"And these both are the barriers. One thing: you must be here and now, and you must not be – you must not be – an ego. Then you are open, and whenever you are open the grace is already flowing; it has been flowing forever. If you are not getting it, it is not something that you can get by doing. The more you do, the more it will be impossible for you to get it.

"The whole effort of the master is to teach you nondoing, nonaction. Or in other words, the whole effort of the master is to take you back – to teach you how to die, how to throw the ego completely, and how to be in a state of nothingness, a state of nonbeing. Buddha called that state anatta, the state of no-self: you are but you are not a self. Then there is no boundary to it, then there is no barrier around you, then all the doors are open – then life can flow, come and go, through you. Grace is not something special that is going to happen to you: grace is the very existence itself, it is grace-filled. The blessing is showering on you.

"I will tell you one Buddhist anecdote – it happened in Buddha's time. One of Buddha's great disciples, Manjushree, was sitting under a tree meditating. Then suddenly he became aware that flowers were dropping from the tree, many flowers showering. But he was surprised because it was not the season for the flowers, and just in the morning when he had come there was not a single flower on the tree – so where were these millions of flowers showering all around coming from?

"So he looked at the tree. Then he was even more mystified, because they were not coming from the tree, they were showering from the sky. So he asked, 'Who is doing this? What is happening?'

"A voice was heard, 'We are the deities, and we are happy that you have attained, and just to express our happiness we are showering these flowers.'

"Manjushree said, 'What have I attained? I have attained nothing. Rather, on the contrary, I have lost myself."