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To be spiritual means to understand that these small things should not be given too much importance.I am not saying that they are meaningless.I am saying that they are meaningful but not as meaningful as you think.But money is not the goal and cannot be the goal.A house is needed, certainly.I am not an ascetic and I don’t want you to destroy your houses and escape to the Himalayas.Don’t misunderstand it.I am not an asceticand I don’t want youto destroy yourhouses and escape tothe Himalayas.The house is needed–but the house isneeded for you.Don’t misunderstandit.They exist as if they are needed for the house.They go on working for the house.And they had never lived.They had never a single moment of throbbing, streaming life.They were just imprisoned in security, familiarity, respectability.Then if you feel bored, it is natural.People come to me and they say they feel very bored.They feel fed up, stuck, what to do?They think that just by repeating a mantra they will become again alive.They will have to change their whole life pattern.Love, but don’t think that tomorrow the woman will be available to you.Don’t reduce the woman into a wife.Then you are living dangerously.Don’t reduce the man into a husband, because a husband is an ugly thing.Expect nothing and be ready for everything.That’s what I mean when I say live dangerously.We fall in love with a woman and immediately we start going to the court, or to the registry office, or to the church, to get married.I’m not saying don’t get married.Good, satisfy the society, but deep in your mind never possess the woman.Never for a single moment say that you belong to me. Because how can a person belong to you?And when you start possessing the woman, she will start possessing you.Then you both are no longer in love.You are just crushing and killing each other, paralyzing each other.Love, but don’t thinkthat tomorrow thewoman win beavailable to you.Don’t reduce thewoman into a wife.Then you are livingdangerously.Love, but don’t let your love degrade into marriage.Play should remain your life, your center of life.Work should be just a means toward play.Work in the office and work in the factory and work in the shop, but just to have time, opportunity, to play.Play means doing something for its own sake.If you enjoy many more things for their own sake, you will be more alive.Of course, your life will always be in risk, in danger.But that’s how life has to be.In fact the better part of it is risk, the best part of it is risk.The most beautiful part of it is risk.It is every moment a risk.You breathe in, you breathe out, there is risk.It is not certain, there is no guarantee.But there are a few people whose whole religion is security.I can testify to it. Even their prayer is just a means.To live dangerously means to live life as if each moment is its own end.Each moment has its own intrinsic value, and you are not afraid.You know death is there, and you accept the fact that death is there, and you are not hiding against death.In fact, you go and encounter death.Those who are courageous, go headlong.They search all opportunities of danger.Their life philosophy is not that of insurance companies.Their life philosophy is that of a mountain climber, a glider, a surfer.Always remain capable of risking.Wherever you can find an opportunity to risk, never miss it, and you will never be a loser.Risk is the only guarantee for being truly alive.Anything that remains a puzzle, a paradox, goes on troubling your mind.You may scratch yourself one way, somebody else may do it differently, but the itch has to be understood.The itch is the belief that existence is not a mystery.Mind can feel at home only if somehow existence is demystified.In fact the more you cover it, the more emphatically it is there.Your very effort to cover it shows your fear that somebody is going to see the hole.Ideas are substitutes for where life is mysterious and you find gaps that cannot be filled by reality.Ideas are substitutesfor where life ismysterious and youfind gaps that cannotbe filled by reality.You fill those gapswith ideas, and atleast you start feelingsatisfied that life isunderstood.Have you ever thought about this word understand?It means standing under you.People have been trying to understand life in that same way, so that they could put life also underneath their feet and declare, We are the masters.Now there is nothing which is not understood by us.But it is not possible.Whatever you do, life is a mystery and is going to remain a mystery.We are surrounded by the beyond.It is as if one looks into an abyss, and one starts trembling, one starts feeling sick.The very awareness of the abyss and you start trembling.The real is like an abyss, because the real is a great emptiness.It is vast sky with no boundaries.Never remain confined to the