Chapter 5. The Buddha is your birthright - Osho

Osho – Dhammapada: The Way of The Buddha (Volume 10)

Chapter 5. The Buddha is your birthright

Quieten your mind.

Reflect.

Watch.

Nothing binds you.

You are free.

You are strong.

You have come to the end.

Free from passion and desire,

You have stripped the thorns from the stem.

This is your last body.

You are wise.

You are free from desire

And you understand words

And the stitching together of words.

And you want nothing.

"victory is mine,

Knowledge is mine,

And all purity,

All surrender.

"i want nothing.

I am free.

I have found my way.

Whom shall i call teacher?"

The gift of truth is beyond giving.

The taste beyond sweetness,

The joy beyond joy.

The end of desire is the end of sorrow.

The whole philosophy of Gautama the Buddha is contained in the first sutra. It is of uttermost importance. It is not only to be intellectually understood, it has to be lived; only then will you be able to understand it.

Quieten your mind.

Buddha does not preach any belief - belief in God, heaven or hell. His whole emphasis is on creating a silent space within you. You are already full of knowledge; more knowledge you don't need. You need more innocence. You need an innocence like a small child. You need more wonder, more awe, more clarity.

And all these come to you when the mind is silent. When the mind is silent you are in communion with existence; when the mind is noisy you are disconnected. Your own noise functions like a wall around you. Silence is the bridge; knowledge, noise, is a barrier. And all knowledge creates noise in you. The more you know, the more you become indoctrinated, the more you are full of rubbish, junk.

You need a spacious being within you, utterly empty, so empty that even you are not there, so silent that even the idea of 'I' has disappeared. Then there is no barrier between you and existence. You fall in harmony. You become part of this tremendous celebration that goes on and on. You dance with the stars, you dance with the wind, you dance with the clouds. Your whole being becomes a dance, a song. You burst forth into thousands of flowers. But a silent being is a must; in a noisy being, nothing is possible. The noisy mind is impotent; it is not fertile, it is not creative. The silent mind is the right soil for your being to grow - to grow to its ultimate heights and depths.

Hence the first sutra: quieten your mind.

One sometimes feels surprised the way Buddha starts. The way Buddha approaches reality is so unique. It is utterly revolutionary, radical. One would have thought he would start with a prayer to God - but there is no God. In Buddha's vision God has no place. God is the invention of the ignorant people.

For Buddha there is no God as a person; there is no creator because the creation is eternal. Yes, there is creativity, but no creator. There is godliness, but no God. The whole existence is overflowing with godliness, but God is not a person so you cannot pray to him.

Remember, prayer is impossible with Buddha. Prayer presupposes a God, a personal God who can favor you if you praise him, who can be very disfavorable to you if you annoy him. This is childish - the whole approach is childish; it is not religious at all.

Buddha begins in a very scientific way. Rather than talking about God he talks about you and about your reality. As you are, you are nothing but noise. Look within and you will see the facticity of Buddha: you are just noise; not even a moment of silence happens to you. Hence your doors and windows remain closed. You are surrounded by your own garbage that you go on creating and accumulating, thinking that it is great treasure.

Quieten your mind... And the statement is very significant, because the moment the mind is quiet the mind disappears. A quiet mind means a no-mind. A quiet mind is not anymore a mind at all. Negatively you can call it a no-mind. That's what Zen people have done, that's what mystics like Kabir, Nanak, have done. They call it amani - a state of no-mind. But you can use a positive term also. Mahayana Buddhists call this state bodhichitta - the universal Mind. Mind with a capital M, mind you, not your mind, not my mind, but simply the Mind: the oceanic Mind, the Mind of the whole.

Both are good. If you love positive ways of saying things you can call it bodhichitta - the Mind of the Buddha, the universal Mind. Or, if you love to be more accurate, then the negative way of saying it is far more correct; then call it no-mind, because as noise disappears, mind disappears. Just as when your disease disappears, health is left behind - not that now you have a healthy disease. Disease is never healthy and mind is never silent. Disease is disease and mind is noise. When there is no disease then there is health; when there is no noise then there is no-mind.

But a new experience arises in your innermost core: the experience of a silent music, a soundless sound. The mystics have called it anahat nad, the soundless sound; or, as the Zen people say, the sound of one hand clapping. It is basically paradoxical; hence the expression, the sound of one hand clapping.

Buddha says: quieten your mind. Really he is saying: Go beyond mind, drop the mind, be finished with it. And what is the way? How has it to be done?

Reflect...

That is the first fundamental. Remember, by "reflect" he does not mean contemplate, think. No, by reflect he actually means reflect - like a mirror. The mirror reflects; whatsoever comes in front of the mirror, it reflects it. It does not think about it, it does not contemplate it; it simply reflects. When it has moved, the reflection disappears.

This should be the fundamental: reflect things, and when they have disappeared, let them disappear. Don't go on carrying the past. Don't become a photo-plate; remember to remain a mirror. The photo-plate also reflects, but it becomes attached to the reflection, it becomes obsessed with the reflection. It clings to it, it becomes imprinted with it. The mirror remains clean; it is not imprinted by what it reflects. It does not become beautiful when a beautiful face is reflected; it does not become ugly.

