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

THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 131
I can say to you: You have heard the right call. But it is risky because you will be risking all that you know
about yourself for something which is far away, invisible, mysterious. One can never be certain. You can’t be
calculative about God, you can’t be cunning and clever about God. You have to go into simple innocence, just like
a small child holding the hand of his father can go into the deep forest without any fear. Lions may be roaring,
but the child has no fear because he knows his hand is in his father’s hand. The father himself may be trembling,
but the child is enchanted with the whole journey, with the whole adventure. Such a simplicity is needed, such
innocence is needed; only then can you take the risk.
The child is the most courageous being. As he grows in age, in experience, he starts becoming cowardly, he
becomes calculating. He thinks twice before he takes any step, and when you think too much you never take any
step. Very calculative people remain stuck their whole lives. They never move because each movement creates
fear in them and this is the greatest movement.
Prabhato, go joyously into it. And don’t be worried what is the distinction between an empty space, a negative
space, and a space that is positive, fulfilling. Don’t be bothered. This is how the mind starts calculating, this is
how the mind starts functioning. There is no need you are on the right track.
Wherever you feel a paradox happening, remember, that is the criterion that you are on the right track. If you
don’t come across a paradox you must have missed somewhere, you are moving in a wrong direction.
So don’t ask me, ”How to feel one or the other?” If you feel one or the other you will be wrong. When you feel
both, then you feel the total. The total is bound to be both, the negative and the positive. It is bound to be both
death and life, summer and winter.
And that’s where mind feels baffled, puzzled. Mind would like clear-cut things, but nothing can be done about it.
Mind’s requirements and expectations cannot be fulfilled. Existence has no obligation to fulfill mind’s requirements
and demands. You have to accept existence as it is. It is paradoxical and mind is not paradoxical. Mind is linear,
logical, not dialectical. As far as mind is concerned it is Aristotelian, and as far as life is concerned it is more
Hegelian than Aristotelian. It is dialectics: it moves from thesis to antithesis, and so on, so forth. The whole
movement depends on thesis and antithesis. The polar opposites are really not opposites but complementaries.
Enjoy the polarity, the paradox. Rejoice that you are on the right track. And go on moving in spite of all the
fears. They are natural. I cannot say that you should not feel those fears they are absolutely natural, but you
can go on in spite of them.
Remember, the difference between a coward and a courageous man is not that the coward feels fear and the
courageous man does not feel fear. No, that is not the difference between the coward and the courageous. Both
feel fear. The difference is that the coward listens to the fear and stops his movement, and the courageous takes
no notice of it, pushes it aside, and moves in spite of it.
The second question:
Question 2
BELOVED MASTER, WHY DO YOU SAY THAT IT IS RIGHT TO MEDITATE BUT WRONG TO PRAY?
IN MY OPINION, MEDITATION GIVES DEEP INNER CALM TO A PERSON FOR HIS OWN SAKE, BUT
TO PRAY DEEPLY AND CALMLY GIVES YOU THE DIRECT AND INTENSE CONNECTION TO GOD,
AND HIS HOLY SPIRIT COMES DOWN TO YOU.
Rosemary, I have not said what you have heard. You must be hearing through a thick layer of Christianity, a
thick layer of rubbish.
In the first place, you say, ”Why do you say that it is right to meditate but wrong to pray?” ... Because
meditation is the only prayer there is, and prayer is possible only in meditation; any other prayer is going to be
false, pseudo. If you have not been in deep meditation, how are you going to know that there is God? Then the
idea of God is just a conditioning given by others to you.
Just think, Rosemary, if you were born in Soviet Russia, then you would not have talked about God at all.
You would not be talking about the Bible; you would be talking about the Communist Manifesto or Das Kapital.
You would not be talking about the Holy Trinity of God the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost; you would
be talking of the unholy trinity of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and V.I. Lenin, because you would have been told
and conditioned by communist education.
If you had been born in a Jaina family you would have never thought of prayer, never because there is no God,
so to whom to pray? If you were born in a Buddhist family, things would have been totally different because you
would have been conditioned in a different way. It is not you, Rosemary, who is asking this question; it is your
conditioning. And all conditionings are wrong.