The law - ancient and inexhaustible

Question 1:

BELOVED MASTER,
PLEASE TELL US MORE ABOUT WHAT YOU MEAN BY THE DIMENSION OF MUSIC.

Yoga Chinmaya, life can be lived in two ways - either as calculation or as poetry. Man has two sides to his inner being: the calculative side that creates science, business, politics; and the noncalculative side, which creates poetry, sculpture, music. These two sides have not yet been bridged, they have separate existences. Because of this man is immensely impoverished, remains unnecessarily lopsided - they have to be bridged.

In scientific language it is said that your brain has two hemispheres. The left-side hemisphere calculates, is mathematical, is prose; and the right-side hemisphere of the brain is poetry, is love, is song. One side is logic, the other side is love. One side is syllogism, the other side is song. And they are not really bridged, hence man lives in a kind of split.

My effort here is to bridge these two hemispheres.

Man should be as scientific as possible, as far as the objective world is concerned, and as musical as possible as far as the world of relationship is concerned.

There are two worlds outside you. One is the world of objects: the house, the money, the furniture. The other is the world of persons: the wife, the husband, the mother, the children, the friend. With objects be scientific; never be scientific with persons. If you are scientific with persons you reduce them to objects, and that is one of the greatest crimes one can commit. If you treat your wife only as an object, as a sexual object, then you are behaving in a very ugly way. If you treat your husband only as a financial support, as a means, then this is immoral, then this relationship is immoral - it is prostitution, pure prostitution and nothing else.

Don't treat persons as a means, they are ends unto themselves. Relate to them - in love, in respect. Never possess them and never be possessed by them. Don't be dependent on them and don't make persons around you dependent. Don't create dependence in any way; remain independent and let them remain independent.

This is music. This dimension I call the dimension of music. And if you can be as scientific as possible with objects, your life will be rich, affluent; if you can be as musical as possible, your life will have beauty. And there is a third dimension also, which is beyond the mind. These two belong to the mind: the scientist and the artist. There is a third dimension, invisible - the dimension of no-mind. That belongs to the mystic. That is available through meditation.

Hence, I say these three words have to be remembered - three M's like three R's:

mathematics, the lowest; music, just in the middle; and meditation, the highest. A perfect human being is scientific about objects, is aesthetic, musical, poetic about persons, and is meditative about himself. Where all these three meet, great rejoicing happens.

This is the real trinity, TRIMURTI. In the East, particularly in India, we worship a place where three rivers meet - we call it a SANGHAM, the meeting place. And the greatest of all of them is Preyag, where the Ganges and Jamuna and Saraswati meet. Now, you can see the Ganges and you can see Jamuna, but Saraswati is invisible - you cannot see it. It is a metaphor! It simply represents, symbolically, the inner meeting of the three.

You can see mathematics, you can see music, but you cannot see meditation. You can see the scientist, his work is outside. You can see the artist, his work is also outside. But you cannot see the mystic, his work is subjective. That is SARASWATI - the invisible river.

You can become a sacred place, you can hallow this body and this earth; this very body the Buddha, this very earth the Lotus Paradise. This is my slogan for the sannyasins. A sannyasin has to be the ultimate synthesis of all that God is.

God is known only when you have come to this synthesis; otherwise, you can believe in God, but you will not know. And belief is just hiding your ignorance. Knowing is transforming, only knowledge brings understanding. And knowledge is not information: knowledge is the synthesis, integration, of all your potential.

Where the scientist and the poet and the mystic meet and become one - when this great synthesis happens, when all the three faces of God are expressed in you - YOU become a god. Then you can declare, "AHAM BRAHMASMI! - I am God!" Then you can say to the winds and the moon and to the rains and to the sun, "ANA'L HAQ! - I am the truth!" Before that, you are only a seed.

When this synthesis happens, you have bloomed, blossomed - you have become the one-thousand-petaled lotus, the golden lotus, the eternal lotus, that never dies: AES DHAMMO SANANTANO. This is the inexhaustible law that all the buddhas have been teaching down the ages.

The second question:

Question 2:

BELOVED MASTER,

IN THE WEST WE ARE CONSTANTLY DRILLED WITH THE APHORISM: DON'T
JUST STAND THERE - DO SOMETHING! YET, BUDDHA WOULD SAY: DON'T JUST
DO SOMETHING - STAND THERE! THE UNCONSCIOUS MAN REACTS WHILE
THE WISE MAN WATCHES. BUT WHAT ABOUT SPONTANEITY? IS
SPONTANEITY COMPATIBLE WITH WATCHING?

Buddha certainly says: Don't just do something - stand there! But that is only the beginning of the pilgrimage, not the end. When you have learned how to stand, when you have learned how to be utterly silent, unmoving, undisturbed, when you know how to just sit...sitting silently, doing nothing, the spring comes and the grass grows by itself. But the grass grows, remember!

Action does not disappear: the grass grows by itself. The Buddha does not become inactive; GREAT action happens through him, although there is no doer anymore. The doer disappears, the doing continues. And when there is no doer, the doing IS spontaneous; it cannot be otherwise. It is the doer that does not allow spontaneity.

The doer means the ego, the ego means the past. When you act, you are always acting through the past, you are acting out of experience that you have accumulated, you are acting out of the conclusions that you have arrived at in the past. How can you be spontaneous? The past dominates, and because of the past you cannot even see the present. Your eyes are so full of the past, the smoke of the past is so much, that seeing is impossible. You cannot see! You are almost completely blind - blind because of the smoke, blind because of the past conclusions, blind because of knowledge.

The knowledgeable man is the most blind man in the world. Because he functions out of his knowledge, he does not see what the case is. He simply goes on functioning mechanically. He has learned something; it has become a ready-made mechanism in him...he acts out of it.

There is a famous story:

There were two temples in Japan, both enemies to each other, as temples have always been down the ages. The priests were so antagonistic that they had stopped even looking at each other. If they came across each other on the road, they would not look at each other. If they came across each other on the road they stopped talking; for centuries those two temples and their priests had not talked.

But both the priests had two small boys - to serve them, just for running errands. Both the priests were afraid that boys, after all, will be boys, and they might start becoming friends to each other.

The one priest said to his boy, "Remember, the other temple is our enemy. Never talk to the boy of the other temple! They are dangerous people - avoid them as one avoids a disease, as one avoids the plague. Avoid them!" The boy was always interested, because he used to get tired of listening to great sermons - he could not understand them.

Strange scriptures were read, he could not understand the language. Great, ultimate problems were discussed. There was nobody to play with, nobody even to talk with.

And when he was told, "Don't talk to the boy of the other temple," great temptation arose in him. That's how temptation arises.

That day he could not avoid talking to the other boy. When he saw him on the road he asked him, "Where are you going?"

The other boy was a little philosophical; listening to great philosophy he had become philosophical. He said, "Going? There is nobody who comes and goes! It is happening - wherever the wind takes me...." He had heard the master say many times that that's how a buddha lives, like a dead leaf: wherever the wind takes it, it goes. So the boy said, "I am not! There is no doer. So how can I go? What nonsense are you talking? I am a dead leaf. Wherever the wind takes me...."

The other boy was struck dumb. He could not even answer. He could not find anything to say. He was really embarrassed, ashamed, and felt also, "My master was right not to talk with these people - these are dangerous people! What kind of talk is this? I had asked a simple question: 'Where are you going?' In fact I already knew where he was going, because we were both going to purchase vegetables in the market. A simple answer would have done."

He went back, told his master, "I am sorry, excuse me. You HAD prohibited me, I didn't listen to you. In fact, because of your prohibition I was tempted. This is the first time I have talked to those dangerous people. I just asked a simple question. 'Where are you going?' and he started saying strange things: 'There is no going, no coming. Who comes? Who goes? I am utter emptiness,' he was saying, 'just a dead leaf in the wind.

And wherever the wind takes me....'" The master said, "I told you before! Now, tomorrow stand in the same place and when he comes ask him again, 'Where are you going?' And when he says these things, you simply say, 'That's true. Yes, you are a dead leaf, so am I. But when the wind is not blowing, where are you going? Then where can you go?' Just say that, and that will embarrass him - and he has to be embarrassed, he has to be defeated. We have been constantly quarreling, and those people have not been able to defeat us in any debate.

So tomorrow it has to be done!"

Early the boy got up, prepared his answer, repeated it many times before he went. Then he stood in the place where the boy used to cross the road, repeated again and again, prepared himself, and then he saw the boy coming. He said, "Okay, now!"

The boy came. He asked, "Where are you going?" And he was hoping that now the opportunity would come....

But the boy said, "Wherever the legs will take me...." No mention of wind! No talk of nothingness! No question of the nondoer! Now what to do? His whole ready-made answer looked absurd. Now to talk about the wind would be irrelevant.

Again crestfallen, now REALLY ashamed that he was simply stupid: "And this boy certainly knows some strange things - now he says, 'Wherever the legs take me....'" He went back to the master. The master said, "I have told you NOT to talk with those people - they are dangerous! This is our centuries-long experience. But now something has to be done. So tomorrow you ask again, 'Where are you going?' and when he says, 'Wherever my legs take me,' tell him, 'If you had no legs, then...?' He has to be silenced one way or other!"

So the next day he asked again, "Where are you going?" and waited.

And the boy said, "I am going to the market to fetch vegetables."

Man ordinarily functions out of the past, and life goes on changing. Life has no obligation to fit with your conclusions. That's why life is very confusing - confusing to the knowledgeable person. He has all ready-made answers: The Bhagavadgita, the holy Koran, the Bible, the Vedas. He has everything crammed, he knows all the answers. But life never raises the same question again; hence the knowledgeable person always falls short.

Buddha certainly says: Know how to sit silently. That does not mean that he says: Go on sitting silently forever. He is not saying you have to become inactive; on the contrary, it is only out of silence that action arises. If you are not silent, if you don't know how to sit silently, or stand silently in deep meditation, whatsoever you go on doing is reaction, not action. You react.

Somebody insults you, pushes a button, and you react. You are angry, you jump on him - and you call it action? It is not action, mind you, it is reaction. He is the manipulator and you are the manipulated. He has pushed a button and you have functioned like a machine. Just like you push a button and the light goes on, and you push the button and the light goes off - that's what people are doing to you: they put you on, they put you off.

Somebody comes and praises you and puffs up your ego, and you feel so great; and then somebody comes and punctures you, and you are simply flat on the ground. You are not your own master: anybody can insult you and make you sad, angry, irritated, annoyed, violent, mad. And anybody can praise you and make you feel at the heights, can make you feel that you are the greatest - that Alexander the Great was nothing compared to you.

