Chapter 3. The quiet way to the happy country - Osho

Osho – Dhammapada: The Way of The Buddha (Volume 11)

Chapter 3. The quiet way to the happy country

You have no name and no form.

Why miss what you do not have?

The seeker is not sorry.

Love and joyfully

Follow the way,

The quiet way to the happy country.

Seeker!

Empty the boat,

Lighten the load,

Passion and desire and hatred.

And sail swiftly.

There are five at the door

To turn away, and five more,

And there are five to welcome in.

And when five have been left

Stranded on the shore,

The seeker is called oghatinnoti -

"he who has crossed over."

A new inmate checked into a California asylum. He seemed quite happy - in fact, he was laughing uproariously. "Nearest kin?" asked the examining physician.

"Twin brother," responded the fellow. "We were identical twins. Couldn't tell us apart. In school he would throw a spitball and the teacher would blame me. Once he was arrested for speeding and the judge fined me. I had a girl, he ran off with her."

"Then why are you laughing?"

"Because I got even with him last week."

"What happened?"

"I died and they buried him."

Man IS mad. Madness is not a disease, it is the normal condition of mankind. Yes, people differ in degrees, but that is not much of a difference. Man as he exists on the earth is insane.

The effort of all the buddhas is to bring sanity to you, to dispel your madness. But because everybody is mad, just like you, you remain oblivious of the fact your whole life. Unless you come across a buddha you will never be aware of the fact that you are mad. The buddha becomes a mirror: he reflects your reality, he shows you your face as it is - and it is utterly distorted. It is not the way you are meant to be. Something has gone fundamentally wrong, something very basic is missing.

Man is born in such a state of unconsciousness that whatsoever he does brings more and more misery to him and to others. He goes on blaming fate, he goes on blaming nature, he goes on blaming the society - but he always goes on blaming others, he never blames himself. The moment you gather courage enough to blame yourself, the moment you accept the responsibility of whatsoever you are, a ray of light enters into your being. You are on the path of inner transformation.

These sutras are for the bodhisattvas. Now Buddha is saying to his bodhisattvas - to those disciples who are going to become helpers to mankind, who are ready to go into the world and to help people who are drowning in their own insanity - Buddha is saying to his bodhisattvas, "These are the basic things you have to start your teaching with."

The first thing he says: Tell the people that... You have no name and no form - because that is where millions are stuck. People live and die for name and fame. It seems their life purpose is to have a name known to the whole world, a name which is going to be written in golden letters in history, a name which will go on resounding down the corridors of time for ever and ever.

And the whole thing is so stupid, so ridiculous, because you don't have any name in the first place. You are born nameless, you are nameless. All names are arbitrary. Don't sacrifice your life for a name. Don't sacrifice the real for something unreal. We are sacrificing something true for something which is untrue and cannot be made true.

When a child is born, you know he does not bring a name with him; he is born as namelessness. But of course a name is needed; it has a certain utility but no reality. It is arbitrary. You can call him anything, any name will do - X, Y, Z will do. In a more scientific age there is every possibility that we will drop these old names. Somebody will be O-11, somebody will be X-13. Names are going to be more mathematical one day because they will be more precise. And there is no need to have the same name for two persons; computers can decide. The computer can say that this is a new name, nobody has it all over the world. Right now so many people have the same name; it is bound to happen. It is not very scientific, but it works.

Buddha wants his bodhisattvas to tell the people the first thing: You are nameless. So don't be worried about your name or your fame. You are also formless: your innermost being has no form. Your body has a form, but your body goes on changing; every day it changes. Within seven years your body is completely new, entirely new. Not even a single cell of the old exists in it, everything goes on changing.

If you come across the first sperm of your father that started your life, will you be able to recognize it as yourself? Impossible. Will you be able to recognize your mother's egg as yourself? Impossible. That was your form one day, but you were not it. And then in nine months' time in the mother's womb you passed through many forms.

The scientists say that each child passes quickly, very speedily, through the whole evolution of humanity. From the fish to the monkey to the man, he passes through all the phases - of course in very quick succession because he has to fulfill the whole evolution in nine months. That's why a premature child is a little retarded, because he has not evolved yet completely; he has not been able to complete the whole cycle of evolution. Every child begins as a fish in the mother's womb. Will you be able to recognize that fish as you? But one day that was your form. Will you be able to recognize your face the day you were born? If a picture is shown to you it will be impossible for anybody to recognize that, "This is me." Right now you have a certain form; that form will also go down the drain in the same way. Every moment it is changing.

