Osho – Dhammapada: The Way of The Buddha (Volume 1)
Chapter 9. Seated
in the cave of the heart
As the fletcher whittles
And makes straight his arrows,
So the master directs
His straying thoughts.
Like a fish out of water,
Stranded on the shore,
Thoughts thrash and quiver.
For how can they shake off desire?
They tremble, they are unsteady,
They wander at their will.
It is good to control them.
And to master them brings happiness.
But how subtle they are,
How elusive!
The task is to quieten them,
And by ruling them to find happiness.
With singlemindedness
The master quells his thoughts.
He ends their wandering.
Seated in the cave of the heart,
He finds freedom.
Freedom is the goal of life.
Without freedom, life has no meaning at all. By "freedom" is not
meant any political, social or economic freedom. By "freedom" is
meant freedom from time, freedom from mind, freedom from desire. The moment
mind is no more, you are one with the universe, you are as vast as the universe
itself.
It is the mind that is the
barrier between you and the reality, and because of this barrier you remain
confined in a dark cell where no light ever reaches and where no joy can ever
penetrate. You live in misery because you are not meant to live in such a
small, confined space. Your being wants to expand to the very ultimate source
of existence.
Your being longs to be oceanic,
and you have become a dewdrop. How can you be happy? How can you be blissful?
Man lives in misery because man lives imprisoned.
And Gautama the Buddha says that
tanha - desire - is the root cause of all our misery, because desire creates
the mind. Desire means creating future, projecting yourself in the future,
bringing tomorrow in. Bring the tomorrow in and the today disappears, you
cannot see it anymore; your eyes are clouded by the tomorrow. Bring the
tomorrow in and you will have to carry the load of all your yesterdays, because
the tomorrow can only be there if the yesterdays go on nourishing it.
Each desire is born out of the
past and each desire is projected in the future. The past and the future, they
constitute your whole mind. Analyze the mind, dissect it, and you will find
only two things: the past and the future. You will not find even an iota of the
present, not even a single atom. And the present is the only reality, the only
existence, the only dance there is.
The present can be found only
when mind has ceased utterly. When the past no more overpowers you and the
future no more possesses you, when you are disconnected from the memories and
the imaginations, in that moment where are you? who are you?
In that moment you are a
nobody. And nobody can hurt you when you are a nobody, you cannot be wounded -
because the ego is very ready to receive wounds. The ego is almost seeking and
searching to be wounded; it exists through wounds. Its whole existence depends
on misery, pain.
When you are a nobody, anguish
is impossible, anxiety simply unbelievable. When you are a nobody there is
great silence, stillness, no noise inside. Past gone, future disappeared, what
is there to create noise? And the silence that is heard is celestial, is
sacred. For the first time, in those spaces of no-mind, you become aware of the
eternal celebration that goes on and on. That's what the existence is made of.
Except man, the whole existence
is blissful. Only man has fallen out of it, has gone astray. Only man can do it
because only man has consciousness.
Now, consciousness has two
possibilities: either it can become a bright light in you, so bright that even
the sun will look pale compared to it... Buddha says it is as if a thousand
suns have risen suddenly - when you look within with no mind it is all light,
eternal light. It is all joy, pure, uncontaminated, unpolluted. It is simple
bliss, innocent.
It is wonder. Its majesty is
indescribable, its beauty inexpressible, and its benediction inexhaustible. Aes
dhammo sanantano: so is the ultimate law.
If you can only put your mind
aside you will become aware of the cosmic play. Then you are only energy, and
the energy is always herenow, it never leaves the herenow.
That is one possibility: if you
become pure consciousness.
The other possibility is: you
can become self-consciousness. Then you fall. Then you become a separate entity
from the world. Then you become an island, defined, well defined. Then you are
confined, because all definitions confine. Then you are in a prison cell, and
the prison cell is dark, utterly dark. There is no light, no possibility of
light.
And the prison cell cripples
you, paralyzes you.
Self-consciousness becomes a
bondage; the self is the bondage. And just consciousness becomes freedom.
Drop the self and be conscious!
That is the whole message - the message of all the buddhas of all the ages,
past, present, future. The essential core of the message is very simple: drop
the self, the ego, the mind, and be.
Just this moment when this
silence pervades... who are you? A nobody, a nonentity. You don't have a name,
you don't have a form. You are neither man nor woman, neither Hindu nor
Mohammedan. You don't belong to any country, to any nation, to any race.
You are not the body and you
are not the mind.
Then what are you? In this
silence, what is your taste? How does it taste to be? Just a peace, just a
silence... and out of that peace and silence a great joy starts surfacing,
welling up, for no reason at all. It is your spontaneous nature.
The art of putting the mind
aside is the whole secret of religion, because as you put the mind aside your
being explodes into a thousand and one colors. You become a rainbow, a lotus, a
one-thousand-petaled lotus. Suddenly you open up, and then the whole beauty of
existence - which is infinite! - is yours. Then all the stars in the sky are
within you. Then even the sky is not your limit; you don't have any limits anymore.
