Hassidism, The Art of Dying Chapter 2: Confusion is my method, question 5

The fifth question:

Question 5

WHY DO YOU GIVE US THESE RELIGIOUS TITLES? THEY SEEM ABSURD. OUTSIDE THE ASHRAM INDIANS SELDOM CALL ME SWAMI WITH A STRAIGHT FACE.

You must be hankering for it. I have not called you swami to be swami for others. The word 'swami' means lord. Don't hanker for others to call you lord. I have called you swami just to indicate your path -- so that you become lord of yourself. It is not to make others slaves to you, it is just to make a master of you. The word 'swami' is intended for self-mastery. So don't feel frustrated if nobody calls you swami. In fact, if somebody calls you swami, be alert, because there is danger. You may start thinking that you are a swami, you may start thinking that you are some holy man or something. Don't carry that type of nonsense. I am not here to make you holy or saintly or anything.

You ask why I give you these religious titles, because they seem absurd. They are. Really my whole intention is to make you so ridiculous, so absurd, that others laugh at you and you-can also laugh at yourself. That is the whole trick in it.

And for another purpose also I call you swami. I give you these religious titles because to me the profane and the sacred are not two separate things: the profane is the sacred, the ordinary is the extraordinary, and the natural is the super-natural.

God is not somewhere away from the world. God is in the world, immanent. That's my whole approach...that everything is divine as it is. The old concept of a religious man is that he is anti-life. He condemns this life, this ordinary life -- he calls it mundane, profane, illusion. He denounces it. I am so deeply in love with life that I cannot denounce it. I am here to enhance the feeling for it.

When I give you these religious titles I am not making you in any way superior to others. Don't carry any idea of 'holier than you', don't carry any idea of that sort. That is stupid.

I give you these orange clothes. These clothes have been used for centuries down through the ages for a specific purpose -- to make a demarcation between the ordinary life and the religious life. I want to dissolve all those differences. Hence I give you these robes and I don't take you away from life.

You will be sitting in ordinary life, working in ordinary life, walking in ordinary life. You will be in the marketplace, you will be in the shop or in the factory, you will be a labourer, a doctor, an engineer. I am not making you special in any way -- because that very desire to become special is irreligious. And I have given you these robes to destroy the whole concept completely. That's why the traditional sannyasins are very much against me.

I am destroying their whole superiority. Now sooner or later there will be no distinction. My swamis are growing so fast that the old traditional swamis will be simply lost in the jungle of my swamis. And people will not know who is who. That's the purpose behind it. I want to make religious life ordinary life, because this is the only life there is. All else is just an ego trip. And this life is so beautiful, there is no need to create another life superior to it.

Go deeper into it, move deeper into it, and profounder depths will be revealed to you. This ordinary life is carrying tremendous possibilities. So I don't want you to become religious in the sense that others are not religious. I want to drop all distinctions between the profane and the sacred, between the holy and the unholy. It is a great revolution. You may not even be aware of what is happening.

And if the traditionalists are against me, I can understand. I am destroying their whole'holier than you' attitude.

That's why I have chosen the orange particularly. That has been the traditional dress for sannyasins. But I have chosen only the dress nothing else is there in you -- nothing else of the traditional discipline. There is just awareness, a love for Life, a respect for life, a reverence for life. I have given you the orange robe, but the day I see that now the traditional distinction has been destroyed, I will free you from the orange robe. There is no need then. But it will take time because they have been creating the distinction for centuries.

You cannot conceive of what is happening. When an orange-robed sannyasin walks with his girlfriend on the street, you cannot conceive what is happening. It has never happened in India, not for ten thousand years. People cannot believe it -- and you are expecting that they should call you swami? It is enough that they are not killing you! You are destroying their whole tradition. A sannyasin was one who would never LOOK at a woman. Touching was out of the question -- and holding the hand, impossible! That was enough to throw him into hell.

I have made you a totally new kind of sannyasin. It is a neo-sannyas. And behind whatsoever I am doing there is a method. You may be aware of it or not. I want to destroy the whole traditional attitude. Life should be religious and religion should not have any life. The distinction between the marketplace and the monastery should not be there. The monastery Should be in the marketplace; the divine dimension should become part of everyday life.

Somebody asked Bokoju, 'What do you do? What is your religious discipline?'

He said, 'I live an ordinary life. That is my discipline. When I feel hungry I eat, and when I feel sleepy I sleep.' Yes, this is exactly how it should be.

The questioner was puzzled. He said, 'But I don't see anything special in it.'

Bokoju said, 'That is the point. There is nothing special.'

All hankering for the special is of the ego.

The questioner was still puzzled. He said, 'But this is what everybody else is doing -- when hungry they eat, when feeling sleepy they sleep.'

Bokoju laughed. He said, 'No, when you eat, you do a thousand and one things also. You think, you dream, you imagine, you remember. You are not there Just eating. When I eat, I simply eat. Then there is only eating and nothing else. It is pure. When you sleep you do a thousand and one things -- you dream, fight, have nightmares. When I sleep I simply sleep, there is nothing else. When sleep is there, there is only sleep. Not even Bokoju exists. When eating is there, there is only eating. Not even Bokoju exists. When there is walking, there is only walking -- no Bokoju. There is walking, simply walking.

This is what I would like you to become. Be ordinary, but bring a quality of awareness to your ordinary life. Bring God to your ordinary life, introduce God into your ordinary life. Sleep, eat, love, pray, meditate, but don't think that you are making or doing something special. And then you will be special. A man who is ready to live an ordinary life is an extraordinary man. Because to be extraordinary, to desire to be extraordinary, is a very ordinary desire. To relax and to be ordinary is really extraordinary.

Hassidism

THE ART OF DYING

Chapter-2

Confusion is my Method