Osho –
Dhammapada: The Way of The Buddha (Volume 8)
Chapter 5. Be
in the world and be holy
There is pleasure
And there is bliss.
Forgo the first to possess the second.
If you are happy
At the expense of another man's happiness,
You are forever bound.
You do not what you should.
You do what you should not.
You are reckless, and desire grows.
But the master is wakeful.
He watches his body.
In all his actions he discriminates,
And he becomes pure.
He is without blame
Though once he may have murdered
His mother and his father,
Two kings, a kingdom, and all its subjects.
Though the kings were holy
And their subjects among the virtuous,
Yet he is blameless.
The first sutra:
There is pleasure
And there is bliss.
Forgo the first to possess the second.
Meditate over it as deeply as
possible, because it contains one of the most fundamental truths. These four
words will have to be understood, pondered over. The first is pleasure, the
second, happiness; the third is joy, and the fourth is bliss.
Pleasure is physical,
physiological. Pleasure is the most superficial thing in life; it is
titillation. It can be sexual, it can be of other senses, it can become an
obsession with food, but it is rooted in the body. The body is your periphery,
your circumference; it is not your center. And to live on the circumference is
to live on the mercy of all kinds of things that go on happening around you.
The man who seeks pleasure remains at the mercy of accidents.
It is like the waves in the
ocean; they are at the mercy of the winds. When strong winds come, they are
there; when winds disappear, they disappear. They don't have an independent
existence; they are dependent, and anything that is dependent on the other
brings bondage.
Pleasure is dependent on the
other. If you love a woman, if that is your pleasure, then that woman becomes
your master. If you love a man, if that is your pleasure and you feel unhappy,
in despair, sad, without him, then you have created a bondage for yourself. You
have created a prison, you are no more in freedom.
If you are a seeker after money
and power, then you will be dependent on money and power. The man who goes on
accumulating money, if it is his pleasure to have more and more money, will
become more and more miserable - because the more he has, the more he wants,
and the more he has, the more he is afraid to lose it. A double-edged sword:
the more he wants... the first edge of the sword. Hence he becomes more and
more miserable.
The more you demand, desire,
the more you feel yourself lacking something, the more hollow, empty, you
appear to yourself. On the other hand - the other edge of the sword - is that
the more you have, the more you are afraid it can be taken away; it can be
stolen. The bank can go bankrupt, the political situation in the country can
change, the country can go communist. There are a thousand and one things upon
which your money depends. Your money does not make you a master, it makes you a
slave.
Pleasure is peripheral; hence
it is bound to depend on the outer circumstances. And it is only titillation.
If food is pleasure, what
actually is being enjoyed? - just the taste! For a moment, when the food passes
your taste buds on the tongue, you feel a sensation which you interpret as
pleasure. It is your interpretation. Today it may look like pleasure and
tomorrow it may not look like pleasure. If you go on eating the same food every
day your buds on the tongue will become nonresponsive to it. Soon you will be
fed up with it - that's how people become fed up.
One day you are running after a
man or a woman and the next day you are trying to find an excuse to get rid of
the other. The same person, nothing has changed! What has happened meanwhile?
You are bored with the other, because the whole pleasure was in knowing the
new. Now the other is no longer new; you are acquainted with the territory of
the other. You are acquainted with the body of the other, the curves of the
body, the feel of the body. Now the mind is hankering for something new.
The mind is always hankering
for something new. That's how mind keeps you always tethered somewhere in the
future. It keeps you hoping, but it never delivers the goods - it cannot. It
can only create new hopes, new desires.
Just as leaves grow on the
trees, desires and hopes grow in the mind. You wanted a new house and now you
have it - and where is the pleasure? Just for the moment it was there, when you
achieved your goal. Once you have achieved your goal, your mind is no longer
interested in it; it has already started spinning new webs of desire. It has
already started thinking of other, bigger houses. And this is so about
everything.
Pleasure keeps you in a
neurotic state, restless, always in turmoil. So many desires, and every desire
unquenchable, clamoring for attention. You remain a victim of a crowd of insane
desires - insane because they are unfulfillable - and they go on dragging you
into different directions. You become a contradiction.
