llVE UlCll HOUEHT;
I would notice guys like
my cellmates who had
sentences of 10 to 12
years who looked at me
as being on holiday; just
passing through. It was
interesting to observe the
m e n who had been inside
for a while and still had
a while to go. They had
lost everything, their
women, their money, and
all their material posses‑
sions and had come to
a rather peaceful space,
almost Zen in a way.
I will never forget when
I was finally let out. You
would think that I would
have been jumping up
and down for joy, but I
wasn’t. There was almost
an ambivalence in me as
if to say, "Oh, now you
are letting me out? Okay,
bring on the n e x t movie.”
As much as my prison
experience was trau‑
matic and challenging
I can appreciate all that
I learned, and as diffi‑
cult as it was, one of the
main benefits I got was
that any hardships that
have come my way since
have paled in compari‑
son, and I have been able
to p u t things in a bigger
perspective!“
Swami Anonymous can
becontacted through
oshovz'ha@oslzovihaorg.
DIE EllCll llOl’lUll
Religion is concerned with the art of how to live
life and how to die life. Seven years, seventy years,
or seven hundred years ‐ what difference will it
make? You will goon repeating the same vicious
circle again and again and again. You will simply
get more and more bored.
50 change the focus of your being. Learn how
to live each moment and learn how to die each
moment. Both are together. If you know how to die
each moment, you will be able to live each moment
- fresh, young, virgin. Die to the past. Don’t allow
it to interfere with your present. The moment you
have passed i t , let it be no longer there. It is no
longer there; it only goes on in your memory, it is
just a remembrance. Let this remembrance also be
released. This psychological hang-up should not
beallowed. [...]
Just keep factual things, and your mind will be
very, very clean and clear.
Don’t move ahead of yourselfinto the future
because that is not possible to do. The future
remains unknown; that is its beauty; that is its
grandeur, glory. If it becomes known, it will be
useless, because then the whole excitement and
the whole surprise will be lost.
Don’t expect anything in the future. Don’t cor‑
ruptit. Because if all your expectations are ful‑
filled, then too you will be miserable, because
it is your expectation and it is fulfilled. You will
not be happy about it. Happiness is possible only
through surprise; happiness is possible only when
something happens that you had never expected,
when somethin