Weblog von Hans-Wolfgang

Die Chinesische Volkskunst kennt sehr viele Geschichten über Unsterbliche und Taoisten. Diese Geschichten spiegeln die Tiefe wieder, bis zu der die gesamte chinesische Kultur, Tradition und Geschichte von dem Konzept der Kultivierung durchdrungen ist.

He Zhizhang lebte an der Xuanping Strasse in Xijing (der heutigen Stadt Changan). Gegenüber von seinem Haus stand ein Haus mit einer kleinen Brettertür. Er sah oft einen alten Mann auf einem Esel reiten und durch die kleine Brettertür kommen und gehen. Fünf oder sechs Jahre vergingen, aber das Aussehen und die Kleidung des alte Mannes blieben die Gleichen; es schien so, als ob die äußere Erscheinung des alten Mannes sich nie änderte. Er sah auch niemals eine der Verwandten des alten Mannes. Als er seine Nachbarn fragte, sagte ihm jeder, dass der alte Mann Wang hieß, und dass seine Arbeit war, auf dem Westmarkt Schnüre zu verkaufen, um Münzen aufzufädeln.

Nach sorgfältiger Beobachtung kam He Zhizhang zu dem Schluss, das der alte Mann eine ungewöhnliche Person sein müsse. Er ging ihn nun oft in seiner Freizeit besuchen. Der alte Mann hieß ihn respektvoll willkommen. Er hatte nur einen Jungen als Diener, und als ihn He Zhizhang über seine Arbeit befragte, antwortete der alte Mann ausweichend. Als sie sich besser kennenlernten, entwickelten sie nach und nach Respekt füreinander und die Themen, über die sie sprachen wurden immer tiefgründiger. Der alte Mann erzählte, dass er Tao (auch als "Dao" bekannt, einem Taoistischen Begriff für "die Bahn der Natur und des Universums") kultivierte, und dass er Pillen herstelle, die es einem ermöglichten, unsterblich zu werden. He Zhizhang hatte immer an den Tao geglaubt und ihn respektiert, und so wollte er, dass ihn der alte Mann formell als seinen Schüler annahm. Eines Tages kamen He Zhizhan und seine Frau zu dem alten Mann, und sie hielten eine helle Perle in der Hand. Dann sagten sie dem alten Mann, dass diese Perle aus Hes Heimatstadt kam, und dass sie sie viele Jahre lang gehütet hatten. He Zhizhang sagte, er wolle sie speziell dem alten Mann zum Geschenk machen, und er bat ihn, ihm den Tao und das Fa (Gesetz und Prinzipien der Buddha Schule) beizubringen. Der alte Mann nahm die Perle an, und schickte sofort seinen Jungen damit zum Markt, er solle sie gegen Brötchen eintauschen. Der Junge kam mit 30 Sesambrötchen zurück, und der alte Mann traktierte He Zhizhang mit den Brötchen. He Zhizhang war darüber sehr unglücklich. Er war der Ansicht, dass die Perle ein besonders wertvolles Geschenk für den alten Mann war. Wie konnte der alte Mann es so willkürlich verwenden, und es gegen 30 Sesambrötchen eintauschen? Der alte Mann sagte darauf: "Der Tao und das Fa können nur erzielt werden wenn man sein Herz opfert. Wie kann man ihm so vehement nachjagen? Wenn der Eigensinn auf Geld und persönlichen Besitz nicht beseitigt wurde, ist es unmöglich Tao zu erreichen. Du solltest in eine Wüste und einsame Berggegend gehen, um Tao fleißig und mit großer Hingabe zu kultivieren. Es ist schwierig Tao zu erreichen, wenn man in der Stadt wohnt. "He Zhinzhang wurde es bei seinen Worten plötzlich klar. Er dankte dem alten Mann von Herzen und ging.

Einige Tage später verschwand der alte Mann. Bald danach dankte He Zhizhang bei seiner öffentlichen Stellung ab, und er ging in seine Heimatstadt zurück, um den Tao zu kultivieren.