One desire takes you to the
left, another towards the right, and simultaneously you go on nourishing both
the desires. And then you feel a split, then you feel divided, then you feel
torn apart, then you feel like you are falling into pieces. Nobody is responsible.
It is the whole stupidity of
desiring pleasure that creates this.
And it is a complex phenomenon.
You are not the only one who is seeking pleasure; millions of people just like
you are seeking the same pleasures. Hence there is great struggle, competition,
violence, war. All have become enemies to each other because they are all
seeking the same goal, and they all can't have it; hence the struggle has to be
total. You have to risk all - for nothing, because when you gain, you gain
nothing, and your whole life is wasted in this struggle. A life which might
have been a celebration becomes a long, drawn out, unnecessary struggle.
When you are so much after
pleasure you cannot love, because the man who seeks pleasure uses the other as
a means. And to use the other as a means is one of the most immoral acts
possible, because each being is an end unto himself, you cannot use the other
as a means. But in pleasure-seeking you have to use the other as a means. You
become cunning because it is such a struggle. If you are not cunning you will
be deceived, and before others deceive you, you have to deceive them.
Machiavelli has advised
pleasure-seekers that the best way of defense is to attack.
Never wait for the other to
attack you; that may be too late. Before the other attacks you, you attack him!
That is the best way of defense. And this is being followed, whether you know
Machiavelli or not.
This is something very strange:
people know about Christ, about Buddha, about Mohammed, about Krishna; nobody
follows them. People don't know much about Chanakya and Machiavelli, but people
follow them - as if Machiavelli and Chanakya are very close to your heart! You
need not read them, you are already following them.
Your whole society is based on
Machiavellian principles; that's what the whole political game is all about.
Before somebody snatches anything from you, snatch it from the other. Be always
on guard. Naturally, if you are always on guard you will be tense, anxious,
worried. And the struggle IS such and it is constant. You are one, and the
enemies are millions.
For example, if in India you
want to become the prime minister, then millions of people, who also want to
become the prime minister, are your enemies. And who does not want to become
the prime minister? One may say, one may not say. So everyone is against you
and you are against everybody else. This small life of seventy, eighty years,
will be wasted into some utterly futile effort. Pleasure is not and cannot be
the goal of life.
The second word to be
understood is happiness. Happiness is psychological, pleasure is physiological.
Happiness is a little better, a little more refined, a little higher, but not
very much different from pleasure. You can say that pleasure is a lower kind of
happiness and happiness is a little higher kind of pleasure - two sides of the
same coin.
Pleasure is a little primitive,
animal; happiness is a little more cultured, a little more human - but it is
the same game played in the world of the mind. You are not so much concerned
with physiological sensations; you are much more concerned with psychological
sensations. But basically they are not different; hence Buddha has not talked
about four words, he has talked about only two.
The third is joy; joy is
spiritual. It is different, totally different from pleasure, happiness.
It has nothing to do with the
other; it is inner. It is not dependent on circumstances; it is your own. It is
not a titillation produced by things; it is a state of peace, of silence, a
meditative state. It is spiritual.
But Buddha has not talked about
joy either, because there is still one thing that goes beyond joy. He calls it
bliss. Bliss is total. It is neither physiological nor psychological nor
spiritual. It knows no division, it is indivisible. It is total in one sense
and transcendental in another sense. Buddha only talks about two words. The
first is pleasure; it includes happiness. The second is bliss; it includes joy.
Bliss means you have reached to
the very innermost core of your being. It belongs to the ultimate depth of your
being where even the ego is no more, where only silence prevails; you have
disappeared. In joy you are a little bit, but in bliss you are not. The ego has
dissolved; it is a state of nonbeing.
Buddha calls it nirvana.
Nirvana means you have ceased to be; you are just an infinite emptiness like
the sky. And the moment you are that infinity, you become full of the stars,
and a totally new life begins. You are reborn.
Pleasure is momentary, of time,
for the time being; bliss is nontemporal, timeless.
Pleasure begins and ends; bliss
abides forever. Pleasure comes and goes; bliss never comes, never goes - it is
already there in the innermost core of your being. Pleasure has to be snatched
away from the other; you become either a beggar or a thief. Bliss makes you a
master. Bliss is not something that you invent but something that you discover.
