"Let-go is certainly the most fundamental principle of religiousness. It simply means no goal, no desire, no longing, no past, no future – just being here in utter totality, drowning in this silence, without any resistance.

"There is no art, there is no knack, there is no method; just a simple understanding. Who is preventing you? Your own past, that you think is valuable…how can you drop it? It is a treasure, it is your heritage! The future…how can you drop it? – although you don't have it. Still, you are worried how to drop it: 'How can one drop the future? Future is all that we have. All the dreams, all the tomorrows, all the great things that have to happen are in the future.'

"And when I say to you, 'Drop the past, drop the future, just simply be…'

"In that moment of simple being, immense blessings descend on you, silences, ecstasies – effortlessly. And because you have not made any effort and the flowers go on showering on you, it creates a very new dimension in your being: the dimension of gratitude, which religions have wrongly interpreted as prayer.

"You cannot pray before you have known let-go. All the churches and all the temples are full of people who are praying, but they don't know; they are not in a state in which prayer arises on its own as gratitude.

"Prayer cannot mean anything else but gratitude – gratitude for so much that is given to you each moment without your asking. You could not have conceived of any more than what happens in the moment, if you allow it to happen.

"And the allowing is very simple:

"No past, no future – just this moment.

"You ask, 'Could you please speak a little more on the art of letting go?' In fact, there is no art. And I have already spoken too much on it which is not really allowed.

"A Zen master is sitting by the side of the sea on the beach, and the king of the country passes by. Seeing the opportunity…the king has thought many times that some day he will go to this man about whom he has heard so much."