We part at the crossroads,
You leave with your joys and problems,
I with mine. Alone, I look down the road.
Each one must walk one’s own path.

People’s paths come together all too briefly when sharing friendship, but that makes those times no less valuable. We must take advantage of support and sharing in a mutually beneficial way. Whenever we taken from another, we should try to give back something. This is fundamental. No one should lean on another person, or expect another to carry them a long distance down the road. Friends should walk side by side for as long as their journey carries them, without becoming dependent on one another.

There should be no obligation. If I can help someone do something, then I should do so without any hesitation or expectation of reward or debt. If there is something that I need to learn and my companion can show it to me, then I should accept it in humility. No one "owns" knowledge. It should be freely shared.

Parting is inherent in all meeting. Nothing lasts forever. Transcience is what gives life poignancy. Every person is responsible for himself or herself. There is no road to walk but your own.

Tao is the source, older than nature. Nature is rooted in Tao. Everything that we know in the world comes from Tao, expressed as yin and yang. Thus, anything we do will invariably create its own opposite. To succeed in life according to Lao-Tzu, we should step back and permit this balancing to take place.

...anything we do will invariably create its own opposite.

Thus, by meeting someone new and making their acquaintance, we invariably create the beginning of the end. The end being when we will one day separate, either by disagreement, choice, moving, by death. We will all one day have to say farewell to those that we know. And by saying good-bye to them in one form, we also invariably create the opportunity for them to return in another form. It is all about cycles.

Sometimes, many times in fact, we refuse to let go when a cycle has come to its end. We hold on to "the old times" and the ideals that something can last forever and always be the same. But what fun is that? Would you stagnate the rest of your life simply to make one moment last forever?

Many people at the moment are being faced with decisions and challenges. Especially those pertaining to cycles we have not let go of, past events, past people, past lives. We carry them around like they are a badge of honour, and all they do is weigh us down, and cloud our experience of new things coming into our lives.

The hurt many are experiencing now is often due to their inability to let go of the old and let in the new. Illness manifests in the body when we hold on to stress, anger, guilt, judgment, hurt... if we could only learn to recognise that these things were but lessons we chose, they are cycles now past, we could release them and welcome the fresh new cycle into our lives where we are healthy, happy individuals. We could truly be free.

The greatest classical text from the yoga school of Indian philosophy is the Yoga Sutras by Patanjali, written in the second century BC. These "threads" on yoga or union, are extremely terse, stating concisely and often precisely, essential points or techniques. Originally these teachings were oral and were explained and interpreted by commentaries from a teacher guiding the student.

This meditative discipline of liberation is called raja or royal yoga or the yoga of the eight steps, which may be listed as follows:

1. Restraint: nonviolence, not lying, not stealing, not lusting, and nonattachment 2. Observances: cleanliness, contentment, discipline, self-study, and surrender to the Supreme God 3. Posture or physical exercises 4. Breath control 5. Sublimation or withdrawal from the senses 6. Attention 7. Concentration 8. Meditation

Yoga means Union and the purpose is to teach the practitioner of Yoga, called the Yogi, how to achieve Union or Spiritual Absorption into the Supreme Absolute or God. Yoga teachs us that our true self is the soul and that our self identity is an illusion to be overcome.

These sutras do not go into the specifics of meditation, such as how to sit, what postures are best, etc... because it was assumed this material would be taught by a teacher to a student and that certain basics would be part of the instruction. It is recommended that the reader become famailiar with basic meditation techniques and postures before practicing these precepts.

