Chapter 3. Buddhas only point the way - Osho

Osho – Dhammapada: The Way of The Buddha (Volume 9)

Chapter 3. Buddhas only point the way

I shall endure hard words

As the elephant endures the shafts of battle.

For many people speak wildly.

The tamed elephant goes to battle.

The king rides him.

The tamed man is the master.

He can endure hard words in peace.

Better than a mule

Or the fine horses of sindh

Or the mighty elephants of war

Is the man who has mastered himself.

Not on their backs

Can he reach the untrodden country,

But only on his own.

The mighty elephant dhanapalaka

Is wild when he is in rut,

And when bound he will not eat,

Remembering the elephant grove.

The fool is idle.

He eats and he rolls in his sleep

Like a hog in a sty.

And he has to live life over again.

My own mind used to wander

Wherever pleasure or desire or lust led it.

But now i have it tamed,

I guide it,

As the keeper guides the wild elephant.

Awake.

Be the witness of your thoughts.

The elephant hauls himself from the mud.

In the same way drag yourself out of your sloth.

The fundamental problem is not metaphysical, it is not concerned with the ultimate reality. It is concerned with you, your mind, your functioning of the mind, your sleep, your state of a sleepwalker.

Man ordinarily exists only mechanically. He is not aware although he believes he is aware. In fact that belief hinders him from becoming aware. Man is fast asleep not only in the night but in the day too. He is constantly dreaming. You can watch it yourself. Any time close your eyes, relax a little and you will be surprised: dreams start moving. They were already moving like an undercurrent. You were occupied with outside reality, hence you were not looking at them, but they were there all the time. Your back was towards them. Just look a little in and you will find thousands of dreams crowding you: possible, impossible, consistent, inconsistent.

When you see this state, you will understand why humanity has missed always the awakened ones. The awakened one has no more any undercurrent of dreaming in him. He is fully alert, aware. He speaks the language of awareness and you are asleep. There is no possibility of communication between you and the awakened one. He shouts, he makes every effort to reach you, to penetrate you, to penetrate your sleep and unconsciousness, but it is thick, dense and very deep. Rarely do you hear him, very rarely, and even when you hear him you misinterpret him. Even when you hear him you don't listen to him. You are like a drunk who seems to be hearing, but still goes on interpreting according to his drunken state. The whole humanity needs to be part of an organization like Alcoholics Anonymous. You may not be alcoholic, you may not be taking any intoxicant, you may not be taking or injecting any drug, but the society goes on injecting into your blood, into your being, many poisons.

For example, each child is poisoned by the society through teaching him ambition. Ambition is a poison far more dangerous than any alcohol can ever be, far more dangerous than marijuana or LSD, because ambition destroys your whole life. It keeps you moving in a false direction. It keeps you imagining, desiring, dreaming, it keeps you wasting your life. Ambition means a subtle creation of the ego, and once the ego is created you are in the grip of darkness. And the whole social structure depends on ambition. Be the first! Wherever you are, whatsoever you are doing: be the first! - as if being the first has something divine about it. By what means you become the first is irrelevant. By right means or wrong means, succeed! As if success in itself has become equivalent to life, synonymous with life.

Life has nothing to do with success. Success keeps you rushing towards the future and that becomes your intoxicant. Hoping, hoping for the tomorrow, wasting that which you have or that which you don't have and will never have.

Rabinowitz walked into Gold's theatrical agency with a puppy under his arm.

"I got here an attraction that will make you a million dollars. I got a little puppy dog that plays an electric piano and sings 'My Yiddish Mama'."

"I don't believe it," said Gold.

Rabinowitz opened up a suitcase, pulled out a tiny piano, put the puppy at it and the dog began playing and singing.

The theatrical agent leaped up and shouted, "My God! We will clean up a fortune!"

Just then the door opened and in walked a big dog, grabbed the puppy by the neck, and ran out with him.

"What the hell was that?" asked the agent.

"That is the puppy's mother," answered Rabinowitz. "She wants him to be a doctor!"

That is being done to every child. Your mother wants you to be a doctor, your father wants you to be an engineer, your uncle wants you to be a scientist and so on, so forth. And nobody asks what you are intrinsically meant to be. They go on imposing their ideas on you. Their ambitions have remained unfulfilled, they project their ambitions through you. They want their ambitions and egos fulfilled through you. And they are going to remain unfulfilled again; hence you will have to do the same damage to your own children. It is from one generation to another generation that the poison is passed on.

For centuries man has lived in this mad situation. Now it has reached to a climax. The whole earth has become almost a madhouse.

