutra call it prayer? Why bring prayer in? Better to call it meditation – why call it prayer? When you are silent, it is meditation. Why bring prayer in? It is not brought unnecessarily, because when you become an infinite space the divine descends in you. You have called, you have invoked. When you are totally silent, you have become a host. Now the divine guest can come. And only in this emptiness, in this silence, in this nothingness, can the divine guest come. This is the only invitation, invocation. This is the only prayer.
Prayer means asking for the divine to come, asking for the divine to be a guest to you. Words won’t do, invitations won’t do. Whatsoever you do – cry, weep – it won’t do. First become a host. Silence is becoming a host. Now you are ready. Now no need to pray, now no need to request, no invitation is needed…the divine descends. When you are silent the divine is there.
It will be better to say it in other terms: the divine is always there, but you cannot feel it because you are not silent. The guest is there, but the host is asleep. The guest is there, but the host is unaware. The guest has already come before the host, but the host is wandering somewhere else. That wandering is our mind.
Have you observed that mind is a wandering? Mind means wandering. You are not here: that is what mind means. You are somewhere else. If you are here, then there is no mind, then there is no wandering. Mind cannot be in the present. It can be in the past, in the future. Mind can never be here-now. It can be there-then. It is a wandering. When you are a mind you are wandering somewhere else. The guest is present always.

Buddha was asked when he became enlightened, “What have you gained?”
He said, “Nothing, because whatsoever I now feel as a gain was already there. I was only unaware. So it would be better,” he said, “that I should say I have not gained anything. Rather, I have lost much. I have lost myself who was there too much, really – who was there too much. I have lost myself and I have gained that which was always, eternally present.”

But then one has to come back to his home. This homecoming is silence, this returning to your home is silence. And the rishi says it is prayer, because when you are silent the invitation has reached. You have invoked, you have prayed. And in prayer many things are implied. If you pray, and if it is really a prayer, then there is no gap between your prayer and the answer to the prayer. If there is a gap, it means the prayer was false.
If you are silent, the divine is there. There is no gap. If you are silent and you find that the divine is not there, remember, you are not silent. Even this thought that “the divine should come to me” creates disturbance.
Buddha has said that even the longing for the divine is a disturbance. Then you are not totally silent. If you are asking, you have moved, you have wandered, you have gone away. If you are asking for freedom, for eternal life, for immortality, for heaven, anything – if you are longing, you have wandered.
Total silence means total acceptance of whatsoever is, of that which is.
So the last thing to be understood: silence basically means total acceptance. Nonacceptance creates noise in the mind, in the being. Whenever you say no to anything, your mind begins to move and work. Whenever you say yes, your mind stops. No is the starter, yes is the stopper. In Sanskrit the word astik, theist, means one who has said a total and final yes to existence. Now he will never say no. Now this yes is ultimate, no going back!
Acceptance means you accept whatsoever is the case. If there is anger, you accept it. If there is suffering, you accept it. If there is lust, greed, you accept it. If there is anxiety, worry, you accept it. You accept everything. And then how is it possible to be disturbed? When one accepts everything, disturbance is impossible. So in the last analysis, silence means total acceptance.
Buddha has given it a name. He calls it tathata, suchness. He says that whatsoever is, is. Whatsoever is, is. Accept it, and then you are silent. Say no, deny, reject, try to change, you have created disturbance. This silence is prayer. And this silence you cannot create, you cannot force.
In life, all that is valuable, all that is of any value at all, is always a consequence of many, many things. You cannot approach it directly. For example, happiness: you cannot approach it directly. And those who try to achieve happiness directly will become most unhappy, and only because of their effort. Whenever you are doing something, totally absorbed in it, happiness happens.
A painter painting: he has forgotten himself completely in the act. He is totally there. He is no more, really. Really, a great painter never paints. Painting happens like we say it rains – it paints!

Van Gogh was asked once, “Which of your paintings is the best?” And van Gogh said, “But I have never painted anything. I cannot say. And if you insist, then I can say only this one which is being painted just now. But I am not the painter – the painting is happening. The painter is not there. The mind has stopped.”

Then Van Gogh can have a happiness not of this world. A singer, a dancer, can have a happiness which doesn’t belong to this world. But that is really a consequence of something else.
Silence is also a consequence of many things: of right living, of right action, of right acceptance, of being a right host. Then suddenly, silence happens. It is there – it has been always there.

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