So should be the seeker. When success comes, reflect; don't become attached to it. When failure comes, reflect; don't be disturbed by it. When you are in a palace, reflect the palace, and when you are in a hut, reflect the hut. Don't become attached either to the palace or to the hut. Let everything come and pass, and you simply be a mirror.

If you are a mirror you cannot carry the past with you, and if you don't carry the past you will remain fresh, you will remain young, you will remain in a continuous process of birth. Each moment you will be born anew. We become old... I am not talking about physiological age, I am talking about psychological age. We become very old for the simple reason that we collect the past.

You are still carrying something that happened thirty years ago. Somebody had insulted you and that wound is still there; you still hanker to take revenge. You were rich fifty years ago, you cannot forget that yet; or you were poor and you are still carrying that with you.

That's how you find the world full of miserly people. From where do they come? These are poor people who have become rich, but they are still clinging to their poverty. Only on the surface they have possessions, but deep down they are poor, very poor. They can't leave their poverty - they can't depart from their past. They are carrying it; it has become a habit, it has become second nature to them. Hence the clinging to the money. They cannot spend, they cannot use their money.

I know a person who has at least ten buildings and earns a lot of money but lives in such a dirty house. All his buildings are beautiful, but those beautiful buildings have been rented and he lives in a dirty black hole. He has no wife, no children; he is alone.

The reason I became acquainted with him, was that whenever he would pass through the street where I used to live, at least from one furlong I would know that he was coming, because he used a bicycle so old that it must have been used by Adam and Eve! It made so much noise that I became interested in the man.

I inquired, "Who is this man?" and they said, "He is one of the richest men of the town. His bicycle has no brakes, but one thing is good about his bicycle: if you tell him to purchase a new one he says no, he can leave it anywhere - nobody ever steals it! Who will steal it? Anybody stealing it... it will be known all over the city who has stolen it, it makes so much noise!"

I told a common friend that I would like to meet the man, and I asked him, "Why are you living in such misery when you can live beautifully, in a beautiful house? You have enough money, more than you need, and once you are dead there is nobody else for whom you are collecting all this."

He said, "I know it, but somehow I cannot spend. That is impossible. Once I get some money, the hardest thing for me is to spend it." Tears came into his eyes and he said, "I also feel, What am I doing to myself? But I lived in poverty - my parents died when I was very young. I have been a beggar; slowly slowly I have earned money. I gambled, I did all kinds of things, and that poverty is still within me - I am still an orphan. I am not a rich man - I am the poorest in this town."

And I could see it in his eyes. This is what happens to people.

You just watch your mind and you will see a queue of past events going back, far back, to the age when you were three or four. And all that has become collected; it is heavy on you.

Buddha says: If you want to quieten the mind, the first thing is to learn the art of reflecting. Just reflect and move on. Yes, live in the moment, live totally. Reflect whatsoever is and then let it move. Don't cling to it, so that you are again pure, again innocent, again available, again empty, ready to experience again.

It is because of your past that you cannot experience the present; your past distorts everything. It is because of your past that you go on desiring the future, because you don't want to repeat the mistakes of the past and you would like to have all the pleasures that you enjoyed in the past again and again in the future. So your future is nothing but a modified past: all the pains have been deleted and all the pleasures have been multiplied. And between your past and future is the small present - which is real. Between two unrealities you are destroying that which is real. If you learn to reflect, then the past is irrelevant, the future is irrelevant; the only relevance is that of the present.

Be present to the present - that is the meaning of reflecting.

And the second thing: to quieten the mind, Buddha says:

Watch.

What will you do when you reflect? You are not a dead thing, you are not like a dead mirror. Be like a mirror, but you can't be dead - you are alive. So what will you do? Watch.

You think, you imagine, but you never watch. Watching is a totally different process. It means you don't have any likes, any dislikes. You don't condemn anything, you don't appreciate either. You simply see and you are aware and you are alert - not dead like a mirror. You are aware. You are watching what is happening.

You see a roseflower; you reflect it and you watch it. You don't say anything about the rose. You don't bring words between you and the rose because all those words are useless. When you are confronting a real rose why bring words in? Why destroy the reality of the rose by bringing interpretations of the past? You may be quoting great poets - Shelley and Yeats - but by quoting them you are bringing between you and the rose a barrier. Leave your eyes utterly empty - but don't fall asleep. Watch, just look silently. Be a witness.

Watching means looking at things without any evaluation, neither saying it is good nor saying it is bad - because nothing is good and nothing is bad. Things are simply what they are.

A rose is a rose and a thorn is a thorn; neither the thorn is bad nor the rose is good. If man disappears from the earth, roses will be there, thorns will be there, but there will be nobody to say that roses are good and thorns are bad. It is our mind that creates these values. And these go on changing.