If Buddha was not understood twenty-five centuries ago, it will be even more difficult to understand him now, because the unfulfilled ambitions of twenty-five centuries are overwhelmingly there, they are surrounding you. You are flooded with them. All the people who have lived and died have left their ambitions as a heritage for you. Your eyes are blind, your ears are deaf, your hearts only pump the blood, they no more feel...

The vicar was driving home one night when suddenly his car made a terrible noise and ground to a halt.

Taking out his flashlight and a box of tools, he pulled up the bonnet and started to look over the engine.

While he was tinkering away with a spanner in hand, the local drunk staggered by and stopped to ask, "Anything wrong, Vicar?"

"Yes. Piston broke."

"So am I," replied the drunk.

You are not in your senses. Hence buddhas have been misunderstood, and to understand them has become more and more difficult. Keep it in your mind when you meditate on these beautiful words - simple words, because buddhas have always used simple words, but with tremendous meaning.

The Buddha says:

I shall endure hard words

As the elephant endures the shafts of battle.

For many people speak wildly.

I shall endure hard words... Buddha expects that that is going to be his reward. He will shower you with his love and compassion and all that you can do is insult him, throw hard words or stones at him. All that you can do is some kind of harm. You are going to hurt him. Hence he says in the beginning: i shall endure hard words. He expects that, and every buddha has expected that down the ages.

Once a disciple of Buddha was going to preach his word to the masses. He had become enlightened, and Buddha said, "Now you are ready to go, you need not accompany me any longer. Once in a while you can come to see me; otherwise you can help people on your own. Go and help people to become more aware, more meditative."

But he said also, "One thing I would like to ask: What part of the country would you like to go to?" There was a part of Bihar, where Buddha lived, where no sannyasin of Buddha's had ever gone. The name of the part was Suka. This newly enlightened sannyasin said, "I will go to Suka."

Buddha said, "Please don't go there. Nobody has gone there yet for a certain reason. The people there are very wild, uncultured, stupid, mischievous, murderous, very violent. Don't go there."

But the disciple said, "If they are in such a bad situation they need us more than anybody else. The physician is needed only where people are ill."

Buddha said, "That I can understand, but before you go, before I bless you to go, I will ask three questions. First: If they insult you, what will be your response?"

The young man said, "I will thank them, I will feel grateful that they are only insulting me. They could have beaten me. They are good people. They are not beating me; they are simply insulting me - and what can words do? Words are words, they can't hurt me."

Buddha said, "The second question: If they beat you, what will be your response?"

The young man said, "I will thank them, I will feel grateful that they are beating me. They could have killed me. They are only beating me - they are so compassionate, so kind. It would have been so easy for them to kill me."

Buddha said, "Now, the last question. If they kill you, dying, in the last moments, what will be your response?"

The young man said, "Still I will be grateful and thankful to them because they are taking a life away from me in which I may have done something wrong. If I had lived more I may have committed some crime, some sin; I may have fallen from my peak of awareness. They are simply taking that life which is useless to me. I have attained the treasure, I don't need life anymore. They are taking something useless away from me and I will be grateful because, who knows, if I had lived more, in some situation I may have gone astray."

Buddha said, "Now you can go anywhere you like with my blessings. You have not only become enlightened, you have become capable of being a master."

Remember it, that every enlightened person is not a master, although every master has to be enlightened. Many enlightened people have lived on the earth without ever becoming masters for the simple reason that to be a master needs certain qualities which are not necessary for being enlightened. Enlightenment is an individual process; it is something inward, subjective, it can happen within you. To be a master means the capacity to communicate, and not only to communicate but to commune with others, others who are almost mad, others who are almost incapable of seeing things.

Keller paid a lot of money for Buck, a golden retriever. One morning Keller went duck hunting with Buck. Within ten minutes he shot a duck that fell into a pond.

Buck ran over the surface of the water, picked up the duck, returned running over the top of the water, and laid it at the feet of his master.

The rest of the morning every bird that fell into the pond when shot was retrieved by Buck running over the top of the water without even wetting his feet.

Around noontime Keller met a fisherman. While they chatted a duck flew by and Keller quickly sent it hurtling down into the middle of the pond.

Once again, Buck ran out over the top of the water, retrieved the duck, and brought it back.

"I just bought this dog yesterday and he cost me a lot of dough," said Keller.

"Well, they pulled a fast one on you," said the fisherman. "The dog can't even swim!"

To communicate, to commune about the unknown, about the invisible, about the mysterious, is one of the greatest of arts. To help people to see that which they have never seen before although it is always around the corner, to help people to hear that which they have never heard before although it has been always there, to help people to be silent, to be meditative, is one of the most difficult arts because people are mad. They don't know what silence is. To wake them up out of their sleep is almost a miracle.

