Osho –
Dhammapada: The Way of The Buddha (Volume 12)
Chapter 3. With
love among the unloving
He looks deeply into things
And sees their nature.
He discriminates
And reaches the end of the way.
He does not linger
With those who have a home
Nor with those who stray.
Wanting nothing,
He travels on alone.
He hurts nothing.
He never kills.
He moves with love among the unloving,
With peace and detachment
Among the hungry and querulous.
Like a mustard seed from the point of a
needle
Hatred has fallen from him,
And lust, hypocrisy and pride.
He offends no one.
Yet he speaks the truth.
His words are clear
But never harsh.
Whatever is not his
He refuses,
Good or bad, great or small.
He wants nothing from this world
And nothing from the next.
He is free.
The master looks deeply into things
And sees their nature.
He discriminates
And reaches the end of the way.
Only the master can look
because only the master has eyes. Without meditation you are blind. You can
see, but only the most superficial things, only the surface of things, only the
circumference and never the center. You cannot penetrate into the nature of
things. And truth remains hidden at the very core.
Meditation gives the master an
insight into himself and the same insight becomes his bridge to the whole of
existence. He is no more blind. Only a man of meditation is not blind. Unless
you have attained meditation think of yourself as blind. Yes, you can see, but
you can see only outwardly. And the real nature is inside you; it is in your
interiority, it is in your subjectivity.
You live outside the house of
your being; you have never entered into the innermost shrine. Not knowing
yourself, you know nothing. And if you don't know even yourself, what else can
you know? All that you think you know is only inferences - not knowledge, not
authentic knowledge but only guesswork.
All your knowledge depends on
guessing. Sometimes it works only by coincidence, sometimes it does not work.
When it works you think you are very intelligent, when it does not work you
think fate is against you. But you never realize the fact that you have no eyes
yet to see into things.
Two men were riding on a train
for the first time. One of them had a bunch of bananas. He offered one to his
friend and began to peel one for himself. Just then, the train entered a
tunnel.
"Have you tasted your
banana yet?" asked the first man, very alarmed.
"No, I haven't,"
replied his friend.
"Well, for heaven's sake
don't!" said the first man. "I took one bite and went blind."
This is what your knowledge is -
just inferences from coincidences.
Just the other day I told you a
joke about a Polack who had come to New York to earn name, fame, money, power,
prestige. He heard a voice coming from far away in the sky, "Climb up to
success!" A little hesitant, a little scared, he tried; he started
climbing the ladder, a fifty-story-high ladder, rung by rung. He reached the
very end and there he found a young man who said, "Hi there, my name is
Cess!" And would you believe that last night the young man came to take
sannyas! In my whole life this is the first time a man with the name of Cess
has come to take sannyas! I must have given sannyas to more then one hundred
thousand people; thousands of Johns and Peters have turned up, but Cess for the
first time! And I think it may be the last time too.
Life is full of coincidences;
there is nothing esoteric about it. And he looked exactly like the description!
But he was an intelligent man - he wanted to change his name.
You go on inferring. Inference
is not knowing, inference is just guesswork. Yes, sometimes it may work, but
more often it fails. Knowing is totally different; it is never guesswork, it is
a clear insight into things, into the very nature of things. To see into the
very nature of things is the whole purpose of meditation.
Meditation is not something
occult, it is very scientific. It is a process of cleansing your eyes, of
giving you clarity, of making you alert. Your minds are so full of prejudice
that you can't see. Your minds are so full of a priori conclusions that
whatsoever you see is colored by your conclusions, by your conditionings. Your
observation is not pure; it is polluted, it is poisoned. You don't see what is
the case, you go on seeing what you want to see or what you are prepared to see
or what you are conditioned to see. This is not real seeing.
Meditation means removing all
your prejudices, putting all your conclusions aside - seeing without any
hindrance, seeing without any curtains, seeing clearly without any mediation of
any thought, seeing without Buddha standing between you and reality, or Krishna
standing or Christ standing.
That's why Buddha is reported
to have made one of the most strange statements; only a man of the caliber of
Buddha can say it. He said to his disciples, "If you meet me on the way,
kill me. Don't allow me to stand between you and the truth. Immediately kill
me, remove me; otherwise I will be the barrier."
The true master is one who
helps the disciple finally to get rid of the master too, so that the disciple
can encounter reality directly, immediately. The false master is one who
creates more and more dependence in the disciple, makes him a slave, so much so
that the disciple cannot even think of being without the master.
That's what is happening all
over the world. So many so-called saints go on creating dependence in you;
their whole effort is how to enslave people. They condition you in such a way
that their conclusions become your conclusions. They don't give you eyes, they
give you ideas.