But there is something eternal in you: your consciousness, your being, your awareness. You can call it your soul, whatsoever you want to call it; names don't matter. But one thing is certain: that you don't have any particular form; you pass through many forms. You can pass through many forms only because you don't have any form, so don't become attached to any form. Don't become attached to any name and don't become attached to any form.

This is the beginning of sannyas. This is the beginning of initiation into the path.

In fact, you don't have any father, you don't have any mother; you can't have. The father fathered your body and the mother mothered your body; they both contributed to your body, to your form, but not to your essential core. Your body is accidental. You have been in many bodies before, thousands of bodies. You have passed through, you have lived in many many houses, and when you were living in a certain house you became identified with it.

Hence the pain of death. It is not because of death, remember; it is just because of your identification with the body, with the form. If you understand the message of Buddha, there is no pain in death. If you are not identified with any name or form there is nobody who is born and there is nobody who is dying.

In fact, that should be the real meaning of Jesus' virgin birth. Everybody is born in the same way. It is not only that you don't have a father, you don't have a mother either. The day you discover your original being you will know that you pass through the mother and the father, you come through them, but you are not created by them.

A snoopy social worker investigating conditions in an old tenement stopped a ragged, neglected-looking youngster and asked him where his mother lived.

"Ain't got no mother," replied the child.

"What about your father, then?"

"Ain't got none, lady."

"What, both your father and your mother dead!" exclaimed the social worker.

"Nope, never had any."

"Good grief, but that's impossible, my boy!"

"If you've gotta know, lady," said the urchin contemptuously, "some damned racketeer played a dirty trick on my aunt."

In fact, nobody has a father or a mother - and no dirty racketeer has played any trick on your aunt either. You are eternal beings: you are never born and you never die. Death and birth are episodes in the long journey, in the eternal journey of your life. Life does not begin with birth and does not end with death.

But this is possible to know only if you become a little detached from the form with which you have become so much attached. You are not man and you are not woman either; your body is male or your body is female. You are not man, you are not animal, you are not vegetable. These are all forms, accidental forms, just circumferences, not the centers of your being. The centers of your being are totally different from the circumferences. And we have become so attached to the circumferences that we have completely forgotten the centers.

This is the basic and fundamental cause of our insanity. A man who does not know his center is insane.

Buddha says, tell the people:

You have no name and no form.

Why miss what you do not have?

How much people suffer if they are not famous, if they are not well-known! To be anonymous feels so humiliating. If nobody knows you, you feel as if you are no longer alive. The more people know you, the more alive you feel. If the whole world knows you, your ego is puffed up to the extreme, it is bursting.

That's why politics has so much interest for people, because that is the easiest way to become world-famous. You don't need to be very intelligent to be a politician; in fact, if you are very intelligent you cannot be a politician. You need a certain stupidity, in good quantity, to be a politician. You need to be stubborn, you need to be violent, you need to be utterly mediocre - so that you can't see what you are doing, so that you can't see how you are wasting your life, and you go on and on... You have to be utterly blind, you have to be very gross. Politics has great appeal because it can give you both a great name and great fame; it can make you a world figure.

I have heard:

A pope and a politician both showed up in heaven one day. Saint Peter greeted them and led the pope to his quarters where he would be spending eternity. Upon opening the door, the pope found a small, plainly furnished room with but one window. When he looked out he noticed the politician being shown to the luxury apartments across the way, which were equipped with hot tubs, saunas, swimming pools, tennis courts and the like.

Filled with righteous indignation, he turned to Saint Peter and protested vehemently, "I am a pope! Why is this politician being treated like this while I get almost nothing?"

"Well," replied Saint Peter, "we have over two hundred popes up here, but this is the first time we've seen a politician!"

But here on the earth the politicians make much fuss. Politics has become the center of life; your newspapers are full of it, your radio programs are full of it. Everything seems to be colored by politics for the simple reason that these people have got something which you are all hankering for - they have got name and fame.

But Buddha says: why miss what you do not have? And, in fact, why miss that which you do not have and can never have? To believe that you are famous is to live in a fool's paradise. And even if your name is going to be written in history... you can make so much nuisance that they will have to write it down in history. Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong, of course their names will remain in history, but not in golden letters. History is not written in golden letters at all, and their names will be only in some footnotes. And even if they are there, what does it matter? Your whole history is bunk! It is less history and more hysteria! Of course, if you are very hysterical you will become historical. But what is the point of it all? You would have missed a great opportunity.