Bliss is your innermost nature.
It has been there since the very beginning, you just have not looked at it, you
have taken it for granted. You don't look inwards.
This is the only misery of man:
that he goes on looking outwards, seeking and searching. And you cannot find it
in the outside because it is not there.
One evening, Rabiya was
searching for something on the street in front of her small hut.
The sun was setting; slowly
slowly darkness was descending. A few people gathered.
They asked the old woman - she
was a famous Sufi mystic - "What are you doing?
What have you lost? What are
you searching for?"
She said, "I have lost my
needle."
The people said, "Now the
sun is setting and it will be very difficult to find the needle, but we will
help you. Where exactly has it fallen? - because the road is big and the needle
is so small. If we know the exact place it will be easier to find it."
Rabiya said, "If you don't
ask me that question, that will be better - because in fact it has not fallen
on the road at all! It has fallen inside my house."
The people started laughing and
they said, "We had always thought that you are a little insane! If the
needle has fallen inside the house, then why are you searching on the
road?"
Rabiya said, "For a
simple, logical reason: inside the house there is no light and on the outside a
little light is still there."
The people laughed and started
dispersing.
Rabiya called them and said,
"Listen! That's exactly what you are doing; I was just following your
example. You go on seeking bliss in the outside world without asking the first
and primary question: Where have you lost it? And I tell you, you have lost it
inside. You are looking for it on the outside, for the simple, logical reason
that your senses open outwards - there is a little more light. Your eyes look
outwards, your ears hear outwards, your hands reach outwards; that's the simple
reason why you are searching there. Otherwise, I tell you, you have not lost it
outside - and I tell you on my own authority. I have also searched on the
outside for many, many lives, and the day I looked in I was surprised. There was
no need to seek and search; it has always been there."
Bliss is your innermost core.
Pleasure you have to beg from others; naturally you become dependent. Bliss
makes you a master. Bliss is not something that happens; it is already the
case.
Buddha says: there is
pleasure and there is bliss. Forgo the first to possess the second.
Stop looking on the outside. Look within, turn in. Start seeking and searching
in your own interiority, into your own subjectivity. Bliss is not an object to
be found anywhere else; it is your consciousness.
In the East we have always
defined the ultimate truth as sat-chit-anand. Sat means truth, chit means consciousness, anand means bliss. They are all three
faces of the same reality. This is the true trinity - not God the Father, and
the Son, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost; that is not the true trinity. The
true trinity is truth, consciousness, bliss. And they are not separate
phenomena, but one energy expressing in three ways, one energy having three
faces. Hence in the East we say God is trimurti
- God has three faces. These are the real faces, not Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh.
Those are for the children - spiritually, metaphysically, for the immature.
Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh: those
names are for the beginners.
Truth, consciousness, bliss -
these are the ultimate truths. First comes truth; as you enter in, you become
aware of your eternal reality: sat, truth. As you go deeper into your reality,
into your sat, into your truth, you become aware of consciousness, a tremendous
consciousness. All is light, nothing is dark. All is awareness, nothing is
unawareness. You are just a flame of consciousness, not even a shadow of
unconsciousness anywhere. And when you enter still deeper, then the ultimate
core is bliss - anand.
Buddha says: Forgo everything
that you have thought up to now meaningful, significant. Sacrifice everything
for this ultimate because this is the only thing that will make you contented,
that will make you fulfilled, that will bring spring to your being... and you will
blossom into a thousand and one flowers.
Pleasure will keep you a
driftwood. Pleasure will make you more and more cunning; it will not give you
wisdom. And it will make you more and more a slave; it will not give you the
kingdom of God. It will make you more and more calculating, it will make you
more and more exploitative. It will make you more and more political,
diplomatic. You will start sucking people; that's what people are doing.
The husband says to the wife,
"I love you," but in reality he simply uses her. The wife says she
loves the husband, but she is simply using him. The husband may be using her as
a sexual object and the wife may be using him as a financial security.
Pleasure makes everybody
cunning, deceptive. And to be cunning is to miss the bliss of being innocent,
is to miss the bliss of being a child.