A deaf man was visiting his friend and the dog of the friend barked at him like mad. Being unable to hear anything, he said to his friend after they had exchanged greetings, "Your dog did not sleep well last night."

"Why do you say that?"

"He looked at me and kept yawning."

A deaf man can't hear, he can't hear the dog barking; he can only see the movement, the gesture, the lips moving, the mouth opening and closing, and he will interpret it according to his own understanding. He says, "He looked at me and kept yawning."

That's how we have listened to the buddhas. We have not listened at all, we have heard their words, certainly. If we had listened to them there would have been no need for us to crucify Jesus or poison Socrates or kill al-Hillaj Mansoor.

Buddha says - the first thing to remember: I shall endure hard words as the elephant endures the shafts of battle. It is a battle between the awakened one and the unawakened crowd. It is really a great battle, it is a war, and the unawakened are many and the awakened is one. And all the unawakened feel a certain humiliation in the presence of the awakened. They feel as if his presence proves to them that they have not risen to their real heights, that they have wasted their lives. Rather than rising to their heights they would like to remove the presence of the awakened one so that they can feel at ease. You always feel at ease with people who are just like you; their presence does not in any way make you feel inferior. The presence of a Buddha makes you feel inferior and you are bound to take revenge. It is a battle, and a buddha has to be like an elephant who endures the shafts in a battle.

For many people speak wildly... Not only will their words be hard, they will be almost wild, mad. I know it from my own experience.

For twenty years I was traveling around this country. I have encountered all kinds of wild people. It was necessary to invite them, it was necessary to choose my people from the crowds, hence I had to go. But the way they were behaving was really strange. I was not harming them; I was simply telling them to wake up in a thousand and one ways, but they were throwing stones at me, they were disturbing my meetings, they were preventing me from entering their towns. They were preventing me from getting down from the train in their towns. They were doing all kinds of things... they were really wild for no reason at all.

They are still doing it, although I don't go to their towns; although I never move anywhere now, they are still behaving in a wild way. Strange things they go on saying - and not only saying, but believing. And now it is not only in India that they are saying hard words about me, it is almost all over the world.

Just yesterday I received an article published in London. They say that I brainwash people here and when their brains are washed away completely, then the men are sent for smuggling jobs and the women are sent for prostitution. That's what I am doing to you, so beware! Once your brain is washed completely these two alternatives are left. And the man who writes it, writes it with great confidence as if he knows.

Just the other day I received a news from Bombay. A sannyasin has come across a few photographs in a studio. The sannyasin could see in the pictures somebody who looks like me. At the first glance he was shocked; when he looked closely then he could see that it was somebody else, but with some similarity. Now, they have bribed this man to be naked among naked women, and they have taken his pictures, and now they are going to publish them all over the world. Great idea! I really loved it. Some imagination.

But this is how they have been doing always. And I am not saying that they do it knowingly. No, they may be thinking that they are serving humanity, they are making people aware of the danger that I am. They may have every good intention behind all these things; that makes it more complex. They are simply servants of humanity.

Buddha says: for many people speak wildly.

So if you want to live in this world and be awakened you will have to be ready to accept their hard words, their wild actions patiently, silently, with a deep understanding that what can they do? Whatsoever they can do they are doing. It is not their fault, they are simply asleep, and in their sleep they are saying absurd things.

When somebody is drunk and starts saying absurd things you don't take much note of it. You say, "He is a drunkard" - but that's how people are.

The tamed elephant goes to battle.

The king rides him.

The tamed man is the master.

He can endure hard words in peace.

The tamed elephant goes to battle... By "tamed elephant" Buddha means "the disciplined one." The words 'tamed elephant' are not very accurate; it will be better to say "the disciplined one." There is a great difference between taming and discipline. You can tame through force, coercion, violence, but you cannot discipline through coercion. Discipline comes out of understanding. You can help people to understand their own minds and the functioning of their minds, the state of their sleep, mechanicalness. Out of that understanding a change happens, a radical change happens: they become soft, compassionate, silent, peaceful, more understanding, more available, more open.

The tamed elephant goes to battle. The king rides him. The tamed man is the master. He can endure hard words in peace.

The disciplined man also becomes a master, also becomes a king. He rides on his own discipline, on his own understanding. He lives in the world with wild people, uncultured, uneducated in the real sense of education: they don't know who they are. That should be the first step for a right education. They are not acquainted with their own interiority. What kind of education is this that does not make them aware of their inner kingdom, that goes on stuffing them with nonsense, useless information? - geography, history... what are you going to do with Genghis Khan and Tamerlane? What is the point of it all?