The real master gives you eyes,
not ideas. He gives you insight into reality and then leaves you in total
freedom to function out of that insight.
Buddha says:
He looks deeply into things
And sees their nature.
He discriminates
And reaches the end of the way.
'Discrimination' is one of the
very important words to be understood. Buddha has used the word again and
again; his word is vivek. Vivek has
far deeper meanings than the English equivalent 'discrimination'. Vivek
contains awareness, and discrimination through awareness. One can discriminate
without being aware; then it will not be discrimination according to Buddha.
You can be told what is right and what is wrong and you can discriminate,
"This is right and this is wrong," but because it is not your
awareness it is not discrimination. Unless you see what is right and what is
wrong it is not going to help much.
The Ten Commandments are of no
help to you unless they are handed over to you by God himself, not to Moses.
They may have been of infinite value to Moses because he came to those insights
himself, independent of the whole past, of the whole tradition. But you are
simply repeating like parrots.
From their very childhood we
start teaching children what is right and what is wrong, what should be done
and what should not be done. And they become conditioned so much that they
forget completely that this is not their own voice. They start thinking this is
their conscience - it is not. It is a strategy of the priests and the
politicians, a conspiracy against man. They have created a conscience in you
and because they have created a conscience in you they have prevented the
growth of your own conscience. Your own conscience comes out of your own
consciousness; it can't come from the outside. Nobody can give it to you, it
has to happen to you in your deep aloneness.
Buddha says: The master knows
what is false and what is true. He knows on his own authority, not on any other
authority. He does not know according to the Koran and he does not know
according to the Talmud, he does not know according to the Vedas - he knows
himself. And only when you know yourself does your knowing have a validity, an
authenticity - an authenticity that can transform you, that can give you a new
birth.
And he reaches the end of the way...
The moment that authentic insight has arisen in you, your consciousness is
born, you are born. This is a rebirth. You are born anew. You have reached the
end of the way, there is nowhere else to go. You have arrived home.
He does not linger
With those who have a home
Nor with those who stray.
Wanting nothing,
He travels on alone.
In India, people are divided
into two categories; this is a traditional division. It was so in Buddha's time
too, it is a very ancient division. Buddha is trying to make a distinction: he
is trying to make his disciples a third category. The old, ancient categories
are two. The first is the worldly, the householder, those who have a home. They
are called householders for the simple reason that they live in the fallacy of
security, safety - a safety that they think comes through money, power,
prestige, a security that they think comes out of relationships. The wife
thinks she is safe with the husband, the husband thinks he is safe with the
wife, the parents think they are safe with their children. The safety is
fallacious because neither the family nor money nor anything else of this world
can save you from death.
When death comes it shatters
everything; it shatters all your sandcastles. The householder lives in a kind
of dreamworld, a world of his own projections. It is not true, it does not
correspond to reality; it is his own projection. The wife thinks the husband is
her security and the husband thinks the wife is his security. Now, both are
insecure. How can two insecure persons give security to each other? Two
insecure persons together become doubly insecure, but the fallacy is created.
This is the first category: the
grihastha, the householder.
And the second category is of
those who have renounced the first category, who have moved to the other
extreme - who don't live in houses, who don't live in families, who don't earn
money, who don't even touch money, who have moved to exactly the opposite
extreme. They are known as sannyasins. They used to wander around the country
in small or big groups.
Jaina monks are not allowed to
move alone. In Buddha's time there were thousands of Jaina monks because
Jainism had existed for at least three thousand years before Buddha. Thousands
of Jaina monks - they are not allowed to move alone, they have to move in a
group of at least five, for the simple reason that a person moving alone cannot
be trusted. He may fall into some error and, knowing that nobody is with him,
nobody knows, he may drink wine somewhere or he may fall in love with a woman
or he may go and visit a prostitute or he may do something... But moving with
four others it is impossible; the other four are constantly watching.
So that was a strategy to
prevent anybody getting any kind of freedom, any kind of license - a
psychological strategy. Unless all the five decide to conspire together... and
that is very difficult, that is almost impossible. Sinners are known to become
friendly to each other, saints are not known to become friendly to each other.
They don't know what friendship is, they can't conspire. They will watch, they
will try to find every kind of fault in the other and they will report to the
master. And Hindu monks used to move - even now they do the same - in big
groups of hundreds.
Buddha says: You have dropped a
small family and now you have moved into a bigger crowd - you have become
another family. Nothing has changed. First you were thinking that was your
security, now you think this is your security, but the old idea of security
still persists.