Silence gives you a chance to
melt, merge, disappear, evaporate. And when you are not, you are - for the
first time you are. When you are not, God is, nirvana is, enlightenment is.
When you are not, all is found - and when you are, all is lost.
Man has become a
self-consciousness; that is his going astray, that is the original fall.
All the religions talk about
the original fall in some way or other, but the best story is contained in
Christianity. The original fall is because man eats from the tree of knowledge.
When you eat of the tree of knowledge, the fruits of knowledge, it creates
self-consciousness.
The more knowledgeable you are,
the more egoistic you are - hence the ego of the scholars, pundits, maulvis.
The ego becomes decorated with great knowledge, scriptures, systems of thought.
But they don't make you innocent; they don't bring you the childlike quality of
openness, of trust, of love, of playfulness. Trust, love, playfulness, wonder,
all disappear when you become very knowledgeable.
And we are being taught to
become knowledgeable. We are not taught to be innocent, we are not taught how
to feel the wonder of existence. We are told the names of the flowers, but we
are not taught how to dance around the flowers. We are told the names of the
mountains, but we are not taught how to commune with the mountains, how to
commune with the stars, how to commune with the trees, how to be in tune with
existence.
Out of tune, how can you be
happy? Out of tune you are bound to remain in anguish, in great misery, in
pain. You can be happy only when you are dancing with the dance of the whole,
when you are just a part of the dance, when you are just a part of this great
orchestra, when you are not singing your song separately. Only then, in that
melting, is man free.
That's what freedom is. It is
not political, not economic, not social. Freedom is spiritual.
The social, the economic, and
the political freedom are freedoms only if they help people to be spiritually
free. If they don't help people to become spiritually free, then they are
pretenders. Then in the name of freedom man is made more and more a slave.
Beautiful names become facades
hiding ugly realities. If you are not spiritually free you are not free at all.
Then all your freedoms are bogus, phony, pseudo. Then you have been duped. Then
you have been given toys to play with.
Buddha is talking about the
reality - the real freedom. He calls it nirvana. The word 'nirvana' is very
beautiful; it means cessation of self-consciousness, utter cessation of the
self, the naked state of egolessness. It brings great ecstasies, great harvest;
inexhaustible treasures it brings.
Hence Buddha goes on repeating
again and again... two statements he repeats in The Dhammapada. One is: aes
dhammo sanantano. This is the ultimate law of life: that you disappear and you
will find yourself. Very paradoxical - that just by disappearing one finds. By
dropping the self one becomes the ultimate self. By disappearing as a dewdrop
one becomes the ocean.
And the other statement that he
repeats again and again is: aes dhammo visuddhya - such is the law of purity,
of becoming innocent, pure. What is the law of purity? A simple law: become
disidentified with the mind, don't think of yourself as a mind. Not that Buddha
is against the mind, not that he does not want you to use it - he wants you to
use it, but not to be used by it. And usually the second is the case: the mind
is using you. You have become a slave. The master has become the slave and the
slave has become the master. Everything has gone topsy-turvy.
You are standing on your head!
Now how can you walk, how can you move, how can you dance? Have you seen
anybody dancing standing on his head? Your life will not be a life of movement
anymore if you are standing on your head. Your life will be stagnant, it will
become a dirty pool of water. You will start stinking soon. Standing on your
head you are crippled, paralyzed.
If you just stand on your legs
again - a small change, a very small change, but it brings a radical revolution
- immediately you are capable of movement, and movement is life.
Not to move is to die.
How do you define death? When a
person cannot move in any possible way. He cannot breathe - that is one kind of
movement; he cannot see - that is another kind of movement; he cannot walk, he
cannot talk - these are all kinds of movement, different dimensions of
movement. Because all movement has ceased we say the man is dead.
The more movement you have, the
more life, the livelier you are. Have multidimensional movement! But that is
possible only if you stop standing on your head. You have to be put right.
The day you come to me you come
in a topsy-turvy state. Initiation into sannyas means nothing except that I
persuade you to stand on your feet and not to go on doing this shirshasana -
headstand - your whole life.
Be natural, be part of nature.
Don't brag. Don't go on puffing up your egos. We are tiny parts - immensely
beautiful if we function with the whole, but absolutely ugly if we function
against it.
But you have been told by your
societies to fight, to struggle, because life is a struggle for survival,
because if you don't fight you will be defeated. And you have to be victorious,
and you have to be famous. You have been given great ambitions and all those
ambitions have become chains, all those ambitions are keeping you tethered. All
those ambitions are the root cause of your mind; they create the mind.
Buddha's word 'tanha' contains
all the meanings of desire, ambition, achievement.
These are the nourishments of
the mind. If you go on nourishing the mind you are poisoning yourself. And the
mind will become bigger and bigger and you will become smaller and smaller. The
mind becomes almost a cancerous growth.
Sannyas means an operation.
Buddha transformed thousands of people through sannyas, through initiation. He
was a great surgeon.
