So there are two types of religion. One which creates emptiness in you and around you so that a flowering becomes possible; you have created the situation, now the flower bubbles up automatically. Finding no resistance, the seed suddenly blooms into a flower. There is a jump in your being, an explosion. Buddhism and Zen follow this path they create emptiness in and around you.
There is another path also, a second type of religion, which creates love in you, which creates devotion in you. Meera and Chaitanya love, and they love the total so deeply that they find their beloved everywhere; on every leaf, on every stone, is the signature of the beloved. He is everywhere. They dance because there is nothing else to do but celebrate. And everything is ready only the celebration has to start on your part. Nothing else is lacking. A bhakta, a lover, simply celebrates, enjoys. And in that enjoyment of love and celebration, the ego disappears and emptiness follows.
Either you create emptiness, like a Buddha, Tilopa, Sekkyo, and others; or you create love, like Meera, Chaitanya, Jesus. Create one and the other follows, because they cannot live separately, they don’t have any separate existence. Love is one face of emptiness; emptiness is nothing but love in another aspect, they come together. If you bring one, you invite one, the other follows automatically as a shadow of it. It depends on you. If you want to follow the path of meditation, become empty. Don’t bother about love it will come of its own accord. Or, if you find it very difficult to meditate, then love, then become a lover, and meditations and emptinesses will follow you.
This is how it should be because there are two types of human mind: the feminine and the male. The feminine mind can love easily but to be empty is difficult. And when I say feminine mind, I don’t mean females, because many females have male minds, and many males have feminine minds. So they are not equivalent. When I say feminine mind, I don’t mean the feminine body you may have a feminine body but not a feminine mind. The feminine mind is the mind that feels love easier, that’s all. That is my definition of the feminine mind: it is one who feels love easily, naturally, who can flow into love without any effort. The male mind is one for whom love is an effort he can love but he will have to do it. Love cannot be his whole being it is just one thing of many other things, not even the most important. He can sacrifice his love for science, he can sacrifice his love for the country, he can sacrifice his love for any trivial affair, for business, for money, for politics. Love is not such a deep thing with him, a male mind. It is not as effortless as it is for a feminine mind. Meditation is easier. He can become empty easily.
So this is my definition: if you find being empty easy, then do that. If you find it is very difficult, then don’t be unhappy and don’t feel hopeless. You will always find love easier. I have not come across a man who finds both difficult. So, there is hope for everybody. If meditation is difficult, love will be easier, it has to be. If love is easier, meditation will be difficult. If love is difficult, meditation will be easier. So just feel yourself.
And this is not concerned with your body, not with your physical structure, your hormones. No. It is a quality of your inner being. Once you find it, things become very, very easy, because then you won’t try on the wrong path. You can try on the wrong path for many lives but you will not attain anything. And if you try on the right path, even the first step can become the last, because you simply, naturally, flow into it. Nothing like effort exists effortlessly you flow.
Zen is for the male mind. Soon I will balance it by talking about Sufism, because Sufism is for the feminine mind. These are the two extremes Zen and Sufism.
Sufis are lovers, great lovers. In fact, in the whole history of human consciousness, more daring lovers than Sufis have never existed, because they are the only ones who have turned God into their beloved. The God is the woman and they are the lovers. Soon I will balance. …
Remember this: Sufism is the path of love. It is more dancing than Zen, it is more singing than Zen, it is more celebrating than Zen. That’s why the countries where Sufism has existed have created the best and the most beautiful poetry that has ever existed in the world. The Persian language became so poetic, and it has created the greatest poets of the world. The very language has become poetic, the very language has become very juicy because God is thought of as the beloved. That too has to be understood the last thing today. For Zen people there is no God, your own awareness is the ultimate. Zen comes out of Gautam Buddha’s insight. Sufism comes out of Mohammed’s love affair with God.
As it happened:
The year was 610AD; Mohammed was in the cave on Mount Hira. He received his first spiritual experience and feared that he had become either mad or, as he said, a poet. He went to his wife trembling with fear saying, “Woe is me. Poet or possessed?” He had even thought of casting himself down from the high rocks to kill himself. It was such a shock, it was such a great voltage of love. For three days he was trembling constantly as if in a deep, dangerous fever.
The fear was that he thought that he had either become a poet or he had gone mad. Out of this experience of Mohammed’s starts the river of Sufism. It has always remained both poetic and possessed. He was both. He had become a poet and he had become possessed. He had gone mad and he had become a mystic.
You must have heard about the beautiful Sufi legend of Majnu and Laila. It is not an ordinary love story. The word majnu means mad, mad for God. And laila is the symbol of God. Sufis think of God as the beloved; laila means the beloved. Everybody is a Majnu, and God is the beloved. And one has to open one’s heart, the eye of the heart.
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