He says that to be a sannyasin
means to accept the natural insecurity of life. That very acceptance is sannyas
- to accept that, "I am born alone and I will die alone, and between these
two alonenesses all ideas of being together with somebody are just fantasies. I
am alone even while I am alive." One is born alone, one lives alone, one
dies alone.
Buddha's emphasis is very much
on the fact of your aloneness; he wants you to be aware of it. Once you are
aware of it you will be surprised at the beauty of it, at the joy of it. You
will not be scared; you will rejoice in it because it has a freedom, it has an
ecstasy in it, it has a purity and innocence in it. And why hanker for
security?
Life is insecure in its very
nature, hence it is simple logic: those who want to be more alive, they have to
live in insecurity. The greater the insecurity, the more will be your
aliveness; the greater the fallacious, so-called security, the less will be
your aliveness.
That's why you see so many dead
people in the world, almost dead, for the simple reason that they have become
so much attached to the idea of security. And the more dead you are, the more
secure you are. Don't do anything that can create any insecurity, remain
confined to the familiar, don't ever go beyond the limits. You will never know
the ecstasy of going beyond the limits. You will never know the ecstasy of
exploring the unknown and the unknowable.
According to Buddha, both
categories are the same people. Of course they are extremists and they appear
opposite to each other, but don't be deceived. They are not really opposite;
they have found different kinds of security.
A Jaina monk wrote to me that
he would like to come here. He has been reading my books and he wants to become
my sannyasin, but he is afraid he will lose all his security because now the
Jaina community protects him, feeds him, takes every care of him, respects him.
Once he leaves the monkhood, the Jaina community won't be protecting him
anymore.
He asked me whether I am ready
to take his life in my hands, whether I will be his security. Now he wants to
change from one security to another security, he cannot take a jump into
insecurity. And my sannyas is insecurity.
Real sannyas is always
insecurity because real life is insecurity. There is a great security in being
insecure. In dropping the very idea of security you are secure with the whole,
with God, with the total. And there is great excitement then, because each
moment you don't know what is going to happen.
Buddha says that the master... Does not linger
with those who have a home. He does not linger with the first
category, the people who are obsessed with money, power and prestige. He does
not waste his time with these people, he does not linger with these insane
people.
And he says: ... Nor with those
who stray - nor with those who go on roaming around the country in
groups because that is another kind of security, a subtler kind, but the mind
is the same. One wants to belong, one can't be alone.
He says: wanting nothing, he travels on alone
- because the real master has no desire, not even desire for life; hence he is
not afraid of death. He has no desire in this world or in the other; hence he
is not concerned with creating all kinds of safeties around himself. He is not
concerned. He can be alone, utterly alone. He is not trying to be clever and
cunning with existence; he trusts existence.
People are trying to be very
cunning with existence, although they call their cunningness their
intelligence. They always give good names to ugly things. Just look at your
life, how cunning you have been trying to be - even with existence. On the one
hand you will go to the church and pray, and on the other hand you are trying
to be very cunning in every possible way, seeking your ends, sacrificing
everybody else for your ends, not caring about anybody, utterly uncaring,
having no respect, no love, no reverence for life. And on the one hand you go
on praying in the churches and the temples; that too is part of your cunningness.
You know what you are doing in your life; to compensate you go to the church
every Sunday, or you go to Kaaba...
At least once in his life every
Mohammedan is expected to go to Kaaba. For what? - to repent for all the sins
that he has committed, so that he can be forgiven. Hindus go to the Ganges as
many times in their lives as possible, just to take a dip in the Ganges because
they think the Ganges cleanses you of all your sins. You commit sins and the
Ganges has the responsibility of cleansing you of your sins. And what will
happen to the Ganges, taking so many people's sins? It must be the most
polluted river in the whole world, the most impure! Each drop of the Ganges
must be full of millions of sins. So many Hindus for so many thousands of years
have been cleansing their sins there. Avoid the Ganges! Even if by chance you
come near the Ganges, escape as fast as you can!
Once a man came to Ramakrishna;
he was going to the Ganges to take a dip, a holy dip. He asked Ramakrishna,
"Paramahansadeva, you bless me - I am going for a holy dip. Do you think
all my sins will be cleansed?"
Ramakrishna was a very polite
man. He said, "Of course, when you take a dip in the Ganges all sins fly
away from you; you are freed."
The man said, "When you
are saying it, I trust it. So it is worth going."
Ramakrishna said, "It is
worth going, but remember one thing: when you dive in the Ganges, don't come
out."
The man said, "What are
you saying? Have you gone mad? I will have to come out, I cannot survive under
the water for more than a few seconds!"
