Osho –
Dhammapada: The Way of The Buddha (Volume 1)
Chapter 6. Through
a glass darkly
Question 1:
Beloved Master,
I feel like I know the answers. Why do I
still allow the questions to become problems?
Savita, there are not answers,
there is only the answer. And that answer is not of the mind, that answer
cannot be of the mind. Mind is a multiplicity. Mind has answers and answers,
but not the answer.
That answer is a state of
no-mind. It is not verbal. You can know it but you cannot reduce it to
knowledge. You can know it, but you cannot say it. It is known in the innermost
recesses of your being. It is light that simply illuminates your interiority.
It is not an answer to any
particular question. It is the end of all questioning, it refers to no question
at all. It simply dissolves all the questions and a state is left without any
question... that's the answer. Unless that is known, nothing is known.
Hence, you may feel that you
know the answers, but still questions will go on popping up, still questions
will go on torturing you. Still questions are bound to arise because the root
is not cut yet. New leaves will be sprouting, new branches will be arising.
The root is cut only when you
disconnect yourself from the mind, when you become so aware, so watchful that
you can see the mind as separate from you. When all identity with the mind is
dropped, when you are a watcher on the hills and the mind is left deep down in
the darkness of the valleys, when you are on the sunlit peaks, just a pure
witness, seeing, watching, but not getting identified with anything - good or
bad, sinner or saint, this or that - in that witnessing all questions dissolve.
The mind melts, evaporates. You are left as a pure being, just a pure existence
- a breathing, a beating of the heart, utterly in the moment, no past, no
future, hence no present either.
Unless that state arrives you
will feel many times that you know the answers, but each answer will only
create new questions. Each answer will trigger new chains of questions in you.
You can read, you can study, you can think, but you will get more and more in
the mire of the mind, more entangled, more entrapped. Slip out of the mind!
Hence, I am not giving you
answers, I am trying to point out the answer. You cannot use the plural for it
because it is one. It is a state of utter silence, peace, no-thought.
Buddha calls it right
mindfulness - sammasati. And he says that those who are rightly mindful, alert,
aware, the truth comes to them of its own accord. You need not go anywhere, it
comes. You need not even seek and search, because how can you seek and search?
Out of your ignorance, whatsoever you do will bring more ignorance. Out of your
ignorance, wherever you go you will go astray. Out of your confusion, how can
you find clarity? Out of your confusion you will become more and more confused
- in search of clarity.
Hence Buddha says: The master
watches, the master is clear. Aes dhammo sanantano - this is the law, the
ultimate, eternal, inexhaustible law.
To be silent is to have the
answer. To be silent is to be without questions...and the root is cut, then no
leaves arrive anymore.
Savita, you say, "I feel
like I know the answers."
That is only an illusion. And
the mind is very clever in creating new illusions. The mind is very deceptive:
it can deceive you in knowledge too. It can deceive you in everything!
It can even make you believe
that you are enlightened, that you are a buddha already.
Beware! The only enemy is the
mind; there is no other enemy.
The old scriptures talk about
the mind. They have a special name for it - they call it the Devil. The Devil
is not somebody outside you; it is your own mind that goes on tempting you,
that goes on cheating you, deceiving you, that goes on creating new illusions
in you. Beware, watch the mind! And in watching, questions disappear - not that
they are answered, let me repeat it again.
The buddha knows no answers -
not that he has come to the conclusion of all questions, no, not at all. On the
contrary, he has no questions anymore. Because he has no questions anymore, his
whole being has become the answer.
Savita, that moment is
possible.
That's my whole work here. I am
not here to give you more information; that you can get anywhere. Thousands of
universities exist, thousands of libraries exist. Information you can get
anywhere, you can become knowledgeable anywhere. My effort is to make you
unlearn whatsoever you have learned up to now, to make you innocent so that you
can start functioning from a state of not-knowing. So that you don't have any
answers, so that you act spontaneously, not out of the past and out of the
conclusions already arrived at. So that you don't have any ready-made formula
for anything... so that you are like a small child mirroring reality.
And when you are silent, no
knowledge clamoring inside you, your perception is clear - no dust on the mirror...you
reflect that which is. And out of that reflection whatever action arises is
virtue.
Question 2:
Beloved master,
You want us to be individuals, but during
work in the ashram we have to be very disciplined. Discipline and individualism
– are they not diametrically opposite?
Sudarshan, I would like you to
be individuals, but not individualists. And there is a great difference. The
individualist is not an individual yet. The individualist who believes in
individualism is only an egoist. And to be an egoist is not to be an individual.
Just the contrary: the individual has no ego, and the ego has no individuality.
The ego is such an ordinary
phenomenon - everybody has it! There is nothing special about it, there is
nothing unique about it. Everybody has the ego. It is so common! The uncommon
thing is egolessness.
Only an egoless consciousness
attains to individuality. And by individuality I simply mean the literal
meaning of the word: individual means indivisible, individual means integrated;
individual means one who is not many, who is not a crowd, who is not
multipsychic; one who has attained to unity, one who has become a crystallized
being.
