Chapter 7. How sweet it is - Osho

Osho – Dhammapada: The Way of The Buddha (Volume 9)

Chapter 7. How sweet it is

To have friends in need is sweet

And to share happiness.

And to have done something good

Before leaving this life is sweet,

And to let go of sorrow.

To be a mother is sweet,

And a father.

It is sweet to live arduously,

And to master yourself.

Oh how sweet it is to enjoy life,

Living in honesty and strength!

And wisdom is sweet,

And freedom.

Gautama the Buddha does not talk about God, but he talks about love, freedom, truth, authenticity. He talks about the essential religion. He does not waste his breath on heaven and hell, the theory of reincarnation. He is absolutely unconcerned about the so-called great metaphysical problems. He is nonmetaphysical - in a sense, very down to earth. He means business. He wants to give you a science which can transform your life. He is interested in creating an alchemy of inner revolution so the baser metal can be changed into gold. His religion is unique, in a way.

There are three types of religions in the world. Jainism is the only religion which is emphatically atheistic. It denies God and raises man to his ultimate peak. It declares that man is God and there is no other God. Except Jainism, all other religions - Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, Christianity - are theistic. They are rooted in the idea of God; without God they will be at a loss what to do. They are at a loss because since Nietzsche declared "God is dead," humanity, by and by, has agreed with Nietzsche. His statement became very prophetic; it represents the twentieth-century mind. And the religions which have depended on the idea of God for centuries feel uprooted. They are dying, withering away.

Buddha is unique. He is neither atheistic like Jainism, nor theistic like other religions. He is a superb agnostic. He says there is no need to worry about unnecessary things. Think of the essential, think of the intrinsic, and don't be bothered about the accidentals.

If you are authentic, if you are compassionate, if you are meditative, then if there is a God he will come to you; you need not go in search for him. And if there is a paradise it will descend in your heart. There is no need to be bothered about such abstract ideas; they simply waste your time. And if you are not authentic, not meditative, not compassionate, not wise enough, even if you come across God what are you going to do? You will feel a little embarrassed and God will feel a little embarrassed facing you. You both will be unnecessarily in a strange situation - what to say, what to do, what not to say, what not to do. You would like to escape and he would like to escape.

Just think: if suddenly you come across God, what will you do? You will run away from him as fast as you can!

Rabindranath has a beautiful parable. In one of his poems he sings: I searched for God for many lives. I saw him sometimes far away on a star, but by the time I reached there he had left the star long before; he was somewhere else. He was always somewhere else and I was chasing him. The very adventure was beautiful; I was enjoying the thrill of it.

And then one day I happened to reach his home. For a moment I was ecstatic that I had arrived, but the next moment I became very sad. Standing at his door I was just going to ring the bell, but my hand became frozen. I thought for a while, "If I ring the bell and he comes out, then what? Then what am I going to do? And after that whom am I going to search? All is finished! My whole past has been nothing but a search for God; it was meaningful because of the search. If the search disappears, all meaning will disappear."

So Rabindranath says, "I descended back from his steps. I took my shoes in my hand so that he would not hear that somebody had come. Otherwise, who knows? He may simply open the door and he will say, 'Come in!' And then I ran away from the place as fast as I could.

"And again I am searching for God, and now I know where he is so I avoid that space only and I search everywhere else, knowing perfectly well that I am not going to meet him there and my search can continue. I can go on hoping and desiring and deep down I know the whole ridiculousness of it - because he is just by the corner; I can reach his home any moment."

This is a true parable about man: you also know where he is. If he is anywhere at all he is within YOU, not even by the corner. If he is anywhere, he is in your consciousness, in your heart of hearts. He is your life. There you don't look at all, afraid you may find him. And you go on searching in Kaaba, in Kailash, in Kashi, and you go on and on searching knowing perfectly well that you will not find him. And the search can continue and the thrill can continue and you can go on hoping and desiring.

Buddha simply cuts all your hoping and desiring. He does not say there is no God, he does not say there is. He simply says it is irrelevant. It does not matter whether he is or he is not; it is absolutely beside the point. What matters is your inner transformation, and the inner transformation cannot be postponed for tomorrow; it can happen right now.

That's the trouble with Buddha: if you go with him you have to drop your hopes, you have to drop your desires. You have to be in the present, utterly silent. And then life has a new color, a new joy, a new music. Then life has a new beauty.

Right now, in the first place, you cannot meet God because you don't have eyes to see him and you don't have ears to hear him and you don't have the right heart to feel him. You are not loving enough. Your eyes are not clear; they are so full of dust - dust of knowledge, memories, experiences. Your ears only appear to hear, but they don't listen.

But by chance even if you meet him, what are you going to ask? A new wife, a new husband, another place to live, a little longer life, youth...? What are you going to ask? - money, power, prestige? Whatsoever you ask will be stupid.