At Lockheed, a part was needed
for a new airplane and an announcement was sent around the world to get the
lowest bid. From Poland came a bid of three thousand dollars. England offered to
build the part for six thousand. The asking price from Israel was nine
thousand. Richardson, the engineer in charge of constructing the new plane,
decided to visit each country to find the reason behind the disparity of the
bids.
In Poland, the manufacturer
explained, "One thousand for the materials needed, one thousand for the
labor, and one thousand for overhead and a tiny profit."
In England, Richardson
inspected the part and found that it was almost as good as the Polish-made one.
"Why are you asking six thousand?" inquired the engineer.
"Two thousand for
material," explained the Englishman, "two thousand for labor, and two
thousand for expenses and a small profit."
In Israel, the Lockheed
representative wandered through a back alley into a small shop and encountered
an elderly man who had submitted the bid of nine thousand dollars.
"Why are you asking that
much?" he asked.
"Well," said the old
Jew, "three thousand for you, three thousand for me, and three thousand
for the schmuck in Poland!"
Money, power, prestige - they
all make you cunning.
Seek pleasure and you will lose
your innocence; and to lose your innocence is to lose all.
Jesus says: be like a small child,
only then can you enter into my kingdom of God. And he is right. But the
pleasure-seeker cannot be as innocent as a child. He has to be very clever,
very cunning, very political; only then can he succeed in this cut-throat
competition that exists all around. Everybody is at everybody else's throat.
You are not living amongst friends. The world cannot be friendly unless we drop
this idea of competitiveness.
But we bring every child...
From the very beginning we start poisoning every child with this poison of
competitiveness. By the time he will be coming out of the university he will be
completely poisoned. We have hypnotized him with the idea that he has to fight
with others, that life is a survival of the fittest. Then life can never be a
celebration.
Then life can never have any
kind of religiousness in it. Then it cannot be pious, holy.
Then it cannot have any quality
of sacredness. Then it is all mean, ugly.
Buddha says: forgo the first
to possess the second.
If you are happy
At the expense of another man's happiness,
You are forever bound.
Naturally. If you are happy at
the expense of another man's happiness - and that is how you can be happy,
there is no other way. If you find a beautiful woman and somehow manage to
possess her, you have snatched her away from others' hands. We make things look
as beautiful as possible, but that is only the appearance. Now the others who
have lost in the game, they are angry, they are in a rage. They will wait for
their opportunity to take revenge, and sooner or later the opportunity will be
there.
Whatsoever you possess in this
world you possess at somebody else's expense, at the cost of somebody else's
pleasure. There is no other way. If you really want not to be inimical to
anybody in the world, you have to drop the whole idea of possessiveness.
Use whatsoever happens to be
with you in the moment, but don't be possessive. Don't try to claim that it is
yours. Nothing is yours, all is God's.
We come with empty hands and we
will go with empty hands, so what is the point of claiming so much in the meantime?
But this is what we know, what
the world is: possess, dominate, have more than the others have. And it may be
money or it may be virtue; it does not matter in what kind of coins you deal -
they may be worldly, they may be otherworldly. But be very clever, otherwise
you will be exploited. Exploit and don't be exploited - that is the subtle
message given to you with your mother's milk. And every school, college,
university, is rooted in the idea: compete.
A real education will not teach
you to compete; it will teach you to cooperate. It will not teach you to fight
and come first. It will teach you to be creative, to be loving, to be blissful,
without any comparison with the other. It will not teach you that you can be
happy only when you are the first. That is sheer nonsense. You can't be happy
just by being first. And in trying to be first you go through such misery that
you become habituated to misery by the time you become the first.
By the time you become the
president or the prime minister of a country you have gone through such misery
that now misery is your second nature. You don't know now any other way to
exist; you remain miserable. Tension has become ingrained, anxiety has become
your way of life. You don't know any other way; this is your very style. So
even though you have become the first you remain cautious, anxious, afraid. It
does not change your inner quality at all.
A real education will not teach
you to be the first. It will tell you to enjoy whatsoever you are doing, not
for the result but for the act itself. Just like a painter or a dancer or a
musician...