The real man does not care about name and fame. The authentic man lives his life irrespective of name and fame; he does not care a bit whether anybody knows him or not.

The seeker is not sorry.

Buddha says: Teach people that the search for truth should not be a sad search. This is one of the things which has been very much misunderstood. Somehow the sad people have dominated the whole religious scene down the ages. Only once in a while do you find a Buddha or a Jesus or a Zarathustra who talks about joy, who talks about living in bliss. Only once in a while do you find a Krishna - who not only teaches dance but dances himself, who not only teaches singing but sings himself. Otherwise the scene is dominated by pathological people, either by masochists or by sadists.

Ninety-nine percent of so-called religious people are ill, seriously ill people. They have gone into religion because they have failed in life, they have gone into religion because they could not cope with life. It is an escape - and the escapist can never be happy.

Christians say that Jesus never laughed. Now, there cannot be a greater lie than that. Jesus, and never laughed? Then who will be able to laugh? Then nobody will be able to laugh at all! And the whole life of Jesus proves that he must have been a man of very joyous nature. He must have been really spiritual - in the sense the French use the word spirituel. In French this word 'spirituel' means both "spiritual" and "humorous." There seems to be a great insight in it - the same word meaning both. He must have laughed with his companions. It is well known that he used to enjoy eating and drinking, and when a man enjoys eating and drinking it is difficult to think of him never laughing. People who enjoy eating and drinking, people who enjoy parties, also enjoy dancing and singing and joking. He must have laughed, he must have joked. One cannot believe that twenty-four hours a day he was delivering only gospels - he must have gossiped!

But the people who are sad, they would like him also to be sad. All the figures, statues, paintings of Jesus seem to be false. And they have been changing down the ages. In the earliest pictures he was shown without beard and mustache. After two centuries, suddenly the beard and the mustache appeared - because without a beard and a mustache he did not look like a prophet; he looked too young, not mature enough. A face without a beard and without a mustache looks a little boyish... suddenly the beard appeared.

In the East just the opposite has been the case. Buddha is never painted with a beard, neither is Krishna or Mahavira, neither is Rama or Patanjali... nobody. Why? - because the Eastern idea is that these people were so young, spiritually young, that it is better to let them appear young from the outside too. The outside should represent the inside.

Buddha became very old, he died when he was eighty-two, but still he is never depicted as having a beard. Jesus died when he was only thirty-three, but the beard appeared after two centuries. Still his face was not sad. After two centuries even that face changed. He became more and more sad - as if he were carrying the whole burden of the earth. Now they have changed him into the savior; he is carrying the cross. He has come to deliver you from your sufferings, he is taking your sufferings on himself. And they have falsified this beautiful man who used to enjoy the company of very ordinary people - carpenters, laborers, gardeners, fishermen, gamblers, prostitutes, drunkards, tax collectors, every kind of people - even tax collectors! They are making him more and more abstract; he is losing his earthliness. He is becoming more and more a concept rather than a real human being; he is losing his humanity. He is no more the Son of Man, he is becoming only the Son of God.

These are the sad people who are projecting their sadness on him. They say he never laughed - I can't believe it. I can believe a far more impossible thing...

The followers of Zarathustra say that he laughed the very moment he was born - I can believe that, that he was born laughing. It looks absolutely impossible - no child is ever born laughing - but it has something beautiful about it. Zarathustra getting out of the womb, laughing, appeals to me more. Such a joyous spirit! That's why Zarathustra could not become a world religion. The followers of Zarathustra are confined to Bombay only. And they are good people - not religious in the ordinary sense, not at all.

Nobody thinks that Parsis are religious; in India nobody thinks them religious. They enjoy eating, they enjoy beautiful clothes, they enjoy the beautiful things of life, they enjoy beautiful houses... they enjoy everything! And we have the idea of religion as renunciation.

I can believe Zarathustra coming into the world laughing, but I cannot believe Jesus never laughing, because to me sadness can never become the source for the search - although millions of people go in search of God just because they are sad. You remember God only when you are unhappy, miserable; when you are in deep anguish then you remember God, otherwise who cares?

But let me tell you: if you remember God only when you are miserable, your remembrance is not worth anything. It is almost a complaint; it is not a prayer, it cannot be. You cannot be grateful for being miserable, and prayer needs to be essentially gratitude.