A black man worshipped God, praying every day for six years. He was always asking for this or that problem to be resolved.

God became very fed up with him and decided to pay him a visit. So one day while the man was praying, God came to his side in living flesh and said, "Hey man, here I am! What do you want to know? Ask!"

The man could not believe his eyes, but he finally asked, "Ah my God, why is my skin so black?"

God answered, "Because the sun in your country is very hot and you must survive."

"And why is my hair so short and kinky?"

"Because in the jungle you have many trees and your hair would get caught."

"And why am I so thin and fast?"

"So that you can fight with lions and other animals in the jungle."

"Then, God, what the fuck am I doing in New York?"

That's going exactly to be the case with you. What are you going to ask God? All your questions will come out of your unconscious. In fact, all questions will be absurd. That's not the way to encounter reality. One has to be silent, utterly silent.

Hence Buddha says, don't be bothered about God. Be concerned with your own preparation, be prepared. The emphasis is totally different. All the religions emphasize God, the object of search; Buddha emphasizes you, the subject. All other religions emphasize the sought; Buddha emphasizes the seeker. And it is certainly more significant to change yourself and prepare yourself for the ultimate encounter with reality - call it God, existence, truth, liberation, or whatsoever you would like to call it. The real thing, the essential thing, is to be prepared for that encounter.

And if you are ready, if your heart is flowing with love and your head is no longer crazy, no longer full of rubbish, and your eyes have clarity and your ears are ready to listen, then the whole reality turns into God; then everything is divine. Buddha does not say anything about it; he goes on emphasizing your inner change.

These sutras are simple but immensely beautiful. Truth is always simple; it is untruth which is complicated. The untruth has to be complicated so that you don't find that it is untrue, so that you can't find it. Truth is simple, utterly simple and naked.

Buddha says:

To have friends in need is sweet

And to share happiness.

He emphasized friendship very much. To translate his word for friendship - maitri - is a little difficult because it has the quality of friendliness more than friendship. Friendship becomes a relationship, fixed; friendliness is more flowing, more fluid. Friendship is a relationship, friendliness is a state of your being. You are simply friendly; to whom, that is not the point. If you are standing by the side of a tree you are friendly to the tree, or if you are sitting on the rock, you are friendly to the rock. To human beings, to animals, to birds, you are simply friendly. It is not something static; it is a flow, changing moment to moment.

He says: to have friends in need is sweet.

Friendliness is one of the most significant qualities for the seeker to develop; it is really sweet. It makes your whole life full of sweet music, full of sweet harmony. In Buddha's vision it is higher than so-called love. Your so-called love is tethered to your biology; friendliness is freedom from biology. The ordinary so-called love is the same in human beings as it is in animals, as it is in the trees. It is sex-oriented. It is only a sugarcoating around the bitter pill of sex. In fact, if love is taken away from your sex, sex will look very ridiculous. It is because of the sugarcoating that you can swallow the pill.

Watch animals having sexual intercourse and one thing you are bound to observe; it is impossible not to observe it, it is so emphatically there: they don't seem to be joyous. They seem to be in a hurry and their faces look sad, as if they are being forced by some unknown energy into certain acts in which they are not interested. Hence animals have their sexual seasons when their biology takes a grip on them, forces them to do something which they are not really interested in at all. They have to do it almost like slaves. And once they are finished with their sexual intercourse they move away from each other - not even a thank-you! They don't look at each other.

Scientists say love has grown in man for the simple reason that man is the only animal in the world who makes sexual intercourse face-to-face. You have to say something, you have to smile, you have to say goodbye, you have to say so long. Otherwise it will look so awkward to finish suddenly and escape! Because you are facing each other you have to be a little polite, a little cultured, a little polished. You have to behave in a certain manner; you can't be rude.

Animals are not facing each other while making love so they don't encounter, they don't look into each other's eyes. It is a simple biological process and they are almost forced by their biology, by their hormones, to go through it. They go through it, they are dragged through it like slaves. And the same is the situation with you; only the sugarcoating is different.

Friendship is a higher phenomenon. It is pure love; it has nothing to do with your biology. Love - ordinary love - can be explained through biology, but friendship cannot be explained. It is a mystery. Friendship is like fragrance; love is gross, because of its sexuality, because of its origins. It is a little heavy. It functions under the law of gravitation: it goes on falling downwards, it has no wings. Friendship has wings. It is nonbiological; it makes you really human, it helps you to transcend your animality.

Buddha praises friendship, friendliness, very highly. He has even chosen that when he comes back again his name will be Maitreya - the friend. He must have loved the word very much. I don't think he will come again or anybody ever comes again. God never makes the same mistake again, remember! Once is more than enough, twice will be too much. But he must have loved the word so much that he says, "Next time, if I am at all going to come, my name is going to be Maitreya - the friend." The word contains his whole philosophy.