Gurdjieff uses the word
'crystallization' for individuality. But the basic requirement for
crystallization is to drop the ego, because ego is a false entity. It won't
allow you to be real, it won't allow you to be authentically real. It won't
allow you to grow. It is false, it is a deception, it is an illusion. You are
not separate from existence, but the ego goes on pretending separation.
And the other word that you
have used in the question also has to be understood: discipline. Discipline
does not mean anything imposed upon you. Nothing is imposed in this commune. If
you enter this commune it is at your own choice. The doors are open - you can
leave any moment. In fact, entry is difficult and we make every possible effort
to help you to leave. Nobody is hindered from leaving, although every possible
effort is made to hinder you from entering. Entry is very difficult.
If you choose to become part of
this commune it is your decision - your readiness to commit yourself, to be
involved.
Out of this decision a
discipline arises. You can choose to get out of the commune, but once you are
in the commune it means that you have taken a responsibility. And it is only
through responsibility that one grows. By fulfilling one's responsibility
totally, growth becomes possible.
There are a few people here,
only a few, who go on trying to deceive the commune.
They are simply befooling
themselves; nobody is befooled! They don't want to work, they try to avoid it
in every possible way. They find excuses, they even fall ill just to avoid
work. But this is so stupid! You have entered the commune to work upon
yourself. You have entered the commune to make a concentrated effort to become
an integrated individual. You have entered the commune for your spiritual
growth, for enlightenment. And if you avoid... and that seems to be the real
question behind the apparent question.
You say, Sudarshan,
"Individualism and discipline - are they not diametrically opposite?"
They are not! An individual is
always a disciplined phenomenon. One who is not disciplined is not an
individual; he is just a chaos, he is many fragments. All those fragments are
functioning separately, even in opposition to each other. That's how people are
ordinarily: one part of the mind going to the south, another part going to the
north; one part saying one thing, another part opposing it. You know it! I am
simply stating a fact - you can observe it. One part says "Do this."
Another part immediately says "No!" Something says "Yes,"
and something immediately destroys it by saying "No."
This is your situation! You are
an individual in such a situation, when you cannot even say a total yes or a
total no? Your no is always halfhearted and your yes too - and you think you
are an individual?
An individual means one who can
function as a totality, as an organic unity. How are you going to become an
organic unity? It can only be through conscious discipline.
That's what Buddha is saying
again and again: perseverance, effort, a conscious, deliberate effort to grow -
and total effort, not lukewarm. You have to boil at a hundred degrees. Yes,
sometimes it is painful, but it all depends on you, on how you interpret it.
If you really want to grow it
is not painful - it is tremendously pleasant. Each step deeper into discipline
brings more and more joy, because it gives you more and more soul, being.
Discipline means readiness to
learn; hence the word 'disciple', they come from the same root. Who is a
disciple? - one who bows down, surrenders, and is ready to learn. And what is
discipline? - the readiness, the openness, the vulnerability, to learn.
Entering into this commune you
are entering into a buddhafield. It is a surrender, it is a trust! I am here to
make you individuals, but you will have to pass through many many devices. Many
fires you will have to pass through, many tests. Only then, slowly slowly, will
you be welded into one unity. And you have remained a multiplicity for so long,
for so many lives, that unless concentrated effort is made, unless you are
attacked from every nook and corner, unless your sleep is broken in every
possible way, you are shaken and shocked, the individual is not going to be born.
The work that is happening in
the commune is not really what it appears from the surface. It is something
else - it is a device! We have to use devices.
Somebody comes to me and wants
to become part of the commune, and I say to him, "Go to Deeksha." Deeksha
is my device! I have given her total power - and I have given her total power
because she is so loving, so soft, so caring. She wounds people, but she heals
also. By one hand she hammers, by the other she consoles. She is a device.
And when I say to you, "Go
and work with Deeksha," and she shouts at you and in every possible way
she provokes you, it is discipline to watch - not to act in your old ways, as
you have always acted. And she is so motherly that it is very simple to react
to her as you have been reacting to your own parents. It is very simple that
she will create a reaction in you that your mother creates in you. Mothers are
intolerable creatures - and Deeksha is a perfect mother!
I know, Sudarshan, it is
difficult - but growth is difficult. Many more devices are going to be created.
You will be sent to many dimensions. No corner of your being has to be left
undeveloped, otherwise you will become lopsided.
And the first principle of
discipline is surrender. Apparently it looks contradictory, because that's what
you have been told: that if you surrender, then you are no longer an
individual. And I say to you, if you cannot surrender you are not an
individual. Only an individual can surrender. Surrender is such a great
phenomenon, only a man of great will can surrender. It is the ultimate in will.
To drop your will is bound to be the ultimate in will. To put yourself aside,
absolutely aside, and to say to something such a total yes - which your mind
resists, your old habits resist...
And sometimes you are right -
and that's where the whole beauty lies. You are right, and still you have to
surrender to something which does not appear at all right logically.
