"If you get too much obsessed with life itself, it is as if somebody was sent to the university and he became too much attached with the university and he could not leave it, and he could not even conceive of leaving it. The university is there just to educate you for something greater. For the universe, the university is to prepare you; that's why we call it the university. It itself is not the universejust a preparation.

"In the East, life is just like a university, a discipline, a training for something far beyond it. If you become too much attached with life, then you will be coming back again and again every year to the university. Then it is futile, pointless. A university is to get ready. A university has to be renounced one day. It is just a preparation. And if the preparation becomes endless, then it becomes a burden.

"That is what has happened to many people. They take life as the goal. Then they go on preparing, they go on preparing endlessly. They never go on the journey, they simply prepare for the journey. And if their life becomes an impotent gesture, no wonder. It is natural, it has to be so.

"Just think about yourself – always consulting timetables, always getting ready to leave, always inquiring from the tourist office, and never leaving, never going anywhere. You will go mad.

"Nothing is wrong with life itself, but if your attitude is this – that life is an end unto itself – then you will be in trouble. Then your whole life will become meaningless. The meaning is there, but the meaning is transcendental to it. The meaning is there, but you will have to penetrate to that core where it is revealed.

"To think of life as the goal is to remain on the periphery. That periphery Buddha calls the wheel. The symbol of the wheel is very significant and has to be understood. The periphery, Buddha calls the wheelit goes on moving.

"You can watch a bullock cart moving. The wheels move. They move on something which is unmoving – the center remains unmoving. The hub remains unmoving."