He says: to have friends... Is sweet.

Why is it sweet? - because with friends your relationship is not physiological, it is not even psychological; it is a spiritual communion. With friends you can sit in silence. When you are with your lover you can't sit in silence; silence looks awkward. The woman will think, "Why are you silent? Are you angry or something?" And if she is silent you will think something is wrong - she is sulking. Why is she so silent? Silence becomes heavy, a burden; it has to be removed.

So people go on talking, whether it is needed or not. They go on talking about anything.

Mulla Nasruddin was coming from his village to see me in his bullock cart, with his dog. It was too hot, a summer afternoon, and suddenly he was surprised that the dog said, "It is too hot."

He looked around; there was nobody, just his dog. He said to the oxen, "Have you heard? Have you heard what has happened?"

And the oxen said, "Yes, he is just like anybody else - always talking about the weather and doing nothing."

If people have nothing else to talk about they talk about the weather. Anything will do, just go on talking. It keeps you, in a way, connected. In fact, it keeps you DISconnected. It is not a bridge; rarely it is a bridge. It is a bridge only between a master and a disciple; otherwise it is not a bridge. When the master speaks out of his silence and the disciple listens out of his silence, it is a bridge. Otherwise it is a wall, a China Wall.

Lovers are facing each other. They have to say something; otherwise silence becomes awkward, embarrassing. Friends don't face each other in that way. They face something else - maybe the sunset, a bird on the wing, a beautiful white cloud. Holding hands, sitting together, they face something else. They both are facing something else. They are in a sort of deep communion, they are one. Their hearts are beating in harmony. Real friends sitting together will find that their hearts start beating in the same way. They even start breathing in harmony; when one exhales, the other exhales. This happens on its own accord; it is a synchronicity. When you are feeling in communion, this happens.

This happens here every day. When you are in communion with me it happens.

Many sannyasins write to me, "Beloved Master, how does it happen? Just before you are going to say something we know you are going to say this. It is so clear and then you say it." It happens because of a deep communion. As it arises in my being it starts arising in your being.

Hence the ultimate between the master and the disciple is silence, sitting together. There is no need to say anything. Whatsoever happens in the master's being also starts happening in the disciple's being. The disciple starts reflecting the master like a mirror.

On a smaller scale the same happens with friends. But by friends Buddha does not mean acquaintances. By friends he means a love which has gone beyond sexuality, a love which has gone beyond biology, a love which has transcended ordinary nature, transcended gravitation and has become part of the higher law of grace.

To have friends is sweet and to share happiness...

You can share your happiness only with the friends. Sharing is possible only when two hearts are open to each other; only in deep trust can you be open to the other. In fear you are closed, in doubt you are closed. You are on guard. You are afraid the other may be some danger to you, the other may do some harm. You are not vulnerable when you are in fear. Only with friends you can be vulnerable, open, available. Then sharing is possible. And sharing is one of the greatest spiritual qualities.

The miracle is that the more you share your bliss the more you have it. The more you share, the more it comes to you. The more you share, the more you become aware of an inexhaustible source within yourself.

Happiness is great in itself, but to share it makes it immensely rich, multidimensionally rich. If one is a miser about one's happiness he will kill it. To hoard your happiness is to destroy it; to spread it far and wide is to help it grow more and more. Miserliness is very dangerous as far as bliss is concerned.

But with whom you will share if you don't have friends, if you don't know the art of being friendly? If you know the art of being friendly you can share with as many people as possible, with as many animals as possible, with as many trees as possible. You can go on sharing every moment of your life because you are always with someone. You can share it with the sun, with the moon, with the stars. No distance prevents. You can share your bliss with a friend who is far far away, thousands of miles away from you. In that moment of sharing spaces disappear, time disappears. There is no time gap, no space gap. You are suddenly together. You can even share with friends who are no longer alive. In deep communion they become available to you, nonphysically.

And to have done something good

Before leaving this life is sweet,

And to let go of sorrow.

Friendship is good, it is virtue. Sharing your joy is good, it is great virtue. In fact, all other virtues are by-products of sharing your bliss. Sharing is the very foundation, the source. Share your truth, share your meditation, share your love. Share whatsoever inner beauty arises in you, whatsoever inner glow arises in you. Share your inner flame and never be a miser, and you will become richer and richer, and there is no end to that richness.

In the ordinary world sharing will make you poor. If you share your money you will become poor. You have to be a hoarder, you have to be miserly. In the inner world just the opposite is the case: hoard, and you will lose; share, and you will have it.

In the inner world a totally different kind of law exists. There you can have your cake and eat it too. And it would be better if you don't eat it alone, if you invite your friends to eat with you.