You can paint in two ways. You
can paint to compete with other painters; you want to be the greatest painter
in the world, you want to be a Picasso or a Van Gogh. Then your painting will
be second-rate, because your mind is not interested in painting itself; it is
interested in being the first, the greatest painter in the world. You are not
going deep into the art of painting. You are not enjoying it, you are only
using it as a stepping- stone. You are on an ego trip.
And the problem is: to really
be a painter, you have to drop the ego completely. To really be a painter, the
ego has to be put aside. Only then can God flow through you.
Only then can he use your hands
and your fingers and your brush. Only then something of superb beauty can be
born.
It is never BY you but only through
you. Existence flows; you become only a passage. You allow it to happen, that's
all; you don't hinder, that's all.
But if you are too interested in
the result, the ultimate result - that you have to become famous, that you have
to win the Nobel Prize, that you have to be the first painter in the world,
that you have to defeat all other painters hitherto - then your interest is not
in painting; painting is secondary. And of course, with a secondary interest in
painting you can't paint something original; it will be ordinary.
Ego cannot bring anything
extraordinary into the world; the extraordinary comes only through egolessness.
And so is the case with the musician and the poet and the dancer.
And so is the case with
everybody.
In the Gita, Krishna says:
Don't think of the result at all. It is a message of tremendous beauty and
significance and truth. Don't think of the result at all. Just do what you are
doing with your totality. Get lost into it. Lose the doer in the doing. Don't
be - let your creative energies flow unhindered.
That's why he said to Arjuna,
"Don't escape from the war... because I can see this is just an ego trip,
this escape. The way you are talking simply shows that you are calculating: that
you are thinking that by escaping from the war you will become a great mahatma.
Rather than surrendering to
God, to the whole, you are taking yourself too seriously: as if, if you are not
there, there will be no war."
Krishna says to Arjuna,
"Listen to me. Just be in a state of let-go. Say to God, 'Use me in
whatsoever way you want to use me. Use me! I am available, unconditionally
available.'
Then whatsoever happens through
you will have a great authenticity about it. It will have intensity, it will
have depth. It will have the impact of the eternal on it. It will be signed by
God, not by you. And you will rejoice because God has chosen you to be a
vehicle."
Buddha says: if you are happy
at the expense of another man's happiness, you are forever bound.
And happiness, pleasure, depend
on exploitation. You are always at the expense of somebody else. You come first
in the university - what about those thousands of other students who were also
struggling to come first? It is at their expense that you have come first.
Jesus says: Remember, those who
are first in this world will be the last in my kingdom of God, and those who
are the last will be the first. He has given you the fundamental law - Aes Dhammo Sanantano - he has given
you the inexhaustible, eternal law: Stop trying to be the first.
But remember one thing which is
very much possible, because the mind is so cunning it can distort every truth.
You can start trying to be the last - but then you miss the whole point. Then
another competition starts: that I'm to be the last, and if somebody else says,
"I am the last," then the struggle, then the conflict.
I have heard a Sufi parable:
A great emperor, Nadirshah, was
praying. It was early morning; the sun had not yet risen, it was still dark.
Nadirshah was to start on that day a new conquest of a new country. Of course
he was praying to God for his blessings to be victorious. He was saying to God,
"I am nobody, I am just a servant - a servant of your servants. Bless me.
I am going on your work, this
is your victory. And I am nobody, remember. I am just a servant of your servants."
The priest was also by his
side, helping him in prayer, functioning as a mediator between him and God.
And then suddenly they heard in
the darkness another voice. A beggar of the town was also praying, and he was
saying to God, "I am also nobody, a servant of your servants."
The king said to the priest,
"Look at this beggar! He is a beggar and saying to God that 'I am nobody'!
Stop this nonsense! Who are you to say you are nobody before me? I am nobody,
and nobody else can claim this. And I am the servant of his servants - and who
are you to say that you are the servant of the servants?"
Now you see, the competition is
still there, the same competition, the same stupidity.
Nothing has changed. The same
calculation: "I have to be the last. Nobody else can be allowed to be the last."
Mind can go on playing such
games on you if you are not very understanding, if you are not very
intelligent.
One thing Buddha wants you to
remember is: never try to be happy at the expense of another man's happiness.
