Osho –
Dhammapada: The Way of The Buddha (Volume 11)
Chapter 5. How
sweet to be free
Seeker!
Do not be reckless.
Meditate constantly
Or you will swallow fire
And cry out: "No more!"
If you are not wise,
How can you steady the mind?
If you cannot quieten yourself,
What will you ever learn?
How will you become free?
With a quiet mind
Come into that empty house, your heart,
And feel the joy of the way
Beyond the world.
Look within -
The rising and the falling.
What happiness!
How sweet to be free!
It is the beginning of life,
Of mastery and patience,
Of good friends along the way,
Of a pure and active life.
So live in love.
Do your work.
Make an end of your sorrows.
For see how the jasmine
Releases and lets fall
Its withered flowers.
Let fall willfulness and hatred.
Are you quiet?
Quieten your body.
Quieten your mind.
You want nothing.
Your words are still.
You are still.
By your own efforts
Waken yourself, watch yourself.
And live joyfully.
You are the master,
You are the refuge.
As a merchant breaks in a fine horse,
Master yourself.
How gladly you follow
The words of the awakened.
How quietly, how surely
You approach the happy country,
The heart of stillness.
However young,
The seeker who sets out upon the way
Shines bright over the world.
Like the moon,
Come out from behind the clouds!
Shine.
The Scots angler died, made his
way to heaven, and was stopped at the gate by Saint Peter who said, "You
have told too many lies to get in here!"
"Have a heart,"
replied the angler. "Remember you were a fisherman once yourself!"
Gautama the Buddha is reminding
his bodhisattvas that the path that they have followed themselves, the very
beginning of the path, they may have completely forgotten about by now. Who
remembers the dreams in the morning when he is awake? Within seconds those
dreams are forgotten.
The same happens when you
become enlightened: all the misery, all the nightmares, all the sorrows that
you had suffered so much simply become so insignificant, so irrelevant that
they disappear from your consciousness. They are no more part of your life
story - as if they had happened to somebody else and not to you. Hence Buddha
is reminding his bodhisattvas how the journey starts from the very beginning;
only then can these people be of help to others.
The first thing he says:
Remember only to talk to seekers. There are many who are inquirers but who are
not seekers, many who are curious but not seekers. The curious person is a
little childish. Every child is curious - curious about each and everything,
curious about one thousand and one things, but not really interested in knowing.
He asks one question; by the time you answer him he has started asking about
something else. He is not listening to your answer at all, he is not interested
in it anymore; it was a momentary phenomenon. He had just become attracted to
something: he saw a flower and he asked about it, and then he heard the noise
of an airplane and he started asking about airplanes, and then something else
caught his eye...
A seeker means one for whom the
inquiry is not only curiosity, not a childish phenomenon, but a mature inquiry,
for whom it has become a question of life and death. Unless truth becomes a
question of life and death you are not a seeker.
Buddha is saying to his
bodhisattvas, his apostles: Talk only to seekers, address yourself only to
seekers. Don't waste your time with childish people who are curious about each
and everything. Their questions may look very great, but their hearts are not
in their questions. They have asked just to ask; they are not interested in
finding the answer and they are not ready to risk anything. If they can get the
answer free, maybe they are ready to listen; but they are not ready to pay. And
life's real questions are not to be solved in such a cheap way. You have to pay
and you have to pay with your whole being. You have to get involved; it needs
commitment.
Anybody can ask about God, but
very few people are ready to risk anything, to go into the unknown, to go into
the adventure - and the adventure for God is the greatest adventure there is.
And it demands; it is very demanding - it demands your total commitment. It
won't allow you any other involvement. It can't be just one involvement among
many other involvements; it has to be the one and only involvement. Only then
is there a hope that some day you may find the answer which liberates you.
Hence he says:
Seeker!
Do not be reckless.
And the first thing to be
taught to these people who are seekers is not to be reckless. People are living
very recklessly, people are living very accidentally. Their lives have no sense
of direction. They don't know where they are going, from where they are coming,
why they are doing a certain thing. Maybe others are doing it so they are
imitating, but imitators are not seekers. Maybe others are going to the church
or to the temple so they are also going. They are not really men but sheep.
A seeker has to be a lion. He
has to learn to be free from the crowd psychology, from the mob mind. He has to
learn ways of individuality, of independence. He has to think of what he is
doing and why. He should not be just a victim of natural life forces; he should
have a certain sense of direction. Only then is there a possibility of
achieving, of coming back home, of reaching somewhere, of attaining
contentment, fulfillment, flowering, fruitfulness. Otherwise life remains
meaningless; it is just a jumble of unrelated events.
Do not be reckless. First thing:
Do not be just curious. Second thing: Do not be reckless.
New York City was jammed for
the convention. Every hotel and rooming house was full. Phillips was tired - he
simply had to find a place to sleep that night.
