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

THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 149
A man entered into a restaurant and ordered a cup of tea. He said, ”P-p-please b-bring a cup of tea.”
Another man who was sitting across the table also repeated the same, ”P-p-please b-bring a cup of tea.”
The first man looked at the second man in anger but didn’t say anything. Then a third man entered and he
asked that he should be brought a cup of tea.
And the second man said, ”Yes, bring another cup of tea for me too.”
Now the first man was really angry. He said, ”Y-y-y-you have been imitating me!”
And the second man said, ”N-n-no. I am imitating HIM.”
But whom are you imitating? Does it matter? Imitation is imitation.
People are imitators. The whole world is full of those imitators. You think those imitators are yea-sayers? You
think those imitators are no-sayers? They are not saying anything, they are simply repeating whatsoever they
have been told to repeat.
So Jinesh, just remember one thing: don’t let it become a habit. Be conscious of it and you will be immensely
benefited.
I have heard:
One ex-Nazi was trying to hide the fact that he had been a stormtrooper. He decided to become an opera
singer.
When the night for his big debut came he walked on stage, looked at his audience and announced, ”I am going
to sing and you are going to listen!”
Things become unconscious. You cannot hide them. Everybody else will be able to see them except you. If
you can also see your habits, you start becoming a little detached, unidentified from them, a little aloof. And that
very aloofness is a transcendence. Then you will be able to say when no is needed you will say no. And you will
be able to say yes when yes is needed. You will not be fixated.
To be fixated is insane. I don’t want you to become yea-sayers; I want you to be conscious, alert, watchful,
responsive. There are moments when your total being would like to say no. Then say no. If everything has to be
risked, risk, but don’t be false to your own being. And there will be moments when your whole being says, ”Say
yes.” And then too, maybe there is great danger in saying yes, but say it. That’s the way of the sannyasin, the
really religious person.
Don’t become fixated. You can move from no-saying to yes-saying, and you can still remain unconscious and
fixated. Then nothing has happened. Your disbelief has become belief, but you are the same person.
Ira Schwartzbaum thought he was God. His worried parents, unable to convince him otherwise, finally took
him to see a world-famous psychiatrist. Ira lay on the couch and closed his eyes.
”Tell me,” the psychiatrist asked him in an encouraging, sympathetic voice, ”how did it all start?”
”Well,” Ira said, ”on the first day I created the earth, then....”
You can be fixated. And once you are fixated on a certain thing, when you cannot have a detached view of it,
when you cannot create a distance between it and you you are insane. What your fixation is is not important.
You may be a communist or a Catholic, Hindu or a Mohammedan, believer/disbeliever, no-sayer/yes-sayer it is
all the same.
Hence, Jinesh, don’t be worried about your no-saying. Be conscious of it. Next time you say no, don’t just say
it out of habit, out of a past pattern. Reflect, watch, wait... and let a response arise in you. And you may be
surprised a yes is born. And it will be born in you, it will not be imposed from the outside.
Your freedom is a supreme value. Nothing is higher than that. But your freedom is possible only if you are not
encaged in your habits, unconscious patterns of living. Change your gestalt from unconsciousness to consciousness.
And I know that as you become conscious you will be able to say more yes than no.
Ultimately a moment comes when life becomes just yes. But it is not fixation. You are still capable of saying
no, not that you have become incapable of saying no. In fact, the greater is your yes, in the same proportion is
your capacity to say no. You may not say... it may not be needed. Your understanding of life, your love affair
with life may have brought you such tremendous joy that you may not like to say no. You may see the childishness
of it, the stupidity of it, the stubbornness of it. You may see its poison and you may not say no, but that does
not mean that you have become incapable of saying it. The more capable you are of saying yes, in the same
proportion you will be capable of saying no too. But now everything will be decided by your conscious response.
Ultimately the awakened person stops saying no. Not that he deliberately decides not to say no... it simply
withers away just as dead leaves fall from the trees.
The second question:
Question 2