And to have done something good... What does Buddha mean by "something good"? Buddha always emphasizes that unconscious acts are bad and conscious acts are good. You can do something apparently good, but if you are unconscious it can't be good. Your intention is good, but the action and its consequences are going to be bad.

For example, just the other day somebody had asked, "I want to stop smoking. What should I do? What do you say about it?" Now, he is asking a simple question. You can ask the same question to any of your so-called saints - Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian, Jaina, Buddhist - and they will all say, "Stop it immediately! Smoking is bad." But I can't say it that way. I can say to you, "Become more conscious. If your consciousness changes something in you and smoking disappears, good; otherwise, please continue to smoke." Why?

Adolf Hitler never smoked, but I can't call him a virtuous man. He was always getting up before the sunrise - brahmamuhurt. In India this is a must for a saint. Brahmamuhurt means God's moment - as if all other moments are the Devil's and just the few moments before the sunrise are God's! Getting up early in the morning before sunrise is thought to be very religious. And if you are sleeping late and getting up at nine or ten, certainly you are a sinner.

Adolf Hitler was a very religious man, if this is what religion is - getting up early. And he was going to bed also very early. He was not a smoker, he was not a drinker.

In that sense, Jesus is less religious than Adolf Hitler. He loved drinking, he loved good wine. He loved it so much that once he transformed the whole sea into wine, you know! Now, what kind of religious man is this Jesus? He loved eating with friends, inviting friends. He was always in a festive mood.

Adolf Hitler used to eat alone. He was a perfect dog! Dogs eat alone. Even if you are just looking they will keep their backs towards you, afraid you may snatch away their food or something. Some other dog may come and start barking and fighting may start. They can't invite anybody. Dogs don't believe in parties! They are loners, very meditative! They eat alone. And of course they eat very silently, no conversation. And they eat quick and fast; they don't waste time. Adolf Hitler did the same. He was also afraid of people, just like dogs.

It is said that he had not a single friend in the whole of Germany. And Buddha says: Be friendly. It is sweet to have friends. He had no friend because he was so afraid of people, so suspicious, that he could not afford friendship. To be friendly means to be intimate. To be friendly means to be available to the other. To be friendly means to trust the other.

He never got married in his whole life. He got married only at the very end, just three hours before he committed suicide. When it was absolutely decided that he was going to commit suicide he called a priest and got married, so that at least in death he can have a companion. The woman had to commit suicide with him also. A strange marriage! Why did he avoid marriage his whole life? - for the simple reason that he was not sure whether to allow a woman in the same room in the night when he was asleep. Who knows? - she may cut your throat, kill you, poison you. You may start uttering some secret in your sleep; she may hear it. She may open your letters. Women are known to do such things, well known, really. In fact, it is very difficult to get your letter without it being read by your woman; she is bound to read it.

Mulla Nasruddin's wife was fighting with him. "Something has to be done - you have to write to your mother. She has been very cruel and crude towards me."

Nasruddin said, "But she is a thousand miles away. How can she be suddenly cruel and crude towards you?"

The wife said, "Yes, she has been. Look at this letter!"

In the letter there was a postscript. The letter was written to Nasruddin and the postscript to Nasruddin's wife, "Please, after you have read it, give the letter to my son!"

Women know each other!

Adolf Hitler was very afraid to get married. He remained a bachelor, a BRAHMACHARI, a celibate. Now, what more religious qualities do you need in a saint? - no smoking, no drinking, no wife, no friends. He lived the life of a monk!

But my feeling is, if he had smoked a little, if he had got drunk once in a while, had fallen into the hands of some woman, had loved somebody, had some friends, played chess or gambled a little bit, he would have been a far more human being and the world would have been saved from the second world war. But he became almost stonelike.

You can do good things, but if you are not conscious your good things are bound to result into something disastrous.

In Manhattan, a policeman strolling his early morning beat stopped in front of an East Eighties brownstone. Sitting on the stoop was Millarney, completely snookered.

"Why don't you go home?" suggested the cop.

"I live here," said Millarney.

"Why don't you go inside then?"

"I lost my key," answered the drunk.

"Why don't you ring the bell?"

"I did, an hour ago."

"Why don't you ring it again?" asked the officer.

"To hell with them!" snorted Millarney. "Let them wait!"

The ordinary humanity is really in a state of stupor. People are asleep. There is no need to be a drunkard, people are already drunk. Naturally we are not born conscious, we are born unconscious, and then we go on becoming more and more unconscious in life - because we are unconscious, we want to be more unconscious. It seems to be natural, it fits with us. To be conscious seems to be a very uphill task.

Hence the immense attraction for alcohol or for other drugs. From the times of the Vedas up to now it has been the same. The Vedas praise somaraS very highly. Somaras seems to be something like marijuana, LSD, psilocybin, something like that. It has not yet been discovered exactly what it was, but whatsoever it was, it was one of the most perfect of drugs.

