Chapter 10. This mad, mad game - Osho

Osho – Dhammapada: The Way of The Buddha (Volume 5)

Chapter 10. This mad, mad game

Question 1:

Beloved Master,

When I expect you to use a precision scalpel with much subtlety, you use a sledgehammer. When I expect you to use a sledgehammer, you kiss me. I give up!

Amitabh, God functions in a very mysterious way; it is never according to your expectations. And I am not here as a person but only as a vehicle. I simply allow God to function through me; I am not doing anything at all. Things are happening, but they are not being done. I am just as much a spectator as anybody else.

I am also surprised, just like you. When you expect a sledgehammer, I also expect one.

And when I see the kiss happening I say, "Gosh! What is he up to?" But I have also given up.

You are on the right track. When so many times you expect something and just the opposite happens, slowly slowly you learn a great secret: that expectation is not the way to be with the divine; it is the barrier, not the bridge. Expect, and you will be frustrated.

Don't expect and simply wait... then whatsoever happens has tremendous beauty. Be ready to be surprised, constantly ready to be surprised.

Each moment brings new surprises to the one who has no expectations, who comes with an absolutely open mind. Then incredible things start happening. Even if you had wanted them you could not have expected them; you could not have found yourself worthy enough to expect them.

When you feel that you are unworthy, suddenly great love showers from the divine.

You were thinking you would be punished, you were thinking you would be judged, condemned. That's not the way of God: there is no judgment and there is no condemnation. There is no hell, all is heaven - and all the way to heaven it is heaven.

You just need a totally different way of looking at things.

Look with clean, clear eyes, with not even a slight expectation lurking somewhere. Then each moment is a mystery, a revelation. And slowly slowly, you will come upon the second secret - this is the first secret, when one says, "I give up."

The second secret is: suddenly you see that the sledgehammer is also a kiss and the kiss is also a sledgehammer. Then opposites lose their opposition, they become complementaries. If a sledgehammer is used, that too is because of love, for no other reason. It IS a kiss! Those who understand, those who are ready to surrender, to trust, know it is a kiss. And a kiss is also a sledgehammer, because to be kissed by God is to be transformed - to be crushed, killed, resurrected. Sledgehammer or kiss, there is no difference: that is the second secret.

And once these two secrets are fulfilled, there is no more to discipleship. One has arrived home. You have fulfilled half the journey by saying, "I give up." Now please don't forget it.

The mind tends to forget. The mind is very much attached to its old patterns. It goes on again and again slipping and falling back. It is easier to fall back because it is downhill.

It is difficult to remain with the understanding that happens once in a while because it is an uphill task.

It is one thing to see the sun, it is another thing to remain filled with its light twenty- four hours a day. Yes, there are moments when windows open and everything is clear and transparent, but those moments will be gone. Soon they will be only memories, just dry flowers with no perfume, just ruins of something. And slowly slowly, as the experience recedes into your memory, you start being doubtful about whether it ever happened or you just imagined it. Was it really so? And once that suspicion, that doubt, arises, you have lost contact with something great, something of the unknown - you have lost track of it.

This is a great moment, the moment of giving up. It means no more expectations from now on. And when there is no expectation there is no possibility of frustration.

Expectation is the mother of all frustrations; expectation gone, frustration disappears.

And when there is no frustration in your life, life really becomes a bed of roses. Then God is a constant blessing; he goes on raining his grace, his beauty on you.

I am here only to be a medium, just like a window. Don't be attached to the frame of the window; look at the sky that the window makes available. The stars and the sun and the moon, they don't belong to the window. What I am giving to you does not belong to me; there is no one inside to whom they can belong. I possess nothing, but that is the greatest possession in the world - nothing - because when you are nothing, a nobody, you are God. When you are nobody, for the first time the whole can flow through you.

What I do here with my disciples is not my doing; I simply allow something to happen.

I don't know what is going to happen, I don't know what I am going to say, I don't know what is going on - why you are here, why I am here. But something mysterious is happening. I am here, you are here, and between the master and the disciple something transpires which belongs neither to the disciple nor to the master.

It is a mad, mad game in which a third party is involved which is invisible. Yes, I call this disciple/master game a mad game - M stands for master, A for and, D for disciple!

Question 2:

Beloved Master,

Love is a secret. Why?

Ganesh Giri, love is certainly a secret, but not an ordinary secret - an extraordinary secret. And its extraordinariness consists in its being an open secret. Everybody knows it and yet nobody knows it; hence I call it the open secret. Everybody knows it in his deepest heart, but nobody knows it in his head. It is a totally different kind of knowing.

It is not knowledge. You cannot learn about it, you can only live it. Living is knowing.

It is not something that scriptures can give to you; nobody can give it to you. Only you are capable of conferring this gift upon yourself; it is your responsibility. You can know it, but knowing is intuitive.

This word 'intuition' is beautiful. You know the other word, 'tuition'; tuition means somebody else is giving it to you. Intuition means nobody is giving it to you; it is growing within yourself. And because it is not given to you by somebody else, it cannot be put into words.