Just a hundred years ago nobody would have ever thought to put a cactus in one's home. A cactus is all thorns. If you had brought a cactus into your home, people would have thought you were mad, something had gone wrong with you! But now to grow roses in your home is orthodox. The avant-garde people grow cactuses; they are the really cultured people. They keep cactus plants in their bedrooms too - poisonous, dangerous, but the cactus is "in" and the rose is "out." Fashions change.

In this century, ugly things have become beautiful and beautiful things have become ugly. Picasso is valuable - one of the ugliest painters the world has ever known! Just two hundred or three hundred years ago he would have been forced to live in a mental asylum if he had painted things like this. He would have been thought insane, utterly insane, because the world of Michelangelo is a totally different world; a different valuation existed. The world of Leonardo da Vinci is a totally different world.

Fashions go on changing. Every day man goes on changing. Nothing is, in fact, good or bad, beautiful or ugly. It all depends on you. Whatsoever you start thinking is good, beautiful, becomes good and beautiful. A Jaina monk moving naked is thought to be great by the Jainas, but others think it a little obscene. Many times problems arise.

Just a few days ago in a village, there was a riot because one Jaina monk entered in the town and the non-Jainas objected that a naked man walking inside the town... "This is bad for our children and our wives and our daughters."

I am not against nudity, but I am also not in favor of Jaina monks moving naked. My reason is totally different; my reason is that they look so ugly. Unless you have a beautiful body you don't have the right to be naked. I can accept Mahavira moving naked. It is said that he had one of the most beautiful bodies - and it seems so because all his statues are so beautiful. He must have had a very beautiful body, very proportionate. If he moved naked, that can be understood. To cover his beautiful body with clothes will not be right. But Jaina monks deliberately destroy their bodies. They are masochistic people: they cripple their bodies in many ways. They make them as ugly as they can, because the uglier your body is, the more respected you are. So they become caricatures. They are cartoons, not real people. It is better to cover them in beautiful clothes.

It depends what your criteria are, what your values are. But in reality, nothing is good and nothing is bad; things are simply what they are. If you witness then there is no question of choice. Then a choiceless awareness arises in you.

That's what J. Krishnamurti goes on saying; it is basically the message of Buddha. The followers of Krishnamurti think that he is teaching something very original. It has nothing original in it; it is essentially the message of Buddha. It is not J. Krishnamurti's invention. In a different sense it is original; it is original in the sense that it is his experience. He also knows it as much as Buddha knew, but it is not new - not original in the sense of being new. It is original in the sense that it has originated in him. He is not repeating Buddha, that is true. He is not imitating Buddha, that is true. He is simply saying what he has known. But whatsoever he has known is the same truth as Buddha's truth.

In fact, there are not two truths in the world, so all the awakened ones know the same truth again and again. Their language is different, their expression is different; it is bound to be so. Twenty-five centuries have passed since Buddha. How can I speak the same language? And how could Buddha have spoken the language that I speak? That is impossible. But as the followers of Krishnamurti go on claiming that his teaching is absolutely original, new - that is utter nonsense. It is basically the same teaching as Buddha's: choiceless awareness. That is the meaning of "reflect" and "watch."

Be aware, but don't choose. If you choose, you lose watching. If you start clinging - because the moment you choose you will start clinging - then reflection is lost. And once you have fulfilled these two simple things - reflection and watchfulness...

Nothing binds you.

You are free.

These simple sutras are enough. If you can practice only these two things - reflection and watchfulness - nothing else is needed. You are free, nothing binds you. You are really freedom; nothing can ever bind you. All bondage is imaginary. You think you are in bondage; hence you are in bondage. It is your thought.

Harvey Pincus, the passionate playboy of Prospect Park, oblivious of human limitations, speeded up when he should have slowed down. To his surprise and dismay, he awoke three days later in Bellevue Hospital where he was placed on a strict diet of raw eggs and oysters with wheat germ, garnished with ginseng and soybean sprouts.

A week later, his physical desires returned and, after having been rebuffed by Bellevue nurses of various shapes, sizes, ages and national origins, he demanded to be released forthwith so that he might resume his "al fresco" prowling in the Prospect Park perimeter.

Pincus was soon confronted by Dr. Siegel, the hospital's staff psychiatrist. "Before we release you, you will have to take a Rohrschach test," explained the medic.

"What is that?" asked Pincus suspiciously.

"A kind of personality gauge. I will just show you some inkblots and you tell me what each one suggests to you."

"So go ahead and test."

Dr. Siegel handed him the first blot. "What does this bring to mind?"

"That's easy," replied Pincus instantly, his eyes lighting with pleasure. "It is a girl's hips."

"And this?" asked the psychiatrist, handing him another inkblot.

"A woman's breast. Very nice, too."

"Hmm - how about this one?"

"Wow, Doctor, what a gorgeous pair of legs!"

Siegel had already reached an obvious conclusion about his patient's proclivities, but he continued with a half-dozen more inkblots just to make sure. When Pincus continued to respond as though all the "pictures" were sexual symbols, right up to the last blot, the doctor leaned back in his chair and rendered his diagnosis.

