Friendship need not be addressed to anyone in particular; that is also a rotten idea, that you have to be friends with a certain person – just be friendly. Rather than creating friendship, create friendliness. Let it be a quality of your being, a climate that surrounds you, so you are friendly with whomsoever you come in contact.
This whole existence has to be befriended! And if you can befriend existence, existence will befriend you a thousand fold. It returns you in the same coin, but multiplied. It echoes you. If you throw a stone at existence, you will get back many more stones. If you throw flowers, flowers will come back.
Life is a mirror, it reflects your face. Be friendly, and all of life will reflect friendliness. People know perfectly well that if you are friendly to a dog even the dog becomes friendly to you, so friendly. And there are people who have known that if you become friendly to a tree, the tree becomes friendly to you.
Try great experiments in friendship, Try with a rosebush, and see the miracle: slowly slowly, it will happen, because man has not been behaving with trees in a friendly way; hence, they have become very afraid.
But now scientist say that, when you come with an axe to cut down a tree, even before you have started cutting it, the trees goes into a shiver, a cold shiver. It goes into a great fear panic. You have not even started, but just the intention – it is as if the tree becomes aware of your intention! Now they have sophisticated instruments just like cardiographs, which can make graphs on paper showing what the tree is feeling. When the tree is feeling joyous, there is a rhythm in the graph; when the tree is feeling afraid, the fear is shown on the graph. When the tree sees a friend coming it rejoices, it jumps, it dances; the graph immediately shows a dance. When the tree sees the Gardner coming………
Have you ever said hello to a tree? Try it, and one day you will be surprised: the tree also says hello in its tongue, in its own language. Hug a tree, and one day will come soon when you will feel that it was notonly you who were hugging the tree – the tree was responding, you were also hugged by the tree, although the tree has no hands. But it has its own way of expressing its joy, its sadness, its anger, its fear.
The whole existence is sensitive. That’s what I mean, when I say that existence is God.
Be friendly , Satyam, and don’t be worried whether anybody is friendly towards you or not – that is a businesslike question. Why be worried? Why not transform the whole existence into a friend towards you? Why miss such a great kingdom?