"Anything will do,"
he said to the hotel clerk.
"I can let you have a cot
in the ballroom," replied the clerk, "But there's a woman in the
opposite corner. If you don't make any noise she'll be none the wiser."
"Fine," said
Phillips. He went to the ballroom but five minutes later came running out to
the clerk.
"Say," he cried,
"that woman there is dead!"
"I know," was the
answer, "but how did you find out?"
Everybody is curious for no
reason at all - it was none of his business. Even he cannot answer why - some
unconscious instinct, maybe biology, maybe chemistry, but not his
consciousness.
Who or what is deciding your
life? - your biology, your chemistry, your psychology, your hormones? Who is
deciding your life? Are you? - you as a conscious being?
A drunk walked into a bar in
Glasgow and asked, "Was I in here last night?"
"Yes, you were,"
replied the barmaid.
"Did I spend much
money?"
"About thirty
pounds."
"Thank God - I thought I'd
lost it!"
Angus was staggering home after
a night with his fishing pals when he came upon a scarecrow, arms outstretched.
"Hey, Jimmy," he
said, "I refuse to believe you. There never was a trout that size."
A number of Scottish soldiers
were court-martialed for wrecking a public house, and one of them was asked to
explain to the court how the trouble had started.
"Well, sir," he said,
"Private McSporran called Private McDougall a liar, and Private Paterson
hit him over the head with a chair. Private Fraser pulled out his dirk and cut
a slice out of Private McDougall's leg. Two or three of Private McDougall's
mates piled onto Private Fraser, and a couple of others started throwing
glasses and tables around. One thing led to another and then the fighting
started."
Buddha says: seeker! Do not
be reckless.
Meditate constantly.
Or you will swallow fire
And cry out: "No more!"
Meditate constantly. The person
who is a seeker will not really be interested in getting only philosophical
answers from others; he will be interested in knowing on his own. He will not
be interested in philosophy, he will be interested in religion. That is the
difference between philosophy and religion. Philosophy is juggling with words,
the art of hairsplitting, arguing endlessly about abstract ideas, arriving
nowhere. Religion is more like science: it experiments, it emphasizes
experience. Science is the religion of the objective world, and religion is the
science of the subjective world.
Philosophy is going to die one
day; it is already on its deathbed. You can go to the universities and see:
every year less and less people are turning to the departments of philosophy.
Many philosophy departments are empty, deserted. People are going to science or
to religion. Those who are interested in knowing the truth about the world are
going to scientific inquiries, to physics, to chemistry, to mathematics, to
biology. Or, people who are interested in their own interiority, in their own
subjectivity, in their own consciousness, are moving towards religion, more and
more towards religion.
Religion is the science of the
inner. Philosophy is neither: it is neither the science of the outer nor the
science of the inner; it is just in between. It only thinks; it thinks about
everything - about science, about religion - but it only thinks. And just by
thinking, nothing ever happens. You can make very clever answers, but they are
not going to solve your real problems; the problems are real and the answers
are just abstract. Real problems can be solved only by real answers.
Hence Buddha says: The seeker
can be persuaded to meditate - only the seeker can be persuaded to meditate.
Meditation means you start changing your inner world. You start removing dust
from the inner world, you start removing all that is unnecessary in the inner
world. You remove all that clutter, all the rubbish you are full of. Meditation
means emptying yourself of all that the society has put inside you so that you
can have a clean, clear vision, so that you can have a mirrorlike quality. When
a mirror is without any dust it reflects reality; so is the case with
meditation.
Meditation means making your
consciousness a mirror. Thoughts are like dust, they have to be removed. And
thoughts contain everything belonging to the mind: desires, ambitions, memories,
fantasies, dreams... all mindstuff is different forms of thoughts, different
kinds, different layers of dust. And the dust is so thick that the mirror is
not functioning at all - hence you have to ask others. Once the dust is removed
you need not ask anyone, you yourself can see. Existence has given you the
magic mirror - it is within you.
I have heard a beautiful
parable; it must be a parable, it cannot be an historical phenomenon:
When Alexander the Great came
to India he collected many valuable treasures. And when he was leaving he came
across a fakir, a naked fakir. He asked him, "Do you see my treasures?
Have you ever seen anybody with so many treasures?"
The fakir said, "All your
treasures are nothing, but I can give you one thing that will really make you
rich!"
Alexander could not imagine
what this naked fakir could give him. In his begging bowl he had a small
mirror. He gave the mirror to Alexander.
Alexander said, "This
mirror will make me the richest man in the world? You must be mad!"
The fakir said, "First
look in the mirror."
And Alexander looked into the
mirror: it did not show his face - it showed his inner being, it showed his
interiority, it showed his subjectivity. His being was reflected in the mirror.