boundaries, always trespass boundaries.Make the boundaries if you need them, but always remember you have to step out.Never make imprisonments.One feels cozy because there are no wild winds blowing.Before death comes and drags you into the beyond, go on your own.A Zen monk was going to die.He was very old, ninety years old.Suddenly he opened his eyes and he said, Where are my shoes?And the disciple said, Where are you going?Have you gone crazy?I would like to go to the cemetery, because I don’t want to be dragged.I will walk on my own and I will meet death there.I don’t want to be dragged.This will be very ugly, that four persons will be carrying me.No.He walked to the cemetery.Not only that, he dug his own grave, lay down in it, and died.Such courage to accept the unknown, such courage to go on your own and welcome the beyond!Then death is transformed, then death is no longer death.Such a courageous man goes beyond death.For one who goes on his own to the beyond, the beyond is never like death.Then the beyond becomes a welcome.It persuades you that by surrounding you in this way it will protect you.That’s the seduction of the ego.It goes on telling you again and again, If I am not there you will be unprotected, you will become too vulnerable, and there will be too much risk.So let me guard you, let me surround you.Yes, there is a certain protection in the ego, but the wall becomes your imprisonment also.There is a certain protection, otherwise nobody would suffer the miseries that ego brings.It is just like when you close your door and hide behind it because you are afraid of the enemy.Then a friend comes but the door is closed, he cannot enter.If you are too afraid of the enemy then the friend also cannot enter into you.And if you open the door for the friend, there is every risk that the enemy may also enter.Life is risky, death has no risk.Die, and then there is no problem for you and nobody is going to kill you because how can anybody kill you when you are already dead?Enter a grave and be finished!But if you are alive, then there are millions of problems.The more alive the person, the more problems there are.But there is nothing wrong in it because struggling with problems, fighting with the challenge, is how you grow.The more alive theperson, the moreproblems there are.But there is nothingwrong in it becausestruggling withproblems, fightingwith the challenge, ishow you grow.The ego is a subtle wall around you.It does not allow anybody to enter into you.You feel protected, secure, but this security is deathlike.It is the security of the plant inside the seed.Behind the wall of the seed, hiding inside the cell, everything is protected.Or think of a small child in the mother’s womb.Everything is there, whatsoever the need of the child it is fulfilled immediately.There is no anxiety, no fight, no future.The child simply lives blissfully.Every need is fulfilled by the mother.But would you like to remain always in your mother’s womb?It is very protective.If it was given to you to choose, would you choose always to be in the mother’s womb?The womb seems to be the last, the ultimate in comfort.But would you like to remain in the mother’s womb?Life is always in the wild.Life is there outside.The English word ecstasy is very, very significant.It means to stand out.To be ecstatic means to get out, to be free, to be moving, to be a process, to be vulnerable so that winds can come and pass through you.When a bird breaks the egg and flies into the sky, it is ecstasy.The ego is the egg, and you will have to come out of it.Get out of all protections and shells and securities.Then you will attain to the wider world, the vast, the infinite.Only then you live, and you live abundantly.But fear cripples you.The child, before he gets out of the womb, must also be hesitating about whether to get out or not.It must take one step forward and another step back.Maybe that’s why the mother goes through so much pain.The child is hesitating, the child is not yet totally ready to be ecstatic.The past pulls it back, the future calls it forth, and the child is divided.This is the wall of indecision, of clinging with the past, of clinging with the ego.And you carry it everywhere.Sometimes, in rare moments, when you are very alive and alert, you will be able to see it.Otherwise, although it is a very transparent wall, you will not be able to see it.This ego has to be dropped.One has to gather courage and shatter it on the floor.People go on feeding it in millions of ways, not knowing that they feed their own hell.Cochrane was standing beside the coffin of her dead husband.Their son stood at her elbow.The mourners, one by one, passed in review.He’s feeling no pain now, said Mrs.What did he die of?Poor fella, said Mrs.He died of gonorrhea!Another woman gazed at the corpse.He’s well out of it now, she said.He’s got a smile of serenity on his face.