Ramakrishna said, "Then it
is futile because whenever you come out... have you seen the big trees standing
on the banks of the Ganges?"
He said, "Yes, I have
seen."
"Do you know their purpose
and their function?"
He said, "That I don't
know. It is not mentioned in any scriptures."
Paramahansadeva said, "I
will tell you the secret. When you take the dip, when you dive in, your sins
have to leave you because of the purity of the Ganges, but they sit on the
trees waiting for you. When you come back they jump upon you! And the danger is
that some other sins may also jump upon you which were not yours in the first
place. So be very alert - if you take a dive, then don't come out!"
People have found cunning ways
to continue their lives as they are. All your so-called religions are your
cunning ways of avoiding God, not of finding God.
A young clerk in a telegraph
office got married and, after a couple of years, was going to attain
fatherhood. He was sure that the child would be a boy. However, he wanted to
keep the whole thing secret from his co-workers so that he could surprise them
with the news that he was the father of a male child.
As the delivery was imminent,
he sent his wife to her father's place and asked her to send a telegram to him.
The telegram, he told her, should contain only the following words: "Cycle
arrived," so that he would know that she had safely delivered.
When the time was ripe she gave
birth to a female child. As the telegram, "Cycle arrived," was to be
given only after the delivery of a male child, the wife was in a fix as to what
to do. Luckily her brother was an intelligent person and he sent the telegram
in this fashion: "Cycle arrived with front tire punctured."
Now these people are thought to
be intelligent. All kinds of cunning people are thought to be intelligent
people. And you have to watch your own cunningnesses. To be cunning is not to
be intelligent; to be intellectual even is not to be intelligent. Intelligence
has a totally different flavor from intellectuality. Intelligence is the
fragrance of meditation - only a master is intelligent.
wanting nothing, he travels alone.
He can see that the householders are living in a projection, in a projected
world of their own; and the so-called monks and nuns are living in another
projection, but again it is a projected world. He moves alone - it has not only
to be an outward act, it has to be an inward feeling also.
To be alone is the most
fundamental thing for a meditator - to experience aloneness, to sit silently
and just be yourself, just be with yourself, not hankering for any company, not
hankering for the other. Enjoy your being, enjoy your breathing, enjoy your
heartbeat. Enjoy the inner accord, the harmony. Enjoy just that you are, and be
utterly silent in that enjoyment.
People find a thousand and one
ways to avoid this aloneness; there are worldly ways and there are otherworldly
ways. The worldly person will start listening to the radio or he will turn on
his idiot box - his television. He can't be alone. And the otherworldly person,
the religious person, will start praying or reading the Bible. He is also doing
the same.
You have to be constantly aware
that there are religious ways of avoiding yourself too - irreligious ways,
religious ways, all kinds of ways are available to avoid yourself. The
religious person will start a dialogue with God. He will start praying in a
formal way - the Christian prayer, the Lord's Prayer, or the Jewish prayer or
the Hindu prayer - and he will recite mantras, just like a gramophone record,
meaning nothing. All that he wants is occupation. All that he wants is somehow
not to feel alone. All that he wants is that God is there: "If nobody is
there then at least God is there; I am not alone."
The whole idea of God as a person
is the fiction created by the people who cannot be alone; hence they have
created God. When nobody is there, at least God is always there; you need not
be worried about that, he is everywhere. To have an idiot box you need some
money and you cannot carry the idiot box everywhere, but God is always there
following you like your own shadow. He is always with you. Even when you are in
your bathroom he is not gentlemanly enough to leave you alone; he comes with
you. You are lying down in your bath naked and he sits by your side. He is a
kind of Peeping Tom - he goes on looking at you! You are making love to your
wife and he is standing there; you don't even allow him to be a little
gentlemanly. No need for him to be British, but if he is a little gentlemanly,
there is nothing wrong in it.
This idea of God is created out
of fear - fear of aloneness. When you close your eyes you are alone, but God is
there. Even in your inner being he persists, he insists on being there. This is
violence! But there is no God - it is your idea.
It is like when you are alone
and moving into a dark lane in the night or you have lost your way in the
forest and you start whistling, just to cheer yourself up. Now that is stupid.
It is your whistling, there is nobody else, but even that helps. It is
psychologically helpful. You start whistling, you start singing, humming - to
forget that you are alone, to forget that you are lost.
All your prayers are nothing
but whistling in the dark.
Buddha is not in favor of
prayers. And this difference has to be understood: he is absolutely in favor of
meditation, but never in favor of any prayer. Prayer is again the old trick,
the old game which does not allow you to be alone. Meditation is the art of
being alone. He says: wanting nothing, he travels on alone.