He touched the feet of the
fakir and said, "You are right - all my treasures are nothing before this
mirror."
And it is said he kept that
mirror continuously with him.
The parable is beautiful. That
mirror represents meditation. The fakir must have given him some meditation
because only meditation can make you aware of who you are.
But Buddha says meditation has
to become something constant. Buddha brings a totally new vision of meditation
to the world. Before Buddha, meditation was something that you had to do once
or twice a day, one hour in the morning, one hour in the evening, and that was
all. Buddha gave a totally new interpretation to the whole process of
meditation. He said: This kind of meditation that you do one hour in the
morning, one hour in the evening, you may do five times or four times a day, is
not of much value. Meditation cannot be something that you can do apart from
life just for one hour or fifteen minutes. Meditation has to become something
synonymous with your life; it has to be like breathing. You cannot breathe one
hour in the morning and one hour in the evening, otherwise the evening will
never come. It has to be something like breathing: even while you are asleep
the breathing continues. You may fall into a coma, but the breathing continues.
Buddha says meditation should
become such a constant phenomenon; only then can it transform you. And he
evolved a new technique of meditation.
His greatest contribution to
the world is vipassana; no other teacher has given such a great gift to the
world. Jesus is beautiful, Mahavira is beautiful, Lao Tzu is beautiful,
Zarathustra is beautiful, but their contribution, compared to Buddha, is
nothing. Even if they are all put together, then too Buddha's contribution is
greater because he gave such a scientific method - simple, yet so penetrating
that once you are in tune with it, it becomes a constant factor in your life.
Then you need not do it; you
have to do it only in the beginning. Once you have learned the knack of it, it
remains with you; you need not do it. Then whatsoever you are doing, it is
there. It becomes a backdrop to your life, a background to your life. You are
walking, but you walk meditatively. You are eating, but you eat meditatively.
You are sleeping, but you sleep meditatively. Remember, even the quality of sleep
of a meditator is totally different from the quality of the sleep of a
nonmeditator. Everything becomes different because a new factor has entered
which changes the whole gestalt.
Vipassana simply means watching
your breath, looking at your breath. It is not like yoga pranayama: it is not changing your breath to a certain rhythm -
deep breathing, fast breathing. No, it does not change your breathing at all;
it has nothing to do with the breathing. Breathing has only to be used as a
device to watch because it is a constant phenomenon in you. You can simply
watch it, and it is the most subtle phenomenon. If you can watch your breath
then it will be easy for you to watch your thoughts.
One thing immensely great that
Buddha contributed was the discovery of the relationship between breath and
thought. He was the first man in the whole history of humanity who made it
absolutely clear that breathing and thinking are deeply related. Breathing is
the bodily part of thinking and thinking is the psychological part of
breathing. They are not separate, they are two aspects of the same coin. He is
the first man who talks of bodymind as one unity. He talks for the first time
about man as a psychosomatic phenomenon. He does not talk about body and mind,
he talks about bodymind. They are not two, hence no 'and' is needed to join
them. They are already one - bodymind - not even a hyphen is needed; bodymind
is one phenomenon. And each body process has its counterpart in your psychology
and vice versa.
You can watch it, you can try
an experiment. Just stop your breathing for a moment and you will be surprised:
the moment you stop your breathing, your thinking stops. Or you can watch
another thing: whenever your thinking is going too fast your breathing changes.
For example, if you are full of sexual lust and your thinking is getting too
hot, your breathing will be different: it will not be rhythmic, it will lose
its rhythm. It will be more chaotic, it will be unrhythmic.
When you are angry your
breathing changes because your thinking has changed. When you are loving your
breathing changes because your thinking has changed. When you are peaceful, at
ease, at home, relaxed, your breathing is different. When you are restless,
worried, in turmoil, in anguish, your breathing is different. Just by watching
your breath you can know what kind of state is happening in your mind.
Meditators come across a point:
when the mind really completely ceases, breathing also ceases. And then great
fear arises - don't be afraid. Many meditators have reported to me, "We
became very much afraid, very much frightened, because suddenly we became aware
that the breathing has stopped." Naturally, one thinks that when breathing
stops death is close by. It is only a question of moments - you are dying.
Breathing stops in death; breathing also stops in deep meditation. Hence deep
meditation and death have one thing similar: in both the breathing stops.
Therefore, if a man knows meditation he has also known death. That's why the
meditator becomes free of the fear of death: he knows breathing can stop and
still he is.
Breathing is not life; life is
a far bigger phenomenon. Breathing is only a connection with the body. The
connection can be cut; that does not mean that life has ended. Life is still
there; life does not end just by the disappearance of breathing.
