Meditation is simply a strange surgical method that cuts you away from all that is not yours and saves only that which is your authentic being.

Nobody asked you about being born, nobody is going to ask you when the time comes for you to be taken away. Then why be worried? Birth happened to you; death will happen to you; who are you to come in between?

Learn to laugh. Seriousness is a sin, and it is a disease. Laughter has tremendous beauty, a lightness. It will bring lightness to you, and it will give you wings to fly. And life is so full of opportunities. You just need the sensitivity. And create chances for other people to laugh. Laughter should be one of the most valued, cherished qualities of human beings - because only man can laugh, no animals are capable of it. Because it is human, it must be of the highest order. To repress it is to destroy a human quality.

For the Baul, life is not a serious thing. It is fun, it is laughter, it is joy. So you cannot find anything like the seriousness of a church-goer, or the long faces of so-called religious people in the world of the Bauls. They love laughter, they love fun. They enjoy small things with tremendous respect. Ordinarily, religions are very long-faced, very sombre, serious, because they have to be - they are against life.

Zen is not effort. Effort is tension, effort is work, effort is to achieve something. Zen is not something to achieve. You are already that. Just relax, relax so deeply that you become a revelation to yourself.

Religion is not knowledge. Religion is love. The word 'religion' comes from a root which means binding together - falling into love, becoming one.

If you are absolutely without mind, just pure consciousness, time stops completely, disappears, leaving no trace behind.