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

122 THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12
which is real. If you learn to reflect, then the past is irrelevant, the future is irrelevant; the only relevance is that
of the present.
Be present to the present that is the meaning of reflecting.
And the second thing: to quieten the mind, Buddha says:
WATCH.
What will you do when you reflect? You are not a dead thing, you are not like a dead mirror. Be like a mirror,
but you can’t be dead you are alive. So what will you do? WATCH.
You think, you imagine, but you never watch. Watching is a totally different process. It means you don’t have
any likes, any dislikes. You don’t condemn anything, you don’t appreciate either. You simply see and you are
aware and you are alert not dead like a mirror. You are aware. You are watching what is happening.
You see a roseflower; you reflect it and you watch it. You don’t say anything about the rose. You don’t bring
words between you and the rose because all those words are useless. When you are confronting a real rose why
bring words in? Why destroy the reality of the rose by bringing interpretations of the past? You may be quoting
great poets Shelley and Yeats but by quoting them you are bringing between you and the rose a barrier. Leave
your eyes utterly empty but don’t fall asleep. Watch, just look silently. Be a witness.
Watching means looking at things without any evaluation, neither saying it is good nor saying it is bad because
nothing is good and nothing is bad. Things are simply what they are.
A rose is a rose and a thorn is a thorn; neither the thorn is bad nor the rose is good. If man disappears from
the earth, roses will be there, thorns will be there, but there will be nobody to say that roses are good and thorns
are bad. It is our mind that creates these values. And these go on changing.
Just a hundred years ago nobody would have ever thought to put a cactus in one’s home. A cactus is all thorns.
If you had brought a cactus into your home, people would have thought you were mad, something had gone wrong
with you! But now to grow roses in your home is orthodox. The avant-garde people grow cactuses; they are the
really cultured people. They keep cactus plants in their bedrooms too poisonous, dangerous, but the cactus is
”in” and the rose is ”out.” Fashions change.
In this century, ugly things have become beautiful and beautiful things have become ugly. Picasso is valuable
one of the ugliest painters the world has ever known! Just two hundred or three hundred years ago he would have
been forced to live in a mental asylum if he had painted things like this. He would have been thought insane,
utterly insane, because the world of Michelangelo is a totally different world; a different valuation existed. The
world of Leonardo da Vinci is a totally different world.
Fashions go on changing. Every day man goes on changing. Nothing is, in fact, good or bad, beautiful or
ugly. It all depends on you. Whatsoever you start thinking is good, beautiful, becomes good and beautiful. A
Jaina monk moving naked is thought to be great by the Jainas, but others think it a little obscene. Many times
problems arise.
Just a few days ago in a village, there was a riot because one Jaina monk entered in the town and the non-
Jainas objected that a naked man walking inside the town.... ”This is bad for our children and our wives and our
daughters.”
I am not against nudity, but I am also not in favor of Jaina monks moving naked. My reason is totally different;
my reason is that they look so ugly. Unless you have a beautiful body you don’t have the right to be naked. I can
accept Mahavira moving naked. It is said that he had one of the most beautiful bodies and it seems so because
all his statues are so beautiful. He must have had a very beautiful body, very proportionate. If he moved naked,
that can be understood. To cover his beautiful body with clothes will not be right. But Jaina monks deliberately
destroy their bodies. They are masochistic people: they cripple their bodies in many ways. They make them as
ugly as they can, because the uglier your body is, the more respected you are. So they become caricatures. They
are cartoons, not real people. It is better to cover them in beautiful clothes.
It depends what your criteria are, what your values are. But in reality, nothing is good and nothing is bad;
things are simply what they are. If you witness then there is no question of choice. Then a choiceless awareness
arises in you.
That’s what J. Krishnamurti goes on saying; it is basically the message of Buddha. The followers of Krishnamurti
think that he is teaching something very original. It has nothing original in it; it is essentially the message of
Buddha. It is not J. Krishnamurti’s invention. In a different sense it is original; it is original in the sense that it
is his experience. He also knows it as much as Buddha knew, but it is not new not original in the sense of being
new. It is original in the sense that it has originated in him. He is not repeating Buddha, that is true. He is not
imitating Buddha, that is true. He is simply saying what he has known. But whatsoever he has known is the
same truth as Buddha’s truth.