I didn't go to the office. Not because I was ill, not because there was some pressing matter—I simply didn't go. I sent my line manager a text. He asked why I hadn't come in; I had no desire to explain. Sometimes I follow my own will. What if I don't live by my own wishes before death comes? How many days are left to live, after all?
Though not an official holiday, today feels like one; there's no rigid schedule to keep, yet I've accumulated quite a pile of tasks to do on my day off—such as taking in the fourth button on my sky-blue shirt just a little, mending one spot on my handbag, spraying pesticide on the different shelves of my bookcase. The storeroom hasn't been cleaned in ages; I really must do it today; I also have some reading and writing to finish, and there are several emails waiting for replies—these small but necessary tasks pile up for holidays.
With the holiday in mind, I woke up quite late, and by the time it was noon, I merged breakfast into brunch. Yet when I calculate, I still have plenty of time. On the other hand, there's no shortage of work either! As I kept wondering which task to do first, I found myself lying down on the bed. Lying down is the easiest and most joyful thing in the world.
I lay down not to sleep, not to rest—I lay down simply for the comfort of thinking. Curiously, somewhere in all that, my eyelids closed without my noticing at all. Though not for long; suddenly I realized it was past one o'clock—nearly half an hour had slipped away! Time passes without time to notice.
Anyway, when I woke, it was in a panic—what was this! So much work still undone, and here I was, sleeping in the middle of the day? Disaster! That's the sort of feeling. But why should I call sleep a disaster? Because even now, the sweetness of that sleep still clings to my eyes, my face. Oh, such peace! Such contentment! It seems to me I have never slept such a sleep in my life. Though of course, I've felt this many times before. Every good sleep in life feels like the first good sleep.
But there's no way I can lie here longer now—tasks be damned—because I have reasons, which I shall explain.
But before that, let me say something else—suppose someone wakes suddenly at dawn and discovers that his house, all his furniture, his clothes, his entire world has turned to gold—what then? Would there be room for joy? Would there not be? The joy of gold is a great joy!
It happened to me too—there was nowhere left to contain my joy. I woke from sleep suddenly and saw it: how my life had become sweetness itself. Truly, wherever there was anything in life—my laughter and tears, my hopes and joys, my deeds and thoughts, my ailments and sorrows—all had turned sweet at once. How then could I lie in bed with such a sweetened life? I had no choice but to rise.
Then I remembered an earlier incident, and it came to me that I had been savoring this sweetness even in deep sleep all this while. That must be why it was so hard to leave my bed when I woke. I said to myself: "Tell me, this honey that has suffused my whole world—where does it come from? From where flows this nectar that stirs the heart?" Troubled by these thoughts, I began to search for the source of that honey.
Through the royal paths of body, mind, and spirit—through every alley and corner, inside and out—I searched thoroughly. I searched for it in my joys and sorrows, in the gains of my past and present. But no, nowhere could I find it; outside there lay no source of that honey!
Yet I had to leave my bed at last. All that searching had parched my throat dreadfully. I drank some water to wet my parched lips. Then I filled a bucket from the bathroom and poured it over the potted flowers.
But I did none of this by whim or the mind's present impulse. Before sleeping, I had seen how the red hibiscus bush in the courtyard had drooped in the fierce afternoon sun. The plant had beseeched me again and again to give it water. I had resolved then and there to do it, and was about to, when something stopped me. Why? Because, as I said, I had so many tasks pressing on my mind; that burden allowed me to complete nothing. With so much work spinning in my head, what else could I do but fall asleep?
I slept, and woke remembering first of all that old resolve. So, without delay, I fulfilled that task of watering. Then I noticed a small branch near the base of the tree had somehow broken—its pale, lifeless leaves looked strangely out of place among the green. For days I had waited, hoping it might somehow survive. But seeing it would not, I pruned the branch and shaped the tree anew. And now there came a joy in thinking: one day, in place of this branch, a tender new shoot full of future promise will emerge.
Yet here I am, performing all these beautiful deeds, and still the restlessness within will not subside. The joy of work fills my heart not at all. There persists only this: that these tasks are not what matters, that there is some other work—something else of particular importance—that I must do. It is always thus. Always this sense that some urgent task remains undone. That special work of life must be done before all else! But what is that work? And still I cannot bring it to mind! It seems all my labors are unnecessary ones!
Then I grow anxious in the middle of things. Over there, how many tasks lie waiting for me—or so I tell myself. Yet here I am in this very urgency, squandering time on trivial pursuits, wasteful thoughts! And suddenly it strikes me: I have no work of genuine necessity. My every undertaking is like the yaksha's groundless sorrow in the Meghaduta—mere empty talk! Otherwise, when the beloved for whom one sits watching the path finally arrives, any soul can forget the demands of necessity. I too could have—I too could have cast away the store to clean, the mending, the studies, all these needful things!
