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The real cannot be given in words. The real can be conveyed only through gestures, through silence, through presence. And sometimes even silence is not adequate enough; even presence, at the ultimate peaks, fails....

The ultimate cannot be given in any possible way. I go on talking to you, but it is not that which I would like to say. That which I would like to say to you cannot be spoken, and that which can be said is not really the thing that I would like to say to you. It is the ancient dilemma, the dilemma of the mystic. He knows, but he cannot say it; and whatsoever he says is not what he knows.

Lao Tzu says: The tao cannot be said, and if you say it, it is no more tao. Read instead of tao, 'dhamma,' and it becomes the statement of Buddha. Read instead of tao, 'truth,' and it becomes a statement of Socrates. The truth cannot be said -- it is so vast! -- but efforts have to be made. In those very efforts, a few people who are vulnerable, open, intelligent, may be able to have a little glimpse -- a faraway glimpse, of course -- but that glimpse will become a seed in them and will start growing.

And what I have to say to you is inexhaustible, hence I can go on speaking. For these many years I have been speaking nonstop, and yet I have not said anything -- not even a single word has been said! Hence I can go on speaking, because it can never be said.

One can ask, 'Then why speak at all?' There is a reason to it: I have caught so many of you through speaking! If I was just sitting silently here, yes, a few people would have been here, but very few, because silence is a difficult phenomenon, the most difficult to understand. It needs tremendous intelligence; not only intelligence, it needs a certain silence in you too. Then only, two silences can commune.

And the world does not teach you to be silent; it teaches you words, language. I have to use words and language so that you become caught in the net. Once you are caught and cannot escape, then you will have to listen to my silence too. And once you have understood my words, you will start feeling the silence that surrounds those words. Those words are born out of silence; they carry something of silence in them, some fragrance around them.

But what I have been saying to you is only the most rudimentary; it is for the beginners. As you grow in understanding, as your silence deepens, my contact with you will be more and more of silence. Even while I am speaking, you will listen to the intervals between the words and you will read between the lines. You will not be so much concerned with the words, but with the wordless. You will be more concerned with the origin of it all.

The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Volume 7, Chapter 8

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