Aloneness is not loneliness,
remember it. Aloneness is not solitariness, remember it. Aloneness is solitude.
It is tremendously beautiful; it is innocent because there is nothing to
pollute it, there is nothing to disturb it, to distract it. It is pure
stillness, it is silence. It has a music of its own.
Once you have heard the music
of your own aloneness you will not like any other music. Then all other music
is only noise; howsoever beautifully arranged, it is noise.
He hurts nothing.
He never kills.
It is impossible for him to
hurt or to kill, because now he knows that he is not separate from existence,
that there is nobody else. It is all one, it is one organic unity. We are all
waves of the same ocean. Hurting another wave is hurting yourself. It is like
hitting your hand, one hand with another hand. It is childish, it is insane.
Sometimes small children do that. If the table has hurt them they hit the table
hard; they are hurt more, but they enjoy. They think they are punishing the table.
Whenever you punish somebody
you are punishing yourself. Whenever you torture somebody you are torturing
yourself - because there is nobody else. The master knows it. It is not only a
belief for him, it is his experience. Reaching his own center he has reached
the center of the whole existence.
This fundamental has to be
remembered: that as far as the circumference is concerned we are all different,
but as far as the center is concerned we have only one center. That one center
you can call God or truth or nirvana.
He moves with love among the unloving,
With peace and detachment
Among the hungry and querulous.
He moves with love among the unloving...
His work is difficult. He is talking to his bodhisattvas, making them aware of
the arduousness of their work. It is not going to be easy, it is not going to
be cheap, because the awakened one has to move amongst those who are fast
asleep. The person who has eyes has to live with those who have no eyes.
Communication becomes impossible. He says one thing, they understand something
totally different. He tries to help them and they feel offended. He tries in
every possible way to save them, but they think that he is trying to exploit
them or something.
Just a few days back, a friend
from Germany took sannyas. His name was Richard; I have called him Veet
Richard. Richard means "hard"; German names are like that. Strange,
that all German names I come across, either they mean "hard" or they
mean "strong" or they mean "masculine" or they mean
"bear-strong" or they mean "the walk of the wolf" -
Wolfgang. I told him, "Go beyond your hardness. veet means going beyond. Become soft, become a little less
German."
And just the other day he wrote
a question, saying, "While you were giving me sannyas I was looking at
your shoulders and I could not believe that 'This man is my master.'" Now,
what do my shoulders have to do with my being a master or not? This is
something new! I have come across thousands of definitions of what a master
means, but neither Buddha nor Lao Tzu nor Zarathustra nor Jesus, nobody has
said anything about the shoulders! And he was looking at my shoulders, not
looking into my eyes - I had asked him to look into my eyes.
But this is how things are.
When you are moving with people who are fast asleep they have their own ideas.
Then, Veet Richard, go to Muhammad Ali! Find some stupid wrestler for your
master. And now I am wondering - whatsoever I was saying to him, was it worth
saying to him? I was simply wasting my time and his time. There is no
possibility of any communication. He was in his own world; maybe he was looking
for Adolf Hitler or somebody. I am not Adolf Hitler and I am not Muhammad Ali
either, but he must be carrying some idea...
Everybody is carrying some idea
- strange ideas people are carrying. And I cannot fulfill your ideas. You are
so unloving and I go on pouring my love on you and there seems to be no
response.
People write me such ugly
letters that if you come to know about those letters you will be simply
shocked. You will not be able to believe it. One woman wrote just the other
day, "Either you are mad or you are a fool!" Madam, can't I be both
together? Is there any contradiction? Not all fools are mad, true, not all
madmen are fools, true, but there are a few who are both together. I belong to
that third category. And certainly I must be mad; otherwise why should I be
working on you? And I should be a fool, I must be a fool; otherwise I would not
have initiated this madam into sannyas. You don't belong here.
But the problem is, everybody
who comes is asleep, unloving, and they can't see their sleep, they can't see
their unlovingness, they can't see their prejudices.
So many questions have come
from British ladies and British gentlemen saying, "The British lady is
just a myth and you should not be so interested in a myth. It is not a reality -
the British lady exists nowhere." But these same people believe that the
Polack exists, the Italian exists, the Jew exists; they are not myths...
because when I am joking about Jews or Italians or Polacks no British lady or
gentleman writes to me that these are myths - they are realities.
Now, no Jew, no Italian, no
Polack is writing to me that the British lady is a myth. Why are only the
British writing to me about it? Can't you see the point? And if it is a myth -
and I know it is a myth! - why not enjoy it? Why become so much worried about
it? Somewhere deep down you believe it is not a myth, otherwise why? Have a
good laugh and it is finished!