Buddha says: Watch your
breathing; let it be normal, as it is. Sitting silently, watch your breath. The
sitting posture will also be helpful; the Buddha posture, the lotus posture, is
very helpful. When your spine is erect and you are sitting in a lotus posture,
your legs crossed, your spine is aligned with the gravitational forces, and the
body is at its best relaxed state. Let the spine be erect and the body be
loose, hanging on the spine - not tense. The body should be loose, relaxed, the
spine erect, so gravitation has the least pull on you.
Have you watched it? If you
want to go to sleep you have to lie down, for the simple reason that when you
are lying down flat on the ground you are in touch with the gravitational
forces at the maximum, because all over the body the gravitational pull works,
it pulls you. You immediately start falling asleep. It is difficult to fall
asleep standing. The most difficult posture to fall asleep in is the lotus
posture. The body is so relaxed there is no need to fall asleep, and the
gravitational forces are at the minimum; hence they cannot pull you downwards;
they can't make you heavy and dull and lethargic. You are bright, you are full
of life. You are more intelligent in the lotus posture than you can ever be in
any other posture. The body affects your mind.
Scientists now agree with this:
that it is only because a few of the monkeys somehow... they have not been able
to find the reason why and how it happened, and monkeys are monkeys - it may
have just happened out of curiosity, a few monkeys tried to stand on two legs
and these are the monkeys who became the original men; they were the
originators. That was the greatest innovation; nothing else has been greater
than that. A few monkeys standing erect on their two legs created a great
revolution; the revolution happened in the growth of the mind. The erect
posture helped the mind to come out of sleep. It became more intelligent, it
became more alert, it became more conscious.
Other animals who move on their
four legs have not been able to develop intelligence, although many of them
have a mind of almost the same capacity as man. For example, the elephant has a
mind of almost the same capacity as man, but has not been able to develop it
and I don't think it is ever going to happen. In circuses they try hard to
teach the elephant to sit in a chair or to stand even for a few seconds on two
feet, but the body is so heavy the elephant cannot manage to be on two feet.
Hence the brain remains clouded; the gravitational pull keeps it unconscious.
Hence this lotus posture is
something valuable. It is not just a body phenomenon; it affects the mind, it
changes the mind. Sit in a lotus posture - the whole point is that your spine
should be erect and should make a ninety-degree angle with the earth. That is
the point where you are capable of being the most intelligent, the most alert,
the least sleepy.
And then watch your breath, the
natural breath. You need not breathe deeply, you don't change your breathing;
you simply watch it as it is. But you will be surprised by one thing: the
moment you start watching, it changes - because even the fact of watching is a
change and the breathing is no more the same.
Slight changes in your
consciousness immediately affect your breathing. You will be able to see it;
whenever you watch you will see your breathing has become a little deeper. If
it becomes so of its own accord it is okay, but you are not to do it by your
will. Watching your breath, slowly slowly you will be surprised that as your
breath becomes calm and quiet your mind also becomes calm and quiet. And
watching the breath will make you capable of watching the mind.
That is just the beginning, the
first part of meditation, the physical part. And the second part is the
psychological part. Then you can watch more subtle things in your mind -
thoughts, desires, memories.
And as you go deeper into
watchfulness, a miracle starts happening: as you become watchful less and less
traffic happens in the mind, more and more quiet, silence; more and more silent
spaces, more and more gaps and intervals. Moments pass and you don't come
across a single thought. Slowly slowly, minutes pass, hours pass...
And there is a certain
arithmetic in it: if you can remain absolutely empty for forty-eight minutes,
that very day you will become enlightened, that very moment you will become
enlightened. But it is not a question of your effort; don't go on looking at
the watch because each time you look, a thought has come. You have to again
count from the very beginning; you are back to zero. There is no need for you
to watch the time.
But this has been the
experience in the East of all great meditators: that forty-eight minutes seems
to be the ultimate point. If this much of a gap is possible, if for this much
of a gap thinking stops and you remain alert, with no thought crossing your
mind, you are capable of receiving God inside. You have become the host and the
guest immediately comes.
If you are not wise,
How can you steady the mind?
You have to be very
intelligent; only then can you steady the mind. And what does he mean by
intelligence? Ordinarily we behave in a very unintelligent way: we behave
according to beliefs; beliefs keep us unintelligent. We behave according to borrowed
knowledge; that keeps us unintelligent.
Try to accept the challenges of
life directly; don't act out of belief or knowledge. Don't follow the
scriptures and the traditions. They are the root cause of making you stupid,
because unless you face life directly, unless those challenges are encountered,
your intelligence will not arise - because there will be no opportunity for it
to arise. Give it the opportunity. Life gives many opportunities but you go on
missing the opportunities because you live on borrowed answers.
Face life and its questions and
its realities on your own, even if your own responses are not so great - they
cannot be. Of course you cannot respond like a buddha, but by borrowing some
answer from Buddha you will never be intelligent enough to become a buddha
yourself. Yes, you will commit many errors, many mistakes. Yes, you will go
astray many times - go, don't be worried! Life is meant for that, so that you
can try. It is through trials, many errors, many mistakes, that one learns. When
you learn by your own efforts you become intelligent. And only an intelligent
person can see the beauty of meditation, can understand the significance of
meditation.
