in the bottle.

If a man puts a gosling into the bottle, he said,

and feeds the gosling through the bottle’s neck

until it grows and grows and becomes a goose –

and then there is simply no more room inside the bottle,

how can the man get it out without killing the goose

or breaking the bottle?

Riko! shouted Nansen, and gave a great clap

with his hands.

Yes master! said Riko with a start.

See! said Nansen.

The goose is out!

339. Love.

Meditation requires understanding and not effort,

understanding is essential, not effort,

and remember always that you cannot

substitute understanding with any effort whatsoever.

But what do I mean by understanding?

By understanding I mean – living a natural life.

Of course, you cannot try to be natural,

that is self-contradictory!

You can be natural but you cannot try to be natural.

Do you understand this?

Suzuki tells a story:

A monk once asked one of the old Chinese masters:

What is the way?

The master replied: The natural one, the ordinary one,

is the way.

How, continued the monk, am I to be in accord with it?

When you try to be in accord with it, said the master,

then you deviate from it.

Does this mean that one should not try?

No, because that too is a way of trying.

Of course, indirect, but still intentional;

that too will not help.

But just see the dilemma clearly and you are out of it.

Are you not?

340. Love and blessings.

I received your letter.

I was waiting for it daily since you left.

I know that you have gone far away from here

but I also know that now you cannot go away from me –

and that nearness is all that counts.

You have come near me in a non-spatial and

non-temporal sense.

The meeting has taken place in the nowhere

or in the everywhere –

because they mean the same thing.

And the real meeting takes place only in this way.

All else is illusion.

Remember me whenever you need

and you will find me then and there.

Ask anything and wait – and you will be answered.

The barriers have fallen from your mind

and you have entered the meditative state.

Now the doors of the divine are open.

Do not hesitate, and take the plunge.

You are completely ready,

just be courageous enough to enter the uncharted

and the unknown.

The call from beyond has come –

now accept the challenge and be fulfilled.

Now close your eyes

and feel me and see me and let my blessings

be showered on you.

341. Love.

Don’t take life so seriously,

because seriousness is a great dis-ease,

and not only a disease but a suicide also.

Be playful – totally,

because that is the only way to be living.

Life is a play, a leela, and to know it as such is religion,

and to live it as such is sannyas – renunciation.

If you can act and live as if acting and living in a dream

and still be a witness to it

then you will be in the cosmic flow, the tao.

And to be in the cosmic flow is to be free –

free from oneself, the ego.

The ego is the seriousness, the disease,

and the tao, the egoless existence, is the bliss, the ecstasy.

That is why I have given you such an absurd name!

But I have given it to you knowingly.

I have given it to you so that

you may never be identified with it.

The name is so absurd

that you will have to remain nameless

and a nobody behind it.

The name is such that not only others