And once you become aware that
you are the cause of your own misery, things start changing. You no longer help
your own misery, you no longer feed it. And once you become aware that you are
not your mind but a witness to it, you start rising above the mind, you are no
longer tethered. You start growing wings, you start soaring higher and higher.
Mind remains always groping in the dark valleys of life, but you can become an
eagle, you can soar high. You can be the master and then you can use the mind -
and very purposely it can be used.
These sutras are how to become
the master of your mind. They contain the science of becoming the master.
The Buddha says:
As the fletcher whittles
And makes straight his arrows,
So the master directs
His straying thoughts.
Now meditate: are your thoughts
directing you, or do you direct your thoughts? - because much depends on that
insight. Are you being dominated by your thoughts? Do they go on driving you
hither and thither? Do they suggest to you, do they fascinate you, do they
obsess you? Do they pull your strings and are you simply a slave? Or are you
the master, and can you say to your thoughts "Stop!" and they have to
stop - can you put them on or off?
People never meditate over it
because it makes them feel very humiliated. It shows them their impotence: they
cannot even stop thoughts, their own thoughts.
There is a famous Tibetan
parable:
A man served a master for many
many years. The service was not pure; there was a motivation in it. He wanted
some secret from the master. He had heard that the master has the secret - the
secret to do miracles. With this hidden desire he was serving the master day
in, day out, but he was afraid to say anything. But the master was continuously
watching his motivation.
One day the master asked,
"It is better that you please speak your mind, because I am continuously
seeing a motive in all your service that you do for me. It is not out of love,
certainly not out of love. I don't see any love in it and I don't see any
humility in it. It is a kind of bribery. So please, just tell me, what do you
want?"
The man was waiting for this
opportunity. He said, "I want the secret of doing miracles."
The master said, "Then why
did you waste your time so long? You could have said it the very first day you
had come. You tortured yourself and you tortured me too, because I don't like
people around me who have motives. They are ugly to look at. They are basically
greedy, and greed makes them ugly. The secret is simple - why didn't you ask me
the first day? This is the secret..."
He wrote down a small mantra on
a piece of paper, just three lines maybe: "Buddham sharanam gachchhami,
sangham sharanam gachchhami, dhammam sharanam gachchhami - I go to the feet of
the Buddha, I go to the feet of the Buddha's commune, I go to the feet of the
dhamma, the ultimate law."
And the master told the man,
"You take this small mantra with you, repeat it five times, just five times.
It is a simple process. Just remember one condition: while you are repeating
it, take a bath, close the door, sit silently - and while you are repeating it,
please don't remember monkeys."
The man said, "What
nonsense are you talking about? Why should I remember monkeys in the first
place? I have never remembered them my whole life!"
The master said, "That is
up to you, but I have to tell you the condition. This is how the mantra was
given to me, with this condition. If you have never remembered monkeys, so far
so good. Now go home, and please never come back to me. You have the secret,
you know the condition. Fulfill the condition and you will have miraculous
powers, and whatsoever you want to do you can do: you can fly in the sky, you
can read people's thoughts, you can materialize things, and so on and so
forth."
The man rushed home; he even
forgot to thank the master. That's how greed functions: it does not know
thankfulness, it does not know gratitude. Greed is absolutely unaware of
gratitude; it never comes across it. Greed is a thief and thieves don't thank.
The man rushed, but he was very
much puzzled: even on the way to his home monkeys started appearing in his
head. He saw many kinds of monkeys: small and big, and red- mouthed and black-mouthed,
and he was very much puzzled - "What is happening?"
In fact he was not thinking of
anything else but the monkeys. And they were becoming bigger and they were
crowding all around.
He went home, he took a bath,
but the monkeys were not leaving him. Now he was becoming suspicious that they
were not going to leave him while he would be chanting the mantra. He had not
even chanted the mantra yet, he was simply preparing. And when he closed his
doors the room was full of monkeys. It was so crowded that he had no space for
himself! He closed his eyes and there were monkeys, and he opened his eyes and
there were monkeys. He could not believe what was happening! The whole night he
tried. Again and again he would take a bath, and again and again he would try
and fail, and fail utterly.
In the morning he went to the
master, returned the mantra and said, "Keep this mantra with you. This is
driving me mad! I don't want to do any miracles, but please help me to get rid
of these monkeys!"
It is so impossible to get rid
of a single thought! And if you want to get rid of it, it becomes even more
difficult, because when you want to get rid of a thought it is a question - a
very decisive moment - of who is the master: the mind or you? The mind will try
in every possible way to prove that he is the master and not you.
The master has been a slave for
centuries, and the slave has been the master for millions of lives. Now the
slave cannot leave all his privileges, priorities, so easily. He is going to
give you great resistance.
You try it! Today take a bath,
close your doors, repeat this simple mantra: Buddham sharanam gachchhami,
sangham sharanam gachchhami, dhammam sharanam gachchhami - and don't let the
monkeys come to you...
You are laughing at the poor
man. You will be surprised: you are that man.
Sigmund Freud used to tell
another story:
It happened once in a big hotel
that a man came to stay. The manager was a little hesitant in giving him a room
although there was an empty room. The man said, "Why are you hesitating so
much?"