"My dear fellow," he began, somewhat severely, "in case nobody ever told you, you have an abnormal fixation on sex."

"What does that mean, if I may be so bold to inquire?"

"It means, sir," Siegel explained bluntly, "that you have a filthy mind."

"Well, look who's talking!" Pincus yelled, outraged. "You are showing me all those dirty pictures and I've got a filthy mind!"

What you are seeing in the world is not really there; it is your projection. What the world is like you will be able to see only when your mind has learned to be silent, to watch, to reflect. Then you will know that which is. Right now what you know is nothing but your own mind being projected on the screen of the world. Everything functions as a screen for you and you go on projecting your ideas; hence the insistence of Buddha on making the mind absolutely quiet.

When the mind is silent the projector stops, the screen becomes blank, and then for the first time you see the glory of existence. Then for the first time you become aware of the splendor and the blissfulness and the peace that surrounds everything. You become aware of godliness overflowing everywhere. Everything is known then in its authentic reality, undistorted by you.

The preacher was telling his congregation that there are over seven hundred different kinds of sin.

The next day he was besieged with mail and phone calls from people who wanted the list - to make sure they were not missing anything.

If you talk about sin and you want people to stop, what they hear is totally different. They start feeling that they are missing something: "Seven hundred sins - just think about it!" And you will also start feeling, "My God, how much I am missing! Seven hundred, and I have not even committed seven! I go on committing only a few, two or three again and again - and there are seven hundred sins! What a wastage of life!" You don't even know the names of them.

The night clerk at the Hotel Algonquin was surprised to see a battered-looking man, wearing nothing but his undershorts, enter the lobby from the street. The stranger staggered to the desk and paused there, weaving groggily. "What can I do for you?" inquired the clerk.

"I would like to be escorted to the third floor, room 302," said the near-naked man.

"Room 302," repeated the clerk. He consulted the register. "I am sorry, sir, but that room is occupied by Mr. Oscar J. Levine of Toledo. It is pretty late to be rousing a guest!"

"I know what time it is, well as you do," retorted the inebriated one. "Just show me to room 302 without any further con-conver... any further talk."

"Well, what is your name?"

"My name is Oscar J. Levine, and for your information I just fell outa the window!"

People are almost asleep, drunk with a thousand and one desires. There is nothing more intoxicating than desire. And it is not only one desire that is intoxicating you, there are many many desires - seven hundred desires at least! And they are all intoxicating you, and they don't allow you to see that which is. You can't see that which is unless you stop desiring.

Desiring disappears on its own accord if you become silent, because in a silent mind no desire can grow. Desire can grow only in a clouded mind, clumsy and confused.

Buddha says:

You are strong.

You have come to the end.

Free from passion and desire,

You have stripped the thorns from the stem.

This is your last body.

If you can fulfill the requirement of being silent, reflecting, witnessing, then you are strong, you are no longer weak. The man who lives in desires always feels weak because thousands of desires are pulling him in different directions. He is almost falling apart. Somehow he is keeping himself together, managing, dragging. He is tired, but he does not know what else to do. Everybody else is doing the same. People are running after desires. Nobody seems to be fulfilled, nobody seems to reach anywhere, but what else to do? When everybody is running, you start running. It is a crowd psychology.

To be a sannyasin, to be a seeker of truth, means getting out of the world of crowd psychology, the mob mentality. Unless you become aware that the crowd is dragging you with itself and you step out of the power of the crowd, you will never be able to know what truth is, you will never become a buddha. And to be a buddha is your birthright.

You are strong... but your desires go on making you weak. Once you have become silent you will be able to see it. A silent state of your being is so strong that you know you have come to the very end, you have come to fulfillment. One comes to fulfillment not by achieving something in the outside world but by reaching to one's own innermost core: what Jesus calls the kingdom of God, what Buddha calls nirvana, what Mahavira calls moksha.

When you have reached to your innermost core suddenly you become aware that all that you have been desiring was useless and what you really needed, what was your real nourishment, has been waiting for you inside you. Your search has to be inner, not outer. You can become Alexander the Great, you can conquer the whole world, and yet you will die with empty hands. Don't be bothered with all that nonsense. Be a Buddha, not an Alexander!

Buddha means one who has seen his truth and is contented, utterly contented with it. Free from passion and desire, you have stripped the thorns from the stem. This is your last body. If you can be free from passion and desire...

Passion is a state of fever, it is a hot state. We know only two states: either we are very hot - that is passion - or we are very cold - that is anti-passion. If you love, you become very hot; if you hate, you become very cold. And exactly in the middle is the point where you should stop. That point is neither hot nor cold. It is transcendental to both, it is cool. And when you are really cool, silent, peaceful, mysteries open their doors for you. A feverish man, in a passionate state, is almost blind.

Feinberg came home from a business trip and his wife coolly informed him that she had been unfaithful during his absence.

