THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 The ...

104 THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12
these people are thought to be religious people. They are not even authentic, they are not even honest what to
say about their religiousness? From the very beginning they are dishonest; belief makes you dishonest.
The very process of belief is believing in something that you have not experienced on your own. How can you
believe if you are sincere? If your search for truth is authentic you cannot believe; you cannot disbelieve either.
You cannot say God is, you cannot say God is not. You can only say, ”I don’t know and I am searching and I am
seeking and I am experimenting and I am trying to experience.”
That is the way of meditation.
Prayer requires belief as a presupposition; without belief there is no possibility of prayer. To whom will you
pray? To whom will you address your prayers? to some God which you have accepted because it has been told
to you from your very childhood, you have been hypnotized.
Every belief is nothing but hypnosis. One is hypnotized as being a Hindu, another is hypnotized as being a
Mohammedan; both are living in a kind of deep sleep. Hypnosis means sleep; the very word means sleep. You
have been given so much poison, slowly, slowly through belief that you have fallen asleep. You are no longer aware
what you are doing, why you are doing. Why are you going to the temple? Why are you bowing down to a stone
statue? Why are you reciting something meaningless? Why are you going to Kaaba or Kashi or Girnar? For
what? There is something a priori. You already believe that is what religion is, without experiencing, without
inquiring.
This is the way of the coward, this is the way of the zombie.
Meditation requires courage. It requires the basic integrity, sincerity, respect towards your own being. At least
don’t deceive yourself.
Buddha says: Let your own experience decide. If this is understood you are bound to move towards meditation
instead of prayer. Then meditation will bring a prayer of its own a prayerfulness, rather. You will not be praying
but you will be in prayer, because more and more you will become silent, more and more you will become still.
More and more you will experience the presence, the mysterious presence that overwhelms everything, penetrates
everything. You may like to call it God, you may not like to call it God; it doesn’t matter what you call it. You
may not like to call it anything; you may be silent about it, because that is the most appropriate thing to do. It
cannot be put into any words; no words are adequate enough to express it.
But Buddha has not been listened to. Humanity has remained in its old, zombielike, sleepy way. It has remained
hypnotized, unconscious.
Howard Rabinowitz, a huge, granite-fisted, supertough young fellow, was drinking a whisky in a bar when he
heard the announcement of the Six-Day War on the radio. Filled with excitement and Jewish fervor, he rushed
to the airport and took the first available flight to Israel where he was immediately inducted into the army.
But his reception at the military base was rather cool. He was not exactly avoided by the Israeli soldiers, but
neither did they go out of their way to welcome him.
”Listen, what’s with you guys?” he complained to his sergeant. ”Here I come halfway around the world to help
you out and I’m practically ignored. What must an American do to get accepted in this army?”
The sergeant eyed the muscular young giant, glanced around somewhat furtively so that he might not be
overheard, and then, in a voice that was almost a whisper, he said, ”Confidentially and off the record, if you really
want to be one of us, there are three things you must do.”
”Name them,” said Rabinowitz.
”First,” explained the sergeant, ”You must drink down a whole quart of our strongest Mount Carmel wine
without stopping for a breath. Second, you must kill an Arab army officer. Third, you must make love to an
Israeli beauty.”
So Howard Rabinowitz chug-a-lugged a whole quart of Mount Carmel wine without stopping.
”Now,” he demanded, ”where can I find an Arab officer?”
”Right across the Suez Canal,” said the sergeant. ”I’m afraid you’ll have to swim both ways that is, if you’re
still alive.”
”I’ll be alive,” promised the American as he lurched off. ”Hell, I was the roughest, toughest, biggest guy on the
East Side. What’s a little adventure like this?”
A few hours later he returned, soaking wet from his return swim, his clothes torn and his face scratched and
bloody.
”Okay, I took care of that Arab officer,” he roared. ”Now, where’s that Israeli beauty you want killed?”
That’s exactly the situation of humanity. You don’t know who you are, you don’t know what you are doing,
you don’t know why you are doing it in the first place. You don’t know, even if you succeed, what is the point of
it all. But still you go on doing something. It keeps you engaged and keeps you unaware of your unawareness.