If you cannot quieten yourself,
What will you ever learn?
And all learning happens through
meditation; it does not happen through study. That is accumulation of
information, it is not learning. Always be alert about borrowed knowledge:
howsoever precious it appears it is all false, pseudo - for you. It is not
pseudo for the man who has lived it. It is true for Buddha, true for Jesus,
true for Krishna, but not for you. You will have to live...
Buddha also had the scriptures
available. He could have read Krishna; the Gita was available. And he was
well-educated - he was the son of a king. All the scriptures must have been
available to him and great scholars and great teachers were available to him.
He could have recited the Gita every day; he could have learned the Gita so
absolutely that he would have been able to repeat it just from memory, but then
he would have missed buddhahood.
And in Krishna's time also the
Vedas were available, but Krishna did not borrow knowledge from the Vedas. In
Jesus' time the Old Testament was available, but Jesus tried to find out the
truth for himself. This is something very essential to understand: truth has to
be found by oneself. Only then is it liberating; otherwise it becomes a bondage
- a beautiful bondage, but a bondage all the same.
And if you cannot learn...
How will you become free?
It is only by experiencing
truth on your own that freedom happens. Freedom is the fragrance of the
experience of truth.
With a quiet mind
Come into that empty house, your heart,
And feel the joy of the way
Beyond the world.
Buddha says: With the silent
mind, the quiet mind... Come into that empty house, your heart.
Your heart is your real home;
it is utterly empty. Your head is full of rubbish, your heart is totally empty.
Move from the head to the heart! The whole process of meditation is a movement
from the head to the heart, from the mind to no-mind.
Come into that empty house, your heart, and
feel the joy of the way - and you will be full of joy - beyond the world.
A joy that is not of this world, a fragrance that comes from the beyond.
Look within -
The rising and the falling.
The rising and falling of your
breath: that is the way of looking within. Many have said: Look within.
Socrates has said: Look within, know thyself, but nobody has given the exact
method. Buddha gives you the exact method: the rising and the falling of the
breath. It is through the breath that you are bridged. Breath is the bridge
between your soul and your body. If you can watch your breath rising and
falling, slowly slowly you will be able to see the body as separate from
yourself and also the breath as separate from yourself, because the watcher
cannot be the watched, the observer cannot be the observed. Suddenly one day
you will realize that you are the witness of it all. And the witness is
certainly transcendental to all that it witnesses. In that very moment freedom
has happened to you. Then:
What happiness!
How sweet to be free!
It is the beginning of life...
Birth is not the beginning of
life. This is the beginning of life, when you experience your witnessing soul. It is the
beginning...
Of mastery and patience,
Of good friends along the way,
Of a pure and active life.
Meditate over these words.
Buddhists have not understood these words at all. How can this man, Gautama the
Buddha, be an escapist? He says: it is the beginning of a new life, of mastery
and patience, of good friends along the way...
He is giving you a new world, a
new way to love, a new way to be friendly; he is giving you new friends. In
fact, only meditators can be friendly towards each other because they are not
competitors. Nobody else can be friendly, they only pretend. How can
competitors be friendly? Deep down they are enemies because everybody is
coveting the same things. You are greedy for money, your friend is also greedy
for money. How can you be friendly? Impossible. All friendship is bogus, phony.
You want to be the prime
minister and your friend also wants to be the prime minister. Who does not want
to be the prime minister? How can you be friendly? Hence they say in politics
there is no friendship at all. A few are enemies openly, a few are enemies in a
hidden way. That's why in politics every day changes happen: somebody who was a
friend yesterday, today is an enemy; somebody who was an enemy yesterday, today
is a friend. It is a strange world, the world of politics.
Machiavelli, in the prince, suggests to the politicians,
"Never say anything to your friends that you would not like to be known by
your enemies, because any friend can become your enemy any day." He also
says, "Never say anything against your enemies that you would not like to
say against your friends because any enemy can become a friend any day" -
then there will be difficulty. Then you will have to swallow something and it
will be humiliating.
Politicians go on doing that:
they go on spitting and swallowing it back again and again. They say one thing
today, another thing tomorrow; they have to. In politics no friends are
possible.
Friends are possible only on
the way, on the way towards God, because it is not a competition. You can have
God, I can have God; there is no question that by your having God I will not be
able to have God anymore. Millions of people can have God and there is no
problem because God is infinite, truth is infinite. My having the truth does
not mean that now you cannot have it. In fact, on the contrary, my having the
truth means that you can also have it! If I can have it, why not you? Hence, on
the way, there is a totally new kind of friendship.