"Who was it?" shouted Feinberg, "that rotten Goldberg?"

"No," his wife replied, "it was not Goldberg."

"Was it that crooked partner of mine - that goniff, Levy?"

"No, not Levy."

"I know who it was - it was that momzer, Shapiro!"

"No, it was not Shapiro, either."

Feinberg glowered at his wife. "What is the matter?" he barked. "None of my friends are good enough for you?"

People are living... not really living, just mechanically moving, victims of blind forces. When sex takes possession of you, you are not your own master. Or when greed takes possession, or anger, or jealousy, you are not your own master. You are being dragged. And it is very strange that you allow it to happen - you don't feel insulted or humiliated! Each of your instincts makes you a slave. You not only tolerate this slavery; on the contrary, you enjoy it. On the contrary, you think this is what life is supposed to be. This is not life that you are living. It is biology, it is physiology, it is chemistry, but it is not life. To live under the influence of instincts is not to live at all.

Life begins only when you rise above your instincts. And the way to rise is: reflect, watch, and you will immediately know: nothing binds you. you are free. You are a master. In your watchfulness, slowly slowly, passions disappear, because a watchful person cannot be hot.

Desires are always leading you into the future. Desire means future; it can only happen tomorrow. So you go on looking at the tomorrow, and meanwhile the time is passing. And the tomorrow never comes; it can't come, in the very nature of things. So your whole life is just a waiting for nothing - waiting for Godot! And Godot never comes. In fact, nobody knows who this Godot is.

But we go on waiting for something to happen some day, and we know that it has not happened to anybody. It didn't happen to your father, to your father's father. It has not happened to your neighbors. You can look around people's faces: it has not happened. You don't see the glow, you don't see in their eyes contentment, you don't see joy. You see only a desperate effort to achieve something which they are not really aware of, what exactly it is and whether it is possible or not. But they go on running in hot pursuit - and they go on destroying their life.

"Grandma, how long have you and grandpa been married?" asked the romantic young granddaughter.

"Forty-nine years," replied the old lady.

"Ah, what a beautiful life you must have had," sighed the girl. "And I will bet you never even thought of a divorce."

"Well," said grandma, "divorce, no - murder, yes!"

Just ask the old people what they have attained, what they have been doing. And if they are true and authentic, if they are sincere, they will tell you nothing but that "Life has been a tale told by an idiot, full of fury and noise, signifying nothing. And now comes death, and all is finished." But to a meditator, death is not the end but the beginning of a new life.

Buddha says: this is your last body. If you have quietened the mind, if you have become free from desire and passion: this is your last body. Now you will be born into a bodiless existence. Now you will be part of the invisible life, the eternal life which knows no birth, no death.

The body is a limitation, the body confines you. You are unlimited consciousness, but your body forces you into a small, dark hole. You live in a dark hole, in a dark cave. Of course, it is going to be miserable. You are vast and somehow you have been forced to live in a small space. Nobody has done it to you; you yourself go on doing it. Each time you die, you die with desires. Those desires bring you back into new wombs. Those desires give you another body.

If you can die without desires, then there is no longer any birth. When there is no birth there is no old age, no death. And when there is no birth there is no time. You go beyond time. You live in eternity, you become divine. That's what Buddha means by godliness - bhagavata.

You are wise.

Through silence you become wise, not through learning, not by becoming more informed but by becoming absolutely silent. You are wise... otherwise you will know only words - hollow words, meaningless words. Yes, you can accumulate much knowledge. You can know the Vedas and the Koran and the Bible and the Gita and you can repeat them, but you will not understand anything. More is the possibility that you will misunderstand. From where will you get the right perspective to understand them? With all your passions and desires and all your confusion and clouded mind, how are you going to understand the Upanishads, the Koran? Impossible. They come from people who had gone beyond the body. Unless you go beyond the body you will not understand them. You can understand only that which you have experienced.

But the knowledgeable people not only deceive others, they start deceiving themselves - maybe not knowingly, not deliberately. If you go on deceiving others your whole life, pretending that you know, slowly slowly you start believing in your own pretensions. You forget that you don't know; you don't want to remember it. Who wants to know that "I am ignorant"? Everybody wants to feel that he knows.

Ask anybody about God and it is very rare to find a person who will say to you, "I don't know." Very rare... almost impossible. Many will say, "Yes, God is, God exists." And they are ready to fight, to argue, to kill you or be killed, for something that they know not, not at all. And there are a few who will say, "No, there is no God." But it is very rare to find a person who will say, "I don't know" - and that is the real religious person.

The agnostic is the real religious person - neither the theist nor the atheist. One believes without knowing, one disbelieves without knowing; both are deceiving. But I am not doubting their sincerity. They may be thinking... they may be absolutely convinced that they know. And then you ask other questions about God and then they have to invent answers, because basically they have accepted that they know.