And you act according to others' manipulations. This is not real action.

Buddha was passing through a village and the people came and they insulted him. And they used all the insulting words that they could use - all the four-letter words that they knew. Buddha stood there, listened silently, very attentively, and then said, "Thank you for coming to me, but I am in a hurry. I have to reach the next village, people will be waiting for me there. I cannot devote more time to you today, but tomorrow coming back I will have more time. You can gather again, and tomorrow if something is left which you wanted to say and have not been able to say, you can say it to me. But today, excuse me."

Those people could not believe their ears, their eyes: this man has remained utterly unaffected, undistracted. One of them asked, "Have you not heard us? We have been abusing you like anything, and you have not even answered!"

Buddha said, "If you wanted an answer then you have come too late. You should have come ten years ago, then I would have answered you. But for these ten years I have stopped being manipulated by others. I am no longer a slave, I am my own master. I act according to myself, not according to anybody else. I act according to my inner need.

You cannot force me to do anything. It's perfectly good:you wanted to abuse me, you abused me! Feel fulfilled. You have done your work perfectly well. But as far as I am concerned, I don't take your insults, and unless I take them, they are meaningless."

When somebody insults you, you have to become a receiver, you have to accept what he says; only then can you react. But if you don't accept, if you simply remain detached, if you keep the distance, if you remain cool, what can he do?

Buddha said, "Somebody can throw a burning torch into the river. It will remain alight till it reaches the river. The moment it falls into the river, all fire is gone - the river cools it. I have become a river. You throw abuses at me. They are fire when you throw them, but the moment they reach me, in my coolness, their fire is lost. They no longer hurt.

You throw thorns - falling in my silence they become flowers. I act out of my own intrinsic nature."

This is spontaneity. The man of awareness, understanding, acts. The man who is unaware, unconscious, mechanical, robotlike, reacts.

Curtis, you ask me, "The unconscious man reacts while the wise man watches." It is not that he simply watches - watching is one aspect of his being. He does not act without watching. But don't misunderstand the Buddha. The buddhas have always been misunderstood; you are not the first to misunderstand. This whole country has been misunderstanding the Buddha; hence the whole country has become inactive. Thinking that all the great masters say: Sit silently, the country has become lazy, lousy; the country has lost energy, vitality, life. It has become utterly dull, unintelligent, because intelligence becomes sharpened only when you act.

And when you act moment to moment out of your awareness and watchfulness, great intelligence arises. You start shining, glowing, you become luminous. But it happens through two things: watching, and action out of that watching. If watching becomes inaction, you are committing suicide. Watching should lead you into action, a new kind of action; a new quality is brought to action.

You watch, you are utterly quiet and silent. You see what the situation is, and out of that seeing you respond. The man of awareness responds, he is responsible - literally!

He is responsive, he does not react. His action is born out of his awareness, not out of your manipulation; that is the difference. Hence, there is no question of there being any incompatibility between watching and spontaneity. Watching is the beginning of spontaneity; spontaneity is the fulfillment of watching.

The real man of understanding acts - acts tremendously, acts totally, but he acts in the moment, out of his consciousness. He is like a mirror. The ordinary man, the unconscious man, is not like a mirror, he is like a photoplate. What is the difference between a mirror and a photoplate? A photoplate, once exposed, becomes useless. It receives the impression, becomes impressed by it - it carries the picture. But remember, the picture is not reality - the reality goes on growing. You can go into the garden and you can take a picture of a rosebush. Tomorrow the picture will be the same, the day after tomorrow the picture will also be the same. Go again and see the rosebush: it is no longer the same. The roses have gone, or new roses have arrived. A thousand and one things have happened.

It is said that once a realist philosopher went to see the famous painter, Picasso. The philosopher believed in realism and he had come to criticize Picasso because Picasso's paintings are abstract, they are not realistic. They don't depict reality as it is. On the contrary, they are symbolic, have a totally different dimension - they are symbolistic.

The realist said, "I don't like your paintings. A painting should be real! If you paint my wife, then your painting should LOOK like my wife." And he took out a picture of his wife and said, "Look at this picture! The painting should be like this."

Picasso looked at the picture and said, "This is your wife?"

He said, "Yes, this is my wife!"

Picasso said, "I am surprised! She is very small and flat."

The picture cannot be the wife!

Another story is told:

A beautiful woman came to Picasso and said, "Just the other day I saw your self-portrait in a friend's home. It was so beautiful, I was so influenced, almost hypnotized, that I hugged the picture and kissed it."

Picasso said, "Really! And then what did the picture do to you? Did the picture kiss you back?"

The woman said, "Are you mad?! The picture did not kiss me back."

Picasso said, "Then it was not me."

A picture is a dead thing. The camera, the photoplate, catches only a static phenomenon. And life is never static, it goes on changing. Your mind functions like a camera, it goes on collecting pictures - it is an album. And then out of those pictures you go on reacting. Hence, you are never true to life, because whatsoever you do is wrong; WHATSOEVER you do, I say, is wrong. It never fits.

A woman was showing the family album to her child, and they came across a picture of a beautiful man: long hair, beard, very young, very alive.

The boy asked, "Mummy, who is this man?"

And the woman said, "Can't you recognize him? He is your daddy!"

The boy looked puzzled and said, "If HE is my daddy, then who is that bald man who lives with us?"

A picture is static. It remains as it is, it never changes. The unconscious mind functions like a camera, it functions like a photoplate. The watchful mind, the meditative mind, functions like a mirror. It catches no impression; it remains utterly empty, always empty. So whatsoever comes in front of the mirror, it is reflected. If you are standing before the mirror, it reflects you. If you are gone, don't say that the mirror betrays you.

The mirror is simply a mirror. When you are gone, it no longer reflects you; it has no obligation to reflect you anymore. Now somebody else is facing it - it reflects somebody else. If nobody is there, it reflects nothing. It is always true to life.

The photoplate is never true to life. Even if your photo is taken right now, by the time the photographer has taken it out of the camera, you are no longer the same! Much water has already gone down the Ganges. You have grown, changed, you have become older. Maybe only one minute has passed, but one minute can be a great thing - you may be dead! Just one minute before you were alive; after one minute, you may be dead. The picture will never die.

But in the mirror, if you are alive, you are alive; if you are dead, you are dead.

Buddha says: Learn sitting silently - become a mirror. Silence makes a mirror out of your consciousness, and then you function moment to moment. You reflect life. You don't carry an album within your head. Then your eyes are clear and innocent, you have clarity, you have vision, and you are never untrue to life.

This is authentic living.

The third question:

Question 3:

BELOVED MASTER,
WHY IS IT THAT NOBODY LIKES TO BE CRITICIZED, AND YET EVERYBODY
LOVES TO CRITICIZE OTHERS?

Gayatri, the ego is very sensitive and very fragile, and is very afraid of criticism. The ego depends on others' opinions. It has no reality of its own. It is not a real entity, it is not substantial - it is just a collection of others' opinions.

Somebody says, "You are beautiful," and you collect it. Somebody says, "You are intelligent," and you collect it. And somebody says, "I have never come across such a unique person," and you collect it. And then one day a person comes and he says, "You are repulsive!" Now how can you accept criticism? It goes against the image that you have been creating of yourself. You will retaliate, you will fight tooth and nail. But whatsoever you do, the mind has taken the impression of this opinion too. Then somebody says, "You are ugly," and somebody says, "You are stupid." And there are millions of people in the world and they all have their own opinions, likes and dislikes.

Hence, your ego becomes a hodge-podge thing, a very contradictory phenomenon. One fragment says, "You are beautiful!" another fragment says, "Nonsense, you are ugly!"

One fragment says, "You are intelligent," another fragment says, "Keep quiet! Shut your big mouth! You are just plain stupid and nothing else!" Hence people live in a confused state. They don't know who they are, whether they are intelligent or stupid, beautiful or ugly, good or bad, saint or sinner - because one person may call you a saint, another person may call you a sinner. There are different values and different criteria in the world, there are different moralities in the world.

Your neighbor may be a Christian and you may be a Jaina. Now the Christian has no problem with drinking wine; in fact, Christ himself loved to drink wine. But the Jaina cannot conceive, even in his dreams, of Mahavira drinking wine. That's impossible, the very idea is inconceivable. But to the Christian the greatest miracle that Jesus did was to turn water into wine. If Mahavira had been around, he would have done just the opposite miracle immediately! He would have turned the wine again into water.

Now, if you drink wine once in a while, are you a saint or a sinner? Different people will say different things. In Mahatma Gandhi's ashram tea was prohibited; what to say about wine! Tea, poor tea, innocent tea was prohibited! And all the Buddhist monks down the ages have been drinking tea. In fact they think that it helps meditation, and there may be a grain of truth in it, because it keeps you awake. And the Buddhist meditation is such that you tend to doze off: sitting for hours in a single posture.... Just try it. After ten minutes you will start dreaming. After one hour it is impossible to keep awake.

Tea may have helped. In fact, tea was discovered by Buddhists. One of the greatest Buddhist masters, Bodhidharma, discovered tea. The name comes from a monastery, Ta, in which Bodhidharma used to live in China. That monastery was on top of the hill, Ta. In China 'ta' can be pronounced in two ways: either it can be pronounced as 'ta' or as 'cha' - hence the Hindi CHAI, the Marathi CHA, and the English 'tea'. Bodhidharma, the great founder of Zen, discovered it.

And wine has been made in Catholic monasteries down the ages. You will be surprised to know that the best wine has been made by Catholic monks and nuns. The oldest wine is available only in the cellars of ancient monasteries in Europe, the oldest and the best. Wine, made in monasteries? What kind of monasteries are these? Who is going to decide?

In fact, again there is a grain of truth in it. Buddhist meditation means watchfulness, and tea has some chemicals in it which help watchfulness - it has a stimulant. Now some day it is possible that another Bodhidharma will come and say, "Smoking is good," because tobacco also has a stimulant - nicotine. Smoking can also help meditation if tea can help it. Smoking is still waiting for its Bodhidharma to appear.

Then you will be more able to smoke and feel very virtuous: the more you smoke, the more saintly you will be!

It is not accidental that wine became part of the monastery's creativity. Jesus says: To be drowned in God is prayer. Jesus' path is that of love, Buddha's path is that of meditation; hence, Buddha will never agree to wine, but to tea he may agree. Jesus agrees to wine because wine gives you a taste of being utterly lost, of being drowned, of getting out of the ego, of forgetting the ego and all its worries. It gives you a taste, a glimpse of the unknown.

