Devadatta, life is not something that can be defined. And life is not one thing, either;
there are as many lives as there are people. Life is not a singular phenomenon. My life
has a taste of its own, your life has its own individuality. The life of a tree certainly is not
your life, and the life of a river is not the life of the tree.
Life is a multiplicity, life has millions of forms. How can it be defined? No definition will
do justice to it. Yes, it can be lived, it can be tasted, but it cannot be defined. And your
definition will simply show your experience. It will not say anything about life, it will
only say something about how you have understood your life. It will not be relevant to
anybody else's life. Remember this, then life is felt as a tremendous mystery.
Sol Greenberg was the only Jewish man in a small Texas town. He had given freely of his
wealth and was particularly kind to the black population. And then Greenberg died.
Since he had no relatives, Greenberg bequeathed all his worldly goods to the
townspeople. In order to show their respect and appreciation they decided to bury
Greenberg in grand style.
They dressed him up in a cowboy outfit, complete with ten gallon hat and gold spurs.
They had a solid gold Cadillac built, placed Greenberg behind the wheel and then dug a
hole large enough to accommodate the car and its deceased occupant.
As they were lowering the Caddy into the ground, two blacks stood nearby and one
commented to the other, "Ah tell ya, man, them Jewish folks sure knows how to live!"
The definition depends on you. The definition is always going to be your definition, how
you conceive life, it will not be the definition of life. For the money mad, life will have
the sound of money, of solid gold. For the power mad, the power maniac, life will have a
different taste. For the poet, of course, life will have something of poetry in it.
It differs individual to individual, it depends. But one thing is central, essential, and that I
would like to tell you. One thing is very essential: anybody who is really alive will be
herenow. Whatsoever the form and whatsoever the expression of his individual life, one
thing will be essentially there: the quality of being herenow.
Past is no more, future is not yet, so those who live in the past don't live, they only think
they live. And those who live in the future can't live, because how can you make anything
out of the future which has not come yet?
But that's how people are living. Millions live in the past, and the remaining millions live
in the future, and it is very rare to find a person who lives herenow. But that is the real
person, that is the person who is really alive. Life needs only one thing: to be rooted in
the present. There is nowhere else for it to be rooted. Past is memory, future is
imagination; both are unreal.
The real is this moment -- thisness.
You ask me, "What is life?"
This is it!
You will have to learn how to unburden yourself from past and future, then you will be
able to live like a roseflower or like a bird or like an animal, like a tree. Then you will
have the same greenness, then you will have the same life juice flowing in you.
As I see it, millions of people on the road are not alive but walking zombies, they are
dead people. In their eyes you will not find life flowing, life juices flowing. Their life is
utterly meaningless -- it is meaningless because it is not life.
In the old days, a minister had a negro named Ezra in his household. Ezra was smart and
ambitious, but he couldn't read or write.
One Sunday the minister saw Ezra in church, scribbling away industriously through the
sermon. Afterwards the minister asked him, "Ezra, what were you doing in church?"
"Takin' notes, suh. Ah's eagah to l'arn."
"Let me see," said the minister, and he glanced over Ezra's notes, which looked more like
Chinese than English.
"Why, Ezra," he chided, "this is all nonsense!"
"Ah thought so," said Ezra, "all the time you was preaching it."
Life is not there readymade, available. You get the life that you create, you get out of life
that which you put into it. First you have to pour meaning into it. You have to give color
and music and poetry, you have to be creative. Only then will you be alive.
The second essential thing: that only those few people who are creative know what life is.
The uncreative never know, because life is in creativity, life is creativity. Can't you see
how life goes on creating? It is a continuum of creativity, constant creativity, every
moment creativity.
In fact God is not a creator. It is better to call him "creativity," because verbs are truer
than nouns. Nouns look like things, verbs are processes -- alive, flowing, dynamic. God is
more creativity than a creator. Whenever you are creating, you will have the taste of life,
and it will depend on your intensity, on your totality. Life is not a philosophical problem,
it is a religious mystery. Then anything can become the door -- even cleaning the floor. If
you can do it creatively, lovingly, totally, you will have some taste of life.
Here in the ashram you will see people cleaning the floors, cleaning the bathrooms,
structuring rooms, making furniture. But you will see a totally different quality:
whatsoever their work is, they are doing it out of immense love. And you will see joy.
That joy is not coming out of the work, that joy is coming out of their totality in the
world, out of their surrender to the work. No work in itself can give you joy unless you
pour joy into it.
So don't ask what life is, ask how to enter into life. The door is now, here -- and you have
to be creative, only then will you be able to enter the door; otherwise you will go on
standing in the doorway without entering the palace.
So the second essential is: be creative. If these two things are fulfilled, you will know
what life is.
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