... Of a pure and active life.
How can Buddha be called an escapist? He says: ... of a pure and active life. He
means creativity, a creativity that comes out of meditative innocence, of
meditative purity. And a real creator is possible only through meditation. Your
so-called painters, ninety-nine percent of them, are not real painters. Your
so-called poets are not poets, your so-called musicians are not musicians -
maybe technicians. They know how to play, they know how to compose, they know
how to paint, but just knowing how to paint does not make you a creator.
A creator is a totally different
phenomenon. The creator brings something of God into the world, something of
the creator into the world. But how can you bring something of God into the
world if you have not known God yourself?
A Buddha is a creator, a Jesus
is a creator. Their words, their acts are the only proof that God exists. Their
very presence is proof that God exists. Their presence is creative: in their
very presence thousands of people are transformed. Buddha is not an escapist;
he cannot be. No awakened person can be an escapist. Cowards escape, courageous
people are creative.
So live in love - these are
Buddha's words, mind you:
So live in love.
Do your work.
Make an end of your sorrows.
He is not against love, he is
not against creativity, he is not against work either. DO YOUR WORK - because
unless you do the work that is close to your heart you will remain unfulfilled.
And the meditator finds immediately what his work is. The meditator finds
intrinsically that this is his work; he does not have to think about it. It is
so clear and so loud that he knows that he has to be a musician or he has to be
a poet or he has to be this or that. It comes so clear that there is no
question of doubt. And then he starts working; that work is his meditation.
There are many people here who
are afraid of work. They don't know that the work that is happening here is
totally different from the work that you have come across in your life. That
was something totally different. When I give you some work it is to help your
growth. Until you become capable of finding your own work I will go on giving
it to you - only up to the moment when you are capable of finding it yourself.
And any work that is being given here is nothing but a meditation for you. If
it is not a meditation for you then you have not understood my message at all.
For see how the jasmine
Releases and lets fall
Its withered flowers.
Let fall willfulness and hatred.
Buddha says: As the jasmine
flowers fall when they have withered away or leaves fall from the trees when
they die, dead leaves. Just like that, let fall willfulness and hatred. The first
thing he says that has to be dropped - easily, without effort, just like a
withered jasmine flower falling of its own accord - is willfulness, your will,
your ego.
So sometimes I have to put you
in a certain work where you have to drop your ego and you think it is a kind of
punishment. It is not a kind of punishment; it is a challenge, it is a
situation where you will have to drop the ego sooner or later because it will
be creating misery again and again for you. It will make you clearly aware that
your ego is causing your misery.
Just the other day, Anshumali
wrote saying, "Beloved Master, working in Vrindavan under Deeksha seems to
be a punishment." It is not, Anshumali. It is a reward, not a punishment!
It is a punishment if you want to cling to your ego; if you let the ego fall,
it is a reward. And then you will be able to see the beauty of the work, and
you will be able to see the beauty of Deeksha too. She is a beautiful Italian
mama! She loves her workers, she loves her people; she is utterly devoted. Of
course, she loves so much that she shouts also, she screams also. Her love is
such that she trusts that you will understand her screaming too. But she is a
good device; she has been of immense help to many people.
There are one hundred therapy
groups here, but Deeksha's is the best! Although it is not known as a therapy
group - it is a secret therapy group.
If you drop your willfulness,
your ego, then hatred also drops because hatred is nothing but the shadow of
your ego. If there is no ego there is no hatred; if there is ego, there is
always hatred following it. Whosoever comes in the way... and everybody will
come in the way because egos cannot adjust to each other. Egos are always in
conflict, egos are always quarreling, they are quarrelsome, hence the hatred.
Drop the ego and see the beauty
of egolessness. Then there is no hatred, no anger. You become so silent, your
energy becomes so calm and quiet, that suddenly you start seeing the world in a
different light, in a different perspective. Then this ordinary world is no
longer ordinary - it becomes sacred.
Are you quiet?
Quieten your body.
Quieten your mind.
Buddha says: First start with
the body and then move to the mind. Quieten your body by watching your breath,
quieten your mind by watching your thoughts.
You want nothing.
Your words are still.
You are still.
Then you will come to see that
there is no desire. How can desire exist in a silent mind? Desire is a state of
turmoil, desire is a state of unconsciousness, desire is mad. When you are
silent, madness disappears.
Three times Jessie brought
Sandy to the vicarage, hoping to be made man and wife, but each time the
minister refused because of the groom-to-be's intoxication.
"Why do you persist in
bringing him to me in such a state?" asked the minister.
"Please, Reverend,"
explained Jessie, "he won't come when he's sober!"
The moment you are sober,
silent, you will not do many things that you are doing and you will start doing
things that you have never thought of before. Your life will no more be a
wastage; it will become creativity, tremendous creativity. Your life will not
grow thorns, it will grow flowers. It is the same energy!
