BENGALURU :As the world has become more and more settled financially and socially: marriage, children, education, retirement, pension, insurance - in advanced countries people are even paid for their unemployment - it has taken away all the joy of exploration. Everything has become so settled and controlled that in the West particularly, there seems to be only one possibility left to explore, and that is suicide. Only that has remained unknown.
They have experienced sex and found it is just foolishness. They have experienced drugs and found that it is just deceiving yourself. Now there seems to be no adventure, no challenge. More and more people are committing suicide. It is something to be noted that the suicide rate is not increasing in the poor countries. The poor people seem to be less bored, less fed up because they have to think about food and clothes and shelter. They don’t have time for boredom. They cannot afford it.
The richer the society, where everything is available… How long can you go on living in a settled, monotonous, secure, insured, guaranteed lifestyle? People of great intelligence start committing suicide.
The East has also known times of richness, but fortunately the East has found a better substitute for suicide, and that is sannyas. When people became fed up, like Gautam Buddha… Because he had all the luxuries possible, and how long can you go on repeating the same luxuries every day? By the age of twenty-nine he was finished with the world. He had experienced everything; there were no more possibilities in the world.
One dark night he escaped from his kingdom, his security, his safety. He dropped all of that and became a beggar in search of something which will be eternally fresh, which will never become old, which will never become boredom. The search for the eternally fresh is the search of sannyas.
There is a source within you that is eternally fresh. It never becomes old, you can never get fed up with it. And when I am saying this, I am saying it from the same source. My words are coming from the same source. If you can taste them, if you can feel them, you may have some glimpse of a faraway land where everything goes on becoming new every moment, where dust does not gather on any mirror.
And that world is within you - but you are interested in a woman, and the woman is interested in you. The woman cannot find your eternal source of joy, neither can you find your eternal source of joy because you are focused on the woman. We are all focused on others, and that which can give you a continuous joy is within you. But you never look within.