The man said, "The reason
is, just below that room there is a politician staying, a very famous man and
very powerful, a big gun. And he is annoyed by small things, so we have kept
the room above him empty for three days since he has been here - because if
anybody walks some noise is created, if you move something some noise is
created, and he becomes so irritated and so angry that he creates much fuss
about it."
The stranger said, "Don't
be worried! I will be very careful. Moreover, I am going to stay only
overnight. I will be coming nearabout twelve in the night because I have much
work to do in the town, and I will be leaving early in the morning, five
o'clock. There is not much possibility that between twelve and five I will do
anything which will irritate the great man. At the most I will be asleep and
dreaming, and I don't think my dreams will disturb him."
The manager was convinced:
"If he is going to stay just for five hours there is no problem." He
was allowed.
At twelve the man reached his
room exhausted: the whole day's work, a thousand and one things clamoring in
his head. He had completely forgotten the politician. He entered his room. He
was so tired. He sat on his bed, took off one of his shoes and threw it in the
corner of the room. Then suddenly the noise of the shoe reminded him that maybe
the politician, the great leader, would get disturbed, may be awakened. So the
other shoe he put down very silently.
After one hour the politician
knocked on his door. He came out of his sleep, opened the door and said,
"Have I done anything? - because for one hour I have been asleep."
The politician was red with
anger. He said; "Yes! Where is the other shoe? I cannot manage to sleep.
That other shoe goes on hanging, a continuous question in my mind - where has
the other shoe gone? Is this man sleeping with one shoe on? One I know you have
thrown, but what happened to the other one? I have tried in every possible way
to get rid of the idea - that this is not my concern. How am I concerned with
his shoe? But the more I have tried to get rid of the idea the more I have
become possessed by it. Now there is only one possible way to go to sleep: to
come and wake you and ask you what happened. Unless I know I cannot
sleep."
It is very difficult even to
get rid of an absurd thought, utterly meaningless to you, of no purpose,
something which is just accidental, none of your business. But still it can
pursue you, it can haunt you, it can torture you. It can become such a powerful
thing that it can drive you mad.
People don't look in. They know
that it is better not to look in because it is very humiliating. To see oneself
as a slave is humiliating. And the mind has been on the throne so long, it has
become accustomed to being the master. And it is not the master.
You are born as a
consciousness, not as a mind. Your innermost core is consciousness, not mind.
Mind is nothing but accumulated thoughts, junk of the past. You are totally
different from it.
Watching it, slowly slowly you
will see the distance. A thought arises in you, watch it.
Watch it without any judgment.
Don't be for or against, simply look at it, see into it, just like a mirror
reflecting it. And one thing will become certain: that it is separate from you.
It comes and goes, and you abide forever. The reflection in the mirror is not
the mirror. Many reflections come and go, the mirror remains. The mirror is
only the capacity of mirroring. A thought is there - anger, greed, jealousy -
some thought, some kind of thought is there. It is not you!
But our whole training, our
whole conditioning, is basically wrong. Our languages are basically wrong
because they give us wrong notions. When you see the thought of hunger arise in
your mind you immediately say, "I am hungry," which is utter
nonsense. You have never been hungry and you cannot be hungry, because
consciousness has nothing to do with hunger, food, satiation. What is actually
happening is: the body is hungry - you are aware of it. You are simply
reflecting the situation of the body.
To be exactly precise you
should say, "I am aware that my body is hungry, I am seeing that my body
needs food."
But every language says,
"I am hungry, I am thirsty." I know it is simpler to say, "I am
thirsty," than to say again and again, "I am aware that my body is
thirsty."
One of the great Indian mystics
visited America - his name was Swami Ram. He used to speak of himself in the
third person, he never used to use the word 'I'. He would only call himself
Ram. He would say, "Ram is hungry. Ram is thirsty. Now Ram is feeling
sleepy." It is a very strange way because we are not accustomed to it.
When he went to America for the
first time, people could not understand him or would understand him only in a
wrong way, misunderstand him. He would say, "Ram is hungry." They
would look all around - where is Ram? And then he would show them:
"This body is Ram, this
body is hungry."
And they would say, "Then
why don't you simply say 'I am hungry'? Why go so roundabout, why go in
circles? 'Ram is hungry.' Then we have to ask, 'Who is Ram?'
Then you have to say, 'This
body is Ram.'" But Ram would say, "I cannot assert something which is
not true. I cannot say 'I am hungry' because I am not."
Once it happened that he was
sitting in a park, a public park, and a few people who had gathered around him
were asking questions. One man asked, "We have heard about Krishna that
when he used to play on his flute that people would forget their jobs and just
rush towards him enchanted, as if possessed. What was his secret?"
Ram was only wearing one single
cloth, he had just wrapped a blanket around himself.
He threw the blanket - rather
than answering he created a situation. That's how great mystics work. He threw
the blanket, he was utterly naked, and he ran away. All the people ran with
him! Not only those who were surrounding him but others also who were standing
here and there or who had come for a morning walk, and people who were sitting
on the benches reading their newspapers, they threw their newspapers. A great crowd
was following him, and he was laughing and giggling, and the whole crowd was
following him.