The truth is, it is not a task at all; it is an unquenchable yearning within my own depths. Something must be done; what I do is not urgent enough; day after day I seem to be doing the wrong thing—such turmoil never ceases. I work and labor, yet this restlessness does not dim; deep within burns an unquenched flame like an eternal offering. But this yearning is not that something must be done—no, that is not it. A vast joy has flooded through my entire being, and there is no work that could contain or express it adequately; this yearning exists for that joy itself. Or to speak more truly: this restlessness is not mine alone; it belongs to the gross, material body, mind, and vital force. They cannot hold all of that vast joy in their entirety, and so that joy cannot become fully, completely joy. And that is why all this yearning has come! There is so much joy all around the world, and I cannot surrender myself to it—is there any helplessness greater than this?
This secret truth I could not understand until now. But now it seems I have found the answer to that task for which I grew anxious—I must become the sky itself, expand to hold that joy within me. There is no other work for me. If I cannot free myself, how shall I taste that joy? That joy will fulfill none of my daily needs, stands far above all my wants and unwants alike.
So I finished tending the flowering plants, and in the scorched, soundless noon I came to sit before the table in the corner of my room. As I sat there, I began to notice—the world around me was slowly turning mute and deaf. It was no longer the familiar world I had always known; this world was empty of beasts and birds and human voices, a vast and desolate plain stretching endlessly. And I sat alone in its midst. To my right and left, before and behind me, something—I know not how—was drowning out the noisy clamor of my neighbors, all the boisterous expressions of life, and instead a tremendous, piercing silence was seeping into the depths of my chest, blooming there like an unfamiliar joy, a subtle needle of happiness I had never tasted before! Why is the sorrow of never having known such happiness so acute? Am I truly more wretched than they are?
I seem to sit watching for someone, waiting for something, my eyes unblinking—and this very act of waiting, this joy of expectation, has made me forget all the hardships of the path, all the necessary tasks, and holds me motionless and upturned like the summit of a mountain... I do not even know for whom or for what I wait. Again and again I only feel that something is missing, someone is absent... my entire life has somehow become filled with this sense of "not-being." In a life where such absence dwells, what difference would sweetness make?
But there—there it comes rushing down again, that joy of all things turning sweet... the joy of becoming sweet keeps presenting itself in ever-new forms, trying again and again to disturb my peace. That joy would not let me rest and sleep a while longer; it would not even let me do anything else. I must only sit awake—that is its sole demand, and then it is satisfied. Day and night its pleasure lies only in keeping me awake. And how could I possibly protest against such cruel treatment? Protest? Every limb of this gross body, every cell of flesh has become suffused with honey! Besides, what is more strange—that this body has no other wish except to become such honey, no other glory.
Now this material body has no movement, no restlessness; all restlessness has long since ceased, and only the soft, gentle action of breath remains. Wherever my hands and feet were placed, they lie there still, like a wooden puppet, without even the strength to shift an inch one way or another. And even if strength were to come, I find I have no will to move them even slightly. It wishes only to still all action, all effort, and become nothing but honey. Rest, only rest... there is no vigor anywhere, no urgency, no path of escape.
The bed on which I lay this morning was suffused with sweetness, and now that I have risen from it, I see—that same sweetness pervades the entire room. The wall before me, the bookshelf beside it, and this very table where I sit—all that I perceive, everything has become honeyed. Even the air that seeped into the room could not escape becoming honey. Now, with each breath I draw, I am taking in that sweetness. I look with my eyes and see clearly—in my very gaze flows an endless stream of honey. It is as though my sight has no other function now—only this pouring forth of sweetness. And if any function still remains, it is merely the echo of old habit pulling on, something that requires neither my special attention nor my conscious effort. That action seems to unfold alongside the flowing honey, of its own accord. I long to flee—but has anything ever come to pass in this world by leaving desire as mere desire?
And so this very day has somehow, in a single moment, become sweet. It seems—just as with all else—that the sweetness of this day too can be felt. Let the day pass in this way. My pressing tasks will wait for another time. The day did not begin at noon—it began sometime before dawn, or even before that. And yet it is now, when the day is in its full vigor, that this sweetness has come. For this reason, a question stirs in my mind—what then was that part of the day in its childhood and youth like? And what was the state of my heart then? The very sense of incompleteness had not yet arrived! Then how could life have been hollow? To see into these things, memory alone is the guide; these days must be viewed in memory's light. But that very memory has become sweet. Wherever I cast it, like looking through colored glass, the seen world becomes nothing but honey—dry knowledge transforms into something alive with the essence of sweetness.
From this I infer—now there is honey, and before there was honey; the present is honey, the past too is honey! And turning my gaze inward, toward the depths of consciousness, that also is honey. The living, wakeful source of consciousness itself, from which consciousness unfolds and awakens—that too is honeyed, as if it were ambrosia! Life is a treasury of ambrosia!
So today, a prayer stirs within—let all the days of life become honeyed like this. Let the whole world be filled with this sweetness. Let the life of every soul become so beautiful. Let the sky and air be honeyed. Let this earthly existence be honeyed. For now I am well; let what comes after, come what may!