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

THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 151
But the American lady reached with arduous effort, and she told the saint he was very old, ancient she told
the saint, ”I have come here in search of peace. I want peace of mind and peace of heart.”
The saint said, ”Yes, you have come to the right place. You will be given both. Don’t be worried, my daughter.
It is not difficult. You will have peace of mind and peace of heart.”
She was very happy. At last somebody is so certain. She has seen many psychiatrists and therapists; they all
said that it will take seven years, ten years of analysis, and then too there is no guarantee. This man is so certain,
and he looks so silent, so happy... a man from a totally different world, so unearthly.
But in the middle of the night the saint jumped into the bed of the woman. She was so shocked, for a few
seconds she could not utter a single word. And the saint started making love, wild love, to the woman.
And the woman said, ”What are you doing? You had promised me peace of the mind and peace of the heart!
And what are you doing?”
He said, ”First things first: piece of ass! We will take care of other things later on. One has to begin from the
beginning.”
If you repress.... That was his problem. Peace of mind and peace of heart was not his problem; he must have
been repressing for thirty years, and he had not seen even a single woman. And I don’t know whether the woman
was really beautiful or not, because if you don’t see a woman for thirty years, any woman looks beautiful! Any
woman looks like she is coming from the gods.
Hindu scriptures are full of the stories that whenever a great saint reaches very close to attaining enlightenment,
beautiful women come from the gods to disturb him. I have not been yet able to find out why the gods should
be interested in disturbing these poor fellows. Some ascetic, fasting for years, repressing, standing on his head,
torturing himself... he has not done any harm to anybody else except himself. Why should the gods be so
interested in distracting him? They should really help him! And they send beautiful women... naked... and
those women dance around and make obscene gestures to the poor fellow. Naturally he becomes a victim, he is
seduced, falls from grace as if the gods are against anyone who is reaching closer to enlightenment. This seems
so ridiculous. They should help. Rather than helping they come to destroy.
But those stories should not be understood literally; they are symbolical, they are metaphors. They are very
meaningful. Had Sigmund Freud come across those stories, he would have utterly enjoyed them. It would have
been a treasure for him. It would have supported his psychoanalysis as nothing else. Nobody was coming; those
repressed people were projecting. These were their desires, repressed desires so long repressed that now they have
become so powerful that even with open eyes they were dreaming.
So I don’t know whether this woman was really beautiful, but she must have appeared beautiful to the so-called
saint.
In India, if a woman is sitting in one place, the saints are taught not to sit in the same place after the woman
has left for a certain length of time, because that space vibrates with danger. Do you see the foolishness of it all?
And these have been the teachers of humanity. And these are the people who have made you, Deven, scared of
your own feelings because you cannot accept your own feelings. You reject them, hence the fear.
Accept them, nothing is wrong, nothing is wrong with you! All that is needed is not repression or destruction.
You have to learn the art of creating harmony in your energies. You have to become an orchestra. Yes, if you
don’t know how to play on musical instruments, you will create noise, you will drive your neighbors mad. But
if you know the art of playing on the instruments you can create beautiful music, you can create celestial music.
You can bring something of the beyond on the earth.
Life is also a great instrument. You have to learn how to play upon it. Nothing has to be cut, destroyed,
repressed, rejected. All that God has given to you is beautiful. If you have not been able to use it beautifully, it
simply shows that you are not yet artful enough. We have all taken our lives for granted, and that is wrong. We
are given only a raw possibility. We have been given only a potential for life; we have to learn how to actualize it.
That’s what sannyas is all about, Deven. That’s what all the devices are: meditation, therapies all possible
sources have to be used so that you can know how to use your anger in such a way that it becomes compassion,
how to use your sex in such a way that it becomes love, how to use your greed in such a way that it becomes
sharing. Every energy that you have can become its polar opposite, because the polar opposite is always contained
in it.
Your body contains the soul, matter contains mind. The world contains God. Dust contains divineness. You
have to discover it, and the first step towards discovery is to accept yourself, rejoice in being yourself. You are
not to be a Jesus, no, you are not to be a Buddha. You are not to be me or anybody else. You have to be just
yourself. God does not want carbon copies; he loves your uniqueness. And you can offer yourself to God only as a