Ask them how many heads God has, and they will tell you three or four, and they will make much out of nonsense. They will say that God has four heads because there are four directions and he has to look in all directions, or three because there are three dimensions and he has to look into all dimensions. How many hands has he? And some say he has one thousand hands because he has to work so much and he is so alone, and he has to create the world and manage the whole show all alone. One thousand hands... two hands are not enough. Do you think one thousand hands will be enough to manage this vast universe? Do you think four heads will be enough to see everywhere?

But people go on inventing answers. You ask the question and they invent - they have to invent because they cannot accept one thing, that they don't know.

A blonde took her dog to the vet who advised her to buy some Nair to remove the excess hair around the Schnauzer's eyes and ears.

The blonde entered a pharmacy and asked for the hair remover.

"Use it full strength for leg hair," said the druggist, "but dilute it one half for the underarms."

"Ah," said the girl, "but I want to use it on my Schnauzer."

"In that case," said the pharmacist, "you better use one quarter strength and I wouldn't ride a Honda for a couple of weeks."

The knowledgeable person cannot ask, "What is this Schnauzer?" That shows his ignorance and he cannot show that. Sometimes knowledgeable people commit such stupidities that no ignorant person can ever commit, because the ignorant person can always ask what it is - "I don't know." But the knowledgeable person finds it impossible. He cannot say these three words: "I don't know." If you can say, "I don't know," you have taken one of the greatest steps towards real knowing, towards wisdom.

Buddha says: When mind is empty, silent, you are wise. By wisdom he does not mean knowledgeability; by wisdom he means innocence. Knowledge comes from the outside, wisdom arises within. Knowledge creates noise, wisdom brings more and more silence. The wise person slowly slowly becomes utterly silent. Even if he speaks, his words carry the flavor of silence, the music of silence.

By wisdom he means spontaneity, childlike spontaneity, eyes full of wonder. When your eyes are full of wonder you can see the beauty that surrounds you. When your eyes are full of knowledge you can't see the beauty because you have explanations for everything - and explanations help you only to explain things away, nothing else.

But knowledgeable people have been doing good business. They have dominated humanity too long; that is their joy.

"I've got a problem, Doc," the new patient began.

"We all have problems," replied the doctor, smiling his assurance.

"My problem is this, Doc: I get migraine headaches every time I think of my wife. I break out in a rash every time I think of my job. I get cold sweats every time I think of my bank account. Talk about problems! Boy, have I got them!"

"Every problem has its answer, of course, and I understand this one perfectly," said the psychiatrist, nodding. "You will need a hundred sessions on the couch, at twenty-five dollars per session."

The patient gulped. "Well, Doc," he said after a painful pause, "that solves your problem. Now, how about mine?"

The knowledgeable people are doing good business. The priests, the professors, the pundits, the scholars, the theologians, they have been doing good business. Without knowing a thing about God, without knowing a thing about themselves even, they go on talking about great problems and great solutions. They talk about metaphysics, about philosophy. They have ready-made answers for everything.

Beware of these people! And they are all around, in the churches, in the mosques, in the temples, in the universities; you will find them everywhere. Beware of them. They are the people who will not allow humanity to ever become wise because once humanity becomes wise their profession is finished.

You are wise.

You are free from desire

And you understand words

And the stitching together of words.

And you want nothing.

Buddha says: When you are wise... not knowledgeable, not well informed, but when meditation has released your inner fragrance, when your inner consciousness has become a fully open lotus, then you will be able to understand words - the words of the buddhas - not before that. Don't waste your time with the Gita and the Koran and the Gurugrantha - unless you become meditative.

Once you know your own being, in deep silence you have encountered yourself, then, of course, scriptures are tremendously beautiful. Then you will be able to understand because you will be standing in the same position, you will be having the same vision. Now scriptures will become your witnesses, they will witness for you. When you have known something on your own, reading in the Gita or in the Koran suddenly you will come across a sentence that will say exactly the same that you have experienced, and suddenly now the meaning is revealed.

Meaning has to come first to you through experience; only then can you understand words - particularly the words of buddhas. In the ordinary world we don't understand even the words of those who are not enlightened. You can see it happening everywhere. Talk to your wife and you will understand; you both speak the same language, but there is no conversation possible. You say one thing, she understands another. You try to explain it to her, she goes even farther away. She tried to explain something to you and you jump to some other conclusion. It seems conversation is impossible. Both are in a state of madness. Both are so full of their own ideas that before the other has said anything they have already concluded what he means.

Nobody is listening to anybody else. Even when somebody is silent and pretending to listen to you, he is not listening. He is thinking a thousand and one things. While you are talking, he is preparing, so when you stop he starts saying something to you.

Passing Beth Yisroel Synagogue in Staten Island, in the wee hours of the morning, a drunk noticed a sign that read: ring the bell for the shammes. He did just that, and a sleepy-eyed old man came to the door.

"What do you want at this hour?" the shammes demanded crossly.

The drunk looked the old man over for a full twenty seconds and then retorted, "I want to know why you can't ring that silly bell yourself!"

People are bound to understand according to their minds.