Buddha says: the seeker is not sorry. He is telling his bodhisattvas: Go to the people and tell them that if you don't drop your being sorry you can never become a real seeker. Seek God out of happiness, seek God out of joy, seek God because this call of the cuckoo is so beautiful, because the songs of the birds are so joyous, because the flowers are so ecstatic, because life is such a blessing. Look at the blessing that life is and then go for the source of it. From where are all these songs and all these flowers and all these stars born? What is the cause of it all, of this mysterious existence?

Don't go in search because you are sad, miserable, a failure. If you go with failure in your heart you will be simply repressing your sadness. You may start smiling, but that smile will be only a painted smile. You can see the priests smiling, but that smile is not true, it can't be true. They have never loved life enough for their smile to be true, they have never lived life enough for their smile to be true. They are escapists, they are afraid of life. And the people who are afraid of life, their search is wrong from the very beginning. But this misunderstanding has happened and this misunderstanding has to be dispelled.

A policeman patrolling lovers' lane late at night shines his flashlight in the window of a car and sees a couple making love. He taps on the window and says, "I am next!" In ten minutes he comes by again and the couple is still making love, so he taps on the window again and says, "I am next!"

In twenty minutes he comes by again and the couple is still making love. Again he taps on the window and says, "I am next. What's taking you so long anyway?"

The man looks up and says, "Man, I'm really nervous. I've never screwed a cop before!"

Misunderstandings and misunderstandings...

Buddhas have been misunderstood so much that whatsoever you think about Jesus, Krishna, Buddha, Lao Tzu, be very cautious - ninety-nine percent of it is going to be a misunderstanding. If you ask me, "Who are Christians?" I say "The people who have misunderstood Christ." If you ask me, "Who are Buddhists?" I will say, "The people who have misunderstood Buddha."

Misunderstanding is so easy because if you want to understand a buddha you will have to rise a little higher to see what he is showing. But if you want to misunderstand you need not move anywhere; wherever you are, remain there and you can misunderstand. To misunderstand is so comfortable, so cozy. You can misunderstand without any effort; it requires no change on your part. But it will show in your life.

People go to the temples, but there is no dance in their eyes. Going to the temple and no dance in your feet and no dance in your eyes - then why are you going? What is the point? Why are you wasting your time? People are praying, but there is no joy, there is no light on their faces. Then why are you wasting your time and God's time? But one thing is good: that God is utterly deaf - deaf to all languages. He listens only to silence, he is available only to silence. So you can go on praying - nobody is listening. It is a monologue.

Martin Buber says that prayer is a dialogue. I say no, unless a prayer is absolutely silent it is not a dialogue. Martin Buber says a prayer means an I/Thou dialogue. If there is I, then there can be no Thou; these two things can't exist together. If there is I and Thou, then the Thou is only a projection and there is no dialogue at all; it is a monologue. You can believe that somebody is listening - nobody is listening. You are simply wasting your time, your breath. Do something else, anything will be better. Even playing cards will be far better, drinking Coca-Cola will be far better!

Your prayers are meaningless. You cannot hide the fact. If you move towards God or truth in sadness, in misery, in some way or other, your life will show it. Truth cannot be repressed.

The Gladwells had a baby born without ears. They brought it home and their neighbors, the Petersons, were preparing to visit it. "Now, please be careful," said Mrs. Peterson to her husband. "Don't say anything about the baby not having any ears."

"Don't worry," said Peterson. "I won't do anything to hurt their feelings."

So they went next door, up into the nursery and stood over the new baby's crib with the Gladwells. "He's so cute," said Mrs. Peterson to the baby's mother.

"Yeah," agreed Mr. Peterson. "What strong arms and legs the kid has - he's gonna grow up to be a bruiser."

"Thanks," said the baby's father.

"How's the kid's eyes?"

"They're perfect!" said Gladwell.

"They'd better be - he won't ever be able to wear glasses!"

Somehow or other it is going to come up. How can you avoid it? The more you avoid, the greater is the possibility you will stumble upon it. In fact, the very effort to avoid it makes you focused on it; then you can't see anything else.

A very holy man went into an optician's one day to order a new pair of spectacles. Behind the counter was an extremely pretty girl, which reduced the customer to total confusion.

"Can I help you, sir?" she asked with a ravishing smile.

