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

146 THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12
You have to remove the weeds, otherwise they choke the field. You are so full of anger, greed, lust, that they
are choking your energies. It will be impossible for you to grow they won’t allow you to grow. They will suck all
your energy; they are suckers, they are parasites.
Buddha says: WEEDS CHOKE THE FIELD. PASSION POISONS THE NATURE OF MAN, AND HATRED,
ILLUSION AND DESIRE.
Passion creates many things in you. It creates fever, it makes you more unconscious more unconscious than
you already are. It drags you deeper into the mud. And with passion come hatred, illusion and desire and then
you are distracted from your nature. Your nature is poisoned, your innocence is poisoned. You lose all simplicity,
all humbleness.
Beware of the poisoning by passion. Be warm, be loving that is a totally different phenomenon but don’t be
full of lust. Warmth is possible with your consciousness. A Buddha is very warm, a Jesus is very warm, very
loving. Passion has disappeared. Passion has become transformed into compassion. Their compassion showers on
you like flowers. Just as passion poisons you, compassion purifies you. Compassion is nectar if passion is poison.
The energy that is involved in passion can be released into compassion.
And the way to release the energy, the way to rechannel it towards compassion, is what Buddha calls sammasati
right awareness, right remembering; what Gurdjieff calls self-remembering, what Krishnamurti calls simply awareness,
what I call meditation. They are all the same, different names indicating the same energy. You have to
become alert, conscious of what you are doing.
Try, when you are angry, to be conscious, and you will be surprised you are in for a great surprise. If you
become conscious, anger disappears. And suddenly you have found a key, you have stumbled upon a secret.
When sex dominates you and you are full of lust, close your eyes, sit silently and meditate on this energy that is
surrounding you, this lust that is surrounding you like a cloud. Just watch it, see it. I am not saying be against
it, because if you are against it you have already taken a standpoint. Now you cannot watch.
For watching, the necessary step, the most necessary, is not to take any prejudice, not to conclude beforehand.
Just remain silently watchful, neither for nor against. And within minutes you will be surprised that that great
storm of lust is over. And when the storm is over, the silence that is left behind is so profound, is so great, such a
blessing that you may not have felt it ever. No sexual experience can give you that beauty that will come if you
watch your lust and through watchfulness the lust disappears. Then a silence comes to you which is virgin, which
belongs to the beyond, which belongs to the other shore.
HONOR THE MAN WHO IS WITHOUT PASSION.... Hence Buddha says: If you can find a man who is
without passion if you can find a christ or a buddha honor the man... for the simple reason that he has done
almost the impossible: he has escaped from the ordinary bondage of humanity. He is no longer a prisoner, no
longer a slave. He has asserted his individuality, his intelligence. He is no longer a fool. Wisdom has happened in
his being. He is full of light; darkness has disappeared.
HONOR THE MAN WHO IS WITHOUT PASSION, HATRED, ILLUSION AND DESIRE.
And the moment passion disappears, hatred disappears, illusion disappears, desire disappears, because one feels
so contented, one feels so utterly fulfilled. One feels one has come home. There is nowhere to go, nothing else to
ask for or desire.
Just think of those moments when there is no desire, when there is no tension, when your mind is absolutely
quiet. Only then will you know God exists or it will be more right to say, godliness exists.
WHAT YOU GIVE TO HIM.... If you give anything to Buddha... what can you give to him? You can give
him your respect, you can give him your trust, you can give him your self, your surrender.
WHAT YOU GIVE TO HIM WILL BE GIVEN BACK TO YOU, AND MORE.
Whenever a disciple surrenders himself to an awakened master he becomes the richest person in the world. In
his very surrender is victory. In his dropping of the ego he attains to beinghood. For the first time he is and in
a very strange way, because he has dropped himself. But the one he has dropped was a false self, and when the
false disappears, the real appears. When the false ceases to be, the real starts shining in all its glory, in all its
splendor.
Whatsoever you give to a buddha comes back to you a thousandfold.
The disciple surrenders, the disciple opens his heart, and the buddha starts flowing into the heart of the disciple.
The buddha is like a raincloud, so full of love, so full of truth, so full of ecstasy, that if you open your heart, if you
are ready to drink out of him, you will, for the first time, feel a deep satisfaction. Your thirst will be quenched.
That’s why Jesus says: Eat me, drink me. He is not telling you to become cannibals! He is saying to you, ”I
am available. Just open your heart and let me in.”