Tannenbaum the tailor had saved up his money for years so that he could fulfill a longtime dream - to take a Caribbean cruise. But he had not reckoned with seasickness. On the second day out from port, the captain noticed him, green-faced, hanging on the ship's rail.

"Sorry, sir," said the captain politely, "but you can't be sick here."

"No?" said Tannenbaum. "Watch!"

Rabbi Longbleibt of Far Rockaway had a well-deserved reputation for being long-winded. On this Sabbath, he was in especially good form. His topic for the day was "Prophets of the Bible."

"Now then," he added, after speaking for half an hour, "we have disposed of the major prophets. Next we come to the minor prophets. To what place, my dear friends, shall we assign them?"

From a seat in the rear of the temple, a bored-looking stranger arose. He waved an explanatory hand at the seat he had just vacated and said, "One of them can have my place!"

It is impossible to understand even the people who are just like you. What to say about buddhas? They speak from sunlit peaks and you live in dark valleys. By the time their words reach you they are no longer the same. By the time you hear them, great interpretation has happened. Your mind has colored them in its own color.

Buddha says: Now you are wise. You are free from desire. That is the sign of wisdom: freedom from desire. Only fools desire. Wise people live and live joyously, but without desire. Either you can desire or you can live, you can't do both. If you desire, you postpone living; if you live, who bothers about desiring? Today is enough unto itself.

... And you understand words and the stitching together of words.

This is a very beautiful sutra. Buddha says: The words of the awakened ones have to be understood in a special way because they are stitched in a special way. Between two words there is silence; that is the stitching. You have to read between the lines. If you can just understand the lines you will miss the whole point. You have to read between the lines. You have to read between the words. You have to read the silences, the pauses. Hence it is more easy to understand a living buddha than to understand a dead one, because with a living buddha you can experience his pauses, his periods, when between two words suddenly there is a gap, the interval, which is far more pregnant than the words themselves.

... And the stitching together of words.

And you want nothing. Once you have become silent and you have understood the words of the awakened ones, what is there to want? You have already got it. You have got the inexhaustible treasure. You have become a king.

"Victory is mine,

Knowledge is mine,

And all purity,

All surrender."

In silence, everything is yours: victory - victory for which you have been struggling your whole life, maybe many lives, is suddenly yours. And without any fight it is yours because it has been yours from the very beginning. You simply never looked within. You are not a beggar, nobody is; everybody is born an emperor. But look within. If you look without you are a beggar. In fact, to look without means to become a beggar, and to look within means to become an emperor.

"Victory is mine, knowledge is mine..." And now a totally different kind of knowledge happens to you. It is not coming from the outside; it is arising from your very depth, it is welling up within you. It is not borrowed; it is authentically yours.

"... And all purity..."

Silence is virgin. The most innocent and the purest experience of life is to know a deep silence when everything stops. Time stops, space disappears, ego is nowhere to be found. Not a single thought on the mind, just silence from end to end. This is purity.

By "purity" Buddha does not mean any moral purity. Moral purity is never real purity. It is calculated, it is greed. It is greed for the other world, it is greed for heavenly pleasures.

There are three persons in the world, three categories. First, the sinners: they have chosen to be immoral. Second, the saints: they have chosen to be moral. But both are half, nobody is whole. The sinner is half, the saint is half. The sinners are attracted towards the saints, the sinners go and bow down to the saints. And the saints are continuously thinking in their minds that maybe they are missing; maybe the sinners are enjoying life.

I have heard that one great saint and a prostitute who lived just in front of him died on the same day, and the messengers from the beyond came and started dragging the saint towards hell and the prostitute towards heaven.

The saint said, "Wait! There must be something wrong. You must have misunderstood the orders. I am the great saint and that woman is the greatest sinner. What are you doing?"

And the messengers said, "We have asked God. We also thought that there is some misunderstanding... But God said, 'No, there is no misunderstanding. The prostitute was continuously thinking how bad she was, how ugly she was, and she was continuously thinking how pure the saint was. And whenever the saint would do his prayers, would chant his sutras, she would sit silently by the door and listen. She never thought herself capable of entering into the temple. She would sit outside the door and listen from there, and tears would flow from her eyes. And she always thought that the saint was living the life of bliss.

"'And the saint? He was continuously thinking of the prostitute, how beautiful she was. And whenever visitors would come to the prostitute he would suffer very much. "They must be enjoying. She is enjoying her life, and what have I done to myself? I have become an ascetic. Who knows but maybe I have done something wrong." The saint was continuously obsessed with the prostitute. In his dreams he was making love to the prostitute. And in the prostitute's dreams there was a totally different flavor: she was always worshipping the saint, bowing down to the saint - hence the decision.'"

God said, "Take the saint to hell; he has lived respectably long enough. And bring the prostitute to heaven; she has suffered enough in the world."

The sinner is half, the saint is half - and they both are attached to each other, both are thinking of each other. I know many saints who have confessed to me in their privacy, "Sometimes the question happens in our minds that maybe the whole world is right and we are wrong. But now it is too late. We may have missed real joys to attain something abstract which may not exist at all. Who knows about God and who knows about paradise? We may prove to be fools finally."