Deeksha is crazy! You may be
far more intellectual, far more rational - but you have to surrender to
Deeksha. Her craziness is her quality - that's why I have chosen her. I have
got many more rational people: I could have chosen a Ph.D. who would have
convinced you that he is right. But when you are convinced and you follow, it
is not surrender. When you are not convinced at all, you see the apparent
stupidity of a certain thing, and still you surrender, that is a great step, a
great step of getting out of your past.
This commune is a lab, this
commune is an alchemical process. You come here as a crowd and I have to weld
you into unity. Much hammering is going to happen, and you will come out of
this whole process as pure individuals.
Discipline is the way to create
individuality. But remember: to be an individual is not to be an individualist.
Individualism is an ego trip. And the people who believe in individualism are
not individuals, remember - remember well. Deep down they know they are not
individuals, hence they create a facade of philosophy, of logic, of argument,
because deep down they don't feel they are individuals. They pretend on the
outside that they are individuals - they believe in individualism. Believing in
individualism is not becoming an individual. Belief is always false.
When you are an individual you
need not believe in individualism. When it is a truth of your being, belief is
not needed. Belief is needed only to cover things: you don't know about God and
you believe in God. The believer is an atheist. He may be a Christian, a Hindu,
a Mohammedan, a Buddhist, it doesn't matter: a believer is an atheist. He does
not know about God, and still he believes. That means he is even trying to
deceive God!
He is a hypocrite, he is a
parrot. Parrotlike he goes on repeating what the scriptures say, what others
say. And parrots can repeat beautifully, without understanding a thing, without
knowing a thing, mechanically.
A Negro walked into a pet store
in Harlem, wanting to buy a good talking parrot. The proprietor told him that
they had a wide selection of parrots, so what sort did he want?
The Negro asked to see a
fifty-dollar parrot. "Polly wanna cracker? Polly wanna cracker?" he
called as soon as the parrot appeared. The parrot said nothing.
"I wanna parrot that talks
good," he said. "Show me a good one."
So the proprietor brought out a
two-hundred-dollar parrot: "Polly wanna cracker? Polly wanna
cracker?" No answer.
"You gotta better parrot
than this?" asked the Negro.
The proprietor said yes, and
led the Negro behind the counter, to where the thousand- dollar parrot,
beautifully plumaged with sparkling beady eyes, clearly a very special parrot,
sat proudly in a luxurious cage.
"Polly wanna cracker? Polly
wanna cracker?" came from the Negro, but the parrot didn't even look up.
"Man, this your best
parrot?" asked the Negro, "because I wanna a good talker and this one
looks dumb."
The proprietor took him to the
back of the shop where in a special polished brass cage the size of a small
room sat the pride of the proprietor's collection - a five-thousand- dollar
parrot. The parrot, dressed in a silk smoking jacket and sitting on a quilted
perch, was smoking a pipe and reading the Financial
Times.
"Polly wanna a cracker?
Polly wanna cracker?" the Negro yelled.
The parrot sniffed and looked
at him over his gold-rimmed spectacles with aristocratic disdain.
"Polly wanna cracker?
Polly wanna cracker?" the Negro yelled again.
"Polly wanna
cracker?" said the parrot in an impeccable Oxford accent. "Nigger
wanna watermelon?"
The believer is a parrot. The
believer knows nothing. The believer is an atheist in disguise. He is trying to
befool himself, the world and even God.
The man who believes in
individualism is not an individual. The man who is really an individual need
not believe - he knows it, so what is the point of believing? Belief is always
needed in ignorance, and individualism is a belief. To be an individual is an
experience! Individualism is very cheap, but to be an individual needs arduous
discipline. It needs great perseverance, work, watchfulness. It comes only out
of years of effort in awareness, in meditation.
And whatsoever is happening
here in this commune, Sudarshan, is nothing but different ways to introduce you
to meditation. In the kitchen, in the carpentry shop, in the soap workshop, in
the boutique - whatsoever is happening, apparently it looks as if it is the
same ordinary thing as happens everywhere else. It is not. If you go and see
the carpenters working, of course they go on working like any other carpenters
anywhere else - but with a different quality. That quality cannot be seen. You
will have to become a participant, only then will you slowly feel it. That
quality is of trust, love.
My sannyasins are here because
they love me, for no other reason. They are simply here with me to be here with
me. For the sake of being here with me they are ready to do anything. But
whatsoever they are doing is only the outer part. You will see the body of the
work but you will not be able to see the spirit of the work. For that you will
have to become a participant.
And, Sudarshan, it seems that
you are still a spectator. Maybe you are working in the commune, but still you
have not become a participant - otherwise such a question would have been
impossible.
Question 3:
Beloved Master,
Why am I feeling I am missing something?
That I should be something else? Please help me let go of this garbage.
Dhyana Yogi, if it is garbage,
if you really understand that it is garbage, then there is no question of
helping you drop it. Knowing it as garbage is dropping it!
