Woman in the bus

What is worry? It's a state of mind, a state to be 'there' somewhere. 

An old woman was traveling on a bus, and she was anxious, worried, and continuously asking what stop it was. The stranger sitting by her side said, "Relax, don't be worried. The conductor will go on announcing what stop it is, and if you are too worried I will call him here. You can tell him where you want to get off so he can keep a note of it. And you can relax!" 

He called the conductor and the woman said, "Please remember, I don't want to miss my stop. I have to reach somewhere very urgently." 

The conductor said, "Okay, I will make a note of it--although even without your asking I will be announcing each stop. But I will make a note of it and I will come to you particularly and tell you whenever your stop comes. But you relax, don't be so worried about it!" 

She was perspiring and trembling and looked so tense. So she said, "Okay, you note it down--I have to get off at the bus terminus."

Now if it is the bus terminus, why should you worry? How can you miss it? There is no way of missing it! The moment you rest, the moment you relax, you know that existence is already going, moving, reaching towards higher peaks. And you are part of it. You need not have separate ambitions. 

This is relaxation, resting, dropping all private goals, dropping the whole achieving mind, all the ego projections. And then life is a mystery. Your eyes will be full of wonder; your heart will be full of awe. 

We are not to become something--we are already it. This is the whole message of all the awakened ones: that you are not to achieve something, it has already been given to you. It is God's gift. You are already where you should be, you can't be anywhere else. There is nowhere to go, nothing to achieve. Because there is nowhere to go and nothing to achieve, you can celebrate. Then there is no hurry, no worry, no anxiety, no anguish, no fear of being a failure. You can't fail. In the very nature of things it is impossible to fail, because there is no question of success at all. 

Have you ever taken note of this one thing? the present is always blissful. Worry and suffering are created either by what you wanted to do in the past and could not do, or by what you want to do in the future and don't know whether you will be able to do or not. There is no suffering in the present, there is no worry? This is why the present does not disturb the mind--anxiety disturbs the mind. 

The present knows no suffering, present is such a small moment that suffering cannot fit into it. The present can only be peace, can only be happiness.