This Moment is Your Home

16 January 1992, Lucknow

You do not need to desire anything; everything belongs to you. Everything you see you can have. It is all yours — everything is yours. Tell me now that which is not yours. The mind is your servant, the ego is your maid servant, the body is your foot mat — what else do you need? You can give commands: “Come on…. come on mind, do this.” Call to the ego; she is your maid servant, she will do everything that you need. You have to give commands, you have to be king. Don’t enslave yourself to the mind, to the ego, to the senses. You have to command them and everything will be done. Otherwise you become a slave.
To be a slave means that, with any desire that you have, you become a slave to it. You enslave yourself to anything that you need or desire, to petty things, you become a beggar. You choose:  if you are a king, you must behave like a king. If you are a beggar take a begging bowl and beg. Any desire that arises in your mind makes you a beggar. So who are you now, king or beggar? Sit on your throne.
Enlightenment is to relieve you from the concept of bondage. You say you are bound, then you ask for something that is the opposite of bondage. If you are in prison you need to be free. That means to get out of jail. Everybody is bound, everybody is in the prison of desires, the prison of “I want this and I want that.” They are never fulfilled. Any prisoner that desires something in the jail is not fulfilled. He is bound; he wants to be released. The whole samsara is a prison, the whole universe is a prison because your desires are not fulfilled. One is fulfilled and gives you sorrow. When you ask for another desire it ends in sorrow, and then the third one ends in sorrow. This is the life and this is samsara. No one is happy.
Here or there, a rare one demands, “I want to be free of samsara.” This is called enlightenment. To be free of sorrows, to be free of death and tensions and unhappiness is called enlightenment. This is a very welcome desire, which arises here and there. A very few —perhaps a finger count in a century — will ask for enlightenment. The world has not much capacity to produce many enlightened people in a century. We have to dig into the past to find some example of an enlightened person. We have to go and hunt it down from centuries ago to find an enlightened man, so it is a very welcome desire: to be enlightened.
To be feeling total in this moment is neither bondage nor enlightenment. This moment has got nothing to do with concept of bondage or even enlightenment. This moment has no name. It is the most precious moment. This moment is out of time, out of mind, out of concept, out of any ideation. This is free. This is your home and you are always in this moment. You went to the past to suffer. Out of suffering you wanted to be free. The thought, “I want to be enlightened” arose from the past. In this moment you have no desire, not even for enlightenment.