Aldous Huxley, one of the most intellectual, philosophic persons, a great scholar, has called the perfect LSD "soma." He says that in the twenty-first century we will be reaching to that perfection. From the Vedas to Aldous Huxley, drugs have been an obsession with humanity, for the simple reason that we are born unconscious and the problems of life, anxieties of life, dangers of life, make us sometimes conscious. They wake up our deep, deep slumber, they disturb it. So we need more drugs, more and more drugs, to remain undisturbed in our unconsciousness. And out of that unconsciousness we act, we live our lives.

Ferguson and Malone decided to go hunting one morning.

"Listen," said Ferguson, "I will bring all the guns and such and you bring all the provisions."

"Fine," said Malone.

The next morning when they met, Ferguson was loaded down with guns and ammunition. Malone was carrying a loaf of bread and six bottles of whisky.

Ferguson blew his stack. "Look what happens when I leave the provisions to you!" he shouted. "A loaf of bread and six bottles of whisky! What the hell are we gonna do with all that bread?"

When Buddha says, and to have done something good, he means when you do something consciously. You cannot do anything bad consciously; that is an impossibility. It is as much impossible to do anything bad consciously as it is impossible to do good unconsciously.

Before leaving this life be conscious, act out of your consciousness, so that you can beautify this existence a little bit, so that you can sing a little song, so you can dance a little dance, so the world is enriched, so that you can be a little more creative, so that the world is a little more divine than it was before you came into it. Contribute something to it. Don't be just a wastage.

And to let go of sorrow. People think sorrow is clinging to you; that is utter nonsense. you are clinging to sorrow, because you have invested so much in sorrow. Your greatest investment is your ego. When you are sad, when you are miserable, your ego can feed on these illnesses, diseases. The ego can keep alive only through these pathologies; the ego lives on them.

When you are blissful, really blissed out, ego disappears. You are, but there is no ego, no idea of I, no idea of separation. In bliss there is a merger with the whole; in misery you are alone and separate. Misery makes you an island and bliss takes all your boundaries away from you. In bliss, the river disappears in the ocean. And we are very afraid to disappear as an ego. We want to keep our identity intact.

Mulla Nasruddin came across a small boy sitting in the gutter crying loudly.

"My boy, don't cry like that," said the Mulla.

Said the little boy, "Listen, mate, you cry your way and I will cry mine."

Sorrow has something very personal about it; bliss is impersonal. Your misery is your misery; it defines you. It is nobody else's misery, it is especially yours; it gives you a certain uniqueness. But bliss? Bliss is universal.

Hence Buddha, Jesus, Krishna, Lao Tzu, these people have disappeared into bliss. They don't have any personality. They are no-persons, they are nonentities. They are tremendously alive, but they are not separate from the whole. They have allowed the whole to live through them.

Buddha says: and to let go of sorrow.

Please watch how you are clinging to your sorrow, your misery. Drop it, let go of it! And your life will have a great sweetness.

To be a mother is sweet,

And a father.

It is sweet to live arduously,

And to master yourself.

To be a mother is sweet... Why? Just giving birth to a child is not to be a mother, remember. Otherwise there are millions of mothers on the earth - and there seems to be no sweetness. In fact, if you ask the psychologists they will say just the opposite. They will say the only problem to be solved is the mother. The only pathology that millions of people are suffering from is the mother. And what they are saying they are saying after fifty, sixty years of constant analysis of thousands of people. Everybody's illness basically comes to one point: that it has been given to you, transmitted to you by your mother.

There are people who are afraid of women; and if you are afraid of women you can't love them. How can love arise out of fear? And why are you afraid of women? - because your childhood was lived in fear of your mother. She was constantly after you, she was constantly hammering you. She was constantly telling you to do this and not to do that - of course, for your own good. She has crippled you, she has destroyed many things in you. She has made you phony because she has told you what is right to do. Whether you like it or not, whether it is spontaneously arising in you or not, you have to follow the order. And you were so helpless... your survival depended on the mother so you had to listen to her. She conditioned you. And it is because of the fear of your mother that you are afraid of women.

Millions of husbands are henpecked for the simple reason that their mothers were too strong. It has nothing to do with the wife; they are simply projecting the mother on the wife. The wife is only a new edition of the mother. They are expecting everything from the wife that they expected from the mother. On the one hand it cripples them; on the other hand they start expecting things which are not possible from the wife's side - because she is not your mother. So you feel frustrated. And how can you make love to your wife?

A boy who has really been dominated by the mother, who has been reduced into absolute obedience, will not be able to make love to a woman, because as he will come close to the woman psychologically he will go impotent. How can you make love to your mother? It is impossible.