Language is needed when we are talking to each other. Language is not needed when something is growing in your consciousness, because there is no dialogue. It grows in silence, it blooms in silence; hence when you try to put it into words it escapes. Its very climate is silence. It can't be brought into language; it can't be reduced to theories, concepts, ideologies. That's why it is an open secret: knowing is possible, knowledge is impossible.

Saint Augustine is reported to have said once... Somebody asked him, "What is love?"

He said, "Love is like time."

The questioner was puzzled. He said, "Okay, then - what is time?"

Augustine said, "You misunderstood me. I meant it is like time because everybody knows what time is, but if somebody asks you what it is, you can't answer."

Can you answer what time is? And you know - it is not that you don't know - but knowing seems to be so deep that it cannot be brought to the surface. Or if you try to bring it to the surface it becomes so distorted that it is no longer the same. In the depth it is a diamond; the moment you bring it to the surface it turns out to be an ordinary pebble. And because you know it is a diamond, you cannot use the pebble to represent it.

Love is one of the most mysterious phenomena in existence - next to God. That's why love is closer to God than anything else. If you can understand love, if you can be love - because that is the only way to understand it - you will become aware of the presence of God, immediately, instantly! The moment of love is the moment of the experience of God. Suddenly he is everywhere.

Once your eyes are full of love you have the capacity to see into the trees, to see into the rocks, to their very innermost core, and find God there. Then he is everywhere. All that is needed is a loving heart.

And the problem with modern man is that we have forgotten the language of silence, we have forgotten the way of the heart. We have completely forgotten that there is a life which can be lived through the heart. We are much too hung up in the head, and because we are so much in the head we cannot make any sense out of love. It becomes more and more problematic. It becomes such a problem that there are many people who deny it just as they deny God. They say, "There is no God - it is fiction; and there is no love either - that too is only a fiction."

They would like to reduce love to pure chemistry; they would like to reduce love to something physiological, hormonal, concerned with your glands and their secretions.

Yes, that too is part of love, but the most superficial part - the chemistry, the physiology. They are its circumference but not the center. The center is elusive, mercurial; you cannot grasp it with your hand or with your head. It slips out, it escapes your fist. You can have it only with an open hand - I call it the open secret.

Never make love a question.

You ask me, "Why? Why is love a secret?" There is no why: it is so. Why are the trees green? Small children sometimes ask, "Why are the trees green and why is the rose red?" How are you going to explain to them? If you are foolish enough - that means if you are scientific enough - you will try to explain to them that it is because of chlorophyll that the trees are green. But the child can ask, "But why does the chlorophyll make them green and why is the chlorophyll green?" The question remains the same, you have simply pushed it a little further back.

D.H. Lawrence is right. A child asked him, "Why are the trees green?" He said, "They are green because they are green." And the child rejoiced immensely in the answer. He said, "This is the right answer! I have been asking many people; they say foolish things.

This I can understand. Yes, they are green because they are green!"

Love is a secret because it is a secret. But it is an open secret - that much I would like to add - it is an open secret. It is available! Nobody is guarding it. It is not locked in the temples, it is not locked somewhere in the libraries, it is not locked in some underground treasure. It is an open secret! It is in the rain and in the wind and in the sun. It is just for you to be open and allow it to happen to you. Don't make a question out of it.

Never make a question out of life. Let life remain a mystery, don't try to change it into a problem. That is one of the greatest mistakes we can make, and we have been making it continuously. First we make a question out of something which is a mystery, and then the question cannot be answered. Then the only resort is to deny the whole thing.

Make God a question and then sooner or later a Friedrich Nietzsche is bound to arrive and say, "God is dead." In fact, God died the day you put a question mark on him; he cannot live with a question mark. The question mark shows doubt, and God can live only with trust. The question mark shows doubt, and love can only be felt in trust.

Ganesh Giri, feel it, don't think about it. It is not a question to be solved by philosophy: it is a mystery to be understood by the poet, by the musician, by the actor. Love is not part of the territory of philosophy but part of the territory of poetry.

But poets can only give you glimpses; they cannot give you the experience of it. They can allure you, they can persuade you to go on a great pilgrimage, but they cannot deliver love to you - it is not a thing to be delivered - but they can make you enchanted with the mystery of love.

I am not a philosopher; I am very close to the poets - but poets can also give you only a glimpse. Mystics can help you to experience it; I am a mystic, I can help you to experience it, but the way to experience is not to be intellectually concerned about it.

You have to be more sensitive.

Love is herenow. This whole place is full of love - this is a temple of love.

That's why I am condemned all over the world, criticized, because the whole of human history has been a history of war, violence. The whole human past has been ugly, inhuman, uncivilized, primitive, animalistic. And all the societies that have existed up to now have tried to kill love and the very possibility of love in you, because only if love is killed can you then be reduced to a machine - a machine which can kill, a machine which can function efficiently without creating any problems, a machine which will be obedient, a machine which will not rebel against any kind of slavery, oppression, exploitation. The priests, the politicians, all have wanted you to be machines, not men, and for centuries they have been in power because you were ready to be reduced to machines.