But who is going to decide about who is right and who is wrong? All these things are there in the atmosphere, and you catch them. Out of these things you make some kind of image; it is bound to remain hodge-podge, it can't be clear-cut. Hence you are very much afraid of somebody criticizing you because he brings your hodge-podgeness to the surface. It is not his criticism that you are against; you are against the fact that he brings problems to the surface which you are somehow repressing within yourself. He makes you aware of the problems, and nobody wants to be aware of the problems, because problems then want to be solved, and it is a complex and arduous affair. It needs guts to solve problems. You may not like to solve problems in fact, because you may have some investment in your problems - you MUST have, because you have lived with them for so long that you must have invested in them. You may not like to change your life-style. If you are miserable you may like to remain miserable - whatsoever you say on the surface, that's another matter. Notwithstanding what you say, deep down you may still like to remain miserable.

For example, a wife knows that the husband is loving towards her only when she is ill.

Whenever she is healthy he simply forgets all about her, he never takes any care when she is healthy. When she is ill, out of sheer duty, responsibility, he comes, sits by her side, puts his hand on her head; otherwise he does not give her even a look. Ask husbands, "How long has it been since you have seen your wife's face, face-to-face?"

You may be able to recognize your dog if it is lost, but if your wife is lost you will have to ask the neighbors because they will recognize her better - just as you will recognize the neighbor's wife better. Who looks at his own wife?

Mulla Nasruddin had gone to see a play. A man was in such great love in the play, he was acting so romantically that Nasruddin said to his wife, "This man is a great actor."

The wife said, "And do you know? - the woman he's acting with is really his wife in actual life."

Nasruddin said, "Then he is the greatest actor in the world!"

To show so much romance to one's own wife...it is next to impossible.

I was traveling for twenty years in this country. I was staying in thousands of homes, and I saw it continuously: when the husband is not in the house, the wife seems to be very cheerful, very happy. The moment the husband enters the house she has a headache, and she lies down on the bed. And I was watching, because I was just staying in the house. Just a moment before, everything was okay - as if the husband has not entered but a headache has entered.

Slowly slowly, I understood the logic. There is a great investment in it. And remember, I am not saying that she is simply pretending. If you pretend too long it can become a reality, it can become an autohypnosis. I'm not saying that she is NOT suffering from a headache, remember. She may be suffering: just the face of the husband is enough to trigger the process! It has happened so many times that now it has become an automatic process. So I am not saying that she is deceiving the husband; she is deceived by her own investments.

You have a certain image and you don't want it to be changed, and criticism means again a disturbance.

You surely know the story of Little Red Riding Hood:

This little girl had gone to see her grandmother who lived in the woods. The bad wolf, who wanted to eat her up, took the grandma's place in the bed after having devoured her in one gulp. So he was under the blankets with grandma's nightie and nightcap on.

When Little Red Riding Hood arrived, she noticed something different, and looking the grandmother in the eye, she asked:

"But, granny, what big eyes you have!"

"It is to see you better, my dear."

"But granny, what a big nose you have!"

"It is to smell you better, my dear."

"But granny, what big arms you have!"

"It is to hug you better, my dear."

"But granny, what hairy hands you have!"

"Hey! Have you come around just to criticize?"

There is a limit. Beyond that nobody likes to be criticized. But the other side of the story is that everybody likes to criticize others; that gives you a good feeling. If others are bad, vicariously it helps you to feel good. If everybody is a cheat, a hypocrite, dishonest, cunning, it gives you a good feeling: you are not THAT bad, you are not THAT dishonest. The comparison relaxes you. It helps you to remain dishonest, because people are more dishonest than you are. In this dishonest world how can you survive?

You have to play the game.

Every morning, early in the morning when you read the newspapers, it always gives you a good feeling - so much happening all over the world, so many ugly things, so much violence, murder, suicide, rape, robbery, that compared to all this you are a saint.

Hence people don't like to read the Bible in the morning, or the Gita, but the newspaper! Reading the Gita you feel like a sinner, reading the Bible you start feeling a trembling, that hell is bound to happen to you, that you are on the way. And the scriptures depict hell so vividly, with such color that it can make anybody afraid. And one thing seems to be certain: that you cannot reach heaven. It seems to be impossible, it demands impossibilities.

Nobody likes to read the scriptures, nobody likes to listen to the scriptures. That's why if you go to the temple you will find almost everybody fast asleep. There are physicians I know who send people to religious discourses if they suffer from insomnia. If no tranquilizer works, don't be worried: go to a religious discourse. It is the ultimate in tranquilizers - up to now nothing has been able to defeat it. Listening to religious scriptures one starts falling asleep. It is a protection, it is to avoid; otherwise, it becomes absolutely certain that heaven is not for you, you are meant for hell. And it stirs your heart, raises great fear, and there seems to be no way to escape from it.

Hence, everybody likes to criticize, and not only to criticize - everybody likes to magnify others' faults. You try to make others' faults as big as possible because then, in comparison, your faults are negligible. And God is compassionate: RAHIM, REHMAN!

God is compassion! You have only small faults, and looking at the world where so many sinners exist....

When the Day of Judgment comes you can be perfectly certain that your number is not going to be called, you will not be called. The queue will be too long, and it has to be decided within twenty-four hours. One Day of Judgment, and millions and millions of people - Tamerlane and Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great and Adolf Hitler and Mussolini and Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong...these will be the people standing in front. You will be the last in the queue. Your number is not going to come. You can be certain of it if you look at people with a magnifying glass.

After running into a wild crowd at a basketball game one evening, the referee picked up his wife and told her it might be better if she stayed away from the remaining games to which he was assigned. "After all," he said, "it must have been pretty embarrassing to you when everyone stood up and booed me."

"It was not so bad," she replied. "I stood up and booed too."

Ego does not want to be criticized AND wants to criticize everybody. Become aware of the strategy of the ego, how it nourishes itself, how it protects itself. Unless you become absolutely aware of all the cunning devices of the ego, you will never be able to get rid of it. And to get rid of it is the beginning of a religious life, is the beginning of sannyas.

Then you are no longer worried what others say about you.

Just look at me.... The whole world goes on saying things about me. I don't even read them. Every day Laxmi brings hundreds of reports appearing in different languages from different countries. Who cares? If they are enjoying rumors, let them enjoy; they don't have anything else to enjoy in their lives. Let them have a little fun. Nothing is wrong in it, they cannot harm me. They can destroy my body, but they cannot harm ME. And I have no image of my own; they cannot destroy that either. And I don't react, I act. My action springs out of my self, it is not to be manipulated by others. I am a free man, freedom. I act of my own accord.

Learn the art of acting of your own accord. Don't be worried about criticisms and don't be interested in praises. If you are interested in being praised by others, then you cannot be unconcerned about criticism. Remain aloof. Praise or criticism, it is all alike. Success or failure, it is all alike. AES DHAMMO SANANTANO.

The fourth question:

Question 4:

BELOVED MASTER,
ALTHOUGH I WANT TO SURRENDER MYSELF TO YOU AND TAKE SANNYAS, I
FEEL HELPLESS TO DO SO. WHY IS IT SO? PLEASE CLARIFY THIS.

S.D. Prasad, it is very simple, there is nothing to clarify. You are afraid of people, you are afraid of the society. You are afraid of the established church, the established religion, the priests, the politicians - you are simply afraid. It is fear that is preventing you. Sannyas needs courage, sannyas needs guts, particularly my sannyas.

The old sannyas no longer needs guts, because it is already part of the status quo. It is accepted, respected. If you become an old-style sannyasin people will worship you. If you become MY sannyasin you will be in constant danger. People will think you are mad, people will think you are hypnotized. People will think that something has gone wrong - that you have gone nuts. People will say, "Such a good man! We had never ever thought, dreamed that this was going to happen to you."

People will laugh, rumor about you, gossip about you, will create a thousand and one kinds of troubles for you. And you have to exist with people, you have to live with them. On each step they will create barriers and they will put rocks in your path. And not only those who are part of the greater society, but even those who are very close:

your wife may create so much trouble for you...your children, your parents. From every nook and corner you will have to face difficulties.

You are afraid. Just try to understand your fear, and then it is very easy. Once you see that it is fear, drop it. In spite of all fears, jump into sannyas, because to remain in fear is to become a coward, to remain in fear is to miss the whole joy of life. Life belongs to those who know how to risk. Life belongs to the adventurous, and sannyas is the greatest adventure there is. And because I am bringing a totally new concept of sannyas into the world - a sannyas that is not escapist, a sannyas that does not believe in renunciation, a sannyas that believes in rejoicing, a sannyas that wants to live in the world and yet not be of it....

The old sannyas is easy: you escape from the world, you leave the opportunities where temptation is possible, you escape to the Himalayan caves. Sitting there you will be a saint, because you don't have any other opportunity. You HAVE to be a saint. What else can you do there?

In the world all kinds of temptations exist. To be a saint in the world is something superb, something extraordinary. If there is no woman in the Himalayan caves...and I don't think there is. Women have never been so foolish; they are more earthly, they are more intuitive, they are not intellectuals. They are very realistic, they don't go after words and theories and philosophies. It is man who becomes very much attracted by abstractions. Woman does not bother much about the other world, she wants a beautiful sari HERENOW! You are a fool if you are waiting for some beautiful woman in heaven.

The feminine mind does not bother much about the other world. The feminine mind says, "We will see. If we can manage here, we will manage there too. If we can find a fool here, the same fools will be available there too. So why be worried about the other world?"

But man lives in abstractions. That is the masculine mind's greatest flaw. It lives in theories. It becomes so much hypnotized by words that it is ready to sacrifice life itself.

It is ready to go to the caves, to renounce this life in order to attain the other life. It lives in the past, it lives in the future. Woman lives more in the present. Hence, there have been no women in the Himalayan caves. You can go and sit there and dream all kinds of dreams, but no opportunity is there. Money is not there, power is not there, beauty is not there - nothing is there! Sitting in your cave you become more and more dull, slowly slowly; it is a kind of gradual suicide.

My sannyas is not dropping out of the world but getting deeper into it, getting to the very core of it, because God is at the very core of the world. God is the soul of the world. You cannot find him by escaping from the world. You can find him only by going deeper and deeper into the world. When you reach the very center of existence, you will find him. He is hidden in the world, the whole world is permeated by him. He is in the trees and in the rocks and in the birds and in the people. Yes, he is in your wife, in your husband and in your children. He is in you! And the best possibility to find him is in the world, not out of the world.