But is seems that you have
heard me say that it is garbage. It has become a belief in you; it is not your
own knowing, it is not your own experience. You are still clinging to it.
Deep down you still think it is
precious, it is not garbage. Deep down you still think these are diamonds not
pebbles. Deep down somewhere you still believe it is a treasure to be protected
and guarded.
Don't start believing me,
because that will make no difference. You were believing in Mohammed, or you
were believing in Christ, or in Buddha, and then you come and you start
believing in me. That is not a revolution, that is not conversion. You simply
change the object of your belief, but the belief remains - the same believing
mind. You believe in Jesus, but Jesus speaks the language which is now two
thousand years old. You cannot make much sense out of it; the context is lost
in which it was relevant. I speak the language of the twentieth century. You
can make sense out of it, so you withdraw your belief from Jesus and you start
believing in me. This is very simple and cheap.
I am not saying believe in me.
I am saying drop all believing and start seeing, because belief will remain a
blindness - start seeing! Is it really garbage that you are carrying? Is it
your understanding that it is garbage? Then you will not ask how to drop it.
Nobody asks how to drop garbage. The problem arises only because deep down you
know yourself that it is gold. And somebody says that it is garbage and says it
very convincingly, and you cannot argue, and he silences you. And the man has
such authenticity, such integrity, that in his presence you simply become
overflooded with his being. You simply start saying, "Yes, it is
garbage." But deep down you still know it is not garbage, it is gold!
Hence the problem arises: how to drop it?
If you understand on your own
that it is garbage, you will never ask how to drop it.
Seeing it as garbage is
dropping it, knowing it as garbage is dropping it! The garbage is not clinging
to you - you are clinging to it. The garbage cares nothing about you, the
garbage is not interested in you. If you drop it, it is not going to make much fuss
about it - "Why are you dropping me?" It will not say a single word,
it will not create any problem for you. It will not go to the court. You need
not have a divorce! If you drop it, the garbage will be really more happy than
it is now. It will be finished with you, it will be free from you. It must be
getting tired of you. It is you who are clinging to it. Why are you clinging to
it? Why does one cling to something? - because deep down one goes on believing
it is precious.
Dhyana Yogi, you say, "Why
am I feeling I am missing something?"
Because from your very
childhood you have been told that in yourself, intrinsically, you are
worthless. As you are you have no value. The value has to be attained, the
worth has to be proved. From your very childhood you have been taught this
millions of times. The parents, the teachers, the priests, the politicians,
they are all in a secret conspiracy to destroy the child. And the best way to
destroy a child is to destroy his trust in himself.
To destroy the trust in the
child you have to prove to the child that worth is not a given phenomenon, that
it has to be achieved in life and you can miss it. Unless you work, unless you
are very ambitious, unless you struggle with others... It is a tooth and nail
fight and you have to cut each other's throats to achieve it. You are being
conditioned to be violent, ambitious, full of desires: to have more money, to
have more power, to have more prestige. Because you have been told that
intrinsically you don't have any worth, this problem has arisen.
And I say that you are
intrinsically worthy, that you are born as buddhas. Unaware you are, utterly
oblivious of the reality of your own being, but you are hidden gods. What I am
saying is so totally different from what has been told to you, that a problem
has arisen. I say you are buddhas - right now you are buddhas! - but the whole
training and teaching, conditioning is: How can you be a buddha right now?
Tomorrow maybe, one day certainly, in some future life it is going to happen...
but right now? It seems impossible.
You have believed too much in
your parents, in your teachers, in your politicians, in your priests, and
whatsoever they have told you, you have collected it. It is garbage, but you
have carried the garbage for so long that suddenly to drop it seems impossible
- so long you have remained attached to it, so long you have thought it
beautiful, precious, nourishing. Now I say: It is all nonsense! Drop it, and
just be a buddha from this very moment! It is not a question of attaining, it
is only a question of becoming aware. It is only a question of becoming
conscious, alert, awake, not a question of achievement.
So you listen to me: one part
of your mind says, "Yes, the Master must be right!" One part of you
simply nods yes, because what is being said is a simple truth of life. But all
your training is against it. When you are close to me you start feeling it is
true. When you go away from me the mind jumps back upon you - with vengeance.
And of course it is very powerful. The mind is so powerful, that's why it
destroys your intelligence.
Intelligence has nothing to do
with the mind; intelligence has something to do with the heart. It is the
quality of the heart. Intellectuality is the quality of the head. The
intellectual is not necessarily an intelligent person and the intelligent
person is not necessarily an intellectual.
Your intellect is full of
garbage - and I am trying to wake up your intelligence. And the whole society
has tried to make you unaware of your intelligence. The society is against your
intelligence. It wants you to be mediocre, because only mediocre people can be
good slaves. It wants you to be unintelligent and stupid, because only stupid
people can be dominated.
And stupid people are obedient,
stupid people are never rebellious, and stupid people simply vegetate. They
don't make any effort to live their lives at the optimum. They don't try to
burn their torch of life from both ends simultaneously. They don't have
intensity. Stupidity is obedient, and obedience creates stupidity.