The only phenomenon that can bring you back to your real nature, that can revive you again into humanity, into human beings, is love. The whole human past has been against love. Yes, to write about love was allowed, but love itself was not allowed. In very cunning ways it was destroyed, killed, uprooted. And there is a great need that man should know what love is, because without love the soul remains unnourished, starved. What food is to the body, love is to the soul. Without love you can't have a very alive soul. Without love your potential will remain a potential; it will never become actual.

This is a temple of love. I am creating a situation here where you can start melting, where you can again start becoming warm, where you can start playing, where you can again be cheerful.

I am not here to create more soldiers in the world, but sannyasins. All the past societies were soldier-oriented. I see the future as sannyasin-oriented. The sannyasin is just the opposite of the soldier, exactly the opposite. The society that has lived up to now, rooted in the soldier, has really outlived its time. It is dying, it is going to die, and it is good that it should die. But before it dies we have to revive a few people as sannyasins; they will be the heralds of a new world, a new age.

But love cannot be taught, it can only be caught. I am love, my people here are love.

Ganesh Giri, what are you doing here? Melt, mix, drop your head! Become as headless as my people are, and you will know what love is. But still it will not become knowledge, it will remain a deep knowing. But that's enough - that is nourishing.

That's enough because that is transforming. That's enough because that opens the door to the divine.

Question 3:

Beloved Master,

What is unconsciousness?

Consciousness means living with a witness; unconsciousness means living without a witness. When you are walking on the road, you can walk consciously - that's what Buddha says one should do - you are alert, deep down you are aware that you are walking; you are conscious of each movement. You are conscious of the birds singing in the trees, the early morning sun coming through the trees, the rays touching you, the warmth, the fresh air, the fragrance of newly opening flowers. A dog starts barking, a train passes by, you are breathing... you are watching everything. You are not excluding anything out of your alertness; you are taking everything in. The breath goes in, the breath goes out... you are watching everything that is happening.

It is not concentration, because in concentration you focus on one thing and you forget everything else. When you are concentrating you will not listen to the humming of the bees or to the singing of the birds; you will only see what you are concentrating upon.

Concentration is narrowing down your consciousness to a point. It is good in archery:

you have a target and you have to see only the target and you have to forget everything else.

In Mahabharata, one of the ancient scriptures of this country, this story occurs:

Drona, a great archer, is teaching his disciples archery. Arjuna wins finally, for the simple reason that his concentration is the most acute.

A bird is sitting on a tree, and Drona tells all his disciples to take their bows and arrows, focus on the bird, and get ready to shoot it. Then he comes close to each disciple and whispers a question in his ear, "What are you seeing?"

One disciple says, "I see many trees and the bird and the eyes of the bird."

Drona moves to another disciple. He says, "I see only one tree and the bird sitting on it and his eyes."

He moves to the third. He says, "I see only the bird."

He moves to the fourth. He says, "I see only the two eyes of the bird." And Drona had said that the right eye has to be penetrated; that is the target.

Then he comes finally to Arjuna and he asks him. Arjuna says, "I see only the right eye of the bird and nothing else."

In a sense Arjuna is the most concentrated, but he has become unconscious of the whole - just a pinpoint of consciousness.

When I talk about consciousness it is not the consciousness that is needed in archery. I am talking about a totally different phenomenon: a diffused consciousness, not concentrated, because concentration is tiring, tense, and sooner or later you will fall into unconsciousness. Anything tiring cannot be carried for long.

Consciousness has to be relaxed; it has to be equivalent to opening. You are simply open to all that is happening. I am talking to you, and the train is passing by, and the distant call of a cuckoo... and you are aware of it all. You are open to all the dimensions of your being. You are simply open and vulnerable, alert, not asleep.

This is consciousness, and its opposite is unconsciousness. You are not open at all, you are closed. You are in a kind of sleep - a metaphysical sleep. All the buddhas down the ages have been fighting the metaphysical sleep.

George got drunk in a bar one night, and as he staggered home he tried to figure how he could hide his not very sober condition from his wife. He decided he would go home and read, since whoever heard of a drunken man being able to read a book? And he laughed at his own cleverness. He thought it would be good to read the Bible!

He made it home and went into the den. A few minutes later his wife called out to him, "What are you doing in there at this hour?"

"Oh, just reading, darling - reading the Bible," he nonchalantly replied.

Knowing reading was not one of his late evening pursuits - and certainly nobody had ever thought that he would read the Bible - she got up and peeked in. "You idiot!" she cried. "Close that suitcase and get to bed!"

When you are drunk, whatsoever you do is going to be like that.

I have heard:

Mulla Nasruddin got so drunk that there was a fight with another drunkard, and he had wounds and scratches all over his face.

He came home in the middle of the night, looked into the mirror and thought, "Now, tomorrow morning is going to be difficult!" How is he going to hide these wounds and these scratches? His wife is bound to know and she will say, "You got drunk again and you have been fighting again!" How to hide it?

A great idea occurred to him. He searched in the medicine chest, found some ointment.