To go out of the world has been a great attraction; that too because of fear. The escapist is a coward; he cannot be watchful enough to live in the world and yet be unaffected by it. He cannot be so watchful - he does not have that much intelligence, he cannot make that great effort to be awake - hence he escapes. He is a coward.

So the old sannyas, S.D. Prasad, may fit you perfectly, but it is not going to help. You will remain a coward, and you will remain fear-oriented. On the surface it appears that the sannyasin who is leaving the world is very brave. It is not so. Don't be deceived by the appearances. The soldier who is going to war looks so brave - don't be deceived by the appearances - deep down he is trembling, he's afraid.

Adolf Hitler was preparing his wardrobe for a second dismal winter on the frozen front in Russia.

"Mein Fuhrer," suggested one of his suite, "remember what Napoleon did when he was in Russia. He wore a bright red uniform so that in case he was wounded his men would not notice the fact that he was bleeding."

"Excellent idea! Excellent idea!" ruminated Adolf. "Just throw me my brown pants."

Don't be deceived by the appearances. Even people like Adolf Hitler are tremendously afraid, trembling. And your so-called sannyasins who have escaped from the world have escaped out of fear.

I teach you the way of fearlessness. It is simply fear and nothing else that is preventing you, although you will not feel very happy with my answer. You must have been expecting that I would say something very gratifying to your ego. Excuse me, I cannot speak any untruth. I can only speak the true, and if it hurts, it hurts. It is only through truth that light starts entering into your being. So if you feel wounded...because your name seems unfamiliar to me, you must be new. And with new people I am never so rude, but I see a possibility in you, hence I am so hard.

Whenever I see a possibility in a man, I become hard. Whenever I see no possibility I remain very polite. If I am polite, that simply means I want to get rid of you. If I am hard, if I hammer hard on your head, that means I have already started respecting you.

The fifth question:

Question 5:

BELOVED MASTER,
I AM VERY GREEDY FOR MONEY. DO YOU THINK I HAVE BEEN A JEW IN MY
PAST LIFE?

Suresh, why in a past life? You are a Jew right now! Just by being born in India, just by being born in a Hindu family, does not make any difference. 'Jew' does not mean a race, it is a psychology, it is a metaphysics. The MARWARI is a Jew - the Indian Jew. In fact, anybody who is greedy is Jewish - greed is Jewish.

Jesus is not a Jew although he was born a Jew - he is not Jewish at all. When I use words like 'jew', remember always that I'm not talking about races. I'm not interested in blood. The Jewish blood and the Christian blood and the Hindu blood are all alike. You can take a few samples - you can get all kinds of samples here - you can take a few samples to the doctor and ask him which blood is Jewish and which blood is Hindu and which blood is Buddhist, and he will be at a loss. He cannot find any way to figure it out - blood is blood! Of course there are types in blood, but they are not Jewish and Hindu and Buddhist. 'Jew' is nothing but another name for greed. In that sense the whole world consists of Jews, except for a few exceptional people. Almost everybody is a Jew! Either you are a Jesus or you are a Jew - these are the only alternatives. If you don't want to be a Jew then be a Jesus. And don't try to console yourself that in a past life.... Those are tricky inventions of the human mind: "In the past life maybe I was a Jew." You are a Jew right now. Throwing the responsibility on the past life keeps you intact; then you can continue as you are.

An old Jew offers to pay a prostitute double her demanded fee if she will keep both hands on his head during love-making. Afterwards she asks him what special thrill he got out of this.

"No thrill," he says, taking a large roll of bills out of his pocket, "but for two bucks extra I know your hands are on my head and not in my pockets!"

Another story for you, Suresh:

A retired Jewish businessman is nearly ruined by his sons' demands for money to pay off the girls whom they have seduced and made pregnant. But he pays in order to keep from seeing the family name disgraced.

A few days later his daughter comes to him and confesses, "Papa, I am pregnant."

"Thank God, business is picking up," says the old man.

And the third story:

A room full of Jews are discussing which business is best. Finally one bearded old man says, "Let us stop lying to each other. The whorehouse business is the best: they got it, they sell it, they still got it."

"What are you saying?" cries another horrified old man.

What am I saying? I'm saying: no overhead, no upkeep, no inventory - who can beat it?

And yes, it is all wholesale."

Greed is Jewish, and everybody is a Jew in that sense. And remember that greed is a projection of fear. It is because of fear that man becomes greedy. He is so much afraid, that he wants to accumulate for the future. He is so afraid, that he sacrifices his today for tomorrow, and the tomorrow never comes. The greedy man is the most foolish man in the world. "The fool" Buddha calls him - the fool par excellence, because he goes on sacrificing the present for the future which never comes. He accumulates money but he cannot use it; he remains poor.

The greedy man never becomes rich. He may have the whole world at his disposal, but he remains poor. He cannot enjoy it, his greed won't allow that. He remains miserly. He always remains in such fear of the future that he cannot part from his money. He accumulates, accumulates, wastes his whole life and one day dies. He was a poor man his whole life - empty-handed he had come, empty-handed he has gone, and his whole life went down the drain with no significance.

Don't try to console yourself that in the past life you were a Jew. Look into your being!

You ARE a Jew. And then there is a possibility that you will see it: "I am a Jew, I am greedy. From where is my greed coming?" Go deeper into greed, analyze greed and you will find fear. And when you find fear you have come to a very fundamental thing.

There are only two ways to live life: one is that of fear and the other is that of love. The man who lives out of fear becomes greedy, becomes aggressive, becomes violent, becomes egoistic. And the man who lives out of love is out of necessity nongreedy, because love knows how to share. Love enjoys sharing, love knows no greater joy than sharing. Whatsoever love has, love shares. And love comes to know a great secret: that the more you share, the more love energy goes on reaching you, welling up from some unknown, inexhaustible source - AES DHAMMO SANANTANO.

The more you love, the more you are prayerful. The more you love, the more God gives you, because you are giving. Whatsoever you do to people, God goes on doing to you.

If you are miserly, God becomes miserly towards you. If you are sharing, God is sharing. Existence is only a mirror, it reflects your face, it echoes your being. Live through love and you will be a Jesus.

Jesus says: God is love. Live through fear and you are a Jew. You may be a Hindu Jew or a Mohammedan Jew or a Christian Jew - it doesn't matter. Adjectives don't matter.

The last question:

Question 6:

BELOVED MASTER,
WHY DON'T I UNDERSTAND YOU?

Ram Gopal, understanding is a second step. The first is hearing. You don't hear me. You miss the first step; then the second is not possible.

While you are listening to me, a thousand and one thoughts are roaming in your mind.

They keep you deaf. My words never reach you intact, in their purity. They are distorted, they are colored by your thoughts, by your prejudices, by your already arrived at conclusions. You listen to me through your knowledge - that's why you really DON'T listen. And whatsoever reaches you is something totally different than what was conveyed. I'm saying one thing, you go on hearing something else; hence the misunderstanding. That's why you don't understand me; otherwise, I am using very simple words.

I'm not using any intellectual jargon, I'm using the day-to-day language. I never use big words - my words are simple, as simple as they can be. If you don't understand, that simply means that somehow you are inwardly deaf. A great clamor of words and thoughts and conclusions and theories and prejudices and knowledge and experience - the Hindu, the Mohammedan, the Christian, the Jew - they are all there inside. It is very difficult for me to find a way to you. It is almost impossible to reach you.

It is not a question of understanding. Understanding will flower of its own accord if you can do one thing: if you can LISTEN, if you can allow me to reach you, if you can open your heart, if you are not deaf - then understanding is bound to happen. Truth heard is understood, is bound to be understood. Understanding needs no other effort, it simply needs an opening, a vulnerability. Just open a window to me, just a window will do, and I can steal into you. Just a window will do. If you cannot open the front door, don't be worried, the back door will do. But open some door to me, let me come in, and then it is impossible not to understand, it is impossible to misunderstand.

Truth has such clarity that once understood, it transforms your life. Once heard, it is understood. Truth has a very simple process: once heard, it is understood; once understood, it transforms your life. If rightly heard you never ask how to understand. If rightly understood you never ask, "Now what should I do to transform my life according to it?" Truth transforms, truth liberates.

Meditate over this small anecdote:

A man walked into a New York bar and ordered two whiskies, one for himself and one for his friend. The barman produced the whiskies and the man poured some whisky into a thimble which he placed on a perfect miniature grand piano, which he took from his briefcase. He also took from his briefcase a twelve-inch-high man in evening dress, who sat down in front of the piano and commenced playing "The Moonlight Sonata."

The barman was incredulous and demanded to know where the little man has come from. The man explained, "I was just looking through a junk shop when I found an old oil lamp. I rubbed it with my sleeve a little in order to examine it better when there was a flash and a genie appeared saying he was the slave of the lamp and any wish of mine was his task to fulfill. So I told him I wanted a twelve-inch penis, and this is what the deaf sonofabitch gave me!"

He heard "a pianist" and missed the whole point.

You go on hearing what you can hear. You go on hearing things which are not said at all. And then you interpret them and all interpretations are misinterpretations. And whatsoever you will do will feel frustrating, because your misinterpretations cannot bring you to truth. Truth is a communion.

Buddha says: Find a friend, find a master and be in communion with the master. What is communion? Communion means withdrawing all conditions, withdrawing all prejudices, becoming innocent with somebody who has arrived, becoming a child again in front of one who has become awakened. Listen like a small child: alert, full of awe, wonder, and your heart will immediately be penetrated. I will reach you like an arrow.

Yes, there will be a little pain too, but very sweet...so sweet that you have never known anything more sweet than that. Yes, when for the first time the truth penetrates your heart like an arrow, it kills you - it kills you as an ego. It is a crucifixion, but immediately there is a resurrection. On the one hand you die as you have been up to now, on the other hand you are born again. You become a twice-born, a DWIJ; you become a brahmin, you become one who knows.

But knowing needs a great love affair between the disciple and the master. Knowing is possible only when the love affair is total, when the commitment is total, when the involvement is total. If you listen just like a spectator, you will go on missing. If you listen only out of curiosity, you will go on missing. If you listen with all your ideas and philosophies, you will hear something else which has not been said.

It is not a question of understanding my words, it is a question of understanding my presence. Only the disciple is blessed.

Ram Gopal, you are still not a disciple. You are curious. You have come to see what is happening. You are not yet committed. You listen to me, but you keep a distance, so that if things become too much you can escape easily. You remain on the periphery, you have not entered into the circle.

Enter the circle - I give you the invitation. Become my guest, let me be your host. Drink out of me and you will be drowned, and you will be transformed. It is a promise.

Enough for today.