But we go on stuffing people with unnecessary information. What is the point of knowing where Timbuktu is? Let it be where it is. Even if it is not anywhere, it doesn't matter. And histories of murderers called kings, murderers called great conquerors, Alexander the Great or Napoleon... And in future people will be reading about Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Ayatollah Khomeiniac. It is all absolutely irrelevant.

The basic education is missing. The first thing to be taught is meditation, the art of going in, because only out of that arises a discipline. The word 'discipline' is beautiful; it means the capacity to learn. A disciplined man is always ready to learn more. He is never closed, he never claims that he knows everything. He knows what he knows, and he also knows what he does not know - and what he knows is very small, and what he does not know is immense. He cannot brag about his knowledge. In fact the more he knows the more he becomes aware of the uncharted, of the unmapped, of the unknown; and not only of the unknown but the unknowable. The more and more he feels the mystery of existence, the more and more he wonders. That is true knowledge, true education, true culture.

Then a man becomes a master, a king; only then can he make an effort to reach people. Only then can he communicate his love, his understanding, his knowing, his seeing.

Better than a mule

Or the fine horses of sindh

Or mighty elephants of war

Is the man who has mastered himself.

Buddha is not concerned with God, Buddha is concerned with you. His religion is man-oriented, not God-oriented. One of the great poets of India, Chandidas, has condensed Buddha's whole teaching into a simple sentence: sabar upar manus satya - the truth of man is the highest truth, there is no truth higher than it - tahar upar nahin; there is nothing higher than that.

Buddha has given man such dignity as nobody else has ever done. All other religions condemn man, they condemn man in order to praise God; and their "God" is nothing but their imagination. Hence there are as many gods as there are religions. There are at least three hundred religions in the world, three thousand sects of those religions, and there must be thirty thousand subsects. And there are as many gods as there are sects in the world. Every sect has its own idea of god, and God does not exist at all.

What exists is a godly existence, a divine existence. God not as a person but as a presence certainly exists. But to understand that presence, you have to understand your own inner presence first, because it is from there that you can take off, it is from there that you can have the first glimpse of what godliness is. If you have not known yourself you will never know God.

You can go on worshipping in the temples, in the mosques, in the churches, but your God is childish. Compared to Buddha's teachings the gods that are worshipped look very stupid. The worshippers look stupid, and their gods, because they are created by the stupid worshippers, also look silly. Your gods are nothing but your projections; they can't be more than your own state of mind. Just watch. Different gods are created by different people. If horses could think of a religion, then their god must be a supreme horse. It can't be man, that much is certain. No horse can believe that man has any divinity in him. Man seems to be the most barbarious animal. If horses were to imagine, they would imagine the Devil in the shape of man. Man imagines God in his own image; hence Negroes have their god like Negroes. You can see the hair of the Negro gods, they are Negroid; you can see the lips of the Negro gods and they are thick. Hindu gods are Hindu, and Chinese gods are Chinese, the cheek bones showing prominently and the noses of course Chinese.

Every country, every race, every religion thinks of God according to its own idea of how man should be. But those are all our projections. Buddha is not concerned at all with them. Buddha wants YOU to become a god. He wants you to become divine. You are divine; he wants you to recognize the fact. There is nobody higher than you. This declaration is something superb, something unique. Nobody had dared before Buddha to respect man so much.

Father O'Reilly had taken up golf and was practicing on the church lawn while Sister McCarthy looked on. Father O'Reilly raised his club, and swung at the ball.

"Oh, shit! I missed," he shouted.

"Father O'Reilly," admonished Sister McCarthy, "God will be very angry if you use such language."

"Yes, Sister," answered Father O'Reilly. "I shall try to control my tongue." He raised his club for another try and swung at the ball. "Oh, shit! I missed," he shouted.

"Father O'Reilly, I am sure God will punish you severely if you say that again!" said the Sister.

"Yes, I will try especially hard next time, Sister McCarthy," said the priest. He raised his club again and swung at the ball. "Oh, shit! I missed," he shouted.

Just then a bolt of lightning flashed out of the sky and Sister McCarthy disappeared in a holocaust of flames. Then a great voice boomed from the sky. "Oh, shit! I missed."

Our gods can't be very different; they are our gods, they will reflect us. Hence Buddha says: Get rid of all gods. What you are worshipping in the temples is nothing but your own image. It will be better if you keep a mirror and worship your reflection in it. That will be far better, at least far truer, less deceptive.

Buddha's emphasis is on man. It is the only man-oriented religion in the world. And of course it transforms man, it does not make you superstitious, it does not give you any belief. It gives you a key to open the doors of your own being. And when you know who you are, you will know what this whole existence is and its beauty and its grace and its splendor.