"Er - yes - er... I want a pair of rim-speckt hornicles... I mean I want a pair of heck-rimmed spornicles... er... I mean..."

At which point the optician himself came to the rescue.

"It's alright, Miss Jones. What the holy man wants is a pair of rim-sporned hectacles."

Hence Buddha says the seeker has to start his journey not out of misery but out of joy. Rejoice in life. He says:

Love and joyfully

Follow the way,

The quiet way to the happy country.

When one first comes across these words one feels a little surprised. Buddha, and saying: love and joyfully follow the way, the quiet way to the happy country...? Yes, one is a little shocked because the Buddhist priests have been avoiding these beautiful sayings, they have been bypassing them. They have been emphasizing those words of Buddha which emphasize pessimism. And he was not a pessimist at all, he could not be. One who knows, how can he be a pessimist? It is impossible. He is not even an optimist, remember, because the optimist is connected with the pessimist; he is the other extreme.

Buddha is beyond both; he is neither a pessimist nor an optimist. He simply wants you to see that which is - and that is enough to make you love life. It is enough, more than enough, to make you dance with joy, with gratitude.

And the way is silent, very quiet. Hence Buddha has not taught any prayer, he only teaches meditation. When prayer is silent it is meditation; when meditation becomes eloquent it is prayer. But first you have to learn meditation; otherwise you will move in a wrong direction. Without knowing meditation all your prayers are going to be false. You will be pouring your rubbish on God - holy rubbish, but it is all holy cow dung!

First learn to be silent. And yes, out of silence some songs are born, out of silence some flowers bloom. Then offer those songs, those flowers to God. But they will be of joy, of tremendous joy.

Seeker!

Empty the boat,

Lighten the load,

Passion and desire and hatred.

Let me remind you again and again: Buddha is talking to his bodhisattvas, to his messengers, to his apostles, who are going to the masses. He is helping them with what to say, from where to begin. He is saying the first thing a seeker has to fulfill is, the first requirement of a true seeker is, that he should not have any belief system, that he should not have any philosophy, any ideology. If you already believe then there is no question of seeking, inquiring. Inquiry means you start with a state of not-knowing. Hence: seeker! Empty the boat... Empty your mind of all the baggage that you have been carrying all along. Become utterly empty. Then the same mind that has been causing you so much insanity, so much turmoil, so much anguish... the same mind when empty becomes the boat for the other shore, for the further shore. Empty, it becomes a vehicle; burdened with all kinds of thoughts, with all kinds of beliefs, scriptures, which each generation goes on handing over to the next generation... We are so much burdened that we are carrying almost Himalayas of weight on our heads; it is not possible to move with such a load. You need unlearning. You already have too much knowledge; all this knowledge has to be dropped.

Empty the boat, lighten the load... When you are utterly empty, when you say, "I know nothing," then the inquiry starts. It is fresh, it is young, it is authentic, because there is a fundamental law of life that if you are in a state of not-knowing, a great urge will arise in you to know. Just as nature abhors a vacuum and it rushes to fill it, exactly in the same way if your mind is totally empty, truth rushes in and fills it.

But right now there is no space. Your mind is so full, even you cannot go in. You have to live somewhere on the outside. People are living in their porches; their houses are so full of junk that they are afraid to go in. They may get lost, and there is no space either.

And three things Buddha mentions particularly which are making you loaded, much too loaded. The first he calls passion, the second, desire and the third, hatred.

Passion means animal lust, biological, unconscious lust. Every animal has it, there is nothing special about it. If man has it he simply remains part of the animal kingdom; it is an animal heritage. You don't really become human unless you go beyond lust. You think that it is your love and you have great, romantic words to describe it and you use great poetry, but that is all rubbish. If you look deep down it is biology, it is chemistry, it is hormones and nothing else. If your hormones are changed you will not be interested in any woman anymore, or if you are a woman and your hormones are changed you will not be interested in any man anymore, and all poetry and all romance will disappear. The Don Juan simply needs a small operation... and he will disappear.

Buddha says the first thing that keeps your mind full of junk is lust. And it is, in a way, natural because for millions of years we have been in animal bodies; we are still carrying those imprints, we are full of animal heritage. We are ninety-nine percent animals; only one percent perhaps - that too is a perhaps - are we human beings. Just a little part of us has risen a little above.

A fiery-tongued Italian priest was laying down some heavy stuff about sex and morality. Stabbing his bony finger at his Little Italy congregation, the guinea padre bellowed, "Sex is-a dirty! I want-a see only good-a girls tonight. I want-a every virgin in-a church to-a stand up."