But your concern to make me
aware of the fact that the British lady does not exist... I know it! I am
surrounded by British ladies! I have more British ladies around me than I have
Jews or Polacks or Italians. I know it is a myth - but a beautiful myth!
And one thing is very good
about British ladies: they never disappoint you because from the very beginning
they are ice-a box-a. That must be said in their appreciation. The Italian lady
begins with a nice-a box-a; ultimately, finally, you find out, but then it is
too late, that she is not a nice-a box-a, she is an ice-a boxa. But the British
lady from the very beginning is clear; she never disappoints anybody. She is
truthful, sincere. If you want an ice-a box-a, it is your responsibility.
Buddha says: he moves with
love among the unloving... Yes, the master has to move among the
Polacks and the Italians and the Jews, the British and the French... and he has
to move with people who know nothing about love, although they all believe they
love. And the love of the master is so different that you cannot understand his
love. His love is very cool; to you it appears it is cold because you know only
two categories, cold or hot. You don't know the third category: cool, neither
cold nor hot.
Coolness is not coldness,
remember. The master is never cold, but certainly he is not hot either. You
know a love which is hot, passionate, lusty, and you know a love which has gone
dead, has become cold - ice-a box-a - everything has become frozen, it is a
corpse. But you don't know the third possibility: the coolness of love and the
freshness of that coolness. And the coolness has a paradoxical quality in it.
If you compare it with cold, then it is cool; if you compare it with hot, then
it is warm. It is exactly in the middle where warmth and coolness are one. The
master has a warmth which is cool and has a coolness which is warm, but that is
very difficult for people who live in extremes to understand.
He moves with love among the unloving, with
peace and detachment... He loves but he is never attached, and you
cannot understand a love which is not attached. To you love and attachment are
always associated; it is impossible for you to keep them separate. Love is
always attachment to you; the deeper the attachment, the more you think it is
love. But the master's love is utterly detached. He loves, yet he is not bound
by it. He loves, but he is not binding on you. You know a love which creates
excitement. The master's love is utterly peaceful; there is no excitement. It
is nothing to do with romance.
He moves... Among the hungry...
The people who are always desiring more, Buddha calls them hungry, constantly
hungry. They go on stuffing themselves with every kind of thing and they are
never satisfied. Their hunger is impossible, their thirst is unquenchable. The
more you give, the more they want. They are never grateful.
... And querulous. And, of
course, when they are always hankering for more they are quarreling with each
other. The master is never querulous, he is never hungry. He is fully
contented, utterly contented, absolutely contented. He has arrived! He asks for
nothing. Hence it becomes more and more difficult for you to understand him.
Like a mustard seed from the point of a
needle
Hatred has fallen from him,
And lust, hypocrisy and pride.
The most important thing to
remember is: these things have fallen from him. He has not dropped them, they
have fallen. If you drop them they will hang around you. He has not repressed
them, he has transcended them - and the difference is great. If you repress
them they will always be with you. If you repress lust it will spread deep down
inside your being like cancer. If you repress hypocrisy you will be creating a
deeper kind of hypocrisy, that's all. If you repress pride you will become a
pious egoist.
Beware of it. Millions are
befooled by this because repression is easy, anybody can do it. It needs no
intelligence; it needs only a little stubborn stupidity and you can do it. You
just have to be a little stubborn, you have to insist and you have to force
something inside yourself. You have to put pressure on it, you have to sit upon
it. But then you will be in trouble. It is always there boiling, ready to
explode any moment.
Three priests - an archbishop,
a bishop and a rather young, newly ordained priest - stood in the lobby in the
airport. The archbishop told the priest to get the tickets while they took care
of the baggage.
The priest approached the
ticket counter, noting the shapely, seductively dressed young woman behind the
counter. By the time she got around to him he was quite flustered by her and
stammered, "I would like three pickets to Tittsburgh."
Embarrassed and ashamed, he ran
from the counter back to his two companions. He told the archbishop,
"Father, I am sorry, I cannot get the tickets. Furthermore, I have
sinned... I was tempted by the flesh!"
The archbishop said, "You
are young, my son, and weak - we shall pray on your problem."
The archbishop then sent the
bishop for the tickets. The bishop, though not easily swayed in his faith, was
also quite taken with the young woman's beauty. He said, to her, "I must
apologize for my brother - he is young. Now, I would like three tickets to
Pittsburgh and I would like the change in nipples and dimes."
Shocked by his slip and
completely overwhelmed by embarrassment, he returned to the archbishop without
the tickets.