He put it on his wounds and scratches, was very happy, pleased with himself that by morning things would not be so bad... and went to sleep.

Early in the morning when he was still in bed, his wife shouted from the bathroom, "Who has put ointment on the mirror?"

Of course a drunken man, a drunkard, looking into the mirror thinks that that is his face. It is natural; if you are unconscious, whatsoever you do is bound to be wrong.

And there is a great metaphysical drunkenness. From many many lives it has become a great weight on you. You have lived unconsciously for so long that the effort to live consciously even for a few minutes seems to be too much.

You love, it is unconscious, and it becomes jealousy, possessiveness. It is no longer love, because love cannot be unconscious. You make friends only to create enemies. You earn money to be happy, but by the time you have earned enough money you are only deeply tense, anxiety-ridden, and there is no joy in it. You run after power, fame, and one day, if you make hard efforts, you certainly succeed. You become famous, but then you realize the fact that by becoming famous nothing has been achieved. Everybody knows you, that's all. Everybody knows your name, but how is that going to make you happy? You have power, but what are you going to do with the power?

In the hands of an unconscious man everything turns sour, bitter, poisonous, everything turns stupid. Give him some intelligent advice and it is bound to fall into wrong hands.

The young lady who was about to get married talked with her mother about the birds and the bees. In this conversation her mother told her that she did not have to take off everything when she went to bed on her honeymoon.

When they returned, the groom asked his mother-in-law, "Is there any insanity in this family?"

"No, why?"

"Well, your daughter slept in her hat all during our honeymoon!"

People are bound to do something stupid. And that's what they have done to the statements of all the buddhas. They write commentaries, great scholarship, but what comes out is stupid. Libraries are full of it, universities are full of it. All rubbish! But people are sacrificing their whole lives for that, and they are not doing the first necessary thing.

You cannot be wise unless you become conscious, unless you break this old habit of functioning in an unconscious way. You have to de-automatize yourself.

Simple things can do the trick. For example, you always walk in a hurry. Start walking slowly. You will have to be alert; the moment you lose alertness you will start again in a hurried way. These are small devices: walk slowly - because to walk slowly you will have to remain conscious. Once you lose consciousness, immediately the old habit will grab you and you will be in a hurry.

If you smoke cigarettes, make it a very slow process, so slow that it becomes de- automatized. Otherwise, people are not smoking cigarettes - cigarettes are smoking people! They are not conscious of what they are doing. In a very unconscious way they put their hands into their pockets, take out the packet, the cigarette and the matchbox.

They are going through all these motions but they are not alert. They may be thinking a thousand and one things. In fact, when they are more unconscious they tend to smoke more. When they are more in anxiety, tension... worried, they tend to smoke more; that helps them to keep a face as if they are relaxed.

Make it a slow process. Take the cigarette packet out of your pocket as slowly as possible, as consciously as possible. Slowing down the processes is very helpful. Then hold the packet in your hand, look at it, smell it, feel its texture. Then open it very slowly, as if you have all the time in the world. Then take a cigarette out, look at the cigarette from all sides. Then put it in your mouth... wait! Then take the matchbox - again go through those same slow movements. Then start smoking so slowly... take the smoke in very slowly, let it out very slowly.

And you will be surprised: if you were smoking twenty-four cigarettes per day you will be smoking only six at the most; it will be reduced to one-fourth. And slowly slowly, only two, one, and one day suddenly you will find the whole thing so stupid! Still you can go on carrying the cigarette packet in your pocket for a few days, just in case - but it is finished, de-automatized.

This is one of Buddha's great contributions to the psychology of man: the process of de- automatization, slowing down everything.

Buddha used to say to his disciples, "Walk as slowly as possible, eat as slowly as possible. Chew each bite forty times and go on counting inside: one, two, three, four, five - forty times. When the food is no longer solid, it is almost liquid..." He used to say, "Don't eat, but drink." That means make it so liquid that you don't eat it, you have to drink it. And he helped thousands of people to become conscious.

You are unconscious, although you believe you are conscious... That is like seeing a dream in which you think you are walking in the marketplace. You are awake in your dream, but your awakenness in a dream is only part of the dream - you are unconscious.

It hurts to accept that "I am unconscious," but the first act of being conscious is to accept that "I am unconscious." The very acceptance triggers a process in you.

Question 4:

Beloved Master,

Does love only happen when it wants or is there something we do, let down, open up, to allow it?

Madhuma, positively, nothing can be done; negatively, much can be done. You will have to learn what negative action is. Lao Tzu calls it Wu-Wei: doing without doing, action without action, effort without effort. It is one of the most significant things to learn. We know how to do things; that is a positive, aggressive, masculine way.

There is another approach, more subtle, more graceful, more feminine: to be in a state of let-go, to be in a state of surrender, and to allow existence to flow through you. That is doing through nondoing. In a sense it is negative, because you are not doing anything.

Sitting silently, doing nothing, the spring comes and the grass grows by itself.