These sutras are in four parts (padas). 1. Samadhi Pada I: Contemplation and Meditation 2. Sadhana Pada II: The Steps To Union 3. Vibhuti Pada III: Union Achieved And Its Results 4. Kaivalya Pada IV: Illumination and Freedom

The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali were originally written in Sanskrit which is an Indo-European language. Sankrit is the oldest of the Indo-European languages still in active use. It is closely related to ancient Greek, Latin, Avestan and many other languages. It is the mother of Hindi/Urdu, Bengali, Gujarati, Punjabi, Marathi, Nepali, Simhal(Srilanka) and many other languages. Many Indian and Asian languages use a large number of Sanskrit words. Ancient texts of Hindus of various traditions, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs are in Sanskrit or related languages (Pali/Prakrit/Hindi). The language of Zoroastrian Avesta is a dialect of the Vedic Sanskrit. The word Sanskrit itself mean 'perfected polished literature' and is a highly organised language with a complex grammer.

It is very difficult to translate Sanskrit to English with a word for word literal equality. Many translations attempt to bypass this difficulty in two ways. One is to not translate certain words but to leave them in their anglicized spelling, whereas the reader is expected to learn the definition of the word. Another way the translator will transcend the problem will be to add commentaries further explaining each sentence or phrase. Both systems can be cumbersome to the reader.

In the mind of man there is intense tension and this tension has reached a level of near madness. One has to relax this tension. And along with it, there is much looseness in the heart of man; the strings of the veena of man's heart are loose. They have to be tightened. How to tighten these strings of the heart ?

Out of the veena of man's life, the greatest music possible comes from the heart whose strings are in tune. The society which has lost its heart, the age or century in which all the values of the heart have been weakened -- has lost all that is good, truthful and beautiful. If we want that truth, beauty and godliness to enter our lives, there is no other way except to tune the strings of the veena of the heart.

Love is the way to tune the strings of the heart, the way to bring the strings of the heart into the right condition from where music can arise. That is why love is 'prayer', love is the way of attaining god, love is 'god'. Prayer without love is false, hollow and futile. The words of prayer without love have no value at all. And nobody who becomes interested in the journey towards god will ever be able to reach god without love. Love is the way to make the veena of the heart musical. We have to understand some things about love itself.

The illusion is that we all think we know about love. This illusion is tremendously harmful because we will never make any effort to acquire or awaken that which we think we already know.

But we are not aware that the one who knows love has simultaneously acquired the capacity to know the divine. If we know love, then nothing else remains to be known in life. But the way we are, we know nothing. Everything is still to be known.

So the love which we think of as love is probably not love. We have called something else love, and as long as we have this illusion, as long as we have the idea that we know all about love, how can we search and seek it? The thing to be understood is that we don't know love at all.

One hot afternoon, Jesus Christ stopped under a tree in a garden. It was very hot and he was tired. He slept in the shadow of a tree. He did not even know to whom the house, the garden or the tree belonged. It was the garden of Magdalene, a very beautiful prostitute of that time.

Magdalene looked out of the window and saw a very unique person sleeping under the tree. She had never seen such a beautiful person. As there is a beauty of the body, there is a beauty of the soul. One can often see beauty of the body, but beauty of the soul is rarely seen, and when the beauty of the soul appears, then even the ugliest body becomes the most beautiful flower. She had seen many beautiful people because there was always a crowd at her door, it was often difficult even to enter her house. Magdalene was drawn to the tree as if pulled by some magic.

Jesus Christ was about to get up and leave. He had completed his rest. Magdalene said, "Will you do me the favor of coming into my house to rest?"

Christ said, "I have finished resting now -- and it was your house, it was your tree. Now it is time for me to leave. But if I happen to pass by here again and I am tired, then I will certainly rest in your house."

Magdalene felt insulted. Great princes were turned away from her door but now when she had invited a beggar from the streets to rest in her house, he refused. This was an insult for Magdalene. She said, "No, I cannot listen to this. You will have to come inside -- won't you even do this much for my love? Won't you come and rest in my house for a few moments?"

Christ said, "In your very invitation I have in a way entered your house because, except in the feelings of the heart, where else is your house? And if you ask, 'Can't you show even this much love?' then I will say to you that you may have seen many people who may have said, 'I love you', but none of them loved you, because in their innermost core, they loved something else. And I can assure you that, actually, I am one of the few people who can love you and who does love you because only a person in whose heart love has arisen, can love."