A rather simple dude rode into
town in the middle of the day stark naked. The sheriff called him over and
said, "Jake, what are you doing riding into town with no clothes on?"
"Well, sheriff," said
Jake, "it is a long story. I was riding into town to get some provisions
for my pa, when I came across this lady on the side of the road who asked me
for some help. Now my daddy always told me to help gentle lady folk, so I got
off my horse and helped her carry her picnic basket down to the river. Then I
helped her lay out her blanket, and helped her with everything she asked me to
do. Then she said, 'How about taking your boots off, cowboy?' So I did,
sheriff, and then she said, 'How about taking your clothes off, cowboy?' And I
said, 'Sure thing, Ma'am.' And she was there on that rug, naked as the day she
was born. Then she lay back and said, 'Go to town cowboy!'... and so here I am,
sheriff."
Obedience is a form of
stupidity - and the society wants you to be stupid. Stupid people are good
people. They remain always with the status quo, they never go against it. Even
if they see the rottenness of things, they simply close their eyes, or they are
always ready to accept any stupid explanation.
For example, this country has
been poor for centuries, starving, suffering. But because people are religious,
obedient, stupid, they have been given any kind of explanation and they have
accepted it. Some believe that God has made them poor because poverty is
something very pious. They worship poverty; in India poverty is worshipped. If
you renounce your riches and you become a naked fakir, millions of people will
think you are a great sage. You may be simply stupid, but just because you have
renounced riches you are a great sage. I have seen many stupid sages.
Now it is a contradiction in
terms - how can a stupid person be a sage? A sage has to be wise! But it is
very difficult in this world to be wise and be worshipped. Wise people are to
be murdered, crucified, poisoned. Stupid people are worshipped. Stupid people
simply follow whatever the society says. Whatsoever the society wants them to
do, they simply do it. So a few people have been worshipping poverty.
Gandhi used to call poor people
daridra narayana - "the poor are divine." Poverty is divine! The poor
people are gods! If this is true then who would not like to be poor? If poor
people are gods, who would not like to be a god?
And then there are other explanations:
that you are poor because in your past lives you have committed sins. Those
explanations have been invented for those people who don't believe in God. The
Jainas, the Buddhists, they don't believe in God so you cannot give the first
explanation to them. They need another explanation: the theory of karma.
But the purpose is the same! If
you have committed sins in your past life, then it is better to be finished
with the karma. Go through poverty, and go through poverty without any
resistance. If you create any resistance, you will again be creating bad karma
and you will suffer in your future life. Enough, after all, is enough! Now be
finished with the whole thing - suffer at this moment contentedly. So people
have become cows and buffaloes; they are suffering contentedly, no resistance,
no rebellion.
The society wants you to be
stupid, not intelligent. Intelligence is dangerous.
Intelligence means you will
start thinking on your own, you will start looking around on your own. You will
not believe in the scriptures; you will believe only in your own experience.
Dhyana Yogi, please don't
believe in what I say.
Experiment, meditate,
experience - unless it becomes your own understanding, nothing is going to
help.
You ask me, "Why am I
feeling that I am missing something?"
...Because you have been told
always that you have to find something. Now you are not finding it, so the
feeling arises that you are missing. And I am telling you, you have never lost
it in the first place! Please stop trying to find it, stop seeking and
searching.
You have it already! Whatsoever
is needed, you have it already. Just look within and you will find infinite
treasures, inexhaustible treasures of joy, love, ecstasy.
Nothing is being missed if you
look in, but if you go on searching outside you will feel more and more
frustrated. And as you grow older, of course, you will feel that your life is
slipping out of your hands and you have not found it yet. And the whole irony
is that you have not lost it in the first place. It has always been within
you...it is this moment within you.
But don't believe me. I am not
here to create believers, I am here to help you experience.
The moment it becomes your
experience, it liberates. Truth liberates, says Jesus - not belief but truth.
But my truth cannot be your
truth; my truth will be your belief. Only your truth can be true to you. Truth
certainly liberates, but let me add that the truth has to be your truth.
Nobody else's truth can
liberate you. Somebody else's truth will become only an imprisonment.
Dhyana Yogi, you are not
missing anything. Nobody is missing. In the nature of things we cannot miss it.
We are part of God and God is part of us. There is no way, no possible way to
miss it. How can you escape from yourself? Where? Wherever you go you will
remain yourself. Even in hell you will remain yourself, because you cannot
escape from yourself, you cannot escape from God.
It is there waiting, patiently
waiting for you to look in.
You say, "...that I should
be something else?"
That has been told to you again
and again: "Be somebody! Look at Gautam Buddha, at Krishna, at Christ. Be
a Buddha, be a Krishna, be a Christ!" Then certainly you will die in
misery, in anguish, frustrated - utterly frustrated, crying and weeping -
because you cannot be a Buddha. You are not meant to be a Buddha! You cannot be
a Christ, you cannot be a Krishna. You can only be yourself.
