Distance is such a vast thing. You will take some time, and then one day you will get up, move, and you will achieve. If he is near, you will feel guilty and wonder why you are not achieving anything with him? One feels uncomfortable reading Heraclitus, Basho, Buddha. That never happens with Patanjali. One feels at ease.
Look at the paradox of the mind: with the easiest of people one feels uncomfortable. The discomfort comes from you. To move with Heraclitus or Jesus is very uncomfortable because they go on insisting that the kingdom of God is within you – and you know that nothing exists within you except hell. They insist that the kingdom of God is within you; it becomes uncomfortable.
If the kingdom of God is within you, then something must be wrong with you. Why can’t you see it? If it is so present, why can’t it happen right this moment? That is the message of Zen – that it is immediate. There is no need to wait, no need to waste time. It can happen right now, this very moment! There is no excuse. This makes you uncomfortable; you feel uncomfortable, you cannot find any excuse. With Patanjali, you can find millions of excuses. He is very far, and millions of lives’ effort is needed. Yes, it can be attained, but always in the future. You are at ease. There is no urgency about it, and you can be as you are right now. Tomorrow morning you will start moving on the path – and tomorrow never comes.
Patanjali gives you space, gives you future. He says, “Do this and that, and by and by you will attain – some day, nobody knows, in some future life…” You are at ease, there is no urgency. You can be as you are; there is no hurry.
These Zen people, they drive you crazy! And I drive you even crazier because I talk from both sides. This is just a way. This is a koan. This is just a way to drive you crazy. I use Heraclitus, I use Patanjali, but these are tricks to drive you crazy. You simply cannot be allowed to relax. Whenever there is a future, you are okay. The mind can desire God, and nothing is wrong with you. The very phenomenon is such that it will take time. This becomes an excuse.
With Patanjali you can postpone, with Zen you cannot. If you do postpone, it is you who are postponing, not God. With Patanjali you can postpone because the very nature of God is such that it can be attained only in gradual ways. It is very, very difficult. That is why you feel comfortable with difficulty. This is the paradox: with people who say that it is easy, you feel uncomfortable; with people who say it is difficult, you feel comfortable. It should be just the opposite.
The truth is both, so it depends on you. If you want to postpone, Patanjali is perfect. If you want it here and now, you will have to listen to Zen and you will have to decide. Are you feeling the urgency? Haven’t you suffered enough? Or do you want to suffer more? Then Patanjali is perfect – follow Patanjali. And somewhere in the distant future you will attain bliss. But if you have suffered enough… And this is what maturity is: understanding that you have suffered enough.
You call Heraclitus and Zen for children? Kindergarten? This is the only maturity, to have been realized: “I have suffered enough.” If you feel this, an urgency is created, a fire is created. Something has to be done right now! You cannot postpone it; there is no meaning in postponing. You have postponed it enough already. But if you want it in the future, if you would like to suffer a little more, if you have become addicted to the hell – to remain the same just one more day – or if you would like some modifications, follow Patanjali.
That is what Patanjali says: “Do this and do that, slowly. Do one thing, and then another thing.” And millions of things have to be done and they cannot be done immediately, so you go on modifying yourself. Today you take a vow that you will be nonviolent, and tomorrow you will take another vow. The day after tomorrow you will become celibate… In this way it goes on and on. There are millions of things to leave behind: lying, violence, aggression, all have to be dropped; by and by anger, hate, jealousy, possessiveness – millions of things. Meanwhile, you remain the same.
How can you drop anger if you have not dropped hate? How can you drop anger if you have not dropped jealousy? How can you drop anger if you have not dropped aggressiveness? They are interrelated.
So you say that now you will no longer be angry. What are you talking about? Nonsense! You will remain hateful, you will remain aggressive. You would still like to dominate, you would still love to be at the top – and you are dropping anger? How you can drop it? They are interrelated.
This is what Zen says: “If you want to drop it, understand the phenomenon that everything is related.” Either you drop it now or you never drop it. Don’t befool yourself. You can simply whitewash over it – a little here, a patch there, and the old house remains with all its oldness. While you go on working, painting the walls and filling the holes, this and that, you think you are creating a new life and meanwhile you continue in the same way. The more you continue, the more it becomes deep-rooted.
Don’t deceive yourself. If you can understand, it is immediate. That is the message of Zen. If you cannot understand, something has to be done, and Patanjali will be good – so follow Patanjali. One day or other you will have to come to an understanding and you will see that this whole thing has been a trick – a trick of your mind to avoid the reality, to avoid and escape – and on that day, suddenly you will drop it.
Patanjali is gradual, Zen is sudden. If you cannot be sudden, it is better to be gradual. Rather than being nothing, neither this nor that, it is better to be gradual. Patanjali will also bring you to the same situation, but he will give you a little space. It is more comfortable – difficult, but more comfortable. No immediate transformation is demanded. The mind can fit in with a gradual progress.
You say: “Heraclitus, Christ, and Zen make the final step seem close; Patanjali makes even the first step seem almost impossible. It seems like we Westerners have hardly begun to realize the amount of work that has to be done.” It is up to you. If you want to do the work, you can do it. If you want to realize without doing the work, that too is possible. That too is possible! It is up to you to choose. If you want to do hard work, I will give you hard work. I can create even more steps. Patanjali can be stretched even longer. I can put the goal even farther away; I can give you impossible things to do. It is your choice. Or if you really want to realize, this can be done this very moment. It is up to you. Patanjali is a way of looking, Heraclitus is also a way of looking.
Once it happened…
I was walking along a street and saw a small child eating a very big watermelon. The melon was too big for him. I looked and watched and saw that he was finding it a little difficult to finish it. So I said to him, “It seems to be really too big, don’t you think?”
The boy looked at me and said, “No! There is not enough me.”
He is also right. Everything can be looked at from two standpoints. God is near and far. Now it is for you to decide where you would like to take the jump from – near or far. If you want to take the jump from far, then all the techniques come in because they will take you far – from there you will take the jump. It is just like you are standing on this shore of the ocean; the ocean is here, and also there at the other shore – which is completely invisible, very, very far away. You can take the jump from this shore because it is the same ocean, but if you decide to take the jump from the other shore, Patanjali gives you a boat.
The whole of Yoga is a boat to go to the other shore to take the jump. It is up to you. You can enjoy the journey; there is nothing wrong in it. I am not saying it is wrong; it is up to you. You can take the boat and go to the other shore and take the jump from there. But the same ocean exists here. Why not take the jump from this shore? The jump will be the same, the ocean will be the same, and you will be the same. What difference does it make if you go to the other shore? There may be people on the other shore who may be trying to come here. And there are Patanjalis there who have also made boats. They are coming here