Furious at the lack of his parishioners' response, he repeated the exhortation.

After a long pause, a sexy-looking chick with an infant in her arms got to her feet.

"Virgins is what I want-a!" the outraged preacher said.

"Hey, Father," the lady asked, "you expect a two-month-old baby to stand by herself?"

It is said that's why Jesus chose to be born two thousand years before us, because now where can you find a virgin? And, moreover, where will you find three wise men? Even if you find a virgin - a two-month-old baby, okay - but three wise men? The conditions cannot be fulfilled now.

People tell me again and again, "Jesus has promised he will come again." I say to you, forget all about it! - he cannot come. The conditions cannot be fulfilled. If he drops his conditions, then it is okay. But then he won't be a Jesus, remember - he will be just another hippie, maybe a Jesus freak but not Jesus!

Remember, Buddha does not want you to repress your lust, he wants you to understand, he wants you to meditate over it. He wants you not to repress it, because repression has never helped. It is repression that has made this sad situation in which humanity is living. It is repression that has driven humanity mad.

Buddha wants you to transform sex energy, not to repress it, because it is the only energy you have got. It can be refined, it can be uplifted, it can be channeled in new directions; it can be moved towards higher planes of being. And it all happens through a simple process of meditation.

The process of meditation is not complicated at all. If your mind can drop its load and if it can become absolutely empty, immediately your sex energy starts rising upwards to fill the gap, as if the emptiness pulls it upwards. A new law starts functioning: the law of levitation. Ordinarily we live under the law of gravitation: everything goes downwards. And you are so top-heavy that nothing can go towards the top; the top is already full, everything goes downwards. Make the top light.

In Japan they make a daruma doll. Daruma is the Japanese name of Bodhidharma, one of Buddha's greatest disciples, who founded Zen in China; he is the first patriarch of Zen. Bodhidharma was his Indian name, Daruma is his Japanese name. They have made a doll in his name, in his memory; for centuries the doll has been made. It is one of the most beautiful dolls; it has a great message. You throw the doll any way, it always sits back in a Buddha posture; you cannot put it upside-down. You can throw it, you can tilt it, you can do anything with it, but you cannot shake or make Daruma fall. He always sits back again in the lotus posture, as Buddha used to sit.

The secret is: his top is not heavy, his bottom is heavy. He has a hollow head, an empty head; there is nothing inside. The head is so empty and the bottom is so heavy that naturally he settles back again into the Buddha posture. It is a beautiful doll. It was invented by the Zen monks for children to play with, and the children are bound to ask, "What is the secret?" And the secret is that the head is totally empty - the secret is meditation.

The second thing is desire. Desire is psychological; just as lust is biological, desire is psychological. Desire means more and more, always for more. Nothing satisfies, nothing fulfills; you go on running for more and more. And you know it, because many times you have achieved your target but your discontent remains the same. Again the desire arises for more, and you start running without giving it a second thought.

Buddha says: Wait, contemplate. Where is it going to end? You are chasing an illusion. The desire for more can never be fulfilled. You can have ten thousand rupees and your mind asks for one hundred thousand; you can have one hundred thousand, the mind starts asking for more - and so on and so forth. Whatsoever you have, the distance between what you have and what the mind asks for remains the same. It is unfulfillable. It is driving people crazy. Seeing it, seeing the point of it, one drops it. Or it would be better to say: the moment you see the futility of it, it drops of its own accord.

And the third thing is hatred. Hatred arises because of these first two, passion and desire. Whosoever comes in the way of your passion or in the way of your desire, whosoever becomes a hindrance, whosoever becomes a competitor, becomes your enemy. Whosoever tries to grab something that you wanted creates hatred in you. If the first two disappear, the third disappears on its own.

The first two are like fire and the third is just smoke. If you are still feeling hatred for something, for somebody, then remember somewhere there is fire still. Wherever there is smoke there is fire. Hatred and anger simply show that you are still living through lust and desire, consciously or unconsciously. But your smoke shows that the fire has not been put out. Go back deep into your being and put out the fire. And it can be put out not by repressing but by understanding.

Understanding is the most fundamental message of Gautama the Buddha. If it happens, you can sail swiftly.

There are five at the door

To turn away, and five more,

And there are five to welcome in.

And when five have been left

Stranded on the shore,

The seeker is called oghatinnoti -

"he who has crossed over."