And then he stood under a tree
and he said, "Why are you following me? For what? I have not even played
on the flute! And you had asked me why people used to become possessed by
Krishna's flute."
Wherever something of the
beyond happens, people become enchanted. "You are enchanted," he
said. "And Ram has not done anything special. Ram has only become naked
and has been running like a child in the morning sun."
Somebody who was not acquainted
with his way of talking asked, "Who is this Ram?"
And again he said, "This
body is Ram, this mind is Ram, and I am a watcher just as you are a watcher.
Just as you watched this body running naked in the morning sun, I was also
watching. You are watching from without, I am watching from within. We are both
watchers."
This is the way to become
disidentified from the mind: be a watcher.
Buddha says: as the fletcher
whittles and makes straight his arrows, so the master directs his straying
thoughts. Then it will be possible and only then: when you have
become an observer, when you have reduced your thoughts to observed objects,
the content of the mind is no longer powerful. You have slipped out of its
power, you are standing apart. You are a spectator, a witness.
When you have become a witness,
you will be able to direct your thoughts. Then thoughts can be used, then
thoughts are beautiful.
The mind is the most
sophisticated mechanism in the whole of existence, and the human mind more so
than any other. It is the most evolved machine, it can be used for great
things. But you have to be the master, only then can you use it.
But the situation is such that
the car is driving the driver.
The driver has become
completely unaware of himself; maybe he is drunk. He is simply moving wherever
the car is leading him. Now he is bound for a ditch, bound for an accident! And
if your life is so full of accidents it is not an accident at all - it has to
be so.
You are following a machine. It
is a biocomputer, your mind; beautiful if you can use it as a master, dangerous
if it uses you. This is slavery. To be free of it is to know something of
freedom.
And the first effort should be
like the fletcher who makes his arrows straight.
Your minds are not in a state
of harmony; your minds are in a mess, nothing is straight there. Everything has
become a very complicated labyrinth, a riddle. You don't know what is what and
which is which. You don't know what you are doing and why. And one moment one
thought possesses you, another moment another thought possesses you, and both
may be contradictory. So by one hand you make something and by the other hand
you unmake it. Hence the utter failure of life, a sheer wastage of energy and
time and opportunity.
Watch how contradictory your
thoughts are. One part says yes, another part immediately says no, never misses
the opportunity to say no. Now saying yes and no together is wasting your
energy. Either say yes and be total, then your thought is straight; or say no
and be total, then your thought is straight. But saying yes and no together, or
alternately - one moment yes, another moment no - where are you going to reach?
You take one step in one direction, another step in another direction. You will
remain stuck in the same place, or at the most you will move in circles, But
your life will not be a life of growth, you will not grow. You may certainly
grow old but you will never grow up, you will never attain to maturity.
Straighten out your thoughts!
It is almost a complete jungle in your mind - all paths are lost. You don't
know what is happening. You can't stop either, because it makes you frightened
to stop. Everybody else is doing so much, everybody else is achieving,
reaching, fulfilling their ambitions, how can you stop? You have to go on, and
you have to go on with great speed and great gusto and enthusiasm. And you
don't know where you are going, what the goal is. What do you really want to
achieve in life? Money?
And even if you achieve much
money what will you do with it?
You can purchase more misery,
of course, when you have more money; that's what you are going to do. You will
go on purchasing the same things that you are purchasing now. Of course, you
can purchase them in bigger quantities, that's all. You will live in bigger
houses, but you will live; the house is not going to live it. If you are
anxious in a small house you may be more anxious in a bigger house, because you
will have more space to be anxious in. If you are ignorant, utterly ignorant of
yourself, how is money going to help? How is being famous going to help? You
may become a world-renowned person, but that will not change anything. Your
inner darkness will remain the same; it may even become darker.
The first thing Buddha says is:
...the master
directs his straying thoughts.
He does not allow the thoughts
to go into contradictory pathways. He does not allow one thought to be
destroyed by another. He does not allow thoughts to direct him - he is the
director. He masters them; he uses them as beautiful implements, instruments.
And then certainly he comes to
fulfillment, because he knows where he is going and he knows what he is doing.
On each step of his journey he
is perfectly aware of his whereabouts; he has a certain sense of direction. He
does not go on running in all the directions simultaneously; he has a
direction. Naturally he becomes integrated, he becomes a great power. Without
attaining any political power he becomes a great power. His power arises from
his own being, it is his own. Nobody can take it away; it does not depend on
anybody. Even death cannot take it away from him, even death is impotent.
But people are living in such
an insane state. This state is insane! People feel offended when I say that the
whole of humanity is insane, but what can I do? - it is so. The fact has to be
stated, howsoever painful it is. I am also pained by it, I feel sorry for
humanity, but it has to be said: that the whole of humanity is mad. What you
call normal human beings are not normal at all. They are normally mad,
certainly; their madness is almost the same, hence they are normal. But they
are not the norm, they are not the principle, they are not the criterion of
health. The whole earth is a big madhouse.
