Just to Pluck a Rose Petal

Freedom, Love, and Peace will be attained instantly as soon as you abandon vasanas — the impressions of the past that you have stored in your memory. If you abandon vasanas right now you can be free and happy; you can be in peace and love.

You can live well without vasanas, without desires, just as when you take off your hat or your coat you can live well and nothing is lost. Likewise, if you renounce vasanas — if you renounce the tendencies of the past — you will be well and happy. No time is needed, it is as easy as plucking a petal from a rose flower. It doesn’t take time. You can attain freedom, light and wisdom now — instantly you can be free. You do not need to toil endlessly. Penance, austerities, even meditations — just abandon them. This notion that, “I am bound.” has to be dropped and instantly you will be free and happy.

I am very happy to see so many seekers of truth here in one place with the desire for freedom. It has never happened at any time before. In the past we can only find isolated cases of those who found freedom. Two thousand years ago Siddhartha became the Buddha. He had to travel from teacher to teacher; he had to go through all kinds of austerities before he could finally just sit under the Bodhi tree in Bodhgaya and find silence. We do not have time to do all that. This teaching is so simple that it is not a teaching at all. So simple just to pluck a rose petal, just to give up the notion that you are bound, that you have to search for freedom in caves or mountains or monasteries. Freedom is revealed within yourself.

A crow sat on a coconut tree and the coconut fell. This does not create a relationship between the coconut and the crow. You may attribute freedom to meditation, sadhanas and effort; but when the coconut fell it fell on its own accord, not because the crow sat on the tree. When you get it you may attribute it to some sadhana, to staying with the teacher, to going to the Himalayas for years of contemplation or to long austerities and meditations, but it has nothing to do with these things. It is simply a question of keeping quiet. Keep quiet just for a moment, for this instant of time, and allow it to happen. Don’t interfere. Just keep quiet and watch what happens.

This is a very simple way to freedom. You are free. The notion that you are bound has been dumped on your head by your parents, by your priest, by your society. If you get rid of all these instantly you will find that you are what you have always been. If you give up all that you have read, heard, seen, touched or tasted, freeing yourself from all past notions — what will be left? You alone will remain — that which you have always been, what you will always be, and what you are now. The exercise or sadhana or way is not something to be borrowed from the outside. Just keep quiet, keep silent, and you will know freedom from sorrow and suffering. I wish everyone would try this and see.