~~LEARNING FROM TEMPLES ~~

"Not only the corporate houses but every place where man dwells has much to learn from the temples. First, you are always moving on holy ground. Not only in the temple are you in a holy place, but even in the marketplace you are moving on the same holy ground. You are not to be just prayerful in the temple, in the mosque, in the church. Your prayerfulness has to become just your breathing. You have not to create only in your temple a beautiful world of incense, of flowers, of music, of chanting, of beautiful architecture, of sculptures -- the temple should simply be the model for every house. Not only corporate houses, every house should be a temple, because every body is a temple.

God dwells in you, and wherever you are, you should create the aroma, the fragrance of godliness.

The authentically religious person is neither Hindu, nor Mohammedan, nor Christian, nor Jaina, nor Buddhist. An authentic religious person is simply a prayerful person, a loving person, a creative person -- a man who has the golden touch; whatever he touches becomes beautiful and valuable. It is not possible that our houses remain in hell and once in a while, for an hour, we can enter a temple and find heaven -- that is not possible. Unless you are twenty-four hours in heaven, you cannot enter into a temple and suddenly change -- suddenly drop your jealousies, your anger, your hatred, your competitiveness, your ambitions, your politics. You cannot simply drop all your ugliness.

You can pretend, you can be a hypocrite ... and in fact all the people who are visiting temples of any religion are hypocrites, because their other twenty-three hours show their reality. For only one hour, they cannot become a different being.

A religious person has to understand that it is not a question of believing in a certain theology; it is not a question of believing in a certain tradition. It is a question of transforming yourself in such a way that compassion becomes your very heartbeat, that gratitude becomes your very breathing, that wherever you are, your eyes can see the divine -- in the trees, in the mountains, in people, in animals, in birds. Unless you can make the whole existence your temple, you are not religious.

Wherever you move, you are always in a temple, because you are always surrounded by that mysterious energy that people have called "God." A few others have given it other names -- they differ only in names. But one thing is certain: we are not living in a mundane universe. On each step there is a mystery, and there are mysteries beyond mysteries. If you are simply aware of all the mysteries, your worship will be to make everything as worthy of God as possible.