Next Chapter – Return to Table of Contents

Xem chi tiết »

Sowing seeds of bliss

FOR A WHILE THE FOOL'S MISCHIEF

TASTES SWEET, SWEET AS HONEY.
BUT IN THE END IT TURNS BITTER.
AND HOW BITTERLY HE SUFFERS!

FOR MONTHS THE FOOL MAY FAST,
EATING FROM THE TIP OF A GRASS BLADE.
STILL HE IS NOT WORTH A PENNY
BESIDE THE MASTER WHOSE FOOD IS THE WAY.

FRESH MILK TAKES TIME TO SOUR.
SO A FOOL'S MISCHIEF
TAKES TIME TO CATCH UP WITH HIM.
LIKE THE EMBERS OF A FIRE
IT SMOULDERS WITHIN HIM.

WHATEVER A FOOL LEARNS,
IT ONLY MAKES HIM DULLER.
KNOWLEDGE CLEAVES HIS HEAD.

FOR THEN HE WANTS RECOGNITION.
A PLACE BEFORE OTHER PEOPLE.
A PLACE OVER OTHER PEOPLE.

"LET THEM KNOW MY WORK,
LET EVERYONE LOOK TO ME FOR DIRECTION."
SUCH ARE HIS DESIRES,
SUCH IS HIS SWELLING PRIDE.

ONE WAY LEADS TO WEALTH AND FAME,
THE OTHER TO THE END OF THE WAY.

LOOK NOT FOR RECOGNITION
BUT FOLLOW THE AWAKENED
AND SET YOURSELF FREE.

The last words of Gautama the Buddha on the earth were: Be a light unto yourself. Do not follow others, do not imitate, because imitation, following, creates stupidity. You are born with a tremendous possibility of intelligence. You are born with a light within you. Listen to the still, small voice within, and that will guide you. Nobody else can guide you, nobody else can become a model for your life, because you are unique.

Nobody has there been ever who was exactly like you, and nobody is ever going to be there again who will be exactly like you. This is your glory, your grandeur - that you are utterly irreplaceable, that you are just yourself and nobody else.

The person who follows others becomes false, he becomes pseudo, he becomes mechanical. He can be a great saint in the eyes of others, but deep down, he is simply unintelligent and nothing else. He may have a very respectable character but that is only the surface, it is not even skin-deep. Scratch him a little and you will be surprised that inside he is a totally different person, just the opposite of his outside.

By following others you can cultivate a beautiful character, but you cannot have a beautiful consciousness, and unless you have a beautiful consciousness you can never be free. You can go on changing your prisons, you can go on changing your bondages, your slaveries. You can be a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Christian or a Jaina - that is not going to help you. To be a Jaina means to follow Mahavira as the model. Now, there is nobody who is like Mahavira or ever can be. Following Mahavira you will become a false entity. You will lose all reality, you will lose all sincerity, you will be untrue to yourself. You will become artificial, unnatural, and to be artificial, to be unnatural, is the way of the mediocre, the stupid, the fool.

Buddha defines wisdom as living in the light of your own consciousness, and foolishness as following others, imitating others, becoming a shadow to somebody else.

The real master creates masters, not followers. The real master throws you back to yourself. His whole effort is to make you independent of him, because you have been dependent for centuries, and it has not led you anywhere. You still continue to stumble in the dark night of the soul.

Only your inner light can become the sunrise. The false master persuades you to follow him, to imitate him, to be just a carbon copy of him. The real master will not allow you to be a carbon copy, he wants you to be the original. He loves you! How can he make you imitative? He has compassion for you, he would like you to be utterly free - free from all outer dependencies.

But the ordinary human being does not want to be free. He wants to be dependent. He wants somebody else to guide him. Why? - because then he can throw the whole responsibility on the shoulders of somebody else. And the more responsibility you throw away onto somebody else's shoulders, the less is the possibility of your ever becoming intelligent. It is responsibility, the challenge of responsibility, that creates wisdom.

One has to accept life with all its problems. One has to go through life unprotected; one has to seek and search one's way. Life is an opportunity, a challenge, to find yourself.

But the fool does not want to go the hard way, the fool chooses the shortcut. He says to himself, "Buddha has attained - why should I bother? I will just watch his behavior and imitate. Jesus has attained, so why should I search and seek? I can simply become a shadow to Jesus. I can simply go on following him wherever he goes."

But following somebody else, how are you going to become intelligent? You will not give any chance for your intelligence to explode. It needs a challenging life, an adventurous life, a life that knows how to risk and how to go into the unknown, for intelligence to arise. And only intelligence can save you - nobody else - your own intelligence, mind you, your own awareness, can become your nirvana.

Be a light unto yourself and you will be wise; let others become your leaders, your guides, and you will remain stupid, and you will go on missing all the treasures of life - - which were yours! And how can you decide that the other's character is a right character for you to follow?

A Buddha lives in his own way, a Mahavira in his, a Jesus still different. A Mohammed IS Mohammed, he is not Mahavira. Whom are you going to follow? Just by the accidents of birth you are going to decide your life, your destiny? Then you will remain accidental. And the fool IS accidental. The wise man never lives by accidents. He does not become a Hindu because he is born in a Hindu family; he does not become a Christian because his parents are Christian; he does not become a communist because he is born in Russia. He seeks, he inquires.

Life is a tremendously beautiful pilgrimage, but only for those who are ready to seek and search.

Jesus says: Seek and ye shall find; ask and it shall be given to you; knock and the doors shall be opened unto you.

He is not saying: Follow, imitate. He is not saying: Be a Christian and the doors shall be opened unto you. He is not saying: I have knocked on the doors and opened them for you. He is saying: Knock and the doors shall be opened unto you. And everybody has to knock, because everybody has to enter by different doors. People are so unique, people are individuals.

This is your glory. Don't deny it; otherwise you will remain a fool. That does not mean don't learn from the buddhas, the awakened ones - learn! Imbibe the spirit! Drink out of their springs, fresh springs of joy. Be in their company, become attuned to their inner music, listen to their harmony, and be filled with great joy that a man like you, just like you, has achieved, so you can also achieve. Become thrilled that a man just like you, made of blood and bones, has become enlightened, so you can also become enlightened.

A buddha has not to be followed but understood. A buddha has not to be imitated but listened to - listened to in tremendous silence, love, trust. And the more you understand a buddha, the more you will feel he is speaking not from the outside but from within, from the very core of your being. He is a mirror who reflects your original face - but he is only a mirror. All great masters are mirrors, they reflect your original face. But don't cling to the mirror. The mirror is not your face!

These sutras of Buddha are of immense value. Go into them meditatively. And when I say go into them meditatively, I mean don't be in an argumentative mood - that is not the way to listen. Be in a receptive mood, be feminine. Don't be on guard, don't be defensive. Don't hide behind armors. Don't bring your mind in to interpret what is being said. Put the mind aside and let the heart dance with these sutras. That's what I mean when I say listen meditatively. Let the heart rejoice. And in that rejoicing is a totally different kind of understanding - not of the intellect but of intelligence.

You will not become knowledgeable if you listen from the heart; you will become more and more wise. If you listen from the head, in the first place your listening will be distorted because all your prejudices will become mingled with it, and all your a priori conclusions will be a distraction, and your mind will give its color to what is told to you. In the first place you won't listen to what is being said; your mind will make much noise and you will listen to your own noise. In the second place, whatsoever you gather will become knowledge, not wisdom. Knowledge is superficial, it does not go deep, it cannot go deep. Knowledge is a way to hide your ignorance, it does not destroy it.

Wisdom is a light, it dispels darkness.

But wisdom is ALWAYS of the heart, remember, it is never of the head. When you come to a buddha, forget all about your head. It is a totally different approach to your being - through the heart. Listen through the heartbeats, become attuned - as if you are listening to great music. It IS great music; in fact, what greater music can there be?

These sutras are the greatest poetry, the poetry of the ultimate being. These sutras are the lotus flowers, born in the lake of a consciousness of one who is awakened. Listen attentively, meditatively, lovingly, in deep trust, and you will be immensely benefited, blessed.

The first sutra:

FOR A WHILE THE FOOL'S MISCHIEF
TASTES SWEET, SWEET AS HONEY.
BUT IN THE END IT TURNS BITTER.
AND HOW BITTERLY HE SUFFERS!

There is a famous Buddhist parable. Buddha loved to tell it again and again:

A man is being chased by his enemies. They are coming closer and closer; he can hear the sound of the hooves of the horses coming closer and closer every moment. It is death! And there seems to be no way to escape, because he has come to a cul-de-sac, the road ends. He is facing a great abyss. If he jumps he is bound to die. He cannot turn back because the enemy is going to kill him. He was hoping that there may be one chance if he jumps - he may become crippled, but maybe, by a miracle, he may survive - but that too seems to be impossible because he sees deep in the abyss two lions looking up at him, ready to devour him.

Finding no other way - cannot go back, cannot go ahead - he hangs from the roots of a tree, just in the middle. It is a cold morning, his hands are becoming frozen. He knows within minutes he will not be able to hold the roots at all; his hands are slipping, he is losing his grip. He knows death is becoming more certain every moment.

And then he sees that two mice, one black, one white, are eating the root, cutting the root. Those two mice represent day and night - they represent time, which is cutting everybody's life root. Day and night, death is coming closer. So now it becomes even more absolutely certain that it is only a question of moments and he will be gone. The root is becoming weaker every moment, thinner every moment. The mice are at work; his hands are getting frozen and he can hear the lions roaring deep in the valley and he can hear the enemy approaching closer and closer. You can understand that man's plight.

And then suddenly he sees that just on the top of the tree there is a bees' nest, and a drop of honey is just slipping out of the nest. He forgets all about the enemies, all about the roaring lions, the white and black mice, his hands getting frozen - in a moment, he completely forgets everything. His whole mind becomes focused on that drop of honey.

He opens his mouth, the honey drops on his tongue...and it is so sweet.

This the situation of the fool. This is the situation of every man on the earth. How sweet it tastes! But how long can this taste remain? Soon death will be arriving from all directions. But that's how we go on living - living for momentary pleasures, indulgence, food, sex, money, power, prestige...just drops of honey. How sweet it tastes, and in that moment we completely forget what is going to happen. The moment takes possession of us and we become oblivious of the reality of life: that it is rooted in death, that it is going to disappear.

Buddha says: FOR A WHILE THE FOOL'S MISCHIEF TASTES SWEET, SWEET AS HONEY. BUT IN THE END IT TURNS BITTER. AND HOW BITTERLY HE SUFFERS!

Watch yourself. What are you doing here on the earth? What have you done up to now?

