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

THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 157
And that’s how this sutra has been interpreted down the ages, for the simple reason that destruction is easier;
any stupid person can do it. And your so-called saints are almost always stupid. It is very rare to come across a
real saint who is a creative person. They are worshipped as saints because they have been successfully committing
suicide slow suicide, of course destroying themselves slowly, poisoning themselves slowly. We have worshipped
death, destruction. We should learn it is time now we should learn to love life and to love creativity, creation.
my understanding of this sutra is totally different. ”Master your senses” means become more conscious of your
senses, become more sensitive. Don’t destroy them; otherwise you will be left without the doors and windows into
creation, into God, into truth.
There is a story of a Hindu mystic. I don’t believe that it is true because I have been deeply impressed by that
mystic’s great sayings; they are so beautiful that it is impossible for me to conceive that he could have done such
a thing.
Surdas is his name. He was a blind man, not born blind; that’s how the story goes. He destroyed his eyes
himself because he saw a beautiful woman and became fascinated by her. She took his fancy, he started thinking
of her and he was a monk. He destroyed his eyes because he thought it was these two eyes that had made him
aware of her beauty. If these eyes were not there, he would not have been infatuated.
I don’t believe the story, but it is true of thousands of other people. My own experience is that Surdas must
have been blind from the very beginning because his insight in his poetry is such that it is inconceivable that such
a man will do such a stupid act.
By destroying your eyes you cannot get freedom from women or from men. You can close your eyes, that will
not make much difference. In fact with closed eyes women appear more beautiful than they are!
That’s why whenever you make love to a woman she closes her eyes; you appear more beautiful. Otherwise,
looking at you she will become afraid, because on your face the expression of passion and lust can’t be described
as beautiful; it is ugly, it is animal. A man full of lust is nothing but an animal. Women must have learned the
art of closing their eyes seeing again and again that the man turns into an animal.
I love a famous Zen anecdote:
Two monks were coming back to the monastery; they had gone into the village to preach. It was evening, the
sun was setting; soon it would be night. They came across a river. A young woman, a beautiful woman, was
standing there on the bank hesitating whether to enter the river or not: it may be too deep, it appears very deep.
The first monk the older one followed the Buddhist rule not to look at a woman. But that is a very strange
rule: first you have to look, then only will you be able to see whether she is a woman or not. You can follow the
rule only by breaking it! So he must have looked of course a stolen look and then he must have looked down.
The Buddhist rule is: Don’t look more than four feet ahead. Such fear... and he must have been trembling inside.
And he crossed the river.
When he was crossing the river and was reaching the other shore, suddenly he remembered his younger fellow
monk, who was also coming behind. What has happened to him? He looked back. The younger monk was
carrying the woman on his shoulders! The older one was really enraged; in his rage there must have been jealousy
also; otherwise why be angry?
The younger one brought the girl to the other shore, left her there, and both the monks moved towards the
monastery. For one mile the old man didn’t say a single word. Then, when they reached to the gate of the
monastery, the old man turned to the younger monk and said, ”Listen, I will have to report it to the abbot. This
is against the rules. Buddha has said: Don’t touch a woman, don’t look at a woman. You have not only seen her,
you have not only touched her, you have carried her on your shoulders. This is too much! This is going against
the law.”
I don’t think that Buddha has said that. A man like Buddha cannot say such nonsense things. But twenty-five
centuries of stupid interpreters have done as much harm as they can do.
The young monk said, ”But I have left the woman on the bank, far behind. Are you still carrying her on your
shoulders?”
It has a great truth in it: the old man was really still carrying her. You can see without seeing, you can carry
without carrying, you can touch without touching. Man has great imagination.
Hence I cannot believe that Surdas destroyed his eyes; otherwise it would be impossible for him to give such
beautiful insights. He must have been a man of inner vision, of inner eyes, of great understanding. So I don’t
believe in the story, but the story is significant. It is true about so many so-called saints. It may not be true
about Surdas but it is true about almost all so-called saints Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian.
In Christianity there has been a sect which used to cut off their genital organs just in order to transcend sex.
If just by cutting off your genital organs you can transcend sex, things will be very easy. You can just go to the