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

THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 139
The intelligent person is an individual; he is not part of a crowd, mob psychology. He is not a sheep, he is a
man. And all the vested interests are against the individual against the man. They want machines. They don’t
like people who are intelligent, who decide on their own. They want people who depend on others, on authoritative
figures on the leaders, on the priests, on the saints, but always on others, never on themselves.
The society has lived up to now in a very destructive way. It destroys the very possibility of your ever being
a buddha or a christ. It has always been against the wise; it respects the fool. The fool fits with the society
perfectly. The fool is cut out to fit with the society.
No child is born foolish, and every child, sooner or later, turns out to be idiotic. The powers are so big, so
great, that it is almost impossible for the child to resist. The child cannot survive if he resists too much. It is
really a miracle that a few people have escaped from being machines. These few people are the salt of the earth;
they are the only flowers. Because of them, humanity has a little perfume, a little fragrance; otherwise, all others
are walking dead, corpses, somehow dragging towards the grave.
The way of the fool has to be understood because only if you understand it you can go beyond it. The fool also
has a way of life. His way of life is the way of the crowd. Whatsoever others say, he repeats. The way others live,
he imitates. He is always looking around for clues how to be, how to behave, what is right, what is wrong. He has
no insight into anything. He depends on commandments from others. For thousands of years he goes on following
commandments that were given in different situations, to a different kind of people, for different purposes, but he
goes on following.
He is never spontaneous; that is the first thing to be remembered about the fool. He is repetitive: he repeats the
past, but he is never spontaneous. He is never responsible he never responds to the situation. He has ready-made
answers. He never listens to the question; he is not concerned with the question at all. The question simply
triggers in him a process of memory, and a ready-made answer comes up. He is like a computer.
To be responsible means to be aware. Unless you are aware you will not be able to see the situation that is
confronting you. And the situation is changing every moment, it is never the same not even for two consecutive
moments is it the same. Hence one has to be very aware, then only can one respond to reality. And to respond
to reality is to commune with God.
The fool knows nothing of God; he never comes across anything divine. He remains part of the stupid collectivity.
Remember, the society, the collective has no soul; the soul belongs to the individual. Hence, those who belong to
the collective are destroying every possibility of being souls.
George Gurdjieff used to say that it is very rare to find a person who has a soul and he was right. To have
a soul means to have awareness, to have individuality, to have freedom, to be able to respond and to be able to
respond on your own accord, not following dictums from others, directions from others.
The fool is never spontaneous; that is the first thing to be understood about the fool. If you become spontaneous
you start becoming intelligent. The fool never learns; he is very stubborn about learning. He thinks he already
knows.
The fool is not necessarily the ignorant person, mind you. The fool may be a great scholar; the fool may be
a famous pundit; the fool may be a well-known professor; the fool may have a PhD, a DLitt. In fact, who else
bothers about PhDs? The fool can be very well-informed, but that makes no difference to his foolishness.
Information does not transform you. Transformation is a totally different phenomenon than information.
Transformation comes through awareness, through being open: open to life, open to people, open to everything
possible. The fool lives in a closed world; he is dumb and deaf.
That’s exactly the meaning of the English word ’idiot’: closed. He lives in his own private world. He knows
nothing of the reality. He lives in his own dreams and he thinks that’s what reality is. He lives in beliefs. He
lives what tradition, what convention has taught him whatsoever he has been conditioned for.
In a Catholic country he will be a Catholic. In a communist country he will be a communist the same person;
there is no difference at all. Whether he quotes from the Bible or from Das Kapital, it is all the same: he quotes
mechanically. He cannot understand because he is not ready to learn.
He remains utterly closed. He is afraid of opening his windows, his doors. He is afraid to be open to the wind,
to the sun, to the rain, because who knows? if he opens to life, his ready-made answers may not be adequate.
He is very much afraid to lose his ready-made answers; he depends on them. They may be right or wrong, that
is not important for him. As long as he believes they are right, they are right for him.
Hence the second characteristic of the foolish man: he is dumb and deaf. He is unlearning. He never listens. He
may be able to hear, but he is not able to listen. Hearing is a physiological phenomenon; listening is something
deeper. You hear through the ears; when your heart is also joined with your ears, listening happens. And the