And who is going to fulfill your conditions? Who is worried? But we will try for those conditions, and the effort is going to be so long that they can never be fulfilled really, because whenever something is fulfilled, by the time it is fulfilled the goal has shifted.

Unless you become the suprememost God you are not going to be satisfied. But we cannot look back and cannot understand the logic of the mind, the logic of the achieving mind. It can never be satisfied, the way it behaves creates more and more discontent. The more you have the more discontent you will feel, because more arenas become open for you in which to compete, to achieve. A poor man is more satisfied because he cannot think that he can achieve much. Once he starts achieving something he thinks more is possible. The more you achieve the more becomes possible, and it goes on and on forever.

A meditator needs a nonachieving mind, but a nonachieving mind is possible only if you can be content with purposelessness. Just try to understand the whole cosmic play and be a part in it. Don't be serious, because a play can never be serious. And even if the play needs you to be serious, be playfully serious, don't be really serious. Then this very moment becomes rich. Then this very moment you can move into the ultimate.

The ultimate is not in the future, it is the present, hidden here and now. So don't ask about purpose -- there is none, and it is beautiful that there is none. If there was purpose then your God would be just a managing director or a big business man, an industrialist, or something like that.

Jesus says.... Somebody asked him, "Who will be able to enter into the kingdom of your God?"

Jesus said, "Those who are like small children." This is the secret. What is the meaning of being a small child? The meaning is that the child is never businesslike, he is always playful.

If you can become playful you have become a child again, and only children can enter into the kingdom of God, nobody else, because children can play without asking where it is leading. They can make houses of sand without asking whether they are going to be permanent. Can somebody live in them? Will they be able to resist the wind that is blowing? They know that within minutes they will disappear. But they are very serious when they are playing. They can even fight for their sandhouses or houses of cards. They are very serious when they are creating. They are enjoying. And they are not fools, they know that these houses are just cardhouses and everything is makebelieve.

The railway train is a prisoner.

But a river is not a prisoner. It also travels long. It may be coming thousands of miles, from the Himalayas, and it reaches finally to the ocean -- with no map, with no guidelines, with no guides, and nobody on the way to whom the river can inquire, "Which way am I to go now?"... because each step is a crossroad.

But strangely enough, every river reaches to the ocean with great freedom, finding its own path.

Taoism can only give you certain hints about how to find your path. Taoism can give you certain indications whether you have found it or not, can give you certain criteria to judge whether you are moving towards the goal or away from the goal. But it does not give you guidelines. In the very nature of things, it is not possible.

The moment you have found tao, you have found the path.

And what is the tao? -- nothing what fulfills your mind expectations. A Christian mind has Christian expectations, a Hindu mind has Hindu expectations, a Buddhist mind has Buddhist expectations.

Tao is that what fulfills the longing of your heart.

It has nothing to do with the mind. It is a love affair.

You simply find that you are in love. You simply find that your heart feels at home, at ease, that your heart has found a treasure, feels a tremendous benediction. And as you come closer to the tao -- in your love, in your trust -- your peace deepens; your silence becomes not something dead, the silence of a graveyard, but something singing and dancing, alive.

The more you are moving towards your life's fulfillment, the more your life becomes a rejoicing, a deep joy for no reason at all, a blissfulness so deep and so abundant that you can start sharing it with others. In fact, you have to share it with others because it is overflowing, you cannot contain it.

For the first time, you are small and your bliss is infinite.

These are the indications that you are moving towards home.

Your ecstasies go on growing deeper and higher.

And if you are moving away, you will become more miserable, more sad, more saintly, more Christian, more Hindu, more Jaina -- all kinds of diseases. More knowledgeable... but inside, more and more empty.

In the movie and stage play, Amadeus, Austrian Emperor Joseph II tells Mozart that there are "too many" notes in one of Mozart’s masterpieces. Mozart replies that there is just the right number of notes, not too many or too few.