What does your life consist of? Have you done anything really real, or have you just been living in dreams? Have you approached in any way the eternal? Or are you too much occupied with the momentary? Have you made any plans, any projects, for the ultimate truth? Or are you just remaining drunk with the mundane, with the ordinary, going into the same rut every day, moving in the same rut every day? The morning comes and you rush to the marketplace, and the evening comes and you are tired and you come home...and the same circle goes on moving, the same wheel. And this has been going on and on for so many lives. When are you going to become bored with it?

When are you going to become a little more alert about what you are doing to your life?

This is a sheer wastage.

But Buddha says: Certainly, there is some sweetness, momentary, and one suffers for that sweetness. It turns, inevitably, into bitterness. Watch your life. You can earn much money, and while you are earning it tastes sweet. But you are not aware that you are losing your life in earning rubbish, that life is slipping out of your hands, that it is a very costly affair that you are pursuing, utterly foolish, stupid.

The life cannot be bought back; not even a single moment, with all your wealth, can you purchase back. It cannot be claimed back. Such precious time being wasted! You are piling up wealth which will be taken away by death, and you will go empty-handed...as empty-handed as you had come to the earth. Then you will feel the bitterness of it, that you wasted your whole life for something which is not going to be with you. You wasted your whole life in power, politics; you wasted your whole life in becoming respectable, and now death has come and all will be taken away. And you have not tasted a single moment of your eternal reality - you have not tasted anything deathless.

This is what Buddha calls the fool's approach towards life. Everything turns bitter: your love, your friendship, your family, your business, your politics...everything, finally, proves to be poisonous, turns into bitterness. One who is wise will become aware while there is still time and something can be done.

FOR MONTHS THE FOOL MAY FAST,
EATING FROM THE TIP OF A GRASS BLADE.
STILL HE IS NOT WORTH A PENNY
BESIDE THE MASTER WHOSE FOOD IS THE WAY.

Buddha is not saying become an ascetic. Buddha is not saying renounce the world, renounce food, starve yourself, fast, torture your body - he is not saying that. He cannot say it. He has learned a lesson, a great lesson by doing all these things himself.

When he left his palace he followed the traditional path for six years, torturing himself, fasting, destroying his body. He came to a point when he was almost on the verge of death - he had tortured himself too much. In that moment he became aware, "What am I doing? First I was indulging, my whole day and night was devoted to indulgence:

women, wine, good food, clothes, palaces, golden chariots, hunting.... That was my life, the life of a prince. I was doing something which proved futile."

He was only twenty-nine when he left his palace - must have been a man of great intelligence. There are people who are seventy or seventy-nine and they have not yet become aware of the foolishness of their lives. He was only twenty-nine. Must have been a man of rare insight. Must have been watching, looking at what he was doing, meditating over things. Suddenly he became aware, "This whole thing is rubbish - all these women, all this wine, hunting, all this indulgence is not going to give me anything eternal."

The East has always been in search of the eternal. The definition of truth in the East is:

that which is eternal. And the definition of untruth? - that which is momentary. When the Eastern mystics say that something is illusory, they mean it is momentary. They don't mean that it is not, they know it is, but it is only for the moment, like a soap bubble. It is! And sometimes a soap bubble can look really beautiful. If sunrays pass through it, it can be surrounded by a rainbow, all the colors. A soap bubble is, but its isness is so momentary, so deceptive, that it is better to say that it is not; hence the Eastern mystics say the world is MAYA - illusory. NOT that it is not, but it is so momentary that it is almost pointless whether it is or it is not. It is better to call it illusory, because that will make you alert, wakeful.

Those twenty-nine years were enough to make him aware that he was playing with soap bubbles. He escaped, he renounced the kingdom. But as it almost always happens, mind moves to the opposite. Mind is like the pendulum of an old clock: goes from right to left, from left to right - to the opposite. It never stays in the middle. And in the middle is the secret. If the pendulum stops in the middle, the clock stops, time stops, the world stops. But the pendulum goes from the left to the right, from the right to the left, and it keeps the clock running, it keeps the clock moving - it keeps TIME alive. And time is the world.

To go beyond time is to know something deathless; hence, in India, for time and death we use the same word, KAL - the same word for time and the same word for death. It is not coincidental, it has a significance. Time is death, because in time everything is momentary, everything is going to die. One moment it is, another moment it is gone, and gone forever. The moment you go beyond time, you go beyond death.

But just as the mind functions - it moves to the opposite - Buddha's mind also moved to the opposite. He escaped from the palace. Up to now he had cared about his body; now he started torturing the body. Up to now he was too obsessed with good food; now he started fasting, long fasts. He became a famous ascetic. People started respecting him, people started following him. He was a beautiful man, one of the most beautiful who has ever walked on the earth, but these six years of self-torture and masochism destroyed his body. He became dark, he became thin, he became ugly.

But one day the great insight arose in him, "What am I doing? First I was obsessed with food, now I am obsessed with fasting - basically I am still obsessed with food. First it was a positive obsession, now it is a negative obsession. But I have not changed a little bit. First I was obsessed with women, now I am obsessed with BRAHMACHARYA - celibacy. Basically I have not changed - I am still obsessed with sex. First I was running towards sex, now I am running away from sex, but sex remains the center of my being."

The revelation was great. That very revelation created the context in which he became enlightened. The evening he understood this, something tremendously important happened to him. He laughed at the whole ridiculousness of his mind. He laughed at the tricky mind - that he was thinking that he was going against mind, but he was not going against mind - mind had played a trick. Mind had befooled him, mind had cheated him. Mind had come from the back door. First it was coming from the front door, now it was coming from the back door, and it is more dangerous when it comes from the back door. By the front door at least you are aware of what you are doing.

When it comes from the back door, indirectly, in a subtle way, hiding, it comes hidden behind a facade.

Mind is so cunning that it can hide in the garments of its very opposite. From indulgence it can become asceticism, from being a materialist it can become a spiritualist, from being worldly it can become otherworldly. But mind IS mind - whether you are for the world or against the world you remain encaged in the mind.

For or against, both are parts of the mind.

When mind disappears, mind disappears in a choiceless awareness, when you stop choosing, when you are neither for nor against - that is stopping in the middle. One choice leads to the left, one extreme; another choice leads to the right, the other extreme.

If you don't choose, you are exactly in the middle. That is relaxation, that is rest. That is TRUE renunciation. It is not opposed to the world, it is not opposed to the body, it has nothing to do with the body. It is sheer awakening of consciousness. You become choiceless, unobsessed, and in that state of unobsessed, choiceless consciousness, intelligence arises which has been lying deep, dormant in your being. You become a light unto yourself. You are no longer a fool.

From indulgence you can move to repression; that is not going to help. That's where all the religions have got hooked.

The head nun is held up one evening while coming back from the bank where she has deposited the charity collection of the week. "You are wasting your time, young man," she tells the robber. "I have no money. I put it all in the night deposit at the bank."

"We will see about that," he says grimly, and begins rumpling up under her black gown to search for the money.

"Oh! What are you doing?" she cries. "Oh! Oh!! Oh Jesus, Mary! Don't stop now - I will write you a cheque!"

Repression is not the way, cannot be the way. All that you have repressed is waiting for its opportunity. It has simply gone into the unconscious - it can come back any moment. Any provocation and it will surface. You are not free of it. Repression is not the way to freedom. Repression is a far worse kind of bondage than indulgence, because through indulgence one becomes tired sooner or later, but through repression one never becomes tired.

See the point: indulgence is bound to tire you and bore you. Sooner or later you will start thinking how to get rid of it all. But repression will keep things alive. Because you have not lived, how can you be bored? You have not lived; how can you be fed up?

Because you have not lived, the charm continues, the hypnosis continues; deep down, it waits.

And the people who indulge are in a way normal compared to the people who repress; the repressing person becomes pathological. The indulgent is at least natural - that's how nature has made you - but to repress is to become unnatural. It is easy to go from lower nature to higher nature. It is very difficult to go from being unnatural to higher nature. Buddha calls the ultimate truth, "ultimate nature" - AES DHAMMO SANANTANO. This is the ultimate nature, the ultimate law, he declares. What is the ultimate law? The eternal, the undying, the pure consciousness.

It is easy to reach this eternal law from nature, because nature is lower but still it is nature. And from the lower to the higher you can step; the lower can become a stepping-stone. But the moment you become unnatural it becomes very difficult. From being unnatural, there is no way to supreme nature.

Hence, my suggestion is: if you are going to choose, choose indulgence rather than repression. The best thing is NOT to choose, to remain choiceless, to be just a witness, to see your instincts, desires, and not get identified with them, for or against. The best thing is just to be a witness because in witnessing, in the fire of witnessing, all desires are burned - not only desires, but the very seeds of desires are burned. One becomes NIRBEEJ - seedless.

But don't choose the negative. Once you become repressive, you become pathological, you are ill. In fact, only pathological people become interested in repressive systems of thought.

All the nuns but one in a Belgian nunnery are found to be pregnant just after the war.

The cardinal makes a personal inquiry and learns that the nuns have all been raped by German soldiers.

"But why didn't they rape you?" he asks of the one thin, little, ugly and repulsive looking nun who is not pregnant.

"Who, me?" she says. "I resisted!"

The pathological can also find rationalizations. You know the old Aesop's fable?

The fox says, "The grapes are sour," because the fox could not get to the grapes - they were too high. She looked around, she tried hard to reach, but the grapes were too high, beyond her reach. She looked around, there was nobody. She walked away, but a hare was watching, hidden behind a bush. And the hare said, "Auntie, what happened?

Couldn't you get to the grapes?"

The fox said, "No, it is not a question of getting to the grapes - they are not yet ripe, they are very sour."

The people who cannot get to the grapes can rationalize that they are sour. These rationalizations may deceive others, but how can they deceive you? The fox knows perfectly well that she had not been able to reach. Now, it is a rationalization, and mind is very clever in rationalizing.

Jake came home in the middle of the afternoon. He was met at the door by his wife and his son. His son exclaimed, "Dad, there is a bogeyman in the closet!"

Jake rushed to the closet and flung the door open. There, huddled among the coats was his partner, Sam. "Sam," shrieked Jake, "why in hell do you come here in the afternoon and scare my kid?"

Mind is very cunning and clever in rationalizing things, in finding ways and means.

The mind can suggest repression to you very easily, because if you repress you will be far more in the power of the mind than you ever were when you were in the life of indulgence. And the mind will have a far stronger grip on you.

Buddha learned it through his own experience - six years of great torture. With Buddha the world entered into a new phase of religiousness. Before Buddha nobody had said this: that repressiveness, austerities, fasting, torturing your body, is not going to help.