That is ugly, inhuman. That is violence in the true sense. If you are a saint
by condemning others as sinners, your saintliness is nothing but a new ego
trip. If you are holy because you are trying to prove others unholy... and
that's what your holy people go on doing. They go on bragging about their
holiness, saintliness.
Go to your so-called saints and
look into their eyes. They have such condemnation for you. They are saying that
you are all bound towards hell. They go on condemning.
Listen to their sermons; all
their sermons are condemnatory. And of course you listen silently to their
condemnations because you know also that you have made many mistakes in your
life, errors in your life. And they have condemned everything so it is
impossible to feel that you can be good - impossible. You love food, you are a
sinner.
You love your children, you are
a sinner. You love your wife, you are a sinner. You don't get up early in the
morning, you are a sinner. You don't go to bed early in the evening, you are a
sinner. They have arranged everything in such a way that it is very difficult
not to be a sinner.
Yes, they are not sinners -
they go early to bed and they get up early in the morning.
In fact, they have nothing else
to do! And they never commit any mistakes because they never do anything. They
are just sitting there almost dead. They are mummies, corpses, full of rubbish!
But because they don't do anything they are holy. And if you do something, of
course, how can you be holy? Hence for centuries the holy man has been
renouncing the world and escaping from the world, because to be in the world
and be holy seems to be impossible.
My whole approach is: unless
you are in the world your holiness is of no worth at all.
Be in the world and be holy!
Then we have to define holiness in a totally different way.
Don't live at the expense of
others' pleasures - that is holiness. Don't destroy others' happiness - that is
not holiness. Help others to be happy. Create the climate in which everybody
can have a little joy.
And what have your saints done?
They have done just the opposite. They have created a climate in which
everybody is living in hell - and they are holy. They have condemned God's
world and they have taught you to renounce it.
If God is against the world he
should have renounced it himself! But he has not yet renounced. Still the
spring comes and the flowers bloom, the bees buzz and the birds sing... and the
sun still rises, and the night is full of stars. Still new babies go on coming.
God has not stopped creation.
It is all nonsense that in six
days he created the world and since then he has retired - it is all nonsense!
He can't have a single holiday, because if God goes for a single holiday we
will all be dead. Then who will breathe life into us? Then who will be the
color in the flowers and the wings of the birds? And who will be the light in
the sun and the greenness of the grass? If for twenty-four hours he goes on a
holiday, if he has a Sunday, finished - everything is finished! He can't have a
holiday - and he need not have.
He loves the world; it is his
creation. It is not work, it is creativity. It is his joy, it is his play. Do
you think on Sunday morning birds don't sing because it is Sunday and they are
not going to do any work? Sunday or Monday, it makes no difference. The birds
sing and the trees grow and you breathe and existence continues in its
celebration without any gap, without any discontinuity.
God has not renounced the world
- and your saints are bigger than God, higher than God, holier than God
himself! My own feeling is: God must be afraid of your saints.
That's why he never appears
before them - because they will condemn him. They will tell him how many
mistakes and how many sins he has committed, and they will ask him how many
fasts he has done and how many prayers he is doing every day. And of course he
will be at a loss - he does not pray and he does not fast and he does not read
the holy scriptures! He will look very irreligious.
But these saints had to create
this idea: that your life is a sin. You are conceived in sin and you live in
sin, and in death you will be dying as a sinner. You are doomed! That gives
them great joy. They feel holier-than-thou, they feel they are saved - the
chosen few.
I tell you, there is no
difference between a sinner and a saint. All are chosen and all will be saved -
all are saved. God is always surrounding you. What more do you need?
Everybody is saved.
But if this is the truth, then
your saints will start disappearing - with their big egos. It will be very
difficult for them to exist. They are living at your expense. The worse sinner
they prove you to be, the more saintly they look; hence they have invented many
things. Catholics have confession. It is a great joy to the priest to listen to
everybody's sins. The more you talk about your sin, the more he feels holy.
If you are happy at the expense of another
man's happiness,
You are forever bound.
The dumbest kid in class showed
up at the reunion with a gorgeous blond on his arm and a Cadillac at the curb.