Such is the case with Tao.

In today’s fast-paced world, where more and more people are awakening to their need for spiritual evolution, there are many questions – and many questioners - calling for quick, simple, easy-to-find answers. Answers to questions about enlightenment and spiritual evolution have been provided for centuries in thousands of texts. There is, indeed, nothing new under the sun.

So – what makes Tao unique?

The message is: understand the true origins of fear, learn to release your own fears, and support others in doing the same. In this way you can heal the pain and fear that bind you, and manifest a life of true abundance – one that is filled with inner peace, happiness, love, and total freedom.

How does every one of us become emotionally wounded? What possible beneficial purpose do the wounds have? How can we heal them? How can we live life harmoniously and fulfilled after healing? How do we create what we truly need in life?

I see life as drama and a comedy, though mostly comedy. I resolved to laugh more, listen more, and to be in the glorious, moment as much as I can. I see that my life is truly about the journey, not the destination, for there is simply a succession of destinations; it is the quality of the journey that matters. Continuing the journey after healing the wounds is to have harmony and fulfillment – at last.

No matter how benign or loving were the adults in my early years, primal abandonment had to occur, for it was necessary to drop the veil so that I "forget" who I am. God became an omnipotent abstract, unknowable and unreachable, for a small child sitting in a large pew of a church, while all the time, I was God. What a great cosmic farce!

As a result of primal abandonment, I learned that "not love" exists. What I made of this was that love is not my birthright; it is conditional and must be earned. That’s when I came to know danger and fear, two powerful emotions that would shape my life for decades. Even now, after having learned the mysteries revealed here, they still shadow me wherever I go.

This is the fall from grace in the Garden of Eden. This is the cross that Christ bore upon Golgotha. This is all of the fables and allegories of how man was cast out by God. Neither I nor anyone else was cast out. We are of God, and by agreement, we all play in this game of re-membering who We are.

Primal abandonment is necessary to the game, the experiment. Can I remember my divinity? Do I have one life or many to accomplish reconnection? Nothing is predetermined, and the outcome for me is immaterial, for it is how I play the game while in this energetic form that counts.

I think it helps to remember that my life is a game. That I do not always see life as a game is, at its core, funny. The humor comes from my "seriousness" about being a human, running around in my skin suit, overly concerned with the trappings of being human, which I regard as "significant," when in fact they have no more significance to my spiritual self than a movie or television show.

Someone once described life to me as a great improvisational play in which I have my story line, as do many others with whom I will interact in the acts and scenes of our lives. We stay true to our characters, yet, because of free will and choice, we improvise our way through life. Comedy and drama are all the same at the curtain call. Remember to laugh.

One day I was sitting with Mulla Nasrudin. He looked at a woman and said, 'This woman is trying to do the impossible.'

I said, 'What do you mean?'

He said, 'She's wearing shoes two inches too small.'

I asked, 'How do you know?'

He said, 'I know because she is my wife. Look at her face -- in such agony, in such anguish.'

Look at the faces of people -- their agony and anguish is written so clear. They are broadcasting nothing else but their agony and their anguish. And the problem is they are wearing a dead mask, a personality, which cannot grow with them. Of course it is always lagging behind. It cannot grow. They are growing continuously and it becomes a dead weight.

Remember, with the false you will be crushed. Never keep company with the false. If you really want to grow into a blooming being, if you really want to give freedom to your being, never keep company with the false. Be true, whatsoever the cost. In the beginning it may seem that these pretensions are very good. They are not. Your mind is deceiving you.

And if you try to keep company with the true, ego will disappear on its own accord. Otherwise it goes on finding new ways, new methods to feed itself.

People have become so false that you cannot imagine. I was reading an anecdote:

Sadie Perlmutter was sent to the finest, most expensive finishing school in New York. There she learned all there was to know about etiquette. Despite the expense, her mother was very proud of her. Then one dark night Sadie staggered into their Park Avenue apartment with her clothes all ripped. 'I have been raped on Central Park South,' Sadie sobbed.