But the mind keeps you occupied
in such stupid things, in such stupid details about stupid things. Just see
what your mind goes on doing... and you will not need anyone to tell you that
you are mad.
A little man walks into
"The Perfect Stationers" - an exclusive New York shop specializing in
paper products. He is approached by an elegant salesman in a Brooks Brothers
suit. "Can I help you, sir?" the salesman intones in a cultured
voice.
"Yes, I would like some
writing paper, please."
"Would you prefer lined or
unlined paper, sir?"
"Oh, anything is fine. It
doesn't matter."
"Then will you be writing
with a fountain pen or a ballpoint?"
"I really don't know.
Whatever comes to hand..."
"Would you like to have a
thick paper or onion-skin paper, sir?"
"Look, anything is fine.
Just give me any old packet!"
"Perhaps you would prefer
one of the perfumed varieties?"
"If you like. But I have a
bus to catch - just give me some paper, PLEASE!"
"It will just take a
moment now, sir. Would you like a hand-made paper in a special presentation box
or a simple commercial brand?"
The little man's voice rises an
octave. "Look, for the tenth time... any paper will do! Make it fast,
would you?"
"Then perhaps you have a
favorite color - red, blue, yellow...?"
Just at that moment another man
bursts into the shop. His eyes have dark circles underneath and his cheeks are
wet with tears.
"Look," he sobs,
"this tile is the color of my bathroom and this is the size of my toilet.
I showed you my asshole yesterday. Now, could I please have some toilet
paper?"
Just look at your mind...
stupid things and stupid details ad infinitum! You go on and on - when are you
going to stop?... please! That's what Buddha is saying.
Feinberg, the funeral director,
was lunching with his friend, Weinstein.
"I got a good bargain for
you in a coffin," he said.
"I don't like to think
about things like that. How much?"
"It's made of mahogany
with silver handles and a lock. For you, only two thousand dollars."
"I'll think about
it."
On his way home from work,
Weinstein stopped at the Minkis Mortuary to compare prices.
"I can give you something
nice," said the director. "I've got a mahogany coffin with silver
handles and I'll even throw in a lock. The price is one thousand dollars."
Weinstein rushed over to
Feinberg's and began screaming. "Some friend you are! I just saw the same
coffin you wanted to sell me and it was a thousand dollars cheaper."
"Was it mahogany with
silver handles and a lock?"
"Yes!" replied
Weinstein.
"Did it have a silk
lining?"
"I didn't look. I don't
think so."
"You see!" said Feinberg.
"In six months you'll need a new lining."
Not only about life but even
about afterlife, the mind goes on preparing even for that. People decide about
their wills, they decide about their epitaphs, they decide how their tombs have
to be made, in what kind of marble. Man seems to be so utterly unintelligent
and he goes on wasting his life on such things which don't make any sense at
all. But you have to look into your own mind.
You want nothing. Your words are still. You
are still. Buddha says this is how one should be - no desire,
because all desires are futile. They are about the future; life is in the
present. All desires distract you from the present, all desires distract you
from life, all desires are destructive of life, all desires are postponements
of life. Life is now and the desire takes you away, farther and farther away
from now. And when we see that our life is misery we go on throwing the
responsibility on others, and nobody is responsible except us.
"My good man," said
the visitor to the prisoner, "how did you happen to come to this sad
place?"
"Well, sir," replied
the convicted man, "you see in me the unhappy victim of the unlucky number
thirteen."
"Indeed!" said the
visitor. "How was that?"
"Twelve jurymen and one
judge, sir."
Nobody wants to take the blame
on himself. Anything will do - unlucky number, palmistry, fate, astrology...
stars, poor stars are creating misery for Anshumali! Even if they search for
Anshumali it will be difficult for them to find him; they cannot even find the
earth - the earth is so tiny. Our sun is twelve thousand times bigger than the
earth and our sun is a very mediocre star. There are stars millions of times
bigger than the sun; compared to those stars this earth is just a particle of
dust, unnoticeable, negligible. It can be neglected, ignored. And there are
millions of stars that science has counted and millions more must be beyond
because our reach is limited, our instruments are limited. And these stars are
deciding the fates of a clerk in the collector's office, of a peon in the
railway station!
Man is so stupid, unbelievably
stupid. He goes on throwing the responsibility on somebody else. Unless you
stop this you will never become religious. A religious person is one who takes
the responsibility upon himself.
The first thing that is making
you miserable is your desiring, constant desiring for this and that. Stop that.
And when there is no desire there are no thoughts either. The function of the
thoughts is to help you desire; they are instrumental. If you don't have
desires, thoughts are bound to disappear of their own accord. And when there
are no desires, no thoughts... You are still. You are calm, collected,
centered, rooted.
