CAN MEDITATION BE PASSIONATE?

Yes, that is the only way for meditation to exist. Passion is energy, passion is fire, passion is life. If you are doing meditation just so-so, without any passion, without intensity, without fire, nothing will happen. If you are praying just as a formality and it is not love that has arisen in your heart, it is meaningless, it is absurd.

If you are praying to God without passion there will be no connection between you and God. Only passion can become the bridge, the thirst, the hunger. The more thirsty you are, the more is the possibility. If you are utterly thirsty, if you have become just a thirst, your whole being is consumed by your passion, then only something happens -- in that intensity, in that moment of hundred-degree passion.

Don't be lukewarm. People live a lukewarm life. They are neither this nor that, hence they remain mediocre. If you want to get beyond mediocrity, create a life of great passion. Whatsoever you do, do it passionately. If you sing, then sing passionately. If you love, then love passionately. If you paint, then paint passionately. If you talk, then talk passionately. If you listen, then listen passionately. If you meditate, then meditate passionately.

And from everywhere you will start having contact with God -- wherever passion is. If you are painting with utter passion, your painting is meditation. There is no need for any other meditation. If you are dancing with absolute passion so that the dancer disappears and only the dance remains, it is meditation, no other need, nowhere to go, no yoga postures. This is the yoga postures: the dancer has disappeared and the dance is there. It is pure energy -- energy vibrating.

In that state you contact. Why in that state do you contact? -- because when the passion is great, the ego dies. The ego can exist only in mediocre minds; only mediocre people are egoistic. The really great are not egoistic, they cannot be. But their life has a totally different direction, a different dimension -- the dimension of passion.

Have you observed these two words -- passion and compassion? Passion becomes transformed into compassion. There is a quantum leap from passion into compassion -- but the quantum leap happens only when you are boiling at one hundred degrees. Then the water becomes vapor. It is the same energy that exists as passion and one day becomes compassion. Compassion is not antagonistic to passion; it is passion come of age, it is passion bloomed. It is the spring season for passion.

I am all for passion. Do whatsoever you do but be lost into it, abandon yourself into it, dissolve yourself into it. And dissolution becomes salvation.