Once you start dropping thoughts, the dust that you have collected in the past, the flame arises - clean, clear, alive, young. Your whole life becomes a flame, and a flame without any smoke. That is what awareness is.

Life is a flux, nothing abides. Still we are such fools, we go on clinging. If change is the nature of life, then clinging is stupidity, because your clinging is not going to change the law of life. Your clinging is only going to make you miserable. Things are bound to change; whether you cling or not does not matter. If you cling you become miserable: you cling and they change, you feel frustrated. If you don`t cling they still change, but then there is no frustration because you were perfectly aware that they are bound to change. This is how things are, this is the suchness of life.

Be the person you are. Never try to be another, and you will become mature. Maturity is accepting the responsibility of being oneself, whatsoever the cost.

Meditation means cleansing the mirror, dropping thoughts, letting thoughts disappear, attaining to moments when thinking ceases. And those are the most blissful moments in life. Once you have tasted a single moment of no-thought, you have taken a great leap into truth; then things will become more and more easy every day.

Be realistic: Plan for a miracle

The life of a sannyasin should be a life of no expectations. And then every moment is such a bliss, such a benediction, because whatsoever God gives is so much. Then you always feel grateful. But your desires are so much that whatsoever God gives always looks so little; and you feel frustrated, and you feel complaints, and you cannot feel grateful. And without gratitude, there is no possibility of prayer arising in your heart. Gratitude is prayer.

When you open up to the ultimate, immediately it pours into you. You are no longer an ordinary human being - you have transcended. Your insight has become the insight of the whole existence. Now you are no longer separate - you have found your roots.