Hence many people become impotent with their wives, but only with their wives. With the prostitutes they are not impotent. It is strange: why are they not impotent with the prostitute? - for the simple reason that they can't think of their mother as a prostitute; that is impossible. Their mother, and a prostitute? The prostitute is a world apart. But they can think of their wife as a mother, they can project the mother. The wife becomes simply a screen. They want the wife to take care of them like a small child, and if she is not taking care they feel offended.

Thousands of neurotic people and psychotic people are there in the world because of the mother. And Buddha says: to be a mother is sweet. He must mean something else. He can't mean a Jewish mother! He means not just giving birth to a child; that does not make one a mother. To be motherly is a totally different phenomenon. It is something absolutely human; it transcends animality. It has nothing to do with biology. It is love, pure love, unconditional love.

When a mother loves unconditionally - and only a mother can love unconditionally - the child learns the joy of unconditional love. The child becomes capable of loving unconditionally. And to be able to love unconditionally is to be religious.

And it is the easiest thing for a woman to do. It is easy for her because naturally she is ready for it. She is just on the verge of transcending biology through being a mother. You can be motherly without giving birth to a child. You can be motherly to anybody. You can be motherly to an animal, to a tree. You can be motherly to anything. It is something inside you.

Being motherly means being capable of unconditional love, loving the person for the sheer joy of loving, helping the person to grow for the sheer joy of seeing somebody grow.

A real therapist is a mother. If he is not, he is not a real therapist. He is only a professional exploiting people, exploiting them because of their misery. But a real therapist is a mother. He becomes a womb for the patient. He gives the patient a new birth. He starts the life of the patient again from ABC. He gives him a clean sheet to write his life again.

That's what I mean when I say "the psychology of the buddhas"; that is real therapy. A master is a real therapist; his very presence is therapeutic. He surrounds you like a mother. He is a cloud who surrounds you from everywhere, from all the sides, in all the dimensions, like a mother.

To be a mother is sweet, and a father. To be a father is a little more difficult. To be a mother is easier because each woman is born intrinsically to be a mother. But fatherhood is an institution invented by man; hence it is very difficult to come across a real father. But when you come across a real father it is a miracle. A real father is also a mother. He is called a father because he is a man, but his whole approach is of unconditional love.

In ordinary life lovers are exploiting each other; it is a mutual exploitation. Unconditional love means no exploitation. The other is not being used as a means but is respected as an end unto himself or herself.

Give your children your love, but don't give your ideologies. Don't make them Catholics and communists; that is poisoning them. Don't make them Hindus and Jainas and Buddhists; that is very destructive. Give your love, give your loving nourishment, and give them strength enough to inquire who they are, what this reality is all about. Give them every support so they can go on in life with an adventurous spirit. Then you are helping them; then you are really educating them. Ordinarily, whatsoever exists in the name of education is nothing but mis-education.

Real education is helping the person to be himself. It is possible only if you love the person for his own sake, for no other motive. If there is a motive, your love is contaminated. Then you are not a real father or a real mother.

It is sweet to live arduously, and to master yourself.

Life is basically insecure. Only death is secure. Life insurance is a contradiction in terms; there can be only death insurance. Life is an adventure, unpredictable. Hence one has to live it arduously. Life is dangerous; only death is safe. So the people who want to live safely die before their death, and the people who want to live without any danger don't live at all.

Life means danger, life means risk. Life means going always from the known to the unknown, from one peak to another peak, always climbing peaks which have not been climbed before, always moving into the uncharted sea with no maps, with no guidelines. Only then you live ecstatically, and only then you know what life is. Through living dangerously one becomes integrated. Through living a life of insecurity one passes through fire and becomes pure gold.

The only way to become a master of oneself is to go into the unknown, unafraid or in spite of all the fears. Buddha invites you for an arduous life. That's what sannyas is all about.

"Hello, hello, police. Please come quickly. There is a big black cat coming to get me. Hurry up! I am afraid."

The policeman replied in a tired voice, "Now, come on! What kind of man are you, afraid of a black cat?"

"I am not a man. I am a peacock."

It is very rare to find a real man. Even to find a peacock is very rare. There are only rats, white and black and all colors of rats! It is not an accident that psychologists go on studying rats to understand man. Strange, trying to understand rats so as to understand man! But not really, not really so strange as it appears, because the majority of men live like rats.

The psychology of Pavlov is based on the study of dogs, and the psychology of Skinner is based on the study of rats. And both are perfectly true as far as the majority of humanity is concerned. Only once in a while they may not be right. If they try to apply their psychology on a buddha they may not be right, but as far as the ordinary humanity is concerned they are perfectly right. What has happened to man? He has lost all meaning and significance for the simple reason that he has become a very cowardly being. He lives in such cowardly ways, he is so afraid of anything new.