He showered drinks on everybody. Stunned, one old friend asked, "How did
you do it, Abe? You were always slow in math."
"Well," said Abe,
"you buy something for a dollar and you sell it for two and that lousy one
percent really adds up!"
That's what everybody is doing,
whether you know mathematics or you don't.
Everybody is exploiting
everybody else. Everybody's hand is in somebody else's pocket; and he may not
be able to detect it because his own hand is in somebody else's pocket.
But then you will depend on the
others, you
are forever bound. Whomsoever you exploit, on the surface you seem
to be the master of the situation, but really you are a slave.
The new neighbor joined the
mah-jongg group for the first time, and all the ladies gaped at the huge
diamond she wore. "It is the third most famous diamond in the world,"
she told the women. "First is the Kohinoor diamond, then the Hope diamond,
and then this one - the Horowitz diamond."
"It is beautiful!"
said Mrs. Fisch, "You are so lucky!"
"Not so lucky,"
sighed the newcomer. "Unfortunately, with the famous Horowitz diamond, I
am afflicted with the famous Horowitz curse."
"What is that?" asked
Mrs. Fisch.
"Mr. Horowitz," said
the woman.
That's how it is: if you depend
on someone for your happiness you are becoming a slave, you are becoming
dependent, you are creating a bondage. And you depend on so many people; they
all become subtle masters and they all exploit you in return. It is a mutual
arrangement, remember. Exploitation is never a one-way traffic. The husband
thinks he is the master, and the wife smiles because she knows better who is
the master.
One day Mulla Nasruddin's wife
was running after him with a stick. To save himself he slipped underneath the
bed. The wife is a fat woman and she could not enter.
Mulla said, "Now you know
who is the master of the house!"
And then exactly at that
moment, somebody knocked on the door; some neighbors had come. The wife started
asking Mulla to come out. "We can finish this quarrel later on.
Now the neighbors are
there."
Mulla said, "Let them
come! Let everybody know once and for all who is the master of this house! I am
the master, and wherever I want to sit I will sit!"
What kind of mastery is this -
sitting underneath the bed?
But every husband thinks that
he is the master and every wife thinks that she is the master. Even small
children... parents think they are the masters; they are wrong. The children
know how to manipulate you, they know how to create trouble for you - in the
right moment. When the neighbors are in the house they start exploiting you,
they start demanding this and that. When you are in the marketplace, in the
shopping center, they create a tantrum, and you have to purchase the toy they
want. If others were not there you would have given them a good beating - but
when others are there you are very polite, very cultured. Let the neighbors
come, then they will see! They have their own times, opportunities, when to
manipulate you.
Every child knows - even a
small child knows - how to exploit the mother, the father, and when. When the
father starts reading his newspaper, he starts asking questions. He won't allow
the father to read the newspaper unless his demands are fulfilled.
Everybody in his own way tries
to be the master of the other. And in fact, it is a strange situation:
everybody has become in a sense the master of others, and also a slave of
others. It is a double-bind situation. We are all interdependent; we are both
jailors and prisoners.
You do not what you should.
You do what you should not.
You are reckless, and desire grows.
Buddha says: You go on doing
that which you should not - and you know it; and you go on doing things which
harm you, harm others. Still you persist in doing them because you seem to be
almost incapable of remaining conscious. You are so unconscious; that's why you
do not what you should and you do what you should not.
He is not giving you
commandments: that you should do this and you should not do that. He is simply
making it clear to you that you are so unconscious that you go on harming
yourself and others. You have to become conscious. With consciousness, your
life starts changing.
Women's liberation has become
an integral part of Egyptian society despite the traditional disapproval of
girls who date many different men.
One night, Sabra was sitting in
a car with a boy who began kissing her passionately while removing her dress.
She started to sob.
"Why are you crying?"
he asked.
"I am afraid you will take
me for the wrong kind of girl. I am not that kind."
"Stop crying - I believe
you."
"You are the first
man," sobbed Sabra.
"You mean I am the first
man to do this with you?"
"No. You are the first man
to believe me."
People don't know what they are
doing, don't know what they are saying. People know only when they have done
it, only when they have said it. People know only when it is too late to change
anything, when the harm is already done.