It was an early morning fire,
and the young Italian reporter was lucky enough on arriving at the scene to get
an account of it from one of the residents of the apartment house who had
escaped.
"It was terrible,"
narrated the man. "Imagine walls crumbling about you, the flames of the
fire practically licking your cheek in whatever direction you turned and the
very iron of the bannisters smoking under your hands. But in the midst of it
all, I want you to know, I kept quite cool and balanced."
"It's a shame, since you
were so calm and cool," replied the reporter, "that you didn't think
of putting your pants on."
The people who think they are
quiet and calm are not quiet and calm, they are just believing that; they are
just hoping that they are quiet and calm. Only very rarely is a person quiet
and calm. It happens only at the ultimate peak of meditation, not before it. So
don't deceive yourself.
By your own efforts
Waken yourself, watch yourself.
And live joyfully.
Accept the responsibility and
that gives you great insight. If you are responsible for all your misery, if
you are responsible for all your nightmares, then the other thing is also
possible: you can wake up. If you are responsible for your sleep, you can wake
up; if you are not responsible, some stars are responsible, then what can you
do? You are just a victim and you have to suffer. Unless the stars change their
mind, if they have any mind...
By your own efforts waken yourself, watch
yourself. And live joyfully. And people say Buddha is a pessimist? -
and he says: live
joyfully.
Buddha says: Don't believe in a
savior because that is the old mind, the same mind that wants to throw the
responsibility on somebody else. Now Christians think Jesus saves. Hindus think
that whenever the need arises, Krishna will come back; he will take another
incarnation to save humanity. When are you going to feel your responsibility?
And people don't think that this is just ugly, insulting, humiliating; it is
falling below human dignity.
A Christian and a Jew were out
walking. They came across a church and in front of it there was a big board with
the words, "Jesus saves!"
The Jew said, "That's
nothing - Moses invests!"
Nobody can save you; don't wait
for any savior. You can save yourself, that is true.
This is also one of Buddha's
great insights into human misery, into human reality, that he says: Don't
believe that somebody will save you. You are the cause of your misery, you can
be the cause of your bliss.
You are the master,
You are the refuge.
As a merchant breaks in a fine horse,
Master yourself.
How gladly you follow
The words of the awakened.
And if you meditate, if you
become a little silent, a little alert, you will love these words because they
have the taste of truth - but only for those who are meditating.
How gladly you follow the words of the awakened.
Then all the awakened ones suddenly become your contemporaries. Then only can
you understand Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Mahavira, Lao Tzu. Then only, when you
meditate, suddenly mysteries open up, closed doors open and things which were
never clear to you suddenly become clear. But it happens through meditation and
there is no other way. Not by studying, not by gathering more and more
knowledge, not by arguing, not by philosophizing, but only by becoming more and
more silent. In utter silence, God speaks to you through all the awakened ones.
How quietly, how surely
You approach the happy country,
The heart of stillness.
And then your steps have a
confidence because all the buddhas are witnesses to you. As you start tasting
the joys of meditation, as you start becoming alert to the beauties of
meditation, as flowers start blossoming inside you, all the buddhas become
witnesses to you. You know you are on the right track; great confidence arises
in you.
How quietly, how surely you approach the
happy country, the heart of stillness.
However young,
The seeker who sets out upon the way
Shines bright over the world.
And it is not a question of
age. Buddha was the first to initiate young people into sannyas. Otherwise, in
India the tradition was that only very very old people, older than seventy-five,
were allowed to take sannyas. Sannyas was for the old people. Buddha created a
revolution: he initiated young people.
And my own experience is: the
younger you are, the better, because as you become older you gather more and
more rust, more and more dust. As you become older you become more and more
burdened with experience, knowledge and all kinds of stupid things. As you
become older you start losing the vigor, the energy, the courage to experiment
with the unknown, to explore the unknown. As you become older you become so
afraid of death that out of fear you go to God, and those who go out of fear to
God never reach God. Fear is not a bridge, it is a wall. Those who go towards
God inquiring for truth out of love for truth, only they are bridged. It needs
a certain youth, a certain courage, a certain capacity to take risks. It needs
energy, freshness; because religion basically is rebellion.
Buddha says: however young...
Don't be worried about that. Maturity has nothing to do with age; growing old
is not necessarily growing up. One can be young and grown-up and one can be
very old and very childish. Age and maturity have no necessary link. Maturity
comes through meditation. Aging is an ordinary process; everybody ages. Animals
age, trees age, people age; that has nothing to do with transformation.
However young, the seeker who sets out upon
the way shines bright over the world.
Like the moon,
Come out from behind the clouds!
Shine.
Buddha says to his
bodhisattvas, go and tell the seekers: like the moon, come out from behind the clouds! Shine.
The same I say to you: like the moon,
come out from behind the clouds! Shine.
Enough for today.
