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

124 THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12
two or three again and again and there are seven hundred sins! What a wastage of life!” You don’t even know
the names of them.
The night clerk at the Hotel Algonquin was surprised to see a battered-looking man, wearing nothing but his
undershorts, enter the lobby from the street. The stranger staggered to the desk and paused there, weaving
groggily. ”What can I do for you?” inquired the clerk.
”I would like to be escorted to the third floor, room 302,” said the near-naked man.
”Room 302,” repeated the clerk. He consulted the register. ”I am sorry, sir, but that room is occupied by Mr.
Oscar J. Levine of Toledo. It is pretty late to be rousing a guest!”
”I know what time it is, well as you do,” retorted the inebriated one. ”Just show me to room 302 without any
further con-conver... any further talk.”
”Well, what is your name?”
”My name is Oscar J. Levine, and for your information I just fell outa the window!”
People are almost asleep, drunk with a thousand and one desires. There is nothing more intoxicating than
desire. And it is not only one desire that is intoxicating you, there are many, many desires seven hundred desires
at least! And they are all intoxicating you, and they don’t allow you to see that which is. You can’t see that
which is unless you stop desiring.
Desiring disappears on its own accord if you become silent, because in a silent mind no desire can grow. Desire
can grow only in a clouded mind, clumsy and confused.
Buddha says:
YOU ARE STRONG. YOU HAVE COME TO THE END. FREE FROM PASSION AND DESIRE, YOU
HAVE STRIPPED THE THORNS FROM THE STEM. THIS IS YOUR LAST BODY.
If you can fulfill the requirement of being silent, reflecting, witnessing, then you are strong, you are no longer
weak. The man who lives in desires always feels weak because thousands of desires are pulling him in different
directions. He is almost falling apart. Somehow he is keeping himself together, managing, dragging. He is tired,
but he does not know what else to do. Everybody else is doing the same. People are running after desires. Nobody
seems to be fulfilled, nobody seems to reach anywhere, but what else to do? When everybody is running, you
start running. It is a crowd psychology.
To be a sannyasin, to be a seeker of truth, means getting out of the world of crowd psychology, the mob
mentality. Unless you become aware that the crowd is dragging you with itself and you step out of the power of
the crowd, you will never be able to know what truth is, you will never become a buddha. And to be a buddha
is your birthright.
YOU ARE STRONG... but your desires go on making you weak. Once you have become silent you will be
able to see it. A silent state of your being is so strong that you know you have come to the very end, you have
come to fulfillment. One comes to fulfillment not by achieving something in the outside world but by reaching to
one’s own innermost core: what Jesus calls the kingdom of God, what Buddha calls nirvana, what Mahavira calls
moksha.
When you have reached to your innermost core suddenly you become aware that all that you have been desiring
was useless and what you really needed, what was your real nourishment, has been waiting for you inside you.
Your search has to be inner, not outer. You can become Alexander the Great, you can conquer the whole world,
and yet you will die with empty hands. Don’t be bothered with all that nonsense. Be a Buddha, not an Alexander!
Buddha means one who has seen his truth and is contented, utterly contented with it. FREE FROM PASSION
AND DESIRE, YOU HAVE STRIPPED THE THORNS FROM THE STEM. THIS IS YOUR LAST BODY. If
you can be free from passion and desire....
Passion is a state of fever, it is a hot state. We know only two states: either we are very hot that is passion or
we are very cold that is anti-passion. If you love, you become very hot; if you hate, you become very cold. And
exactly in the middle is the point where you should stop. That point is neither hot nor cold. It is transcendental
to both, it is cool. And when you are really cool, silent, peaceful, mysteries open their doors for you. A feverish
man, in a passionate state, is almost blind.
Feinberg came home from a business trip and his wife coolly informed him that she had been unfaithful during
his absence.
”Who was it?” shouted Feinberg, ”that rotten Goldberg?”
”No,” his wife replied, ”it was not Goldberg.”
”Was it that crooked partner of mine that goniff, Levy?”
”No, not Levy.”
”I know who it was it was that momzer, Shapiro!”