"But that night, tired and hungry and afraid, he looked at the full moon and he could not believe it – what he saw in the full moon he had never seen before. And he had been a lifelong moon gazer. That night he saw a loaf of bread!

"What you see depends on you. People see the faces of their loved ones, people see their dream girls in the moon, but nobody has ever seen a loaf of bread. But his experience was absolutely authentic – but only in his context.

"I am reminding you of this because people tend to forget that life is a very interwoven, interdependent, cosmic whole. You cannot take a part out of it and keep it alive, meaningful. I will not tell you to do Vipassana unless I can also give you the experience of Gautam Buddha. Poor Goenka cannot understand this. He is just a businessman. What does he understand about the context in which Vipassana arose?

"Gautam Buddha had lived in tremendous luxury, surrounded by beautiful girls, beautiful palaces. The whole night was a celebration; the day was for rest, the night for dances and drinking. Out of this experience he became tired. He had seen all the beautiful girls; there was nothing more to be seen. He had seen that every man and woman is just a skeleton, covered with a thin skin. Just think for a moment: here all of you are skeletons covered with thin skin! This body and its beauty fades very soon.

"He had seen all that was possible in those days for a man of power and riches to see, but he could not find peace, contentment, silence. He could not find himself. Utterly frustrated, he moved out of the palace one night – because this life is going to end in a few days, or in a few years. It is not something to cling to. Each moment death is coming closer; before death grabs you, you have to figure out something which is eternal, which is immortal.

"All that you see around you is made of the same stuff as dreams are. Do you think you are for the first time on the earth? On the same earth millions of people have come and simply disappeared into thin air."