Kahlil Gibran has a beautiful
story:
One man becomes insane; he is
put in an insane asylum. A friend comes to visit him.
The friend is a professor, a
professor of philosophy, has written many books, is a well- known scholar, is
also a psychologist. The madman is sitting on a bench under a tree in the
garden, surrounded by a big wall. The professor comes, sits by his side and
asks him, "How are you feeling inside this place?"
The madman laughs. He says,
"I am feeling so good - as I have never felt before."
The professor is puzzled. He
says, "Why? Why are you feeling so happy being in this madhouse?"
The madman says,
"Madhouse? This you call a madhouse? I have left the madhouse outside -
this is the sanest place in the world! The madhouse is outside; this wall
protects us from mad people. If ever you become tired of the mad people
outside, you are always welcome here. Come in! It is very peaceful here -
nobody interferes in anybody's work. It is very silent here. Very few people
are here, and I have never seen such sane people in my whole life - they are
all like me!"
That's his definition of
sanity: he is sane and they are like him. The people who are outside are
insane.
But the same criterion is
followed by the people outside: you think yourself sane because you are exactly
like your neighbors. But who knows? - the neighbors may be insane too.
The whole history of humanity
proves that this is an insane humanity; something is basically wrong with it.
In three thousand years man has fought five thousand wars.
Will you call this humanity
sane? Everybody is greedy, jealous, possessive - and you call this humanity
sane? Everybody is at each other's throats - and you call this humanity sane?
Normal of course - normal in the sense that they are all alike.
Once Mark Twain advertised, as
a hoax, that he had lost a cat so black that it could not be seen by ordinary
light, and he wanted it back. Nearly a thousand people contacted him claiming
to have seen it.
Just look around, just observe
people, and you will be surprised seeing the utterly insane state which is
known as normal. What is normal? What is the definition of a normal human
being?
He should be full of love, he
should be full of bliss. He should be fearless. He should be joyous and
ecstatic. He should be able to sing and laugh and dance. He should be able to
enjoy the small things of life. He should be total in whatsoever he is doing.
His thoughts will be straight: if he says no he means no, if he says yes he
means yes. He will not be diplomatic, he will not be political in that he says
one thing, he means another, and will do a third thing. You cannot figure it
out, you can never be sure what the political person is going to do. He has one
face outside and another reality inside. He is double-faced, in a double bind.
He smiles at you, he greets you - and he hates you, he curses you inside. He is
an enemy, yet he pretends to be a friend.
This is insanity! This
hypocrisy is insanity, this split is insanity. This schizophrenic atmosphere is
insane. It is not a healthy human being that we have been able to produce. We
have failed up to now... and we have to do something very drastic now,
otherwise humanity is doomed. Now the insane people have so much destructive
power in their hands that one war more and humanity is finished and this planet
is finished.
Something tremendously drastic
is needed, a quantum leap is needed. But this is possible only through those
people who listen to the buddhas.
...The master directs his straying
thoughts.
Like a fish out of water,
Stranded on the shore,
Thoughts thrash and quiver.
For how can they shake off desire?
Thoughts cannot live out of
desire, just as a fish cannot live out of the sea. Thoughts cannot live out of
the sea of desire: thoughts are basically instruments of a desiring state. And
we are continuously desiring, desiring this and that. We cannot stop thinking
if we go on desiring. First the desire, the very root, has to be cut.
What is there to desire in
life? Those who have known, those who have realized life, say there is nothing
worth desiring in life. Live it! and live as wholly as possible, and live each
moment to its uttermost. Squeeze it totally. But there is nothing to desire.
Desire leads you astray because it leads you into the future.
Drink out of the present
moment, because the present moment is the door to God. God has only one tense:
the present. He knows no past and no future. If you also want to be part of
God... and that's the only way to be sane, to be healthy. Only a religious
person is sane and healthy. If you want to be part of God, you will have to
learn to relax in the present moment.
Die to the past and die to the
future, and live in the present. Don't allow yourself to move from the present,
not even a single inch here and there; otherwise you will always go on missing
the train.
And the mind is continuously
running from one object to another, from one person to another. You have a
wife, but the mind is running after other people's wives. You have children,
but they never look so beautiful as other people's children. The grass is
always greener on the other side of the hedge. Everybody else seems to be
happier than you.
And then, of course, you
logically deduce: "They have bigger houses, better children, a beautiful
woman, more money, more power, more prestige, so these are the things I also
need. Unless I have all these things, how can I be happy?" You make your
happiness conditional. And the moment a man makes his happiness conditional he
is doomed; he will remain unhappy his whole life.
Happiness is not conditional;
nothing is needed to be happy. Only to be alive is needed - and that you are,
you already are. Only to be conscious is needed - and that you already are.
Hence the mystics and the buddhas say that bliss is our very nature. But the
mind is a runner and it keeps dragging you.
The sultan called for his
eunuch. "I am in the mood," he said. "Go get me wife number."