A great Hassid master, Zusiya,
was dying. People had gathered - disciples, sympathizers. Somebody asked, an
old man, "Zusiya, when you are facing God - and soon you will be facing
God because you are dying - will you be able to say to him that you followed
Moses absolutely, truthfully?"
Zusiya opened his eyes, and
these were his last words. He said, "Stop talking nonsense!
God is not going to ask me,
'Zusiya, why were you not a Moses?' He will ask me, 'Zusiya, why were you not a
Zusiya?'" You have to be just yourself and nobody else. And in fact that's
what buddhahood means: to be yourself. That is what christ-consciousness means:
just to be yourself.
Buddha was not an imitation of
somebody else. Don't you think there were many many great men who had preceded
him? He must have been told, "Be a Krishna! Be a Parshvanath! Be an
Adinatha!" He must have heard beautiful stories, mythologies. He must have
read the PURANAS, ancient stories about the great men, Rama, Krishna,
Parasuram. He must have heard all that, he must have received the heritage. But
he never tried to be somebody. He wanted to be himself, he wanted to know who
he is. He never became an imitator; that's why one day he became awakened.
Jesus never tried to be
Abraham, Moses, Ezekiel. Jesus simply tried to be himself. That was his crime,
that's why he was crucified. The same people who crucified Jesus would have
worshipped him if he had simply been an imitator, a carbon copy of Moses. If he
had been just a gramophone record repeating the Ten Commandments, the Jews
would have worshipped him. But they had to crucify the man - he was just
himself.
The rotten society, the crowd,
the mob mind, cannot tolerate individuals. It is impossible for them to
tolerate a Socrates. Do you know what the charge was against Socrates? Exactly
the same thing is said about me! This was the crime of Socrates, that he used
to corrupt the minds of the youth. That's exactly what my enemies say: that I
am corrupting people's minds, particularly the minds of the youth.
Socrates was corrupting the
minds of the youth? He was trying to awaken their intelligence, but the society
became afraid. If so many people become so authentic, true, then the vested
interests are in danger. Then you cannot drive people like cattle. And that's
what priests enjoy, and the politicians too.
There is a conspiracy between
the priest and the politician to exploit people, to dominate people, to oppress
people. And the fundamental is: never allow them to become intelligent. Give
them substitutes. What is the substitute for intelligence? - intellectuality.
Give them education; send them to the school, to the college, to the
university, so they become intellectuals.
Have you ever heard of
universities creating intelligence? They create intellectuals, they create
scholars, they create people who know the scriptures - to the very word they
can repeat the scriptures - but they don't create intelligent people. They
serve society; the educational system is invented by this rotten society to
serve its own purposes. It is not there to help you, it is there to keep you in
bondage.
Dhyana Yogi, I cannot help you
let go of this garbage, I can only help you to be more conscious. And if you
are conscious the garbage will be dropped of its own accord. One day suddenly
you will find it disappearing... suddenly disappearing. As consciousness
deepens, all garbage disappears - just as you bring light in and darkness
disperses.
Buddha says: Become more aware
and the light will start pouring in... aes dhammo sanantano.
Question 4:
Beloved Master,
I often read the 'hymn to love' in the new
testament. It seems to me that this is exactly your message. Also, it is
significant that it never actually uses the word 'god'. I can find nothing to contradict
your basic message in this lovely poem. On the other hand, it seems to be
exactly what you are saying in your discourses. Am I right?
You have such a beautiful voice that it
would be really nice to hear you say some or all of it, especially as I feel
you will soon stop talking publicly altogether. Here is a copy of the hymn.
Premartha, the message of all
the buddhas is always the same because the truth is one.
Expressions may differ,
different languages may be used, but that which is indicated towards is the
same.
Millions of fingers can point
to the same moon. Fingers are bound to be different - my finger is different
from the finger of Jesus or Buddha or Moses or Abraham - but the moon is the
same. And this hymn is a beautiful finger pointing to the moon. It is the very
essence of all the teachings of all the buddhas of all the ages - past,
present, and future too.
Though I speak with the tongues of men and
angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.
And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all
knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and
have not love, I am nothing.
And though I bestow all my goods to feed
the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it
profiteth me nothing. Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love
vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh
not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in
iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things,
hopeth all things, endureth all things.
Love never faileth: but whether there be
prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease;
whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy
in part. But when that which is perfect is come then that which is part shall
be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I
thought as a child; but when I became a man, i put away childish things. For
now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face-to-face. Now I know in part,
but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope,
love, these three; but the greatest of all these is love.
These are the essential
qualities of a religious person. This is my message - this is the message!
The language is old, and
because it is old it has a beauty of its own, because the older the language
is, the more poetry it has. As we have become more and more scientific our
language has also become more and more scientific.
As the hymn is two thousand
years old, it has something of primitive innocence in it, the childlike quality
of wonder, of being surprised at the mysterious. But, Premartha, you are
perfectly right: there is nothing in it which contradicts me, and there is nothing
in it which I would like to contradict either. Whosoever said it must have been
an awakened one.
