"This unawareness creates all suffering, because, unknowingly, whatsoever you do will bring suffering. It is not what you do that is basic; it is whether you do it with your presence or with your absence that is significant.

"Whatsoever you do, if you can do it with your total presence, your life will become ecstatic; it will be a bliss. If you do something without your presence there, absently, your life will be a suffering – bound to be. Hell means your absence.

"So there are two types of seekers: one type of seeker is always in search of what to do. That seeker is on a wrong path, because the question is not of doing at all. The question is of being – what to be, how to be. So never think in terms of action and doing, because whatsoever you do, if you are absent it will be meaningless.

"Whether you move in the world or you live in a monastery; whether you function in the crowd or you move to an isolated spot in the Himalayas will make no difference. You will be absent here and you will be absent there, and whatsoever you do – in the crowd or in the isolation – will bring suffering. If you are not there, then whatsoever you do is wrong.

"The second type, and the right type of seeker, is not in search of what to do, he is in search of how to be. The first thing is how to be.

"One man came to Gautam Buddha. He was filled with much compassion, with much sympathy, and he asked Gautam Buddha, 'What can I do to help the world?'

"Buddha is reported to have laughed and said to the man, 'You cannot do anything because you are not. How can you do anything when you are not? So don't think of the world. Don't think of how to serve the world, how to help others.' Buddha said, 'First be – and if you are, then whatsoever you do becomes a service, it becomes a prayer, it becomes compassion. Your presence is the turning point. Your being is the revolution.'

"So these are the two paths: the path of action and the path of meditation."