'You know who did it?'

'No, I don't.'

'You mean, after all the etiquette you studied you did not even ask, "With whom am I having the pleasure?"'

People go on keeping their etiquette, their mannerisms, their falsities, their pretensions, even in such situations where it is unimaginable.

Mulla Nasrudin finally reached the age of 105. A newspaper reporter from town came out to take his picture and write a story about him. The reporter was talking to a neighbour about the old man and asked him, "How do you figure your friend was able to live so long?"

"I GUESS," said the neighbour, "IT WAS BECAUSE HE NEVER DID ANYTHING ELSE."

A newspaperman was interviewing Mulla Nasrudin on his 105th birthday. He noticed that the Mulla was wearing a rabbit's foot on his key chain.

"You don't mean to tell me," said the newspaperman, "that a man of your experience still believes in that old and childish superstition? "

"CERTAINLY NOT," said Nasrudin, "BUT MY WIFE: TELLS ME IT IS SUPPOSED TO BRING YOU LUCK WHETHER YOU BELIEVE IN IT OR NOT."

Mulla Nasrudin was stabbed by burglars.

But before dying he wrote a note to his wife from the hospital.

The last paragraph of it read:

"I have been very fortunate because only the day before I had put all of my money and negotiable bonds in my safety deposit box at the bank, SO THAT I AM LOSING PRACTICALLY NOTHING BUT MY LIFE."

When Mulla Nasrudin died, his wife decided to have him cremated. The attendant at the crematory showed his widow a display of beautifully decorated urns for his ashes.

"NO," she said. "I DON'T WANT ANY OF THOSE THINGS. I WANT YOU TO PUT HIS ASHES IN AN HOUR GLASS. I AM GOING TO PUT IT ON THE MANTELPIECE. MULLA NASRUDIN NEVER DID A DAY'S WORK IN HIS LIFE, BUT BELIEVE ME, HE WILL BE BUSY ALL DAY LONG FROM NOW ON."

And now, in the West particularly, people have become too much manipulators. The man goes on thinking whether he is making love perfectly or not, whether he is making love according to the experts or not -- Masters and Johnson and others -- whether he is going according to the reports of Kinsey or not -- and he's trying, making all efforts to satisfy the woman. And the woman is trying to satisfy the man. And both are missing because both are too much in the ego.

The woman is trying to satisfy her man as no other woman can satisfy; the man is trying to satisfy his woman as no other man can satisfy. Both are on an ego-trip and both remain dissatisfied. Because satisfaction comes only when nobody is trying to satisfy anybody; when everybody is simply disappearing into that vagueness, that merger, where personalities are no more separate, where things overlap, when one never knows who is who.

The man continues to be the man, the woman continues to be the woman -- then you miss that rare opportunity that love makes available. You remain closed to that door. The door opens and; closes, but you cannot enter into it. You are engaged somewhere else, with small things, trivia.

In deep lovemaking you can attain first glimpses of samadhi -- or in music, or in dancing, or looking at the sunset, or just sitting silently not doing anything.

But remember, whenever you are a doer you are missing, because the doer carries his ego. The doer is the ego.

Whenever you are a non-doer there is a possibility you may fall into line with the whole, you may fall into harmony with the whole -- what Lao Tzu calls the way, what Buddha calls the dhamma. You will become one with the dhamma, and suddenly a rush of bliss -- it rains all around, your whole being becomes saturated with a new benediction that you have not known before.

Personality has to go. With personality goes the ego. Then individuality has also to go, and with individuality goes the self. Then nothing is left and you are at home. Gone -- you have arrived.

One of Buddha's names is tathagata. It means 'who has gone very skilfully, disappeared very skilfully'. Gata means gone. Another of Buddha's names is sugata -- well gone, who has gone so well that you cannot find a trace behind... nothing is left, just pure innocence. Become a sugata, become a tathagata. Allow yourself to evaporate and disappear. Only then will you find who you are.