But don't go on simply
repeating it. It is beautiful to repeat, it is beautiful to sing it, but not
enough. Practice it, let it become the very flavor of your life. Let it be
dissolved into your blood, into your bones, into your marrow. Let it surround
you like an invisible aura. Don't go on simply repeating it. It is beautiful -
and that is the danger. You can become so charmed, so hypnotized by its beauty,
that you may go on repeating it your whole life. And the more you repeat, the
more beautiful it will look... because these ancient messages have tremendous
power and many layers of meaning.
But don't go into the
linguistic or philosophical analysis of it. It is a prayer! - and a prayer is
not something to be said but something to be felt. A prayer is not something to
be read but something to be lived. Live it!
It is true: and now abideth
faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of all these is love.
You can think about love, you
can have beautiful flights of imagination about love, you can have beautiful
dreams about love, but that is not going to help. What is going to help is, you
have to become love. Love has to become your essential core. Everything else
has to be sacrificed to love, everything else has to become part of your loving
life.
Then only will this prayer be
true for you. And then it will not be Christian, then it will not belong to the
New Testament. It will be something that is part of your heart; you will
breathe it. And whosoever will come close to you will have a little glimpse of
it. A little light will be shed on everybody's path...if you live it.
Scriptures can be understood
only if first they are practiced. People do just the opposite:
they read the scripture and
they try to understand it. Intellectually it is not difficult to understand
those scriptures, they are simple. People become very proficient, very
efficient, in repeating the scriptures - and they end with that. They remain
parrots.
And what can you understand
about it? Intellectually whatsoever you understand will not be right, because
it will reflect your state of mind, not the state of the mind who uttered these
words.
A retired cattle rancher, aged
sixty-five, who had sold his ranch and come to New York to see the sights,
checked into a midtown hotel.
Once upstairs, he made himself
comfortable and relaxed on the bed. While he was resting, he saw the door
slowly open, and there standing before him was a curvaceous blonde attired only
in a sheer negligee.
"Oh," she apologized
when she saw the old fellow, "I must be in the wrong room."
"No," he corrected,
"you are in the right room, but you are about forty years too late!"
The interpretation is always
going to be yours. You can read Jesus, you can read Buddha, but who is going to
interpret it? You will interpret it. And what is your understanding? What light
have you got? Those beautiful sayings will remain just beautiful sayings,
beautiful nothings. Yes, good poetry, but poetry cannot liberate you unless it
becomes your own experience, unless you can become a witness to the scriptures.
"Your continual
unfaithfulness proves you are an absolute rotter," stormed the outraged
wife who had just caught her husband for the seventh time in a sportive romp
with another woman.
"Quite the contrary!"
came the cool reply. "It merely proves that I am too good to be
true."
Your interpretations will
always reflect you. When you look in the mirror you will be looking at your
face, you will be looking at yourself. You can't see the mirror, you can only
see your face reflected in it. You will be able to see the mirror only when you
have lost your face, when you have lost your head, when you are not. When you
have become a nothing, a nobody, then stand before a mirror and you will see
the mirror and its mirroring and you will not be mirrored in it, you will not
be reflected in it. You will not be present there. Before you become an
absence, going before the mirror is of no use.
And that's what people go on
doing: reading the Bible, the Koran, The
Dhammapada, they read themselves.
The worried mother was
lecturing her teenage daughter on the subject of sex morality.
"Of course I realize you
may be tempted while you are out on a date. If you are, dear, please ask
yourself this all-important question: is an hour of pleasure worth an entire
life of humiliation?"
"Gosh, mother," asked
the daughter, "how do you make it last an hour?"
Remember always, you cannot
understand Jesus, Moses, Zarathustra. Your face will come in it too much.
A newly wed patient was
complaining to his doctor about his marital relations. It seems the first time
he makes love to his spouse it is just wonderful, but the second time, he is
perspired and sweaty.
The medicine man decided to
consult the wife. "Isn't it odd," the medico asks the missus when she
arrives, "that it is just wonderful the first time and the second time he
is all perspired and sweaty?"
"Why should it be
odd?" she smirks. "The first time it is in January and the second
time it is July!"
You cannot go directly into the
sayings of the buddhas. First you will have to go inside yourself. The basic
encounter has to be with your own originality, and then all the buddhas will
become clear to you. And then one thing more starts happening: then Jesus and
Buddha and Moses and Mohammed are not saying different things - they are saying
the same things.
Unless a person becomes a
witness to the ultimate truth himself, he will go on thinking that Buddha is
saying one thing and Jesus is saying something contrary; that Buddhism is
against Hinduism, that Hinduism is against Jainism, that Jainism is against Mohammedanism.
Unless you witness the truth you will go on believing these three hundred
religions, and you will be part of the quarrel, the conflict, the antagonism
that goes on between these religions continuously. The day you see the truth of
your own being, all these three hundred religions simply disappear, evaporate.