These fives have to be understood. There are five at the door...

The first five: Buddha says the first is selfishness, the second is doubt, the third is pseudo spirituality, the fourth is passion and the fifth is hatred. They are always standing at the door. You have to be very conscious; otherwise they will jump upon you.

Even the people who think they are doing selfless service - their service is selfish. They are hoping to gain some reward in the other world, in paradise; hence they are serving. Their service is not just out of love, their service is a bargain. It is a search for some great reward - heaven, paradise and the heavenly joys. Beware of selfishness.

Second is doubt. Even people who believe are full of doubt; in fact, if you are not full of doubt there is no need to believe. Belief simply means you have covered up a doubt. You have a wound, you cover it up with a beautiful flower, but the wound remains.

Third is pseudo spirituality. When people want to be spiritual it is easier to be pseudospiritual because it costs nothing. You can be a Christian, you can be a Hindu, you can be a Mohammedan; it is so easy, it is so formal. You go and do certain rituals in a temple and you are a Hindu, or you go to the church every Sunday and you are a Christian - and it is so easy!

But real spirituality is going through fire. Real spirituality is rebellion against all that is rotten, against all that is past, against all that is being forced on you by others, against all conditionings. Real spirituality is the greatest rebellion there is. It is risky, it is adventurous, it is dangerous.

So beware of pseudo spirituality which is always there, available, easily available at the door.

And passion... You can drop passion here, you can repress it here, but then you are asking for it somewhere else. In heaven, all the religions have provided for your passion - beautiful women are available there. Of course, because these stories have been written by men they talk only about beautiful women. Now I think some liberated woman is going to write a few scriptures; then they will manage some beautiful men, very beautiful men who always remain young, never become old, are always nice...

Your so-called mahatmas and saints, all have been hoping that beautiful women are waiting; it is only a question of a few days. Just torture yourself a little more and you will get an even better one. Just go into the scriptures of your religions and look and you will be able - it is so clearly there - to see the projections.

In the Hindu heaven the girls never grow older than sixteen, because in India that is thought to be the best age. So thousands of years have passed, but in heaven the same beautiful women are still hanging around at sixteen. They don't perspire; in heaven you don't need deodorants, you need not use perfumes, etcetera! Their bodies are made of gold. I think if right now you write the scriptures again you will not make the bodies of gold because they will be too heavy. Carrying a golden woman will give you a heart attack! A plastic one will be far better - with washable, exchangeable parts! And just a few buttons... so you push one button and the woman smiles and you push another button and the woman goes into an orgasm and you push another button... and it will just be far more scientific now. In the old days those old fools could not think of anything better - gold bodies! And if it is solid gold it is going to be really difficult.

But you can see the desire... So Buddha says: Beware! You can repress here, but you will be desiring somewhere else. Passion is not going to leave you so easily.

And hatred: all your saints are full of hatred - hatred for the sinners. That's why they have created hell: heaven for themselves and hell for the sinners; heaven for themselves and hell for people who don't follow their religion. If you are a Catholic you will go to heaven - according to Catholic priests. The Hindu has no hope. First he has to become a Catholic, then he can hope; otherwise he is bound to go to hell. And ask the Hindus: they laugh at the whole idea! Their scriptures are far more ancient and they have a longer tradition - and a longer propaganda. They think that except Hindus nobody is going to heaven; and not even all the Hindus - the SUDRAS, the untouchables, have no place there.

This is hatred! This is still the same mind, the same ugly mind playing new games, but nothing has changed.

There are five at the door to turn away... These are the five. Buddha says: Turn them away. Be watchful so they don't catch hold of you.

and five more... These five are very visible, and there are five more which are not so visible, but they are also there hiding behind these five. Those five are: first, lust for life... It is easy to drop the lust for a woman or the lust for a man, but it is very difficult to drop the lust for life itself. Everybody wants to live and to live as long as possible.

You can ask in India - yogis are trying hard to live as long as possible. Now what is that? Why should they be so much concerned about living long? And what is going to happen even if you live long?

Before Bernard Shaw died he left a message to be engraved as an epitaph on his grave. The message was, "I knew all along that if I lived long enough, something like this was going to happen."

So whether you live ninety years or a hundred years or two hundred years, what is the point of it? Death is going to happen. But lust for life... Buddha says that ordinary people lust for money, power, prestige, and your so-called saints lust for life, long life. And the yogis go on pretending that they are more aged than they are.

