We have wings, but we have not used them yet. And because we have not used them, we have become oblivious that they are there. Small wings are not that small because they can cover the whole sky: their capacity is infinite, immense, immeasurable. There is nothing more beautiful than a bird on the wing. Lie contains the whole sky under his small wings, moving toward the ultimate frontier of existence, always moving from the known toward the unknown, never afraid of the unknown- in fact, always intrigued by the unknown. He is always dropping the known because once you have known it, it is sheer stupidity to go on repeating an experience. The intelligent person would like new experiences, new vistas to open up, new visions. And that’s what the bird on the wing represents.
A buddha is a bird on the wing. So keep that as a symbol deep in your heart: all my sannyasins have to become birds. We are all living in cages — Christian cages, Hindu cages, Mohammedan cages, beautifully decorated: on some cages the Koran is inscribed, on other cages the Gita is inscribed, on other cages there are sayings of Buddha, Confucius, Moses. And there are golden cages studded with diamonds — but a cage is a cage. We are not made to live in a cage.
A sannyasin has to get rid of all cages: of religion, of nation, of caste, of ideology. You have to go on dropping all cages so that one day the whole sky opens up and becomes available to you.
That’s what existence is all about: the whole open sky. And freedom is the only thing worth trying for. Freedom achieved, everything follows; without freedom, there is no possibility of anything.