I know people who have been listening to me for years - ten years, twelve years, fifteen years - and they go on saying to me, "We want to become sannyasins, but we are still thinking." And they go on finding excuses, sometimes one excuse, sometimes another excuse. They love me, but they are not courageous enough to declare it. They hide the fact. They are not courageous to move into this unknown dimension of sannyas. They love me so they listen to me, and they love me so sometimes they think that one day they are going to become sannyasins, but they go on finding excuses to postpone it.

It is because of this cowardliness that man has lost all meaning and significance. All joy, all bliss, all ecstasy, has disappeared. Man looks very sad. Even if he laughs, his laughter looks phony, mechanical, false - something cultivated, managed, not coming from the depths. It has no profundity, it does not sound like it is coming from the center. It is only a painted smile on the circumference.

Do you know how the word 'phony' came into existence? It came because of the telephone. When the telephone was invented and people started listening to others thousands of miles away on the telephone, the voice sounded strange. It is bound to be so. It is mechanical; it has not that authenticity. And there was nobody behind it; it was coming out of nowhere. Hence the word 'phony'. You smile, but you don't seem to be behind it; you may not be there at all.

And now even a new thing has come into existence. At least in the old days you could imagine that on the other side there must be somebody. Now there may be just a tape recorder saying, "Hello. How are you?"

I have heard:

One psychologist became very tired with a patient, tired because he was saying the same things again and again. And he was so rich that there was no hope of getting rid of him! So the psychologist said, "You do one thing. I will leave my tape recorder and you go on talking to the tape recorder. And whenever I have time I will listen to it."

The man said, "That's perfectly right" - because psychologists sit behind a screen, particularly Freudian psychologists. The patient lies down on the couch and the psychologist sits behind a screen. It is a good device... so that the psychologist can go to sleep, can read a newspaper, or may even leave. And the patient goes on talking, believing that he is there. Only once in a while he has to say, "Hmm. Yes. Go on," but this can be done by a tape recorder.

Next time, next session, and the psychologist said, "You did perfectly well last time. Now my tape recorder is here again. You go on talking to it. I am going to see a matinee show. When I am back I will listen."

When he was outside he saw the patient walking out. He said, "Where are you going?"

The patient said, "To the matinee show."

He said, "What happened? Aren't you going to talk to the tape recorder?"

He said, "I have put my tape recorder there. I have told everything to my tape recorder, and my tape recorder is talking to your tape recorder, so what's the need of me being there? I'm also coming to the matinee show!"

Life has become phony because of us, because we are living in a very cowardly way. We are not living arduously. We are not trying to climb new mountains, new peaks. We are not trying to explore. We have become more concerned with comfort, with security, safety.

Buddha says: it is sweet to live arduously.

Have you ever enjoyed climbing to the peak of a mountain? It is hard. You perspire, breathing becomes difficult, you become tired. And then you reach to the sunlit peak and then you lie down on the grass, and what relaxation and what joy arises in your being! The silence of the peak and the arduous climb, and you have reached, and the joy of reaching! You could have been dropped by a helicopter, but then there would have been no joy. It would have been comfortable.

Edmund Hillary could have reached to the peak of Everest by a helicopter - it was easier - but he tried the hard way. And he writes, "I have never known such bliss. When I reached to the peak I was all alone, the first man on Everest." Nobody had seen the sky from that point, nobody had seen the world from that point. It was sheer ecstasy. He danced.

Sooner or later buses will be going there and hotels will be there and cinema houses, and it will become very comfortable. But don't hope that you will have the same ecstasy as Edmund Hillary had, although you will be standing on the same spot. You will look a little silly and stupid, that's all. And you will not believe why this Hillary danced; you don't see any point. All around there are hotels and tourist centers and guides and everything is available; the whole world is there. You don't see why he laughed, why he enjoyed, why he danced, because you don't feel any dance.

Life is joy only when you live it raw, when you live it in all its wildness, when you live it naturally, spontaneously. Yes, there are bound to be difficulties, there are bound to be dangers, but they are part of life, and without them life will not be life at all. And this is the only way to master yourself.

Oh how sweet it is to enjoy life,

Living in honesty and strength!

Strange words from the mouth of Buddha. They would be perfectly right from the mouth of Zorba the Greek, but from the mouth of Buddha? Oh how sweet it is to enjoy life, living in honesty and strength!

Just the other day I received a very angry letter from someone who was here for a few days. He is the librarian in Dharamsala of the Dalai Lama's library - must be a scholar!

He writes to me, "You are saying things which are not Buddhist at all. In Mahayana sutras," he quotes, "Mahayana scriptures, it is perfectly and clearly stated that one has to live life ascetically. And you are changing the whole color of Buddha - you are making him look as if he is a hedonist!"