So the eunuch ran out of the
palace and into the harem. He ran through the garden, past the orchard, and up
the steps. Soon he returned with wife 256. A bit later the sultan sent for the
eunuch again and said, "I want more. Go get me wife 87." The eunuch
ran and got her. Then the king wanted wife 68, and soon after, wife 92.
When he returned with wife
number 92 the eunuch was panting heavily. Then he suddenly collapsed and died.
Moral: It is not the loving
that kills you, it is the running around.
The mind is continuously
running around. It never sits, it can't sit. Sitting seems to be death to it,
and in a way it is. That's why Zen people say, if you can sit silently for a
few hours every day, doing nothing, not even chanting a mantra, because that is
again a running of the mind, the same mind... It can sing pop songs, it can
chant a religious mantra, it makes no difference. It wants some work, it wants
activity, it wants occupation, it wants to run. Its life is in the running.
The Zen people say just sit,
don't do anything. The most difficult thing in the world is just to sit doing
nothing. But once you have got the knack of it... If you go on sitting for a
few months doing nothing for a few hours every day, slowly slowly, many things
will happen. You will feel sleepy, you will dream. Many thoughts will crowd
your mind, many things. The mind will say, "Why are you wasting your time?
You could have earned a little money. At least you could have gone to a film,
entertained yourself, or you could have relaxed and gossiped. You could have
watched the TV or listened to the radio, or at least you could have read the
newspaper you have not seen. Why are you wasting your time?"
Mind will give you a thousand
and one arguments, but if you just go on listening without being bothered by
the mind... It will do all kinds of tricks: it will hallucinate, it will dream,
it will become sleepy. It will do all that is possible to drag you out of just
sitting. But if you go on, if you persevere, one day the sun rises.
One day it happens, you are not
feeling sleepy, the mind has become tired of you, is fed up with you, has
dropped the idea that you can be trapped, is simply finished with you!
There is no sleep, no
hallucination, no dream, no thought. You are simply sitting there doing
nothing... and all is silence and all is peace and all is bliss. You have
entered God, you have entered truth.
They tremble, they are unsteady,
They wander at their will.
It is good to control them.
And to master them brings happiness.
Watch, and you will see the
trembling mind, the quivering thoughts chasing each other, running in every
possible direction, consistent, inconsistent, meaningful, meaningless.
Just one day sit down in your
room, close the doors, and start writing the thoughts that are happening to
you. That will help you to become aware. Just go on writing whatsoever is
happening. Don't edit, don't make them look consistent, beautiful. It is not to
be shown to anybody, it is just for your observation. For fifteen minutes go on
writing, then read it, and you will be puzzled: are you mad or something? What
kind of things are going on in your head? All kinds of things, so irrelevant
that you cannot conceive any possible relationship with them. Anything leads to
anything just accidentally.
The dog starts barking in the
neighborhood and your mind starts functioning. You remember a dog you used to
have in your childhood, and suddenly the mind jumps from the dog to a friend
who was also known in the childhood... and from the friend to the school, and
the teacher. And this way the mind goes on hopping, and you will land nobody
knows where. And it was just started by the barking of the dog who knows
nothing about you, who is not interested at all in you, but he triggered a
process. You may reach anywhere! And each time it happens you will reach some
other place.
Mind goes on jumping from one
place to another, and mind has so much information that it can produce all
kinds of worlds.
Watching it you will see the
truth of Buddha's statement: they tremble, they are unsteady, they wander at their
will. They don't listen to you, they have their own will. Each
thought has its own will and insists on remaining itself. It does not want to
be tinkered with, it does not want you to interfere. If you interfere, it
resists, it protests. Every thought wants its own individuality. And these
millions of thoughts in your head destroy your individuality, because they all
claim their own individuality and they all claim to be autonomous and free. And
if you say anything, they ask, "Who are you?" And each time they will
show you your place, they will reduce you to nothing.
Unless they are controlled,
Buddha says, there is no possibility of bliss happening to you. You will remain
in a mess, you will remain a confusion.
Inmate: "I have a mad,
insane desire to crush you in my arms."
Lady psychiatrist: "Now
you are talking sense!"
It depends on you what you call
sense and what you call nonsense. There are philosophers in the world who say
all is nonsense, and there are philosophers in the world who say everything is
sense, sensible. This is the most rational world, they say, very logical. It
all depends on you what you call sense and what you think is sensible. It
depends on your training, your upbringing, your conditioning, the way you have
been hypnotized.
Now, eating meat is sensible if
you have been brought up in a house where nobody ever thought of vegetarianism;
even if they talked about it, they talked only to laugh at vegetarians:
"These foolish people who think that by becoming vegetarians they are
becoming religious." If you are born in a vegetarian house, in a vegetarian
family, then the people who eat meat are monsters. They are not people at all;
they are untouchable, they are not human beings, they are animals.
You yourself never know what is
right, what is wrong; you know only according to what others have said to you.