This is the secret of real meditation: sit silently, do nothing. Wait... Wait patiently. Wait in deep trust that the existence cares about you, that whenever you are ready and ripe you will be filled with love, that love will overflow you. The spring comes... that means there is a season to everything. You cannot have it before its time, you have to attain to a certain maturity.

And the greatest maturity is attained by learning the action which is basically inaction, the doing which is not doing at all but a state of nondoing. You remain available; if God calls you, you are ready. You are listening - that is real prayer. When you say something to God, that is not real prayer; you have moved into action, you have become aggressive.

The real prayer is when you listen to God, you become all ears. You simply listen from every pore of your being; your every cell is just waiting: "If he calls, I will be ready. If he needs me, he will find me available." You remain unoccupied so that you can be available. You remain without thoughts so that you can hear him without distortion.

A maid who seemed to enjoy her work gave notice one day without warning.

"Why do you wish to leave?" the lady of the house asked her. "Is anything wrong?"

"I just can't stand the suspense in this house a minute more," the maid replied.

"Suspense? What do you mean?"

"It is the sign over my bed that says, 'Watch ye, for ye know not when the master cometh.'" That statement, that beautiful statement - "Watch ye, for ye know not when the master cometh" - is one of the greatest sayings of Jesus Christ. But to the poor, unconscious maid it has a different meaning, altogether different - a very distorted meaning, a meaning that she has given to it.

That's what goes on happening to you: God calls you, the spring comes, but finds you so much occupied that the grass cannot grow by itself; he finds you so much burdened, so full of yourself, that he cannot enter into you - he finds you without any space. And he needs great space. You have to be utterly spacious, you have to be absolutely empty - only then can God descend in you.

And love is nothing but God approaching closer and closer to you. The rays of God - that's what love is.

You ask me, "Does love only happen when it wants?"

There is no question of God wanting - he is always ready to happen to you - just you are not ready. And what is needed on your part is not aggressive action; what is needed on your part is to become feminine, receptive, passive. Allow him in: he is knocking on your doors.

Jesus says: Ask, and it shall be given to you. Seek, and ye shall find it. Knock, and the doors shall be opened unto you.

I say to you: He is knocking on your doors - please leave them open. He is seeking you and you are hiding. He is asking, but you are not responding.

It is not only that man seeks God - in fact, God is seeking man continuously. But he never finds you, because you are never now, you are never here. You are always gone somewhere else.

Mulla Nasruddin was talking to one of his friends.

The friend said, "How was your night last night?"

Mulla said, "It was a beautiful night! I dreamed that I had gone to the Taj Mahal Hotel, and I have never tasted such delicious food in my life. I enjoyed my night, my dream. I can still feel the flavor of the food, I still feel the joy. Those dreams are still around me."

The friend said, "That's nothing! That's why I asked how your night was, because last night I dreamed that I was on a boat at sea and Sophia Loren was with me - naked, absolutely naked!"

Mulla suddenly became angry and he said, "What kind of friend are you? Why didn't you ask me to come?"

The friend said, "I did phone. Your wife said you had gone to the Taj Mahal Hotel!"

You are never at home. God goes on calling you, you are always somewhere else: the Taj Mahal Hotel, the Oberoi, the Blue Diamond... somewhere else. You are never found at home. Whenever he comes you are not there - because God knows only the present time; he has no idea of the past and no idea of the future. Now is the only reality for him, and you are absolutely unaware of the now.

You enjoy, you reminisce with great joy... your old days, your childhood, your youth.

You are always going backwards, into your memories, or you are always moving into "not yet," the future, and imagining, projecting. But you are never now.

The small gap between the past and the future is the only real time. It does not belong to your time, it belongs to eternity. It is only through that moment that God can penetrate you. It is only through that moment that love happens, the spring comes. The spring is always now, here; it is never then or there.

Love is the closeness of God felt in the heart. Be available, Madhuma. Allow. Be open and vulnerable. Don't live with armor around yourself. It is your armor, your safety and security arrangements, it is your strategies that are destroying you. Be innocent, be authentic, be true, whosoever you are. Then you will be able to see that which is, to know that which is. And seeing that which is creates love, releases your love energy.

In the ancient Hebrew the word for God simply means "that which is." It is a code word; it stands for reality itself.

But man goes on distorting scriptures, words, language, everything. Because of your preoccupation, your prejudices, your concepts, your knowledge, you remain ignorant.

It was their honeymoon night and the bride put on a sheer nightgown and crawled into bed - only to discover that her husband was about to go to sleep on the couch.

"George," she called out, "aren't you going to make love to me?"

"I can't, honey," he replied, "because it is Lent."

"Why, that's awful!" she exclaimed, bursting into tears. "To whom and for how long?"

The preoccupied mind can't see what is, can't hear what is, can't feel what is. The preoccupied mind lives in its own world. Buddha calls that world the real problem: the world that is created by your mind. Renounce that world, renounce the mind! And, Madhuma, you will be overflowing with love and overflowing with God, overflooded.

And it is an inexhaustible source; you can go on sharing it, but you cannot exhaust it.

Aes Dhammo Sanantano - so is the ultimate, inexhaustible law, the law of the universe.

