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

128 THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12
Once you have become silent and you have understood the words of the awakened ones, what is there to want?
You have already got it. You have got the inexhaustible treasure. You have become a king.
”VICTORY IS MINE, KNOWLEDGE IS MINE, AND ALL PURITY, ALL SURRENDER.”
In silence, everything is yours: victory victory for which you have been struggling your whole life, maybe many
lives, is suddenly yours. And without any fight it is yours because it has been yours from the very beginning. You
simply never looked within. You are not a beggar, nobody is; everybody is born an emperor. But look within. If
you look without you are a beggar. In fact, to look without means to become a beggar, and to look within means
to become an emperor.
”VICTORY IS MINE, KNOWLEDGE IS MINE....” And now a totally different kind of knowledge happens to
you. It is not coming from the outside; it is arising from your very depth, it is welling up within you. It is not
borrowed; it is authentically yours.
”... AND ALL PURITY....”
Silence is virgin. The most innocent and the purest experience of life is to know a deep silence when everything
stops. Time stops, space disappears, ego is nowhere to be found. Not a single thought on the mind, just silence
from end to end. This is purity.
By ”purity” Buddha does not mean any moral purity. Moral purity is never real purity. It is calculated, it is
greed. It is greed for the other world, it is greed for heavenly pleasures.
There are three persons in the world, three categories. First, the sinners: they have chosen to be immoral.
Second, the saints: they have chosen to be moral. But both are half, nobody is whole. The sinner is half, the
saint is half. The sinners are attracted towards the saints, the sinners go and bow down to the saints. And the
saints are continuously thinking in their minds that maybe they are missing; maybe the sinners are enjoying life.
I have heard that one great saint and a prostitute who lived just in front of him died on the same day, and the
messengers from the beyond came and started dragging the saint towards hell and the prostitute towards heaven.
The saint said, ”Wait! There must be something wrong. You must have misunderstood the orders. I am the
great saint and that woman is the greatest sinner. What are you doing?”
And the messengers said, ”We have asked God. We also thought that there is some misunderstanding.... But
God said, ’No, there is no misunderstanding. The prostitute was continuously thinking how bad she was, how
ugly she was, and she was continuously thinking how pure the saint was. And whenever the saint would do his
prayers, would chant his sutras, she would sit silently by the door and listen. She never thought herself capable
of entering into the temple. She would sit outside the door and listen from there, and tears would flow from her
eyes. And she always thought that the saint was living the life of bliss.
”’And the saint? He was continuously thinking of the prostitute, how beautiful she was. And whenever visitors
would come to the prostitute he would suffer very much. ”They must be enjoying. She is enjoying her life, and
what have I done to myself? I have become an ascetic. Who knows but maybe I have done something wrong.”
The saint was continuously obsessed with the prostitute. In his dreams he was making love to the prostitute. And
in the prostitute’s dreams there was a totally different flavor: she was always worshipping the saint, bowing down
to the saint hence the decision.’”
God said, ”Take the saint to hell; he has lived respectably long enough. And bring the prostitute to heaven;
she has suffered enough in the world.”
The sinner is half, the saint is half and they both are attached to each other, both are thinking of each other.
I know many saints who have confessed to me in their privacy, ”Sometimes the question happens in our minds
that maybe the whole world is right and we are wrong. But now it is too late. We may have missed real joys to
attain something abstract which may not exist at all. Who knows about God and who knows about paradise?
We may prove to be fools finally.”
That doubt lingers in your so-called saints; it is bound to linger. The more they feel this doubt, the more they
condemn the sinner. The more they condemn the sinner, so the sinner thinks they are great saints; he goes to
worship them. The opposites attract each other.
But there is a third category also: the sage. He is neither a sinner nor a saint; he is beyond both. And he is the
person who is always misunderstood in the world. You understand the sinner very well: he lives in immorality.
You understand the saint: he lives in morality. The sage is a mystery; you cannot understand him. He seems to
be beyond comprehension; hence Jesus is misunderstood, Socrates is misunderstood, Buddha is misunderstood.
That has been the fate of all the sages. They have been misunderstood for the simple reason that you cannot put
them in the ordinary categories; they are beyond the categories.
When Buddha says ”purity” he means the purity of the sage who knows nothing of morality or immorality,
who has become again a child, who is reborn.