This is not a way which can lead you into sanity. You will have to become more
aware, more alert, more watchful. You will have to decide on your own. You have
lived a borrowed life. You will have to reflect - you become a human being only
when you start reflecting on things on your own. When you observe accurately,
precisely, when you judge, when you value, when you weigh things and you start
living according to your own consciousness more and more, you will attain to
freedom. And freedom brings bliss.
Freedom means you have to
control the mind, your so-called mind, which is not yours at all because it has
been given to you by others, in fragments. A part of it belongs to your mother,
another part to your father, another part to your uncle, and so on and so forth...
to the priest, to the teacher, to the neighborhood boy... You have gathered
fragments from all over the world - from the books you have been reading and
the films you have been seeing.
If you look into it you will be
surprised - you don't have any mind of your own.
Everything is borrowed! How can
you be authentic? You are just a piled-up phenomenon, fragments from so many
different sources that they can never melt and become one. But one thing is not
borrowed in you and that is your consciousness, that is your awareness. That
you have brought with you, that is part of your inner core.
Depend on it and never depend
on the mind. Become independent of the mind and absolutely dependent on
consciousness, and you are taking the greatest step of your life.
But how subtle they are,
How elusive!
The task is to quieten them,
And by ruling them to find happiness.
It is not going to be an easy
job. It is arduous, because the mind is very cunning and thoughts are very
subtle.
One soldier is explaining
transmigration of souls to another and tells him that if he is killed his body
will decay on the battlefield and finally sink into the ground. In the spring a
beautiful flower will come up on the spot.
"And that is me, is
it?" asks the other soldier.
"No, wait a minute. Then a
cow comes along and eats the flower and leaves behind a big pile of cowflop.
Then I come strolling through the field with my girl, I sees this cowflop and I
taps it with my walking-stick and I says, 'Hello, Bill! Why, you ain't changed
a bit!'" Mind is very cunning - it can always find its ways to remain the
same. It can find new ways so that it can remain old. It can find new garments
so it can hide behind them; it can find beautiful rationalizations.
Beware! Mind is not a simple
phenomenon, it is complex, subtle, very elusive. If you try to catch hold of it
you will be in difficulty. If you push it out through the front door, it will
come from the back. If you want to control it and repress it, it will start
functioning from your unconscious - which is far more dangerous because it will
control you still, although now you will be absolutely unaware of its control.
The enemy is no longer visible, that's all, but the enemy is there. And when
the enemy is invisible the enemy is more powerful.
... How subtle they are, and how elusive! The
task is to quieten them... So remember, they are not to be
repressed, they are not to be caught. The task is to quieten them, and by ruling them to find
happiness.
It is through stilling them
that one becomes a ruler, not by ruling them that you quieten them. Remember
that process: it looks similar, it is not. It is very very different,
diametrically opposite in fact. You have to quieten them first, still them
first.
And the way to still them is
just to watch silently without judgment, without saying this is good, this is
bad. The moment you say good and bad you have jumped into the mire.
The mind has already caught
you, you are already entrapped.
You simply watch! Your moral
teachers don't allow you watching. You sit and just look... a thought of
murdering somebody comes. Your mind is enjoying the thought of murdering
somebody. This is one part. Another part of the mind says, "This is very
bad, this is a sin. You should not even think such a thought, even to think it
is a sin." This is another part of the mind. You become identified with
the other part, the moral part.
You say, "This is my
conscience." It is not your conscience: it has been put into you. It is
the society controlling you from within; it is a strategy of the society to
control you. You don't know what is right and what is wrong.
Be innocent! Just watch, watch
both. One part of the mind is saying, "Murder that man - he has insulted
you!" Another part of the mind is saying, "This is bad, this is
immoral. You will fall into hell, you will suffer in your next birth, you will
be punished for it."
Know well, the second is also
mind, and there is no choice between two fragments of the mind. Watch both,
enjoy both. See the contradiction of the mind - don't get identified with any
part.
Remember, the ego wants to be
identified with the good part, the moral part. It feels beautiful: "I am
against murder, look! I am not for it." You are just getting caught by
another part of the mind. You are still a slave. Your sinners and your saints,
both are slaves.
The really free man is free
from both good and bad. He is beyond good and evil. He is just consciousness
and nothing else. He simply observes. And if you can just observe without being
identified, slowly slowly mind quietens down, and in that quietening is your
power. One day when the mind is completely gone, has become totally still, you
are the sovereign.
With singlemindedness
The master quells his thoughts.
He ends their wandering.
Seated in the cave of the heart,
He finds freedom.
And when the mind is no more,
where do you go? Suddenly, when the mind is no more, you enter into the heart.
You slip out of the mind, out of the grip of the head. And then the heart, the
cave of the heart, is your palace. The mind is a by-product of the society: the
heart is an extension of God.
This is possible only if you
work singlemindedly to still the mind, to be aware of the mind, to be utterly
watchful, without any judgment and without any identification.
The master quells his thoughts. He ends
their wandering. Seated in the cave of the heart, he finds freedom.
The head is a slavery, the
heart the freedom. The head is a misery, the heart the ultimate bliss.
Aes dhammo sanantano.
Enough for today.