Not on their backs

Can he reach the untrodden country,

But only on his own.

Remember, you cannot reach to the untrodden country on anybody else's back. You will have to reach on your own. The last words of Buddha were: Be a light unto yourself - because there is no other light.

He gives you total freedom, he wants you to be free from all kinds of bondages. He does not want you to be a follower, an imitator; he wants you to be authentically your own self.

The mighty elephant dhanapalaka

Is wild when he is in rut,

And when bound he will not eat,

Remembering the elephant grove.

Even though it is a mythological elephant, Dhanapalaka is said to be the greatest elephant who has ever been on the earth, the wisest elephant. It is just a beautiful story. But even Dhanapalaka with such might, with such wisdom, goes wild when he is in rut; when he is sexually aroused he is no more in his senses, he becomes mad.

Sex is really an internal process of intoxicating you. It is chemical. You have nothing to do with it. It is your body chemistry, it is your physiology that releases certain chemicals in your body and then in a sexual state you can do something for which you will repent. Later on you will say, "I cannot believe how it happened. It happened in spite of me." And it is not only sex; so many things are happening in you through your physiology. When you are angry, it is not you. Again certain poisons are released in your blood and you are under the impact of those poisons.

Buddha says: If you start watching the processes of sexuality, anger, greed, you will be able to see that it is not out of you that these things are born. You are only a witness. These things are born in your body, in your mind; and body and mind are not two things, they are one. You are psychosomatic. The mind is your inner body, and the body is your outer mind. Hence the body affects the mind and the mind affects the body. You are a third force.

That third force is known only through meditation; there is no other way to know it, because it is through meditation that you become disidentified with the bodymind mechanism. Otherwise you can be very mighty, very knowledgeable, even sometimes in some moments very wise, but all that can go in a second. Your body can possess you, your physiology can become so powerful over you that you become a slave. You lose your mastery. Whenever you are angry, whenever you are in a sexual arousal, you are no more a master, you are simply a slave.

Buddha is not against sex, remember. Buddha is not against anger or greed, he is against slavery. And anything that creates slavery in you, he would like you to transcend it. Remember the difference. There are people who are against sex - they are against sex because sex is hedonistic, they say; they are against sex because sex makes you happy. They are against happiness. They can't tolerate any happiness anywhere. They are sadists, they would like the whole world to be in suffering; they enjoy suffering. They not only want others to suffer, they make themselves suffer too. Suffering is their joy. That is a perverted state, a pathological state.

Buddha is not against sex because it gives you pleasure; he is simply trying to make you aware of the fact that these are the things that keep you tethered into a kind of inner slavery. You are a slave of your own chemistry, you are a slave of your own physiology - and this slavery has to be transcended.

The mighty elephant dhanapalaka is wild when he is in rut, and when bound he will not eat, remembering the elephant grove. When he is under the impact of his sexuality he cannot eat; he thinks only of the elephant grove, he thinks of female elephants. His whole mind is possessed by fantasy - and that's true about you too. Whenever you are under the impact of any chemical process you are no more yourself, you are distracted from your true being. You are no longer centered. You become eccentric. That's exactly the meaning of the word eccentric: you lose your center, you go off center.

The fool is idle.

He eats and he rolls in his sleep

Like a hog in a sty.

And he has to live life over again.

Buddha wants you to be reminded that if you live like a fool - idle, lazy, without making any effort to transform your being, without making any effort to transcend your slavery, without making any effort to become a master - if you live like a fool, just eating and rolling in your sleep, like a hog in a sty, you will have to live again and again the same stupid life. You will have to repeat it. In fact you have already repeated it many times, and you have not yet understood why you are repeating it again and again. You have to learn the lesson. The lesson is freedom. If you don't learn it you will be sent back to the same school, to the same grade again and again.

That is one of the greatest contributions of Indian spirituality to the world. India has contributed a few things; this is one of the contributions of great significance. The idea is that existence is an opportunity for understanding, for transcending, for going through a radical change. It is a school. Life is a school. If you learn rightly, if you discipline yourself rightly you will not be coming back again, you will exist in the universal. You will never become again a separate individual; you will never have to be an ego again. You will live an egoless existence, like the wave which has disappeared in the ocean.

That has been the ultimate goal of the mystics: to disappear into the universal, not to be separate; to melt and merge into the universal. Separation brings anxiety, separation brings death, separation brings misery. We are miserable because we are feeling separate from God or the universe. Bliss arises whenever you feel one with the universe; when you are in harmony with the universe bliss arises. There is great joy, rejoicing; you disappear, you die in a way, but you are reborn. You are reborn as the ocean, you die as the dewdrop.

