Words Are the Problem

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

The manifest, dynamic nature, don't stamp it with words! Just be. Don't conceptualize. Now everybody is weighed down by words. Suppose a child is there, and the child is dead. Whatever that principle, that dynamic principle has left the body. No, you cannot say what that dynamic principle is. It has no name now. Because of this association with body, you have tried to capture it with words.

Q: So words are the only problem.

M: Yes. The whole problem is with the words. Since that principle which has quit the body is now freed from the body, you cannot capture it through words. The dynamic beingness principle, because of its association with the body, embracing a certain form and certain words and concepts, is suffering. Without that - without form, and without words - how can it suffer?

Q: All this stops immediately when you see it as a puja to the Ultimate.

M: That means all this worldly business stops. You may understand it that way. Once you understand that you are not the body nor that you are wrapped up in name and form, and that you are this manifest brahman only, you are free.

Q: Even the idea 'I am not free' is part of the puja.

M: What do you mean by 'puja'? Puja is a process or an aid to propitiate somebody. 

Q: Well, OK. Would you call it darishma?

M: Call it whatever you like. It is an expression of it.

Q: It is consciousness playing with its own.

M: Yes.