Love can never really be a great base for marriage because love is fun and play. If you marry someone for love you will be frustrated, because soon the fun is gone, the newness is gone, and boredom sets in. Marriage is for deep friendship, deep intimacy. Love is implied in it, but it is not alone. So marriage is spiritual. It is spiritual. There are many things which you can never develop alone. Even your own growth needs someone to respond, someone so intimate that you can open yourself totally to him or her.

Even trees are creative, rocks are creative. You are man, the very culmination of this existence. You are at the top, you are conscious. Never think with wrong beliefs, and never be attached to wrong beliefs, that you are uncreative.

I teach you joy, not sadness. I teach you playfulness, not seriousness. I teach you love and laughter, because to me there is nothing more sacred than love and laughter, and there is nothing more prayerful than playfulness. I don't teach you renunciation, as it has been taught down the ages. I teach you: Rejoice, rejoice, and rejoice again! Rejoicing should be the essential core of my sannyasins.

The future of humanity will move closer and closer toward the approach of Zen, because the meeting of the East and West is possible only through something like Zen, which is earthly and yet unearthly.

Just see how much respect God has paid to you. You are a masterpiece - unrepeatable, incomparable, utterly unique.

Meditation is enough. Everything else follows on its own.

To me, life in its totality is good. And when you understand life in its totality, only then can you celebrate; otherwise not. Celebration means: whatsoever happens is irrelevant - I celebrate. Celebration is not conditional on certain things: 'When I am happy then I will celebrate,' or, 'When I am unhappy I will not celebrate.' No. Celebration is unconditional; I celebrate life. It brings unhappiness - good, I celebrate it. It brings happiness - good, I celebrate it. Celebration is my attitude, unconditional to what life brings.