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

138 THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12
else can keep you together. And if love cannot keep you together, then anything that can keep you together is
dangerous.
The last question:
Question 7
BELOVED MASTER, ARE ALL WORDS REALLY USELESS?
Dharmendra, not all words. The words of the buddhas are immensely significant. They are the same words
as your words, but they come from a deeper experience. Let your words come from deep experience; then they
will have significance, then they will have some perfume of the unknown, of the beyond. But leaving the buddhas
aside, then too all words are not useless. Otherwise, how are you going to communicate? You cannot communicate
through silence, you cannot communicate without words.
To communicate without words you will have to become a total meditator. And then, too, you can communicate
only with another total meditator, not with everybody else. The whole of humanity is not going to be in meditation,
not at least in your life, and you will have to talk to people who are not meditators.
I am using words, Buddha used words, Jesus used words. You have to use words. Just make one effort; don’t
use unnecessary words. Be more telegraphic, be more condensed. Make your words more meaningful. When you
use them, don’t just go on using them so that you remain occupied.
Little Alma, a pupil in the first grade, arrived home from school all out of breath.
”Daddy, Daddy,” she cried, her eyes sparkling with excitement, ”we had our very first drill today!”
”That’s good, shayneh,” he said, smiling. ”I believe in fire drills. Why I once almost died in a fire.”
”Ooh, tell me.”
”Well, it was like this: I fell into a great big vat of chicken soup. So I climbed on top of the knaidlach to keep
from drowning and I hollered ’Fire’ at the top of my lungs.”
”Fire?” exclaimed Alma, ”Was there a fire, too?”
”No,” grinned the father, patting her curls, ”but who would have helped me if I had yelled ’chicken soup’?”
Words are significant.
For their first date, the boy takes the girl to a carnival. After walking around for a while the girl says to her
date, ”I want to get weighed.”
So the boy finds a man who guesses people’s weight. The man accurately guesses the girl’s weight.
After visiting some other attractions the boy again hears the girl say the same thing, ”I want to get weighed.”
Again he finds another stall where she again has her weight judged correctly.
After some ice cream and taffy, she again says, ”I want to get weighed.”
The boy replies, ”No, this is too much. I am taking you home.”
After being deposited on her doorstep, the girl goes inside and seeing her mother, starts to cry and blurts out,
”Oh, mother, I had such a wousy time!”
Enough for today.
The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol. 10
Chapter 7 The fool is his own enemy
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THE FOOL IS HIS OWN ENEMY. SEEKING WEALTH, HE DESTROYS HIMSELF.
SEEK RATHER THE OTHER SHORE.
WEEDS CHOKE THE FIELD. PASSION POISONS THE NATURE OF MAN, AND HATRED, ILLUSION
AND DESIRE.
HONOR THE MAN WHO IS WITHOUT PASSION, HATRED, ILLUSION AND DESIRE.
WHAT YOU GIVE TO HIM WILL BE GIVEN BACK TO YOU, AND MORE.
Man is born intelligent, but the society does not allow intelligence to flower; it destroys it. In a thousand and
one ways it makes every effort to make every intelligent being unintelligent. The unintelligent person seems to
be more obedient obedient to the state, to the church, to the society. He is less rebellious he cannot rebel.
Rebellion needs intelligence. The greater the intelligence, the greater the rebellion. The unintelligent person seeks
security and safety with the crowd. He cannot be an individual. He is always hankering to become part of a crowd
Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan. These are all crowds. They depend on those people who have become victims
of the social strategy of destroying intelligence.
An intelligent person will not go to the church in search of God, or to the temple. An intelligent person will go
within. He will not go to Kaaba or to Kashi, because if God is not here he cannot be anywhere else and if he is
anywhere else, why not here? If God is not in me, he cannot be anywhere else; and if he is anywhere else, he is
bound to be in me too.