and you and only you will be responsible for it.

So be careful.

My blessings are always with you.

332. Love.

Metaphysics is born out of childish curiosity,

so however sublime, it remains juvenile.

And all the ultimate answers are foolish in a way

because the ultimate is not only unknown,

it is unknowable.

A mature mind is one

who understands the impossibility

of knowing the ultimate,

and with this understanding

there is a new dimension:

the dimension of being.

Knowing is not possible, but being is.

Or in other words:

in relation to the ultimate, only being is knowing.

This dimension is the religious dimension,

and unless one is religious in this sense

one goes on asking absurd questions

and accumulating even more absurd answers.

In a little backwoods school

the teacher was at the blackboard explaining

arithmetic problems.

She was delighted to see her dullest pupil

paying fixed attention,

which was unusual for him.

Her happy thought was that at last

the lanky lad was beginning to understand.

When she finished she said to him:

You were so interested, Cicero,

that I am sure you want to ask some questions.

Yes’m, drawled Cicero, I got one to ask.

Where do those figures go when you rub them off?

333. Love.

Do not cling to anything,

to any idea,

because clinging is the bondage.

Even if one is clinging to the idea of liberation –

moksha or nirvana –

one will be in bondage.

With clinging meditation is impossible

because clinging is mind, the bondage;

and no-clinging is meditation –

the freedom.

In the Book of Amu Daria there is an old Sufi tale:

Once upon a time there was a monkey

who was very fond of cherries.

One day he saw a delicious looking cherry

and came down from his tree to get it,

but the fruit turned out to be in a clear glass bottle,

so he had to put his hand into the bottle to get it out.

As soon as he had done so

he closed his hand over the cherry

but then he found that he could not

withdraw his fist holding the cherry

because it was larger than the bottle’s neck.

Now all this was deliberate

because the cherry in the bottle was a trap laid

by a monkey hunter

who knew how monkeys think.

The hunter, hearing

the monkey’s whimperings, came along.

The monkey tried to run away,

but because his hand was, as he thought,

stuck in the bottle,

he could not move fast enough to escape.

But as he thought he still had hold of the cherry,

he consoled himself.

The hunter picked him up

and tapped the monkey sharply on the elbow

making him suddenly relax his hold on the fruit.

The monkey was now free –

but he was captured.

The hunter had used the cherry and the bottle

and he still had them.

This monkey-way of thinking is the mind-way also!

And in the end when death, the hunter, comes,

everyone is found caught in his own bottle.

Remember, before the hunter comes

make sure your hand is out of the bottle!

334. Love.

A life without meditation

is like a winter landscape with the sun hidden,

the flowers frozen and the wind whispering

through the withered leaves.

And everyone knows it

because everyone lives it that way,

though no one needs to live it that way.

But why is this so?

This is so because life’s needs require an occupied mind

and meditation means being unoccupied.

We train ourselves to be occupied