I have heard:

One yogi was telling people that his age was seven hundred years, and all the Indians were nodding their heads. One Westerner was also there, a tourist, who could not believe this. The man looked not more than seventy - and he was saying he was seven hundred years? Impossible! He wanted to find out so he remained there.

He saw one man who used to serve the old man; he bribed the young man. And it is so easy in India to bribe anybody! In fact, nobody feels offended by it; it is absolutely accepted. It is a way of life in India, no problem in it.

And the young man was happy. He said, "What do you want?"

The Westerner said, "I want to know only one thing. Is your master really seven hundred years old? - because only you can tell me; you have been with him."

He said, "Yes, I can tell you only one thing, more than that I don't know. I have been with him for only three hundred years."

And the man was not more than thirty years old!

And there are books - now they are being translated into all the languages of the world - saying that if you practice yoga you will prolong your life. And if you eat this and if you eat that, and if you do this asana, this posture, your life will be prolonged. If you breathe in this way or that way...

Buddha is saying this is the same lust. So the first subtle thing is lust for life.

And second: longing for birth in higher realms. Even if you drop it from here - "Okay, I don't want to live long here" - then you have a deep desire to be born on some subtle planes, some higher planes, bodiless planes. You would like to be angels. Beware of all these games!

The third is vanity. The people who are virtuous are very vain, they are not humble. In fact they may have practiced humbleness for years, but their practicing of humbleness has given them only a new kind of vanity, a new kind of ego.

Fourth: restlessness. These people are restless, they are not at ease herenow, they can't be. All their hopes are somewhere else, beyond death, in heaven, in paradise. How can they be at ease herenow?

A really spiritual man is absolutely at ease herenow. He has no other time; his only time is now, and his only place is here. And he is utterly at ease, at home. He does not hanker for anything.

And the fifth is self-ignorance. These people go on practicing yoga... a thousand and one methods are available. You can distort your body this way and that - you can become a good performer in a circus - but that will not help you to know who you are. And unless you know "Who am I?" all your knowledge and all your cultivated virtues and practices are simply futile - exercises in utter futility.

And there are five to welcome in. And what are those five? Faith... Remember, by faith Buddha does not mean belief; by faith he means trust, a loving trust, a trust in existence - not in theories, not in scriptures, not in dogmas and creeds, but in existence itself, a trust - because this is our home, we are part of it. If we live in doubt, we live disconnected from the whole; if we live in trust, a bridge is slowly slowly made between the part and the whole. Only with trust can one know what one is and what the whole is; and they are not different. The dewdrop contains the whole ocean; in exactly the same way, every man contains the whole of God.

Second: vigilance. One has to be very alert. Alertness is Buddha's method; his only yoga that he has taught is that of being alert. We are living almost mechanically, robotlike. Bring alertness to your actions, to your thoughts, to your feelings.

And the third is energy. We go on dissipating energy in stupid things - quarreling, arguing, for no reason at all. Preserve your energy because unless you have an overflowing energy you will not be able to take the ultimate jump. The ultimate jump means the river entering into the ocean, the river disappearing into the ocean and becoming the ocean. If you are not full of energy you will not be able to reach the ocean; you will be lost somewhere in a desert.

And the fourth is meditation. By "meditation" he means remaining more and more silent so slowly slowly, a shift happens from mind to no-mind, so slowly slowly, the gestalt changes from noise to silence.

And fifth: wisdom. Wisdom is not knowledge. Knowledge is borrowed, wisdom is yours. Knowledge can be gathered from a library; you can contain the whole library in your mind. Still you will remain as ignorant as before; in fact, you will be far more ignorant than before because now the load is bigger. Wisdom comes from your own heart; it is the voice of our own inner being. It happens in meditation: when you are silent you start hearing the still, small voice within. That is wisdom.

And when five have been left stranded on the shore... What are those five? Greed, anger, delusion, ego, false teachings. ... The seeker is called oghatinnoti - "he who has crossed over."

This is Buddha's message for the seekers. He is telling his bodhisattvas to go and give it to the people who are ready, to the people who are prepared, to the people who are willing to listen, to understand, to follow the path.

Meditate over these sutras - they are for you. Everything that Buddha says is very significant. It is no ordinary religion, it is pure religiousness.

Enough for today.

Hanh Nguyen

Dhammapada Vol. 11

Wednesday, August 23, 2017

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