Monk or Monkey

Just got this piece and thought of sharing ...its too good...!!!!

A monk is always thinking that the people of the world are having a good time, while really they are wasting their lives. And worldly people think they are missing some higher experiences of life the monks and recluses are having. In fact, only their situations are different. Psychologically the householder and the monk are both in the same boat. Psychologically they are heavily dependent on others, they are in shackles. And such people cannot know freedom, truth, bliss. Really the "other" is the bondage.

Usually a renunciate thinks that he has given up the other, but he is not aware that he is mistaken to think so. He is still bound with the other; he is now in another kind of relationship with the other, a relationship of escape. What he leaves behind pursues him. Although he is no longer running after it, he is afraid of it. Because he has escaped from it, he is worried lest it overcome him again. And where can you run away from the other.

The other is everywhere. The other is everywhere except one place, and that is your innermost being, the center of your being. If you leave your home, the ashram or the monastery will take its place. And you will be attached to it the way you were attached to your home. If you leave your wife or husband or children, then the master and the disciples will take their places and you will again be attached to them. You can leave a palace for a hut, but a hut is as much a house as a palace. You can give up costly clothes and take to a loincloth, but a loincloth is as binding as a king's robe is.

Even if you go naked, you will become attached to your nudity.

The other is all over. In this world you cannot run away from the other, because the world is the other, and wherever you go the world will be with you. You cannot run away from the world. Wherever you go, the other will be there, so you cannot run away from the other. Of course, the other will take on new forms, but it will be there. By changing appearances you cannot change reality.

Except one space, the space of love, the other is everywhere. At the deepest core of love there is no other - not because the other cannot enter there, but because at your deepest core even you disappear. At the deepest center of one's being even the self, the "I", disappears; so there is no way for the "other" to be there.