You are not you. Your very sense of 'I' is a confinement, a bondage, an imprisonment, a cage. When the cage disappears the whole sky is yours; even the sky is not your limit. You contain the sky in your inner being. You are vaster than the sky, bigger than the space.

Friedrich Nietzsche says, "God is dead." Taoism cannot even say that. He thinks he is saying something tremendously anti-God, anti-religion, anti-Christianity, antiChrist. This is not so. To say that God is dead implies that He was there, alive. You have accepted the existence of God -- if not in the present, then in the past -- and it is going to be very difficult to prove how the existent God died. Nietzsche never argued further and the theists are not capable of raising significant questions.

The whole of western Christianity was shocked by the statement that God is dead. They were angry, they would have liked to kill Friedrich Nietzsche. But nobody asked him, "You have accepted the primary existence of God, now you have to explain how He died And if He was God, how could He die?" And particularly to ask Nietzsche... because Nietzsche believes in the recurrence of life, that life continues. He is the only Western philosopher who believes in the Eastern idea of reincarnation.

If God is dead, He must be born again. That is a simple corollary of his own philosophy. If man dies and is born then why be so unfavorable to God? At least give Him as much as you give to ordinary human beings, to animals, to birds -- to all life.

Either God has never been there or will always be there. Life can change its forms but can never become death. That, Nietzsche accepted. And no Christian bothered him, raised the question, argued with him.

Taoism cannot say God is dead. Nietzsche is not really against God. He is against the priesthood, against Christianity particularly, against Jesus. But God is the foundation of all these, so he has to hit God to demolish the whole edifice of the only begotten son, the messiah, the pope, the church, and the whole ugly history of Christianity. Without God it all becomes absurd. That s the reason he says God is dead, but deep down he knows God is.

Taoism is totally different.

Taoism is not against God.

There is no God. This is a simple statement of fact, with no anger, with no enmity.

But man's mind wants some extreme position. It is worth understanding.

Why does man's mind want some extreme position?

Either you have to be theist or atheist; either you have to be for or against. It does not allow you a third alternative. The reason is simple: the third alternative becomes the death of the mind. Mind lives on extremism; that is its very nourishment.

If you trust existence, guns are part of existence too, just as roseflowers. And if you want roseflowers, you will need to protect them. But many people think life just a bed of roses. What are you going to do with the thorns? Guns are the thorns. And it is such a simple thing to understand, even an idiot can understand it.

To harm is ugly. To allow somebody to harm you is the same, it is ugly. Life in both the cases is harmed.

You cannot remain naive about the facts of life. It is a struggle. In this struggle you have to remember only one thing, that you are not on the destructive side, that you are not attacking anybody, that you are not harassing anybody.

The Americans made the Constitution, and they have put the people to whom this land belongs into reservations. The reservation is nothing but the American name for concentration camps -- yes, without barbed wire. They have a more sophisticated way: you give those Red Indians pensions. Now, people who have nothing to do, and get enough money, what do you expect them to do? They will gamble, they will drink, they will fight. They are all drunkards, gamblers -- rowdy. These people cannot think of independence, they cannot think of freedom. They have not put barbed wire around them, they have put barbed wire around their very soul!

If Americans have any integrity and dignity, the first thing they will do is: give the government to the Red Indians. They will decide who is going to stay here and who is not going to stay here. Let them decide about George W. Bush's green card, because his forefathers entered this country without any visa, they had no green cards. They committed crimes.

And it is a very simple thing to understand: If Adam and Eve disobeyed God and every Christian is still born in sin because of Adam and Eve, then what about Americans? Your forefathers committed all the crimes, and it was only three hundred years ago. Suddenly you have become president, you have become governors, you have become attorney generals, you have become judges, Supreme Court judges, and you have started deciding. This is not your country.

This thing has to be brought to their notice, and to the whole world's notice. They talk against the terrorists, they talk against slavery -- and that's what they are practicing.