But if you don't learn the lesson you will have to come back again. Unless you learn you will have to repeat the same process.

David, a student of a university, received a telephone call from his brother Blake, back home.

"Hi, David," said Blake. "Your cat is dead."

David fell apart. He began crying uncontrollably. When finally he was able to compose himself, he scolded his brother.

"Damn it, Blake," he told him. "You know how I loved that cat. You did not have to call me and just spill it out, first thing - 'Your cat is dead.' You should have broken it to me gently. You could have said, 'Dave, the cat got out of the window the other day and crawled up the rainspout and got up on the roof and slipped and fell,' and then you could have said it died."

"I am sorry," apologized Blake.

"Okay, forget it," said David. "How is Mom?"

"Well, Mom got out the window the other day and crawled up the rainspout..."

It is so difficult to learn, we go on repeating the same mistake again and again - maybe in a new way, in a new fashion, in a new style, but it is the same mistake. You watch your life: you have not done many mistakes, you have been doing the same mistakes again and again. You move in a circle. How are you going to learn? I am not against making mistakes. Make as many mistakes as you can, but please at least don't make the same mistake twice. Then certainly there will come a great understanding to you. One learns through mistakes, so nothing is wrong in mistakes as such. The wrongness is in repeating them again and again. That means you are not learning anything.

Your whole life you have been angry. What have you learned out of it? Your whole life you have been jealous. What have you learned out of it? If you are not learning out of these experiences, you will have to repeat your life again. Learn out of every experience, small or big. Whenever you are jealous you are in a fire, your heart burns - and you know what you are doing to yourself. You know the wrongness of it, but you know it only because others say so. It is not your own understanding, your own insight. Let it become your own insight, so the next time the situation arises to be jealous you can laugh at it, so the next time the same situation arises you don't behave in the same old pattern; you can get out of the old pattern.

To me this is sannyas: getting always out of the old patterns, becoming always new, remaining always fresh, young, learning. Then your whole life will teach you something of tremendous value and you will be able to die in deep silence, peace, joy. Then there is no coming back. Then you become part of the whole. That is nirvana, that is moksha.

In Western religions there is no word which can translate moksha or nirvana. In Western religions - Christianity, Islam, are offshoots of one religion, Judaism - there are two words, hell and heaven. In Indian religions there are three words: hell, heaven and moksha. Hell means nothing but misery; it is a psychological state of misery, a state of negativity, a state of darkness, of utter loneliness. And heaven is joy, happiness, health, light. But there is a third word, moksha. Moksha means freedom, freedom from both heaven and hell, freedom from pain and pleasure - because pain binds you as much as pleasure binds you. Pain may be an ugly chain and pleasure may be a beautiful chain, decorated, maybe made of gold, but it chains you. Hell may be a poor place and heaven may be a very rich place but poverty and riches are two aspects of the same coin. One has to be free of both.

When you are free of both, you are free of mind, because mind lives in the duality of heaven and hell, of darkness and light, of misery and happiness, of day and night, of life and death. When you have transcended both and reached to the third which is beyond, which is transcendental, it is moksha. Moksha means nirvana; it is cessation of the ego, and meeting and merging into the universal. That has been the goal of the Eastern mystic.

Just as science has reached its ultimate peaks in the West, religion has reached its ultimate peaks in the East. Whenever East and West will meet there will be a great meeting of science and religion. And that is going to be one of the greatest moments in the history of humanity, because then man can live outwardly a rich life and inwardly a full life. Then there is no need to be as poor as India is or to be as empty inwardly as America is. One can be rich outside, and one can be rich on the inside simultaneously.

The fool is idle. He eats and he rolls in his sleep like a hog in a sty. And he has to live life over again.

An elderly German sat before the fire and in a reflective moment spoke to his dog, "You is only a dog, but I wish I was you. Wen you go your bed in, you shust turn round dree times and lie down; wen I go de bed in, I haf to lock up de place, and wind up de clock, and put out de cat, and undress myself, and my wife wakes up and scolds, and den de baby wakes and cries and I haf to walk him de house around, and den maybe I get myself to bed in time to get up again.

"Wen you get up, you shust stretch yourself, dig your neck a little, and you was up. I have to light de fire, put on de kiddle, scrap some vit my wife, and get myself breakfast. You be lays round all day and haf blenty of fun. I haf to work all day and haf blenty of drubble. Wen you die, you was dead; wen I die, I haf to go somewhere again."

