"Then you start tasting your being for the first time. You have been tasting the other for millions of your lives, and the other only keeps you occupied; nothing else ever happens. The other only keeps you engaged with toys. And as you are engaged with the other, the other is engaged with you – because you are the other for him or her.

"To look at the other and forget oneself is ignorance. To remember oneself and forget the other is awakening. And once you have become awakened to yourself, recognized your buddhahood, then you can look outside too. Then never again is the other to be found. If you have come to know who you are, the other disappears in that very knowledge.

"This is the paradoxical nature of self-recognition: when you recognize the self, the self disappears, and with the self, the other. The other cannot exist without the self. I-thou exists as a pair. They are not two words, it is a pair-word. You cannot separate them. You go on looking at the other; in the shadow the I is created. And you remain engaged with the other, and you go on falling into new traps, new games. The other is the world.

"Turning in….

"But you are too concerned with turning on. You are turned on by the other. You become excited with the other, you want to explore the other; hence you continue moving always in the other and remain unrecognized, remain unremembered, remain unaware. Buddhahood is nothing but becoming engaged with oneself. And once you know who you are the I disappears, and with the disappearance of the I, the you, thou, the other, disappears. Then it is all one. There is nothing in and nothing out. That is what is called enlightenment.

"You ask me,

Am I a restless, confused buddha and only need to accept right now the peculiar nature of my buddhahood…?

"Everybody is restless, everybody is confused. The confusion is coming from your engagement with the other; the other confuses you. The restlessness is there because you are too excited by the other. It will remain, but it does not destroy your buddhahood. Your potential remains untouched by it."