Question 5:

Beloved Master,

Did you say today that the path of meditation was for spiritually masculine people? I am confused as Buddha, Lao Tzu and all these people seem to be more feminine. Please explain.

Anand Dharmen, you are right and yet wrong. You are right because Buddha and Lao Tzu are feminine, but they are feminine when they have attained to the ultimate peak of meditation - at the peak they are feminine. At the peak everybody is feminine, only God is masculine. At the peak only God is "he," everybody is a she.

There is a beautiful story about a great woman mystic of India, Meera. She was really a mad devotee, a mad bhakta, in tremendous love and ecstasy with God. She was a queen, but she started dancing on the streets. The family disowned her. The family tried to poison her - the family itself - because it was a disgrace for the royal family. The husband was feeling embarrassed, very much embarrassed, and particularly so in those days. And the story belongs to one of the most traditional parts of this country, Rajasthan, where for centuries nobody had seen women's faces; they were covered, always covered. Even the husband might not have been able to recognize his wife in the daylight, because they were meeting only in the night, in darkness.

In those days, in such a stupid climate, in such a milieu, the queen started dancing on the streets! Crowds would gather, and she was so drunk with the divine that her sari would slip down, her face would be exposed, her hands would be exposed. And the family was obviously very much perturbed.

But she sang beautiful songs, the most beautiful ever sung in the whole world, because they came from her very heart. They were not composed, they were spontaneous outpourings.

She was a devotee of Krishna, she loved Krishna. She told her husband, "Don't go on believing that you are my husband - my husband is Krishna. You are not my husband, only a poor substitute."

The king was very angry. He expelled her from the kingdom; she was not allowed to enter the territory. She went to Mathura, the place of Krishna. Krishna had died thousands of years before, but for her he was as alive as ever. That is the mystery of love: it transcends the barriers of time and space. Krishna was not just an idea to her, he was a reality. She talked to him, she slept with him, she hugged him, kissed him.

Nobody else could see Krishna, but she was absolutely aware of him.

Krishna represented to her the very spirit of existence, what Buddha calls dhamma, the law. That is the masculine formation, the masculine expression: the law. Meera calls Krishna "my beloved" - not law but love; that is the feminine heart.

She reached Mathura; there is one of the greatest temples of Krishna. And the head priest of that temple had taken a vow that he would not see any woman in his life; for thirty years he had not seen a woman. No woman was allowed to enter into the temple and he had never left the temple.

When Meera reached there, she danced at the gate of the temple. The guards became so enchanted, magnetized, that they forgot to prevent her. She entered into the temple; she was the first woman after thirty years to enter the temple.

The head priest was worshipping Krishna. When he saw Meera he could not believe his eyes. He was mad. He shouted at her, "Get out of here! Woman, get out of here! Don't you know that no woman is allowed here?"

Meera laughed and said, "As far as I know, I know that except God everybody is a woman - you too! After thirty years of worshipping Krishna, do you think you are still a male?"

It opened the eyes of the head priest; he fell at the feet of Meera. He said, "Nobody has said such a thing ever before, but I can see it, I can feel it - it is the truth."

At the highest peak, whether you follow the path of love or meditation, you become feminine. So you are right, Dharmen, that Buddha and Lao Tzu, all these people seem to be feminine, because you know them only when they have reached the highest peak.

But you don't know their path, you don't know their journey. Their journey was masculine, it was not feminine.

Another story will help you:

A king was very much interested in the ideas of Moses; Moses was alive. The king said to the court painter, "Go and paint an absolutely realistic painting of Moses as he is. I would like his picture to always be in my bedroom."

The painter went. It took six months for him to do a really realistic painting. But when he came back with the painting, the king was puzzled, the whole court was puzzled, because the face of Moses looked like that of a murderer, that of a thief, that of a criminal.

He said, "You say this is the painting you have done in six months? The face looks like Moses, but it can't be Moses' face. I know the man, I have seen him with my own eyes!

Yes, the outer lines are exactly like his face, but the gesture, the expression, it is not that of Moses!"

The painter said, "But you have told me to be very realistic, so I have not created any fiction around him. As he is I have painted him; this is just an exact replica. Now I am not responsible. If you find any difficulty in it, you ask Moses."

The painter, the king, the court, they all traveled. They went to Moses, the painting was brought to him and the king asked, "Sir, I have known you for years - you are the most graceful man I have ever seen in the world. There may never be such a graceful man again... and this is the painting! My painter is a great painter, there is no doubt about it.

He has never made any fault like this. He has painted my father, my mother, and thousands of other paintings - he has painted me. And he is absolutely exact, whatsoever he has done. But with this painting we are not satisfied - not only not satisfied, I am angry at him. Your face looks like that of a murderer, a thief or a criminal."

Moses said, "You are both right. Now, looking at me, you will see grace. But your painter has painted with such acuteness that he has caught my whole life in the painting. Yes, for the first time I am confessing: once I killed a man. I am a murderer. I have never told this to anybody else. And I have been, in my past, all the things that your painter has painted; they have left their subtle marks on my face. You cannot see them because you don't have the eyes which your painter has. So your painter is right:

he has depicted my whole history. It is not only my present face but all the faces that have been there before. And you are also right, because it does not correspond to my present face - but I have to agree with your painter."