You need not if you learn; if you learn the lesson you need not go anywhere again. You disappear into the whole, you are everywhere and nowhere then. You are no more an entity, confined into boundaries.

My own mind used to wander

Wherever pleasure or desire or lust led it.

But now I have it tamed,

I guide it,

As the keeper guides the wild elephant.

This also is something new in Buddha. Christians believe Jesus is special; he is the only begotten Son of God. Hindus believe Krishna is special; he is the perfect incarnation of God. Mohammedans believe Mohammed is special; he is the only prophet of God, the only messenger. Jainas believe Mahavira is special; he is the last, the twenty-fourth tirthankara, the last prophet of Jainism; there will be no more prophets after Mahavira. Unique they are, these people, special, not just ordinary human beings like you and me.

Buddha is different again. He says, "I am an ordinary human being." He says, my own mind used to wander.

Gospels never say anything like that, no Hindu scriptures will ever say anything like that about Krishna or Rama because that will make them ordinary like you. They are born gods.

Buddha simply says, "I was a human being just like you. I was groping in darkness just like you. I was doing all kinds of things as you are doing; I am in no way special. All that happened to me is happening to you and something more has happened to me which can happen to you if you allow it to happen. I was as ordinary as you are; just only one thing has happened to me which has made all the difference. I have become aware and you are unaware. You are carrying the truth in you as much as I am. I am aware of it; you are not aware of it.

"But remember, whether you know the truth or you don't know, it makes no difference to the truth. The truth remains true. Knowing or not knowing does not make any difference. Truth is truth. It is behind you," Buddha says, "it is in front of me. I have turned in; I have taken the hundred-eighty-degree turn, that's all. It is not much to brag about. You can do it."

This is again very special about Buddha. He never claims that he is unique; hence he is of more help to humanity than anybody else. Because he says: I was just like you... My mind used to wander wherever pleasure or desire or lust led it.

He does not deny that there was lust in him from the very beginning. He does not deny that there was desire, he does not say that he was born pure. He simply says, "I was as much after pleasure - I was as much full of desire as you are, and I was as much full of lust as you are. So nothing is wrong in lust, in desire, in pleasure; if anything is wrong it is in your unawareness. Be aware; and lust disappears, and desire disappears and the constant greed for pleasure disappears."

When you become aware, you are so at ease, so full of bliss, who bothers about pleasure? When you have diamonds who cares about pebbles? When you have inexhaustible sources of inner bliss who goes on begging for small pleasures, ugly pleasures? - they simply disappear.

Buddha says: but now i have it tamed, I have disciplined my mind, I have meditated, I have gone into the functioning of the mind, I have seen it through and through. Now I have become the master. Seeing it I have become the master. Knowing it I have become the master. Understanding makes you the master. Now i guide it, as the keeper guides the wild elephant.

So don't feel guilty - that is Buddha's message - don't feel guilty for your greed, don't feel guilty for your anger, don't feel guilty for your lust. All that you need to do is become aware of your greed, become aware of your lust, become aware of your desire, and see the miracle happen. Just as you bring light in the room and darkness disappears, exactly like that, precisely like that, as you bring awareness in all desire, all greed, all anger, all lust simply disappears as if it has never been there. Don't try to escape, don't try to renounce, because if you renounce you are simply renouncing the opportunity.

A man escapes from his wife, goes to the Himalayas or moves to a monastery... There are monasteries where no woman has been ever allowed in; there are monasteries where once you go in, you are not allowed to go out again your whole life. Now, this is not a transformation, this is simply escaping from the opportunity.

Dick brought Sally to his bed. "What would you like to do?" he asked.

"I would like to see today's newspaper," she said.

"Sure," said Dick, "I will send my dog for it. He is so smart he will even bring back the change." Dick gave the dog ten dollars and sent him for the paper. In an hour when the dog didn't return, Dick and Sally went out looking for him. They found the dog making it with a French poodle.

"Did he ever do this before?" asked Sally.

"No," said Dick, "this is the first time he ever had any money."

Opportunity... You can escape from the opportunity, that will not change your being. Outwardly you will become a monk; inwardly you will remain the same person. Outwardly you will become a nun; inwardly you will remain the same person. And the real question is of your inner consciousness, not of your outer circumstances. The mind is not bad if it is used as a mechanism and you are the master. The mind is beautiful as a servant. When it becomes the master then it is ugly. Let consciousness be the master, the guide, and let the mind be like an elephant tamed, disciplined. How can you do it?

Buddha says:

Awake.

Be the witness of your thoughts.

In these simple words he has given to the world the greatest meditation: vipassana. More people have become enlightened through vipassana than through any other method. There are thousands of methods but vipassana seems to be the easiest, the most perfect, and very natural. It does not demand any unnaturalness from you.