With Buddha, humanity entered into a new phase, a higher phase.

Buddha is a very very significant milestone in the evolution of human consciousness, but he has not been understood rightly, because again the interpreters were those old scholars, pundits, priests. They again interpreted Buddha in such a way...they started interpreting Buddha almost completely against his own experience. They started talking much about those six years; Buddhist scriptures are full of the description of those six years. And if you read Buddhist scriptures you will find that it seems as if it is because of those six years of austerities that he attained enlightenment. It is not so. It is not by those six years of austerities that he attained enlightenment; he attained enlightenment the day he dropped all those austerities. It was by DROPPING them that he attained enlightenment, not by or through them.

But if you read the scriptures, particularly those written in India, you will be given a totally false impression. They make it appear as if Buddha has not contributed anything new to human consciousness, as if he is just the old type of ascetic - maybe far more intelligent in expressing, far more convincing, logical, far more deep-going in his insight, but nothing new. It is the same old religion which he has brought in new words, with new logic; the same old wine in a new bottle, that's all. That's what Indians have made Buddha look like. That is a falsification. Buddha does not represent the old.

He is a stepping beyond the old. He is a new phase. And just as he took a new step, again another step is needed. Twenty-five centuries have passed.

My new commune is going to be that new step - a further step in human evolution, in human consciousness.

Although Buddha dropped asceticism, he did not talk much against it; he could not, because he had to communicate with people who were full of the ancient lore and the ancient ideology. He had to talk to people who would have been absolutely incapable of understanding if he had talked like me. Even I am not comprehensible to people.

Twenty-five centuries have passed and people are still stuck. It is very rare to find a contemporary. People are in the twentieth century, but only physically; spiritually they are thousands of years back. Buddha could not even make an effort. He did say to his closest disciples, "It is not through asceticism that I have attained. I have attained by dropping asceticism - that was all foolishness." These sutras were given to his closest disciples.

He says: FOR MONTHS THE FOOL MAY FAST, EATING FROM THE TIP OF A GRASS BLADE. STILL HE IS NOT WORTH A PENNY BESIDE THE MASTER WHOSE FOOD IS THE WAY.

If you really want a transformation, then make dhamma your food - let the very way to God be your food. Nourish yourself on it! Jesus says it in another way: Eat me! He says to his disciples: Drink me! Absorb me, digest me!

Buddha says: ...WHOSE FOOD IS THE WAY. The way means dhamma, religion, the ultimate law, that keeps the whole world in harmony. One who starts eating out of this harmony, that one attains - not by fasting. It is not by fasting from the gross food, but by eating the subtle food that one attains.

Yes, there is a subtle food available. When you look at a roseflower, just watch. Let the beauty of the rose be absorbed in you, and you will feel nourished. You have not eaten the rose but something subtle that surrounds the rose, the aura of the rose, the dance of the rose in the wind, the fragrance which is invisible. Have you not felt it? Seeing a beautiful flower, suddenly you feel saturated, contented. Looking at the sky full of stars, have you not felt nourished? Watching the sunrise or the sunset, or just listening to the faraway call of a cuckoo, a distant song, have you not felt yourself becoming full of something unknown...?

Your body needs food, your soul also needs food. The bodily food is gross, obviously; the body is part of the gross world. The spiritual food is invisible - in music, in poetry, in beauty, in dance, in song, in prayer, in meditation...and you go deeper and deeper towards the spiritual nourishment.

Buddha says: It is not by dropping the gross food, by fasting, that one attains, but by eating the way. A strange expression - by eating the dhamma. What is dhamma? Just the other day somebody asked, "Beloved Master, I love it when you say: AES DHAMMO SANANTANO, but what exactly does it mean?" It means the harmony of existence, it means the melody of existence, it means the ultimate dance that is going on and on. It means the celebration that is everywhere. The trees are celebrating and the birds and the animals and the rivers and the mountains...this whole existence is made of the stuff called bliss.

That's what Buddha means when he says: AES DHAMMO SANANTANO - this is the ultimate law, inexhaustible. You can go on eating out of it, but you cannot exhaust it.

And the more you eat, the more soul you will have. The more you eat it, the more divine you become. Buddha is saying: I am not teaching fasting - I am teaching you a new way of indulgence, a higher kind of indulgence. He is not saying it exactly in that way, but I am saying it. I am teaching you a higher way of love, a higher way of rejoicing, a higher way of dance, a higher way of absorbing God's energy into yourself - - becoming more and more receptive and feminine so you can be pregnant with God.

He calls the man a fool who goes on fasting. But those fools are worshipped in India, and not only in India - almost all over the world. In fact, the majority of the crowd consists of fools; hence, whenever a fool starts following the rotten, trodden path, the traditional path of the crowds, the crowds are very much thrilled. Their egos are very much satisfied. This man proves that they have been right, their parents have been right, their heritage is proved right: "Look, this man is fasting!" And spiritual people have always been fasting - that is their idea.

Yes, sometimes it has happened that a spiritual person HAS fasted, but the reason is totally different from what you think. Mahavira fasted, and fasted for twelve years, and for long long periods. It is said that in those twelve years he took food for only three hundred and sixty-five days - that means only one year. One month he would fast and he would take food for one day; in twelve years, one year means that mostly after twelve days he ate on one day - average. That was his way of fasting.

But Mahavira never became tired and Buddha became tired after six years. What was the matter? And he attained as much as Buddha attained. Buddha attained by dropping his fasting and austerity; Mahavira never dropped it. Now, both cannot be right - and I say to you both are right. But the reasons are so different, almost inconceivable.

Mahavira's fast has a totally different quality. He is not an ascetic, he is not fasting - in fact, he is eating so much of God that he does not feel the need to eat. His soul is so overflowing with subtle energies that his body feels satisfied. He does not feel the need to eat. In fact, to say that he fasts is not right. If I am allowed then I will say: he cannot eat. And you have also sometimes observed it.

When I used to come to Poona, I used to stay with Sohan, and she was very much puzzled. One day she asked me, "What is the matter? Once or twice a year you come to Poona. I wait the whole year long - you will be coming, you will be coming - and then for three or four days you come. For these three or four days I cannot eat at all. What is the reason why I can't eat? I am not fasting," she told me. "I want to eat, but I simply can't eat. I feel so full."

I told her, "Whenever you are tremendously happy, you will not be able to eat. Your blissfulness is so overflowing it leaves no appetite, it leaves no emptiness in you. Not only is your soul overflowing, your body starts being affected by the soul. Your body is a shadow to your soul."

You will be surprised: miserable people eat more, happy people less. A miserable person feels so empty that he wants to fill himself, stuff himself with something or other. The miserable person goes on eating, he goes on stuffing this and that inside. He feels so utterly empty and lost that he does not know what to do. It seems easy to go to the fridge and eat something more; maybe that will give you a feeling of fullness. And certainly it does give, on the very gross level, a feeling of fullness.

Now, America suffers most from overeating, and the reason is simple: America is now suffering from great inner emptiness. The reason is spiritual, hence no dieting can help.

And how long can you diet? You can diet for a few days with great willpower; you have to force yourself. Then after a few days you become tired of making the effort and then you jump upon the food with a vengeance; and you will gain more weight than you had lost by dieting.

In America this is a problem. In all rich countries this is going to be a problem, because you have food and you have emptiness both available. Only food is left to fill yourself with, sex is left to fill yourself with. Go on purchasing new gadgets, new things; if you cannot have anything else you can at least go on accumulating furniture. You can fill the house if you cannot fill your being. Just a vicarious way of feeling full. Just the opposite happens when you are really happy, joyous, when you are flying, when you are feeling weightless.

I told Sohan, "This is perfectly logical. This is real fasting!"

In Sanskrit, the word for 'fast' has a beauty of its own. The English word does not have that quality. The English word 'fast' simply means starving through willpower. The Sanskrit word is UPAWAS - it means 'being close to God'. Literally it means being close to God; it has nothing to do with fasting. It means being so close to God, so full of God, that you forget all about your body, that you forget all about your body nourishment. You are so nourished by the subtle food, the subtle energy, that goes on showering on you.

Mahavira was not fasting in the same way that Buddha was; Mahavira was eating God, and Buddha was simply fasting. Mahavira's fast was upawas - being close to God. His fast was what it means in Sanskrit; Buddha's fast was what it means in English - just starving. Hence Mahavira attained without dropping his fast. It was not fasting in the first place - there was no need to drop it. Buddha had to drop it, it was just the opposite of indulgence. He was simply starving himself with the motive that by starvation one can attain.

How can you attain God by starving the body? What logic is this? What scientific reasoning is there in it? Do you think God is someone like Adolf Hitler who enjoys your tortures? who enjoys seeing his children hungry and dreaming of food? who enjoys seeing people becoming ugly, ill? God is compassion, God is love. He would like you to be full of him. And when you are full of him you may not feel the need to eat. Mahavira was not fasting, he was simply not feeling like eating, that's all. And that's a great difference.

Buddha says: FOR MONTHS THE FOOL MAY FAST, EATING FROM THE TIP OF A GRASS BLADE. STILL HE IS NOT WORTH A PENNY BESIDE THE MASTER WHOSE FOOD IS THE WAY.

One day he discovered that there is another kind of food: one can eat out of the harmony of existence, one can become part of the harmony, one can become part of the celebration, the festivity that goes on and on, with no beginning and no end. Then you are full and fulfilled.

FRESH MILK TAKES TIME TO SOUR.
SO A FOOL'S MISCHIEF
TAKES TIME TO CATCH UP WITH HIM.
LIKE THE EMBERS OF A FIRE
IT SMOULDERS WITHIN HIM.

If you do something, it takes time for its result to come. And you may not even be able to connect the two, the cause and the effect.

Do you know that in Africa, still there are primitive tribes which have no conception that the birth of a child has anything to do with intercourse - because the gap is so big, nine months. And not only is the gap so big...and they have no way of calculating time, so for them nine months is really a long time; they cannot keep track of time. They have no calendar, no watches, no idea of time at all. They live in a really primitive world where time has not been invented yet, so how can they conceive that the intercourse between a man and a woman can be the cause of the birth of a child?

And then there are other reasons: it doesn't always happen. You may make love to a woman and there may come no child, so it is not an inevitable thing. Then how is the child born? The child is born not by intercourse, not by sexual relationship, it has no biology behind it - it comes as a gift from God, whomsoever he chooses. If you follow the tribe's religion, you will be blessed with children; otherwise there is no possibility.