It is a very significant story. At the peak a person is transformed, but on the path he may have been a totally different person.

Yes, I did say that the path of meditation was for spiritually masculine people. In India, the Buddhists and the Jainas have followed the path of meditation. All the twenty-four TIRTHANKARAS, the great masters of the Jainas, were warriors. They belonged to the KSHATRIYA caste, the caste of the warriors; they were not brahmins. Buddha himself was not a brahmin; he was a kshatriya, a warrior. These warriors followed the path of meditation; they were as masculine as possible. Their whole training was that of the warrior. But at the ultimate peak they certainly were transformed: they became feminine. You can't find a more feminine man than Buddha. They became so feminine, they became so soft, so vulnerable, so beautiful, so graceful, so rounded - they lost all the corners, all roughness. They became like lotus flowers - the East has painted them without mustaches, without beards.

Have you ever seen a statue or a painting of Buddha with a beard and mustache? Not that some hormones were lacking in him, not that he could not grow a beard. I know him perfectly well - he had a beautiful beard! But we have left it out because it does not represent his inner reality. His inner reality has become so feminine that we had to make his face according to the inner. The inner cannot be painted; it can only be painted symbolically. That's why Rama, Krishna, Mahavira, Buddha, none of them is painted with a beard, a mustache, no.

And one thing more: nobody is painted as bald. And I know perfectly well, they were all bald! But women don't go bald, hence the mustache and the beard have been taken away, and instead hair has been added to their baldness - the same hair maybe, take it away from the beard and put it on the head.

So your question, Dharmen, is right in a way, and yet not right. The man on the path is one thing, and the same man at the peak is a totally different person, transformed, transmuted.

Question 6:

Beloved Master,

I am seventy years old, and it feels embarrassing to be still longing for sex. What should I do?

Jagat Narayan, the first thing is to accept your longing. Don't reject it, don't deny it, don't repress it. It is because of repression that it continues; in your youth you must have repressed it too much.

Once it happened:

I was in New Delhi and a young monk was brought to me; he must have been not more than thirty-five. He was living a life of absolute celibacy. He told me, "It is only a question of a few more years that I have to fight with my sexual desire. Can you tell me," he asked me, "exactly how many more years it will take? I am thirty-five. I am getting a little bit tired of fighting, fighting. Up to now I have succeeded - now how many more years?"

I said, "It is better if you don't ask me, because the real problem is still ahead of you. The real problem has not happened yet; it happens at the age of forty-two."

He said, "What do you mean?"

I said, "Right now you are young, full of energy, strength - you can repress your sexual desire. But after forty-two you will become weak; slowly slowly, every day you will become weaker. YOU will become weak, but the repressed sexual desire, accumulated for years, will be very strong. The energy that is repressing it will be weaker and the energy that is repressed will become stronger every day. The real problem starts after forty-two."

He said, "Nobody has ever said that to me. People say that by the time you reach forty- five, if you can manage to keep yourself celibate, the problem disappears."

I said, "They don't know at all, they don't know the ways of energy. The repressor will become weak, but the repressed never becomes weak, because the repressed accumulates."

After ten years, when he must have been forty-five, he came to see me again. I was in Amritsar. He touched my feet, cried, and he said, "You are right. Now I am on the verge of breaking down. Now the urge is so intense, as it has never been, and I am not in a situation to fight. I am tired, defeated, weak. You were right, but I didn't listen to you.

And all the people who have been telling me that after forty-five the problem disappears, either were deceiving me or they were deceiving themselves or they were utterly ignorant, unaware of how energies function."

Jagat Narayan, you must have repressed. That's how people are brought up, particularly in India: the religious person is one who represses all his natural desires.

Now you are seventy and it really looks embarrassing to still be so childish. The older you grow, the more embarrassing it will become, but the more persistent it will be.

Twenty-four hours of your day will become obsessed with sex. And this is what has been done to you by your society: the society has created a kind of split in you, you have become divided from your own nature.

Even now it is not too late. Don't be worried and don't feel embarrassed. Why? If God has given you sex and the longing for it then it is perfectly right, it is divine. YOU have not created it - why do YOU feel embarrassed? It is instinctive.

If you really want to feel embarrassed, feel embarrassed because you are a Hindu and for seventy years you allowed foolish people to dominate you, stupid priests to dominate you. Feel embarrassed that you were not intelligent enough to get out of the prison in which you were accidentally born. But don't feel embarrassed about sex and the longing for it - that is natural. Being Hindu is not natural, being Mohammedan is not natural. Feel embarrassed that for seventy years you have been doing such harm to your own nature.

Accept your sexuality, say yes to it - because only by saying yes to it is there a possibility of going beyond it. Yes is the stepping-stone. Without yes you cannot reach the other shore; the yes becomes the boat.

But my feeling is that you are still saying no. Be less of a Hindu, be less of a fanatic, be less of an idealist. Be a little more realistic.

