"You can miss it. That doesn't mean that you have to work hard to attain it; it simply means that you are not aware of something that is already surrounding you.

"I will go on talking about enlightenment, because without it you are not alive at all; without it you only seem to exist but you don't exist; without it you go on missing. But remember, I am not creating a goal for your desires. Enlightenment can never be a goal. This has to be understood. Nirvana cannot be desired.

"Let me explain it to you. Whenever you desire something, you become tense. The desire creates disturbance. Whenever you desire something, of course you desire in the future. In the present, how can you desire? There is not enough space for a desire to exist in the present. It can only exist in the future. Desiring can only be concerned with something in the future, with something which is not here. That which is here cannot be desired.

"You can delight in it, but you cannot desire it. You can live it, you can dance it, but you cannot desire it. Hence all the Buddhas say: 'Become desireless,' but the human problem is that we understand it as if they are saying: 'Make desirelessness your goal.'

"We turn everything into a goal. Put anything into the mind; it immediately reduces it into a goal and the problem arises – immediately. And then the mind asks 'how?' 'How' to achieve this, 'how' to get it, 'how' to become it. Again you are on the track, again you have missed.

"When Buddhas say, 'Become desireless,' they are not trying to create a goal for you. They are simply saying, 'See, look into your desiring. Understand your desire and the futility of it. Look deeply into it, penetrate deeply into it, and that very penetration will help: desire disappears.'

"When you can see the total futility of desire, will you ask how to drop it? If you see the total futility of it, it drops by itself.

"You go on asking how, because you still want to cling. You still want to postpone it. You still think there must be something in it: 'Maybe I am missing, maybe I am not making right efforts, maybe I am not moving in the right direction – but there is something.' You are still hoping."