I don't care about the Mahayana sutras and the scriptures, but I know Buddha, I know his heart. I know that space from my own experience. I am not a scholar; in fact I have never read these sutras before! Every day I have to look at them and start talking to you. I am not concerned much with what Buddha said, but I know what Buddha would have said. I cannot believe that he was a pessimist. He believes, of course, in a totally different kind of life. He does not believe in the ordinary, unconscious life - dishonest, unauthentic, unloving, unmeditative. He calls that life misery, but only a certain kind of life he calls misery. True life cannot be misery, true life is bliss.

Oh how sweet it is to enjoy life, living in honesty and strength!

We have forgotten all honesty. Out of fear we have become dishonest, out of fear we have become false. Out of fear we follow the crowd and become phony. Out of fear we wear masks so that we look like everybody else - and we are not like everybody else. Everybody is unique; nobody is like anybody else. We have fallen below the animals as far as honesty is concerned.

Kaflin was planning a vacation and did not know what to do with his collie. He wrote to the resort hotel and asked if dogs were allowed.

He received this answer from the manager: "Dear sir, I have been in the hotel business for over thirty years. Never yet have I had to call in the police to eject a disorderly dog in the small hours of the morning. No dog has ever attempted to pass off a bad cheque on me. Never has a dog set the bedclothes afire through smoking. I have never found a hotel towel in a dog's suitcase. Certainly, your dog is welcome. P.S. If he will vouch for you, you can come too."

Of course, a dishonest life cannot be a life of bliss. You think you are deceiving others; you are simply destroying yourself and destroying all possibilities of growth, because growth comes through sincerity, honesty, authenticity. Growth comes through accepting your truth in its total nudity. And then life is certainly a joy, then life is certainly a bliss.

But you cannot expect anything else from a scholar. A scholar is bound to be stupid, otherwise why should he be a scholar in the first place? An intelligent person will seek and search for truth. He will not bother about Mahayana sutras and scriptures. I have no respect for scholarship.

And this man became very much disturbed, so much so that he has left already. If he had been here I would have hammered him a little more, but I received his letter just the other day when he had left. I hope that sometime again he will come, because to me the space of Buddha is a totally different space from what Buddhist scholars think it is.

He said, "Whatsoever you are saying is illogical and against the scriptures." So far so good! If it is against the scriptures it must have some truth in it. If it is illogical then it must be closer to truth, because truth IS illogical. Life is illogical. Those who think that life is logical are simply befooling themselves. Life is absolutely illogical because life contains contradictions and logic cannot contain contradictions. Logic is stupid.

A cyclist was stopped on the road by a policeman. He was no ordinary man - he was a professor of logic.

"Ah so! No light, that is twenty marks. No brakes, that is fifty marks. No bell, that is ten marks."

The cyclist turned round and looked at the row of traffic lined up behind him. He pointed at the man behind him and said, "Alright, that is eighty marks. But the poor man behind me, what will he have to pay? He has no bicycle even!"

Logically, that's true. If no bells, ten marks, no brakes, fifty marks, no light, twenty marks - no bicycle, how much will he have to pay?

A male scorpion was walking along the bank of a river. At a certain point he saw on the other bank a most beautiful female scorpion dancing erotically to attract him. He desired very much to cross the river, but he could not swim.

Suddenly he saw a big red frog and called to him, but the frog, being afraid of the scorpion's poison, started to hop away.

The scorpion, however, was a philosopher, and he said to the frog, "Come on, don't be afraid. Look at it logically. I am not interested in you, I am interested in her. I just want you to get me across the river. Everything will be okay. I am obviously not going to sting you because if I do, not only will YOU die, but I will die too because I can't swim. So come on, be logical and help me get across."

The red frog reluctantly agreed. The scorpion jumped on his shoulders and they began to cross the river. The frog swam very carefully, always looking towards the approaching shore.

Suddenly the frog felt a shooting pain in his ass and shortly after he felt the coolness of death slowly overtaking him. He turned to the scorpion and said, "Shit! This is not logic at all!"

"Yes," the scorpion agreed. "It is not logic, it is my nature."

 Logic is one thing, life is totally another. My concern here is not logic but life. My statements may not be logical - they cannot be - but they are alive; they have the flavor of life.

Buddha says: oh how sweet it is to enjoy life, living in honesty and strength!

And wisdom is sweet,

And freedom.

Buddha says: Meditation brings two things. It brings wisdom, it brings freedom. These two flowers grow out of meditation. When you become silent, utterly silent, beyond the mind, two flowers bloom in you. One is of wisdom: you know what is and what is not. And the other is of freedom: you know now there are no more any limitations on you, either of time or of space. You become liberated.

Meditation is the key to liberation, to freedom, to wisdom.

Enough for today.

John Nguyen

Dhammapada Vol. 9

Friday, August 18, 2017

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