Tony's wife passed away and he was almost inconsolable. At the cemetery he collapsed with grief. In the car riding back home, his whole frame shook with wild sobs.

"Now, now, Tony, my boy," soothed his friend. "It's really not so bad. I know it is tough now, but in six months maybe you find another beautiful bambina and before you know, you get married again."

Tony turned to him in rage. "Six months!" he shouted. "What I gonna do tonight?"

You laugh at Tony, but he is more natural. He is not embarrassed about it, he accepts it.

Jagat Narayan, even though you are seventy years old, your sex, because it has remained somehow unfulfilled, is not seventy years old but seventy years young! Now there is going to be difficulty: you are seventy years old and your sex is seventy years young. But if you accept it, if you embrace it, if you take it naturally, still it is not too late.

In the East we have a saying: Even if you come back home when the sun is setting, it is not too late...

Eighty-five-year-old Will Jones hobbled down to the local bar to have a cold one and shoot the breeze with his friends. Mr. Jones was the talk of the town, as he had recently married a beautiful nineteen-year-old girl. Several of the boys bought the old man a drink in an effort to get him to tell about his wedding night. Sure enough, the old rascal fell right into their plans.

"My youngest son carried me in and lifted me on the bed with my young bride. We spent the night together and then my three other sons carried me off the bed."

The men scratched their heads and asked the old boy why it took his three sons to take him off when it only took his youngest boy to put him on.

Proudly he replied, "I fought them!"

Jagat Narayan, gather courage! Don't feel embarrassed. At least deep down accept it, even though you may not be able to move into a sexual relationship. The very acceptance - total, I mean, less than that won't do - if you accept totally, even that very acceptance will heal the wound. There may be no need to actually move into a sexual relationship. That may be even dangerous; that may create more problems for you than it will solve.

I have heard:

One Friday afternoon a couple appeared before a justice of the peace in a small town and had a marriage ceremony performed. The man must have been nearabout eighty and the girl was only twenty-two. They then drove to a motel and checked in for their honeymoon. They had a lively evening together.

The next morning the groom raised the window shade just to take a look outside, pulled it down again and went back to bed.

The next morning, Sunday, this performance was repeated. The groom raised the shade, looked out for a moment, then pulled it down and went back to his bride.

On the third morning, as he raised the shade, he flew up with it.

So it can be dangerous! Don't blame me that I am telling you to find a bambina, no! You may be too old for it. But nobody is too old to accept something that he has been denying. Drop condemning it - respect your nature.

And my own observation is, the moment you accept something totally, the very acceptance brings a revolution, a radical change. It is your energy - accept it. It will make you stronger. Reject it, it keeps you weak. Fighting with your own energy is dissipating it. And fighting with your sex will take so much of your time and so much of your energy - then when are you going to look at God who is knocking on your door?

Stop fighting, stop fighting absolutely. Start respecting. Drop condemnation. Nothing is sin - not sex at least. It is a natural phenomenon. If people are allowed to live it naturally, then at the age of fourteen they will become flooded with it. But in an unnatural society they will be flooded before their time.

Do you know? In America the boys and girls are becoming sexually mature earlier than anywhere else. In every other country the boys become sexually mature at fourteen; in America, at thirteen or twelve they become sexually mature. There is too much sex around in the movies, on the TV, everywhere.

A small boy - must have been six or seven - was sitting on the steps of his house and crying big tears.

An old man came by and he asked, "My son, why are you crying?" He wanted to help the boy. He sat by his side, wiped his tears with his handkerchief and asked, "Why are you crying? What has happened?"

The little boy said, "I am crying because I can't do what other boys are doing."

And the old man started crying!

The little boy was surprised. He said, "Pop, why are YOU crying?"

He said, "I can't do what the other boys are doing either. Our problems are the same."

In America people are becoming sexually obsessed before their age. That is ugly, that is ill, that is premature. In India the opposite happens: people remain sexually interested even when they are seventy, eighty, ninety. They may not say so - Jagat Narayan, you are at least authentic, courageous, to say it is so - but they remain obsessed with it.

In a natural society, children will become sexually overflooded at fourteen - a beautiful energy - and by the time they are forty-two the energy will disappear suddenly, as it appeared at the age of fourteen. If a person lives naturally, without the interference of the priests... Priests who are against sex or priests who are for sex - avoid both! If a man lives naturally, then between fourteen and forty-two his sex energy will give him tremendous joy, great experience of ecstasy, first glimpses of God and samadhi. And by the time it disappears it will leave you ripe, mature, centered, rooted.

Right now you can do only one thing: accept it totally, absorb it. It is not too late, although the sun is setting. If you can come home, if you can become natural and spontaneous about yourself, authentic, true, at least to yourself, you will be able to face God with a smile on your face. You will be able to enter death dancing, singing.

And a death that can be welcomed with dance and song is not death at all. It becomes the door to the deathless, it leads you into immortality.

Enough for today.

John Nguyen

Dhammapada Vol. 5

Saturday, August 19, 2017

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