That doubt lingers in your so-called saints; it is bound to linger. The more they feel this doubt, the more they condemn the sinner. The more they condemn the sinner, so the sinner thinks they are great saints; he goes to worship them. The opposites attract each other.

But there is a third category also: the sage. He is neither a sinner nor a saint; he is beyond both. And he is the person who is always misunderstood in the world. You understand the sinner very well: he lives in immorality. You understand the saint: he lives in morality. The sage is a mystery; you cannot understand him. He seems to be beyond comprehension; hence Jesus is misunderstood, Socrates is misunderstood, Buddha is misunderstood. That has been the fate of all the sages. They have been misunderstood for the simple reason that you cannot put them in the ordinary categories; they are beyond the categories.

When Buddha says "purity" he means the purity of the sage who knows nothing of morality or immorality, who has become again a child, who is reborn.

"Victory is mine, knowledge is mine, and all purity, all surrender." When you become absolutely silent, ego disappears; it is not found at all.

Just the other day Vedant Bharti asked, "Why should I drop the ego? That too is part of the divine play." You don't understand what divine play is, and you don't understand that no buddha has ever said to you, "Drop the ego." I am not saying to you, "Drop the ego," either. What I am saying is: Try to find it... and you will not find it at all! That is how it disappears, that's how it is dropped. When you can't find it, what can you do with it? It has never been found. It exists only when you don't search for it. It exists only like a shadow. If you look and search, then you come to understand that a shadow is a shadow; it has no substance in it. There is no need to drop it; in understanding it and not finding it there, it is dropped.

This is surrender. In silence surrender happens because in silence you can't find the ego at all. Surrender is not something that you have to do. If you do it, it is not surrender, because if you are the doer how can it be surrender? One day you do, another day you can undo it. One day you can say, "I surrender"; another day you can come and you can say, "I withdraw it." Who can prevent you? It was your doing, you can withdraw it. But surrender cannot be withdrawn, you cannot undo it, because it is not your doing in the first place. It is a happening. When you are silent, suddenly you see there is no ego; ego disappears. This is surrender, this is purity, this is wisdom, this is freedom.

"I want nothing.

I am free.

I found my way.

Whom shall i call teacher?"

Buddha says: Now, whom should I call my teacher? The whole life has been a learning, the whole life has been my teacher. I have learned through failure, through success, through poverty, through richness. I have learned through pain, through pleasure. I have learned through agony, through ecstasy. Whom should I call my teacher?

It is impossible because the whole life, in fact, is a teaching device. Life exists so that you can grow up towards wisdom, so that you can grow up towards godliness.

And a very beautiful sutra:

The gift of truth is beyond giving.

Truth is always a gift. You cannot snatch it away, you cannot conquer truth. It is always a gift. When you are silent it simply descends in you. It fills your silence, overfills it, starts overflowing.

The gift of truth is beyond giving. But when you have it, the problem is you cannot give it to anybody else. You would like, you would love to share it, but how to share it? The other person has to be utterly silent, only then can it be shared. But when the other person is silent, he need not share your truth; truth descends in him on its own accord. Hence it is beyond giving.

The taste beyond sweetness...

It is far sweeter than sweetness itself, it is beyond sweetness.

The joy beyond joy.

We can call it blissfulness, but it is a blissfulness that goes far beyond our idea of blissfulness. In fact, it is incomprehensible for the mind. It is impossible to express it in adequate words. If we call it joy, yes, only a bit of it is expressed. If we call it sweet, only just a fragment of it is expressed; the total remains unexpressed. It has to be experienced, there is no other way.

The end of desire is the end of sorrow.

You do only one thing: let desire be gone. And how will desire go?

Quieten your mind.

Reflect.

Watch.

Nothing binds you.

You are free.

Contemplate over these sutras. Try to experience them... because Buddha is not an ordinary religious person. He is not interested in miracles. He is not interested in anything occult, esoteric. He is interested in transforming you. He is very down to earth.

Moses and Jesus were playing a round of golf at the Celestial Country Club. First, Jesus teed up and made a hole in one. Then Moses also drove a hole in one.

"Well, Moe, we are even so far," said Jesus.

"Now look here, Jake," Moses protested. "We made our point. Now what do you say we cut out the miracles and play a little golf?"

Buddha never did any miracle - that is the greatest miracle. He is not interested in mystifying you. His whole effort is to give you the key so you can open the doors of all the mysteries. He is very existential, nonphilosophical, nonintellectual in his approach. He is not heady - but very practical, pragmatic. His whole approach is experimental, experiential. So you will not be able to understand him if you only go on reading.

Try to experiment with what he is saying. Try to quieten your mind, reflect, watch, and see yourself what happens: freedom, bliss, truth, wisdom, innocence, purity... thousands of flowers start blooming in you. The spring suddenly bursts forth.

Enough for today.

John Nguyen

Dhammapada Vol. 10

Tuesday, August 22, 2017

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