You are reckless, and desire grows. And
in this unconscious soil nothing but desire grows. Desire is like weeds. If you
don't look after your garden, roses will disappear soon and there will be weeds
and weeds.
Mulla Nasruddin has purchased a
new house and he planted a beautiful garden, a beautiful lawn. Then a new
neighbor moved into the empty house by the side of Mulla's house. He was
enchanted with Mulla's garden and his lawn. He said, "I would also like to
make a beautiful lawn, but how do you know what is grass and what is just
weeds?"
Mulla said, "Very simple.
You pull out both and throw them. Whatsoever grows again on its own is
weeds."
Weeds grow on their own; you
need not take any care of them. That's how it is with the unconscious desires:
they grow on their own. They are rooted in your biology, in your past, in your
physiology, in your hormones, in your chemistry.
Consciousness has to be
deliberate. One has to make arduous effort to be conscious.
And when you are conscious you
do that which should be done and you do not do that which should not be done.
Buddha is not giving you
detailed information about what should be done and what should not be done.
That is the difference between Buddha and other masters. He simply gives you
the master key which unlocks all the locks; there is no need to go on carrying
a thousand keys for every lock.
Buddha says: Be conscious and
that's enough. Then things will start changing in your life.
... The master is wakeful.
That is the fundamental key.
He watches his body.
In all his actions he discriminates,
And he becomes pure.
Now this word 'discrimination'
is not the right translation. Buddha's word is vivek.
Vivek can be translated in two
ways: either as "discrimination" or as "awareness."
Whenever Buddha and Mahavira
use the word 'vivek' they use it in the sense of awareness, never in the sense
of discrimination - because discrimination means thinking. You are thinking,
"This is good and this is not good. This I should do and this I should not
do."
Awareness is not thinking; it
is clear insight. It is not a question of choosing - awareness is choiceless.
You simply know that this is the only thing that can be done; there is no
alternative. You don't choose, you don't weigh which is better. You simply know
- your whole heart knows - that this is so, and you can't go against it.
In all his actions he is aware, and he becomes
pure. Awareness brings purity, innocence.
He is without blame
Though once he may have murdered
His mother and his father,
Two kings, a kingdom, and all its subjects.
Though the kings were holy
And their subjects among the virtuous,
Yet he is blameless.
In Buddha's time, these were
considered to be the greatest crimes: to kill your own father and mother, and
to kill the king.
Buddha says: A man who becomes
aware, for him his whole past is like a dream; it disappears without leaving
even a trace behind it. It is as if in the dream you kill your father and
mother and when in the morning you wake up, do you go to the priest to confess
that you have committed a great sin? - you killed your father and mother in the
dream. Or do you go to apologize to your parents, that "Forgive me - I
killed you last night"? You simply forget all about it. It is a dream, it
doesn't matter. The father and mother are not killed.
Buddha says: When you become
aware, all that you have done in your unawareness, in your unconsciousness, in
your sleep, in your metaphysical sleep, is nothing but a dream.
And remember: bad deeds are
dreams, good deeds are dreams. Your being a sinner in a dream is a dream as
much as your being a saint. When you wake up you are neither a sinner nor a
saint. You are simply awareness.
Once Buddha was asked,
"Who are you? Are you a god?"
He said, "No."
"Are you an angel?"
He said, "No."
"Are you a Chakravartin - a great emperor of all
the world?"
He said, "No."
The questioner was very much
puzzled. He said, "You go on saying no to everything.
At least you must be a human
being! Now you cannot say no."
Buddha laughed and said,
"Yes, I will still say no!"
"Then who are you?"
the man asked, annoyed.
Buddha said, "I am just
awareness. All these human beings and angels and gods, they were part of my
metaphysical sleep. That sleep is no longer there; I have become
awakened."
That's exactly the meaning of
the word 'buddha': one who has become awakened, one who is enlightened, one who
is no longer dreaming. And when you are not dreaming, you have clarity, you can
see. And that very seeing becomes the determining factor of your life. Only
then you do that which should be done and you don't do that which should not be
done.
It is not a question of
discriminating between right and wrong. It is a question of coming out of your
sleep.
Wake up!
Enough for today.