When Christian missionaries for the first time discovered this tribe, they could not believe that these people for centuries have lived, given birth to children, and have no idea at all of cause and effect. And that's how we all are, in so many ways - primitive.

Today suddenly you start feeling sad for no reason at all; you cannot find any reason in close proximity - nothing has happened. In the night when you had gone to bed, everything was good; you were flowing, glowing, and in the morning you are suddenly sad. Nobody has insulted you, nothing has happened, no bad news has arrived...why?

From where has this sadness come? You must have done something; maybe there is a time gap, maybe three months' gap or three years. And those who have gone deep into this phenomenon, they say maybe even in the past life...sometimes a few seeds take very long to sprout.

And because of this, the fool goes on living in the same way, in the same foolish way, because he cannot see that his life's suffering is caused by his own choices. Those choices may have been made long before. You may have thrown the seeds a year before, and then you have completely forgotten about those seeds. Rains come, the seeds start sprouting, and you are surprised - from where? From where are these plants coming up? And, of course, the seeds that we go on sowing in our souls are very very invisible. You may have been angry, violent, jealous, and it has remained inside you.

Buddha says: LIKE THE EMBERS OF A FIRE IT SMOULDERS WITHIN HIM. It goes on inside you, getting ready, waiting for the spring to come, and then it explodes suddenly. Man is responsible for whatsoever happens to him. The wise man becomes aware of it and stops sowing seeds of misery and starts sowing seeds of joy. Sooner or later you will be ready to reap the harvest.

That's what heaven is: a wise man sowing seeds of bliss, love, compassion. And one day the garden is ready. Do you know? - the word 'paradise' comes from Persian, has a beautiful meaning. In Persian it is FIRDAUS; from 'firdaus' it has become 'paradise' in English. 'Firdaus' means a walled garden of truth. If you go on sowing seeds of joy, beauty, dance, song, meditation, prayer, soon you will create a walled garden of truth - that is paradise. Otherwise, you are bound to create hell. Live unconsciously, live mechanically, live foolishly, and hell is going to be the outcome of it.

WHATEVER A FOOL LEARNS,
IT ONLY MAKES HIM DULLER.
KNOWLEDGE CLEAVES HIS HEAD.

The fool is not very much interested in becoming intelligent, because intelligence is dangerous. Intelligence is rebellious, hence it is dangerous. Intelligence brings individuality to you, and the moment you become an integrated individual the crowds start turning against you; they cannot tolerate an individual. They cannot forgive a Jesus or a Buddha. They are very happy with the fools, because the fools are just like them - in fact, a little more magnified, a little more decorated, a little more sophisticated. They are very happy with the fools. They are happy with politicians, they are happy with professors, they are happy with pundits but they are not happy with a Jesus or a Socrates or a Buddha. Why? - because the presence of a buddha makes them look stupid. The very presence of a buddha and they start feeling silly. How can they forgive him?

And they don't want to be intelligent themselves, because it is a long journey and there is no shortcut to it. It is hard, arduous. To become intelligent means to sharpen your consciousness continuously; to become intelligent means to be full of love. Love is the center of intelligence, logic the center of intellectuality.

The fool becomes intellectual; then he can brag that he knows. He is interested in knowledge. He will read the Bible and the Vedas and the Koran, he will cram information. He turns his mind into a computer, he becomes a walking ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA. That is easy, that is simple, that can be done by a machine; it does not need any intelligence. And your schools, colleges and universities only make people computers.

We have yet to create universities where intelligence is sharpened. Our universities only dull the intelligence because they prepare slaves for the society. The universities are in the service of the vested interests; they are agents of the established status quo. They don't serve the future of humanity, they serve the past, they serve the dead. They are not interested in creating people who are intelligent, creative, alert, aware; they are interested in people who are dull, stupid, but efficient. Clerks, deputy collectors, stationmasters - efficient! They can just do their work very efficiently. And remember, machines are more efficient than men, so they are not interested in men; they are interested in reducing men to machines.

Buddha says: WHATEVER A FOOL LEARNS, IT ONLY MAKES HIM DULLER. The more knowledge he gathers, the more dull he becomes, the more stupid he becomes.

And that is my observation too. I have seen ignorant villagers far more intelligent than the so-called Ph.D.'s and D.Litt.'s and professors of the universities, deans, vice- chancellors and chancellors. They seem to be the dullest people in the world.

A villager, a woodcutter, seems to be far more intelligent. He has no information, of course; he is not knowledgeable - but he is innocent, and innocence is part of intelligence. To be knowledgeable is to be machinelike - and machines are dull. Have you ever seen any machine which is intelligent? Just look at the machine, and look at the dean and the vice-chancellor...!

In fact, the duller you are, the greater is the possibility that you will become a vice- chancellor - because the politicians will not like a Buddha to become a vice-chancellor, they will not allow Socrates to become a vice-chancellor. This was the crime Socrates was accused of: that he was corrupting youth. Socrates, and corrupting youth? And these fools - the magistrates and the vice-chancellors and the prime ministers and the presidents - these fools are not corrupting? Socrates is corrupting the youth - what do they mean by it?

In a way, they are right: he is corrupting the youth because he is preparing them for the future. He has to destroy the past, he has to create doubt, inquiry, he has to create seekers, not believers. And the society wants believers, and the dull people are good believers. A Mohammedan, a Christian, a Hindu, a Jaina - the duller they are, the more they believe, the better they believe...because the dull person cannot inquire, he cannot risk. He is afraid:he knows that he is not capable of knowing the truth on his own, he has to believe somebody else.

KNOWLEDGE CLEAVES HIS HEAD, says Buddha. Knowledge does not help him but becomes a burden, a Himalayan weight on his being.

FOR THEN HE WANTS RECOGNITION,
A PLACE BEFORE OTHER PEOPLE,
A PLACE OVER OTHER PEOPLE.

His whole knowledge becomes an ego trip, and the ego is the greatest bondage there is.

To be free of ego is to be redeemed. But the fool learns just to become famous, to be recognized as an authority, to be an expert. The fool accumulates knowledge so that he can brag and exhibit, so that he can show people how intelligent he is. And intelligence is not of the ego; intelligence comes only when you are in a deep egoless state.

Intelligence is the disappearance of ego, meeting and merging with the whole, forgetting your separation, becoming a wave in the ocean of God - then you are intelligent.

"LET THEM KNOW MY WORK,
LET EVERYONE LOOK TO ME FOR DIRECTION."
SUCH ARE HIS DESIRES,
SUCH IS HIS SWELLING PRIDE.

ONE WAY LEADS TO WEALTH AND FAME....

Buddha says: But let me make you aware that if you want wealth and fame, then follow the way of the fool - because the foolish person is capable of becoming famous more easily than the intelligent person. If the intelligent person becomes famous, that is just accidental - he never tries. If the intelligent person is well known, that is not because of his effort. His fragrance may have reached people, but there is no positive effort on his side to be recognized. He knows his being, he does not depend on others' recognition.

He knows who he is, he does not need anybody else's certificate.

When I came out of the university I went to see the education minister. I told him, "These are my qualifications. If you can give me some place anywhere, any place will be okay." He looked at my qualifications, was very much impressed - people are impressed by nonsense - because I was a gold-medallist, first-class, first. He was very much impressed. He said, "Immediately I will appoint you as a lecturer. But one thing you will have to do: have you got a character certificate?"

I said, "I have got a character, but no character certificate. Look into my eyes, hold my hand! I can hug you...!"

He said, "But that...that is not the point. Where is the character certificate?"

I said, "I have got no character certificate."

He said, "You can go to the vice-chancellor, or the head of your department - just one character certificate. It is a formality."

I said, "I cannot ask the vice-chancellor, because I don't believe that he has any character at all! What weight will his certificate carry? And the head of my department? - I know him more than he knows himself. I cannot give him a character certificate!"

He was very much puzzled. He really wanted to help. In fact, he became really interested in me also. He had never come across such a man - so many people must have approached him, but nobody had said, "Look into my eyes, or hold my hand and feel! Or I can come and live with you for one week, in your house. Just see my character in every possible way. I will not even lock the door of my bathroom. I will keep everything open, so you can just go on watching...!"

He said, "These things are not needed at all! Just a simple character certificate."

So I said, "Then I can write a simple character certificate to myself" - and that's what I did. I wrote a certificate, in front of him, and he said, "What are you doing? But this has never been done: you yourself giving a character certificate to yourself? Somebody else's signature is needed!"

So I said, "Okay, then I will sign for the head of my department, on his behalf. This is a true copy," I told him, "and the original I will take from the head of my department."

So I went to the head of my department. I said, "I have given this character certificate in your name - you please give the original."

He said, "This is strange! The original is needed FIRST." But he loved the idea and he gave me an original.

ONE WAY LEADS TO WEALTH AND FAME.... If you follow the fool's way, you can become very rich, you can become famous. You can become a president of a country, a prime minister of a country - you can become anything. You can have as much wealth as you want - just follow the fool's way. Don't be intelligent, remain stupid, because in fact, except for a stupid person who wants to run after money? Yes, sometimes it happens, money comes to the intelligent person, but it comes running after him, he does not go.... Fame also sometimes comes to the intelligent person. It comes on its own; he is not interested at all.

...THE OTHER TO THE END OF THE WAY.

But if you want to end this whole nonsense that has persisted down the ages for so many lives, the same repetitive wheel of birth and death moving; if you want to stop it, then the other, the way of the intelligent person, the way of the wise...be a light unto yourself.

LOOK NOT FOR RECOGNITION
BUT FOLLOW THE AWAKENED
AND SET YOURSELF FREE.

Don't be bothered, don't desire recognition. If millions of fools recognize you, what does it matter? Millions of fools recognizing you simply proves that you are a greater fool than them. Nothing else is proved.

BUT FOLLOW THE AWAKENED.... What does Buddha mean when he says FOLLOW THE AWAKENED? He does not mean imitate. He simply means become awakened as the awakened has become awakened. Be awake - that is following the awakened. Not following in the details: how he lives, what he eats, when he goes to sleep - that is stupidity. Follow the awakened in becoming awake.

AND SET YOURSELF FREE - because it is only awareness, the state of an awakened consciousness that brings freedom. Intelligence is freedom. Meditation is freedom.

Awareness is freedom. And those who live mechanically, unconsciously, unintelligently, they live in prisons. And to live in a prison is to suffer.

Freedom is the ultimate value of life.

FOLLOW THE AWAKENED AND SET YOURSELF FREE.

AES DHAMMO SANANTANO....

Enough for today.

Next Chapter – Return to Table of Contents

Xem chi tiết »