Reverend Johnson, an old black preacher, was warning his parishioners about sin.

"Sin," he said, "is like a big dog. There is the big dog of pride, and the big dog of envy, and the big dog of gluttony, and finally there is the big dog of sex. Now, folks, you gotta kill those big dogs before you are ever gonna get to heaven. It can be done - I know - because I've done it. I killed the big dog of envy, and the big dog of pride, and the big dog of gluttony - and yes, brethren, I killed the big dog of sex!"

"Brother!" came a voice from the back of the church, "Are you sure that last dog didn't die a natural death?"

You cannot kill these dogs. Either they die a natural death - but that does not bring any transformation to you - or you have to become masters. There is no need to kill... Buddha will not suggest you kill anything. Why kill anything? If you kill anger you will never be compassionate in your life, because it is anger, and the energy involved in anger, which becomes compassion. If you kill sex you will be simply impotent, that's all; you will not attain to love. It is sex transformed that creates love energy. Love energy is confined to sex. When you bring awareness to it, sex disappears but love energy is released. Anger disappears but compassion is released. Greed disappears and sharing comes in its place.

It is not a question of killing; these are energies. Don't be such a fool as to kill anything, because if you kill it you will miss something very essential in your life. Transform. Religion has to be the real alchemy, the science of transformation. It is not murderous.

But the stupid religious people go on murdering, destroying. They are destructive, self-destructive. Hence even if they drop their anger they don't become graceful, they don't attain to creativity, they don't contribute to the world and its beauty. They are burdensome, they are not in any way a help. They are a hindrance in the progress of humanity. Buddha will not suggest to you to kill anything. He says: Just be awake. Be the witness of your thoughts.

Anger is a thought, sex is a thought. Just watch, be alert, let them move on the screen - anger, greed, lust - and you remain aloof, cool, just a witness. In the beginning it is very difficult, but only in the beginning. If you persist then within three to nine months you will be able to do the impossible.

One day it happens that your witness has become so perfect that the screen remains empty, nothing passes - no thought, no desire. That day you have attained to the first state of samadhi, the first satori. And the first satori is the beginning; it triggers many satoris in you, culminating ultimately into samadhi, into nirvana.

When the mind becomes just a pure mechanism... when you want to use it, you use it, when you don't want to use it, it remains silent.

The elephant hauls himself from the mud.

In the same way drag yourself out of your sloth.

Buddha insists again: nobody can pull you out of your mud, nobody can help you. So don't believe that Jesus will come and everything will be solved. Jesus has been before and nothing has been solved. Don't believe in salvation through somebody; no messiah can help you. Buddhas only point the way. You have to do everything on your own. Nobody can do it for you. I cannot see for you, I cannot hear for you; you have to do it on your own.

There are a few things which cannot be done by anybody else for you, on your behalf, and those are the most precious things which only you can do. Awareness is one of those most precious things.

Buddha says: the elephant hauls himself from the mud. Just like that, in the same way drag yourself out of your sloth.

By awareness Buddha does not mean presence of mind. Many people misunderstand. Whenever Buddha uses the words 'awake', 'awareness', people think he is talking about presence of mind. Presence of mind is presence of mind; awareness has nothing to do with the mind. Awareness is something beyond the mind.

Presence of mind is very ordinary. In any danger it comes to you. If somebody is going to shoot you, you will have presence of mind in that moment. If a tiger suddenly jumps in front of you, you will have presence of mind; you will do something which you have never done before.

Frank and Gene were tossing down a few brews at the neighborhood pub.

"Boy, did I have a close call with Angie last night," said Frank.

"What happened?" asked Gene.

"Well, I got home real late, so I took off my shoes, climbed the stairs, opened the door of the bedroom, tiptoed in, and closed the door without making any noise. Just as I am about to get into bed, the wife wakes up and says, 'Is that you, Toto?'"

"What did you do?"

"For once in my life I really used my head," said Frank. "I licked her hand."

This is presence of mind. She is thinking he is the dog, Toto. But presence of mind is not awareness; it is a small phenomenon, a tiny thing. Mind can do it.

Awareness is something beyond the mind. You have to watch the mind, you have to watch the presence of mind as much as absence of mind. You have to watch both, you have to go beyond both. It comes, it certainly comes, and when it comes it takes all that is your misery, your ego, your insensitivity, your cruelty. It takes all mud from you... and out of that mud arises the lotus, the one-thousand-petaled lotus of samadhi in you.

Enough for today.

John Nguyen

Dhammapada Vol. 9

Friday, August 18, 2017

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