Once - just like Premartha - a
Christian missionary went to see a Zen master. He wanted to convert the Zen
master, so he had brought the Sermon on the Mount with him. He started reading
the Sermon on the Mount: he had read only the first two or three sentences, and
the Zen master said, "Stop! Whosoever said it was a buddha!"
The missionary was surprised.
He said, "But these are the words of Jesus!"
The master said, "It
doesn't matter what the name of the buddha is, but whosoever said this was a
buddha. He had arrived."
And I say this to you because I
know too. Once you have tasted, you will know. In whatsoever form the truth
comes you will immediately recognize it. But first become a witness.
Question 5:
Beloved Master,
Only one step?
Digambara, yes, in fact, not
even one... because we are not to go anywhere. We are already in God! I say
"only one step" just to console you, because without any steps you
will be too puzzled. I reduce it to the minimum, only one step, so that
something remains for you to do, because you understand only the language of
doing. You are a doer! If I say, "Nothing has to be done, not even a single
step has to be taken," you will be at a loss how to make any head or tail
of it.
The truth is, not even a single
step is needed. Sitting silently doing nothing, the spring comes and the grass
grows by itself. But that may be too much. Your doer mind may simply ignore it
or may think it is all nonsense. How can you achieve God without doing
anything? Yes, a shortcut the mind can understand; that's why I say, "a
single step." That is the shortest - it cannot be reduced to less than
that.
A single step! That is just to
make you understand that doing is nonessential. To attain to being, doing is
absolutely nonessential. When you are agreed and convinced that only one step
is needed, then I will whisper in your ear, "Not even one - you are
already there!"
Rabiya, a great Sufi mystic,
was passing... It was the street she used to pass every day on her way to the
marketplace, because in the marketplace she would go every day and shout the
truth that she had attained. And for many days she had been watching a mystic,
a well-known mystic, Hassan, sitting before the door of the mosque and praying
to God, "God, open the door! Please open the door! Let me in!"
Rabiya could not tolerate it
that day. Hassan was crying, tears were rolling down, and he was shouting again
and again, "Open the door! Let me in! Why don't you listen?
Why don't you hear my
prayers?"
Every day she had laughed,
whenever she had heard Hassan she had laughed, but it was too much today.
Tears...and Hassan was really crying, weeping, crying his heart out. She went,
she shook Hassan, and said, "Stop all this nonsense! The door is open - in
fact you are already in!"
Hassan looked at Rabiya, and
that moment became a moment of revelation. Looking into the eyes of Rabiya, he
bowed down, touched her feet, and said, "You came in time; otherwise I
would have called my whole life! For years I have been doing this - where have
you been before? And I know you pass this street every day. You must have seen
me crying, praying."
Rabiya said, "Yes, but
truth can only be said at a certain moment, in a certain space, in a certain
context. I was waiting for the right, ripe moment. Today it has arrived; hence
I came close to you. Yesterday if I had told you, you would have felt
irritated; you may have even become angry. You may have reacted
antagonistically; you may have told me, 'You have disturbed my prayer!' - and
it is not right to disturb anybody's prayer."
Even the king is not allowed to
disturb the prayer of a beggar. Even if a criminal, a murderer, is praying in
Mohammedan countries, the police have to wait till he finishes his prayer, only
then can he be caught. Prayer should not be disturbed.
Rabiya said, "I had wanted
to tell you this, that 'Hassan, don't be a fool, the door is open - in fact,
you are already in!' But I had to wait for the right moment."
Digambara, I say "only one
step" - and even that seems to be unbelievable to you, hence the question.
You ask me, "Beloved
Master, only one step?"
Not even one, Digambara. But
the right moment has not come yet, at least for you.
When it comes I will whisper in
your ear, "You are already in. Not even a single step is needed" -
because we are not going outside. Steps are needed to go outside, steps are not
needed to go in.
It is like a man dreaming, and
in his dreams he has gone far far away. Will he need a long journey to come
back home? He is already home, he is sleeping in his home... but he may be in
Timbuktu in his dream. All that is needed is that he has to be shaken up.
As Rabiya shook Hassan,
Digambara, one day I will shake you up! You just need cold water to be poured
on you - really cold water, ice-cold, so in shock you open your eyes.
Do you think you will ask me,
"How to go back home - because I am in Timbuktu?"
No, you will not ask, if you
see that you are already in your home, had fallen asleep and dreamt about
Timbuktu. You had never gone there.
You have not gone out of God!
You cannot, it is impossible, because only God exists.
Where can we go, where can we
go? There is no place where God is not. We are always in him and he is always
in us. But that needs an awakening.
Not even one step - that is
just to bring you closer to truth. Slowly slowly, you have to be persuaded. One
thousand steps are reduced to one step, and then I will take that step away
from you too. But that needs a right moment. Ultimate truths can be said only
in a right, ripe situation.
That moment will also come.
Just be ready to receive it,
welcome it...
Enough for today.