The archbishop was by now quite
angry at both the priests and the young woman. He then went for the tickets
himself. He said, "I would like three tickets to Pittsburgh and I would
like my change in nickels and dimes."
As the young woman began
processing the tickets, the archbishop said, "Look at you... you should be
ashamed. How do you dare to leave the house that way? Why, your breasts are not
covered and your skirt is entirely too short. Every man who approaches you is tempted.
When you go to heaven," he said, with his voice raising in pitch,
"Saint Finger will surely shake his peter at you!"
That is bound to happen. Hence
Buddha says: like
a musard seed from the point of a needle hatred has fallen from him...
He has not dropped it or repressed it; it has fallen of its own accord. ... And lust,
hypocrisy and pride.
How does this miracle happen
that these things fall of their own accord? They fall of their own accord if
you become more aware of them - not repression but awareness is needed.
Repression makes them more unconscious and more dangerous. Become more
conscious of them, watch them, meditate over them. And as you become more and
more capable of watching all kinds of thoughts in your mind, you will become
more and more detached from them. You will come to know that the observer is
separate from the observed, that they are there like the traffic on the road
and you are just a spectator. They have nothing to do with you, they are not
part of your being. Repress them and they become part of your being. Repress
them and you become more and more controlled by them. You will remain afraid
your whole life if you repress anything. Repression creates fear, because you
know it is there - any opportunity and it can arise again.
My approach is also the same:
don't repress anything - watch. Nothing has to be repressed, everything has to
be watched. Just by being watchful things start dropping on their own. And then
there is a beauty because a silence comes to you, a stillness comes to you
which is not forced, not cultivated.
He offends no one.
Yet he speaks the truth.
His words are clear
But never harsh.
He offends no one - he cannot
because all violence has disappeared from him - but he speaks the truth. If truth
offends you, then he is helpless. There is no intention to offend you, but if
you are living in lies then truth offends. About that the master cannot do
anything, he has to say the truth. In fact, he says only the truth; otherwise
he is not interested in saying anything to you.
The little baby was very quiet.
He never cried or chuckled or said "Mama" or "Dadda."
When he was three, the parents
began to get rather worried, thinking he might never talk at all.
At last, when the child was
seven years old, he suddenly spoke. They were sitting having lunch when he
said, "Not enough salt."
"Good gracious!"
exclaimed his mother. Then she asked, "How is it that in seven years you
have never said a word?"
"Well," said the
child, "up to now everything has been alright!"
The master speaks only if
something is wrong; otherwise he keeps quiet, he remains silent. He speaks only
if something is wrong. But that can hurt you, that can offend you. To show that
something is wrong with you seems to be offensive to you. You love to be
appreciated, not criticized. You love to be buttressed, not to be criticized.
You love that your lies should be supported, not destroyed. But about that the
master cannot do anything. He has to shatter your lies, he has to bring the
truth to your notice. If truth hurts, then that is another matter; otherwise,
the master has no intention of hurting anybody. His words are clear but never harsh.
"How was Lady Hastings'
party?" Lord Peter was asked.
With an absentminded, faraway
glance in his eyes, he said, "Had the soup been as warm as the wine, had
the wine been as old as the chicken, had the chicken been as tender as the maid
and had the maid been as willing as the Lady, it would have been a great
party!"
The master will not be that
roundabout. He will simply say it clearly, although he is not harsh. But he can
appear harsh to you - that is your problem. He is always sweet, and if
sometimes he appears harsh to you, ponder over it, why he appeared harsh to
you. Maybe something was inside you that started pinching, that started
hurting. Maybe there was a wound inside you that you were hiding and the master
hit the wound. He has to hit your wounds. He has to pull much pus out of your
being. It hurts. The master is a surgeon.
Buddha himself has said again
and again: I am not a preacher but a physician.
Whatever is not his
He refuses,
Good or bad, great or small.
That's exactly the definition
of meditation according to Buddha and according to all other buddhas too. Watch
your mind, and whatever is not yours, whether it is good or bad, great or
small, don't get identified with it, don't accept it, go on refusing.
In the East this method is
called - even prior to Buddha it was called -
neti, neti, neither this nor that. Go on saying that "I am not this, I
am not this, I am not that either." Go on rejecting inside your being
whatsoever you can observe you are not.
Slowly slowly, eliminating all
that you are not, one day only that is left which you are. That day is a day of
great rejoicing. Then the watcher turns over onto itself. Nothing else to
watch, it starts watching itself. Nothing else to see, it starts seeing itself.
That is the moment you become a seer. That is the moment your wisdom explodes.
That is the moment when darkness disappears and there is just light and light
and nothing else.
