"It is absolutely and categorically true. Our birth is the birth of a buddha and our life is a life of a buddha, whether we remember it or not. And our death is going to be the death of a buddha. But remember: although on the screen it appears that there is a beginning and there is an endexistence has no framework; it is not a window, it is not enclosed by death and life. The buddha within you just comes like a breeze from eternity and moves through your heart, again into eternity. From the outside it may appear somebody is born, somebody is dead. From the inside, if you are aware, nothing is born, nobody dies. Only forms change, but the center of all our activities remains the same forever.

"To experience this center is the whole effort of all meditation, because once you know it you are relaxed; you cannot be miserable. Even if you try, you cannot be tense, you cannot be angry, you cannot be greedy, you cannot have a lust for power. Once, knowing your own center, you reach to heights from where even the clouds are far below. You have touched the blueness of empty space. This traveler is called by Kassan and Jozan 'the Buddha'.

Kassan said, 'If the Buddha were within life-and-death, there would be no delusion with regard to life-and-death.'

"Right, but not perfect. There is nothing wrong in it, but even to say there would be no delusion with regard to life-and-death, is unnecessary. Awakening to your buddhahood, all that is false disappears – just like when you bring a lamp into a dark room the darkness disappears. You don't say that the darkness has gone away, because nothing goes. The darkness was never there in fact; it was only an absence – absence of light. The moment you bring light in, of course, the absence of light cannot remain. Nothing has gone out, only light has come in. As the buddha is awakened within you, it is not that delusion or darkness or hallucination disappears. Your buddha is awake, and all around, from infinity to infinity, there is only consciousness and nothing else."