Stop judging.
Whatever you are doing, if you like doing it, do it. There is no question of judgment; nobody else has the right to say that what you are doing is wrong. If you enjoy it, you are not harming anybody, you are not disturbing anybody…but it is a strange world.
From my childhood I have always loved to just sit in a corner silently. Everybody who would pass by would say, “What are you doing?”
I would say, “Nothing.”
And everybody would say, “This is not good.”
I said, “This is strange: I am doing nothing, doing no harm to anybody – just sitting silently in this corner – and you say, ‘This is not right.’ It seems it has just become your habit to condemn, to criticize. But I am enjoying sitting here doing nothing, and I am going to continue it in spite of your judgment. I have not asked for your advice, and to give advice unasked for is unwise.”
Slowly, slowly one has to assert oneself, to make one’s point clear. Unless I trespass on somebody else’s rights – if I am doing something which I am enjoying and I don’t see it as harmful in any way – then I will not allow anybody to judge me, because it is not only a question of this act, it is a question of my whole life. You are teaching me a very subtle disease of judging. And when I condemn myself, how can I leave anybody else uncondemned?
Everybody is so miserable that he wants to find some reason somewhere to explain to himself why he is miserable, why she is miserable. And the society has given you a good strategy: judge.
First, naturally, you judge yourself in every way. No man is perfect, and no man can ever be perfect – perfection does not exist – so judgment is very easy. You are imperfect, so there are things which show your imperfection. And then you are angry, angry with yourself, angry with the whole world: “Why am I not perfect?”
Then you look with only one idea – to find imperfection in everybody. And then you want to open your heart – naturally, because unless you open your heart, there is no celebration in your life; your life is almost dead. But you cannot do it directly; you will have to destroy all this upbringing from the very roots.
So the first thing is, stop judging yourself. Instead of judging, start accepting yourself with all your imperfections, all your frailties, all your mistakes, all your failures. Don’t ask yourself to be perfect. That is simply asking for something impossible, and then you will feel frustrated. You are a human being after all.
Just look at the animals, at the birds; nobody is worried, nobody is sad, nobody is frustrated. You don’t see a buffalo freaking out. He is perfectly contented chewing the same grass every day. He is almost enlightened. There is no tension; there is a tremendous harmony with nature, with himself, with everything as it is. Buffaloes don’t make parties to revolutionize the world, to change buffaloes into super buffaloes, to make buffaloes religious, virtuous. No animal is concerned at all with human ideas.
And they all must be laughing: “What has happened to you? Why can’t you be just yourself as you are? What is the need to be somebody else?”
So the first thing is a deep acceptance of yourself.
I have never judged, so I don’t exactly know the experience. When you say that you judge yourself, it is borrowed. People have judged you, and you have accepted their idea without any scrutiny. You are suffering from all kinds of people’s judgments, and you are throwing those judgments on other people. And this game has grown all out of proportion; the whole of humanity is suffering from it.
If you want to get out of it, the first thing is: don’t judge yourself. Accept humbly your imperfection, your failures, your mistakes, your frailties. There is no need to pretend otherwise. Just be yourself: “This is how I am, full of fear. I cannot go into the dark night, I cannot go into the thick forest.” What is wrong in it? – it is just human.
Once you accept yourself, you will be able to accept others because you will have a clear insight that they are suffering from the same disease. And your accepting of them will help them to accept themselves.
But first, accept yourself. That makes you capable of accepting others. And because somebody accepts them, they learn the beauty of acceptance for the first time – how peaceful it feels – and they start accepting others.
If the whole humanity comes to a point where everybody is accepted as he is, almost ninety percent of misery will simply disappear – it has no foundation – and your hearts will open of their own accord and your love will be flowing.
Right now, how can you love? When you see so many wrongs, so many weaknesses, how can you love? You want somebody perfect. Nobody is perfect, so you have to accept a state of no-love, or accept that it doesn’t matter whether somebody is imperfect. Love can be shared, shared with all kinds of people. Don’t make demands.
Judgment is ugly; it hurts people. On the one hand, you go on hurting, wounding them, and on the other hand, you want their love, their respect. It is impossible.
Love them, respect them, and perhaps your love and respect may help them to change many of their weaknesses, many of their failures – because love will give them a new energy, a new meaning, a new strength.