He wants nothing from this world
And nothing from the next.
He is free.
Once you know that all that the
mind contains is not you, all that the mind craves is not you, all that the
mind is hungry for is not you, you are becoming free. Slowly slowly, desires
disappear. Seeing that all desires are basically futile, that all desires end
in frustration, seeing it on your own - not because I say it or the Buddha says
it - seeing it on your own, desiring evaporates. You are left without any
desire and there is no smoke of desire. Your flame of awareness burns bright,
and freedom is the fragrance of that flowering of awareness.
Ordinarily we are living like
robots. Ordinarily we are living mechanically. We are not conscious at all,
although we believe that we are conscious. We are not conscious at all. And
because we are not conscious, if we drop the desires of this world, then we
start desiring something in the other world. It is absolutely ridiculous.
See your so-called saints and
mahatmas desiring the same things that they have dropped desiring in this
world, but now they are desiring the same things in the other world...
Mohammedans believe that in their paradise there are streams of wine. Now this
seems to be very illogical! Here wine is a sin and there it is the reward -
reward for all your virtues. And you don't have to go to a pub - streams are
flowing everywhere! Here the woman is hell and the woman has to be renounced,
and there...?
In the Hindu paradise beautiful
women are available, always young, stuck at the age of sixteen; they don't grow
beyond that. In fact, I always wonder how they reached sixteen! They must have
been born sixteen years old from the mother's womb. Since then they have not
grown. And they have bodies of gold - solid gold, it seems! And not American
gold, mind you, pure gold, twenty-four-carat gold! And their eyes are made of
emeralds, pure green emeralds. And their bodies don't perspire of course, how
can they perspire? If their bodies are made of solid gold it is impossible to
perspire. They may melt in the heat, but they cannot perspire!
Here women have to be
renounced. And the Hindu scriptures say: The woman is the door to hell. And
there the mahatmas are provided with beautiful apsaras, beautiful women. What kind of nonsense is this?
And the same is the case with
all the religions. Because in Mohammed's time when the Koran was written
homosexuality was very prevalent in the Arabian countries, provision is made
for gay people also! In the Mohammedan paradise not only are beautiful women
available but beautiful boys too. They never grow their mustaches, they remain
always the same - young. Now here, in all the Mohammedan countries,
homosexuality is one of the greatest crimes. The homosexuals have to be
beheaded, death is the penalty. Can't you see the absurdity? In paradise you
will be provided with all kinds of beautiful boys! I am not against
homosexuality, I am simply against this absurdity. It is perfectly good,
generous - but then why are you against it here?
It is the stupid, unconscious
mind of man. He is ready to let go of something in this world, but then he
moves to the other extreme. He lets it go here, he renounces it here, and he
starts asking for it in the other - the same thing. The problem does not
change. From one problem he moves to another problem, from one desire to
another desire.
A fat, round-bottomed Italian
woman comes to the doctor's office with her husband. "My husband no
shit-a!" she exclaims.
The doctor gives her a small
bottle of cod-liver oil, saying, "Give him this tonight and he will be
alright tomorrow."
But the next day the woman
returns and says, "My husband no shit-a!"
So the doctor gives her a
bigger bottle with the same instructions.
The following day the woman is
back again: "My husband no shit-a!"
The doctor finally gives her a
huge bottle of cod-liver oil. The next day the woman comes back again.
"Doctor, Doctor," she
exclaims, "no husband, only shit-a!"
But the problem remains; now it
is the other extreme.
The seeker of truth has to be very
watchful not to move from one prison into another, from one desire into
another. He has to be very alert and aware. He has to de-automatize himself. He
has to become a man, not continue as a machine. You are born as a machine, and
unless you make a great effort, you will remain as a machine and you will die
as a machine. Make every effort to become aware so that you are no more a
machine. Then the real man is born.
A wild West cowboy purchases a
horse from the local priest. "This horse is very special," the
priests explains. "When you shout, 'Praise to the Lord' this horse will
start galloping like crazy and the only way to stop it is to call out,
'Amen!'"
At once the man jumps up on the
horse's back and shouts, "Praise to the Lord!"
He shoots like an arrow across
the desert. Suddenly he becomes aware of a steep canyon ahead of him.
"Goddam! I forgot the other command," he says. "What shall I do
with no means to slow down this mad horse?"
Cursing and sweating, he
approaches the deep canyon, and at the last moment he remembers:
"Amen!" And just above the gorge the horse comes to a standstill.
Trembling and relieved, with
tears in his eyes, the cowboy looks up to the sky and says, "Praise to the
Lord!"
Enough for today.
