Chapter 1: The Roots and the Flowers Are One
The milk of the lioness is seen at its best
when stored in a golden cup.
Worshipping prospers in a proper container.
The lover who wholly loves,
can reach reality,
comprehending the unattainable man.
The secrets of death
are revealed to him
while he is fully alive.
What does he care
For other shores of life?
Humanity is split. The very human mind is split because of two extremist life philosophies. Both are exaggerations, both are logical extremes.
One is what people call the philosophy of ‘eat, drink and be merry’, the materialist standpoint that life is just an accident - it is not going anywhere. There isn’t any meaning in it, no significance, no coherence. You are not preparing for something. Nothing is going to happen, so you are left in the moment; make the most of it. Death is going to destroy utterly, nothing will survive, so don’t be bothered about the other shore. Don’t think in terms of goals. Don’t think that God, truth, liberation, moksha, nirvana have to be achieved. These are all just illusions; they don’t exist - empty dreams of the human mind. They are not substantial, so squeeze out of the moment whatsoever you can. But there is no undercurrent of meaning in life. Life is accidental: you are not created for any purpose.
Many live that way and miss much - because there is purpose, because life is not an accident, because there is a running thread in each moment of eternity, because life is an unfoldment. Something is going to happen. The future is not barren, it is going to be creative. Preparation is needed so that you can unfold, so that your seed can become manifested, so that your essence is achieved, so you can know who you are and what this existence is.
Life is not just madman’s thinking. It is very systematic. It is not chaos, it is a cosmos. There is order. Even behind disorder there is order; only eyes are needed to penetrate to that depth. On the surface maybe you can see only a sequence of moments and you cannot see eternity. On the surface maybe you can see only the body and nothing more. Just as when you go to the ocean, standing on the beach you cannot see the depth of the ocean, only the waves. But the ocean is not just waves. In fact, waves cannot exist without the ocean; the ocean can exist without the waves. Waves are not separate from the ocean. Waves are nothing but ocean waving, and ocean has tremendous depth. But to know that depth one has to go into that depth, one has to dive deep.
The materialist standpoint makes life absolutely empty of meaning. Then whether you live or you commit suicide makes no difference, because life and death are just the same. Life is nothing but a way of dying. You are going to die; how you die does not matter, when you die does not matter. How long you live and then die does not matter. Nothing matters.