Get Wise Before You Get Old
It takes years of living to realize that many things we thought were very good, turned out not to be good. When Krishna was asked, “What is the nature of truth?”, he said, “What seems to be like poison is the nectar; what tastes like nectar is the poison.” Typically, realizing this takes years, and much pain as well. For most, this realization arrives too late—when it makes no difference anymore. The more you hasten your experience of life, the better. Because you realize sooner that what you actually thought was great, is not as great. Has it happened to you? What you thought was wonderful at 16 or 30, is no longer so? If you don’t let the experience happen at 30, it will at 60. That is a terrible waste of life.
A torrent of wisdom
As someone once said, experience is like a comb that you find when you have lost all your hair, or as a vernacular saying goes, you find nuts to eat when all your teeth are gone. Nuggets of wisdom fall upon you when they are digging your grave. No, they must fall now. When you are young and healthy with your life ahead of you, not just nuggets, a torrent of wisdom should fall upon you. The only way to make this happen is to bring clarity to your perception. If you don’t work towards clarity of perception, wisdom is an accident. Without clarity, you will see things the way they are not and unknowingly, you will live a ridiculous life.
Accumulate experience––by living!
You cannot gain experience if you live with walls around you. If you live with absolute openness, experience will happen to you. Only if you let life happen to you, experience will accumulate. If you guard yourself against every little thing, there will be no experience except that of defense––defense against life itself! That is a good strategy if you have not come here to live. But you are a piece of life–that means you have come here to live.
Those of you who lost money in the stock market or had a tiff with your husband or wife today, if you feel like dying, just close your mouth, and hold your nose for two minutes. Don’t conclude, try and see. Don’t do what your mind says, don’t do what I say, do what the life within you says. What does it say?
This being wants to live. ‘It wants to live’ means it wants to experience the process of life so that you can look through the process and you can go beyond this process. Typically, people are either tangled up or insulated from the process. Both will not lead to liberation. Liberation will only happen when you are able to look through the process. If the wisdom that you are expecting to dawn when you are 60, happens to you when you are 16, you are sure to get somewhere. That means you are able to look through the process of life. You don’t have to consider all the rubbish your mind throws at you––you look through it. That means you are a candidate for liberation.
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