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

158 THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12
Sassoon Hospital and they will really do a butchery on you! They are official butchers, government butchers,
recognized, authorized. But by removing your sexual organs you will not transcend sex; you may become more
obsessed with sex than ever before.
That’s what happens to old people hence the expression, ’the dirty old man’. You don’t say ’the dirty young
man’ why? The old man is called dirty for the simple reason that now all his sexuality has entered into his mind.
His sex center has moved into his mind; it has become cerebral. Now he thinks about it only, he continually thinks
about it. Physiologically he has become incapable; that does not mean that psychologically he has transcended
it, that he has mastery of his sexuality no.
By destroying your senses you don’t, you can’t become masters. Then what is the way to become the master?
Buddha says: MASTER YOUR SENSES.... He could have simply said: Destroy your senses. But mastery is
a totally different phenomenon; it needs great art, skill, awareness, meditativeness, watchfulness, alertness. Only
then the senses will remain there. In fact, the master is more sensitive than the slave.
My own understanding is that Buddha smells more deeply; his sense of smell is far deeper than yours. Your
sense of smell is repressed, very much repressed. For centuries you have been repressing sex, and the sense of
smell is very much connected with your sexuality. You have been repressing your sense of smell. You use so many
perfumes just to hide the smell of your sexuality. Otherwise, when a woman has her period she smells differently;
you can smell that she has her period. When a woman is sexually aroused she starts smelling differently; you
can know just by her smell that she is sexually aroused. And the same is true about man: sexually aroused, his
body starts smelling because there are great chemical changes happening inside him. They affect his body, his
perspiration, his breathing, his blood.
Man has been so much afraid of his sexuality: somebody may become aware, somebody may note what is
happening to him. He has used clothes to hide his body, he has used perfumes to hide his natural smells. He has
tried in every possible way to appear as nonsexual as possible. And we have had to repress our noses very much....
You know the animals. They know through their noses whether the female is willing or not. Just the nose is
enough to know whether the female is saying yes. Unless the nose says the female is saying yes, the male won’t
approach the female. That is aggression, that is rape. No animal ever rapes, remember, except man. Man is the
only rapist animal in the world. I am not including the animals who live in the zoos because they have become
more like human beings. Living in the company of human beings they have been distorted; otherwise no animal
rapes. Love happens only when both the parties are absolutely willing. But man has lost his sensitivity of smell.
It is because of the so-called religious teaching down the centuries.
My understanding is that Buddha’s sense of smell is far more clear than yours because there is no repression
in him. His eyes see better than you can see because his eyes are not clouded by any prejudice, by any a priori
conceptions. He hears perfectly well because his ears are not full of noise, his mind is silent.
When the mind is utterly silent you are capable of listening. Then you are capable of listening to the song of
the birds, a distant call of the cuckoo. Then you are able to listen even to the silence. Just now, listen to the
silence... not only sound but soundlessness can be listened to. But you have to be noiseless.
And you can start smelling people not only in their sexuality, you can start smelling their anger because anger
also changes their body chemistry. You can start smelling their greed, their jealousy, their hatred. You can start
smelling all kinds of emotions. The moment a person comes to you, if your mind is silent and your senses are
clear, unclouded, without any fog, you can smell everything that the man is carrying. He may be smiling on the
surface, but deep down you can see that he is angry, a hypocrite. Try smelling people their greed, their anger,
their cruelty.
And if you can learn to smell cruelty, anger, greed, slowly,slowly you will be able to smell more subtle things:
their compassion, their love, their prayer. Yes, even their meditativeness, their silence has its own fragrance.
When a person is full of greed, he stinks of greed; when a person is full of silence, he exudes something of the
beyond, something of the unknown.
Buddha is not saying destroy your senses. He is saying master your senses, become more aware of your senses.
Bring awareness to your senses so that they become more sensitive. They are doors, windows, bridges with
existence. Without them you will be just a closed phenomenon, a Leibnizian monad, windowless. You will not
see the light of the sun, moon, stars. You will not feel anything.
Destroying your senses will simply mean you are killing yourself. You have five senses. Destroy your eyes and
eighty percent of your life is destroyed eighty percent, because your eyes contain eighty percent of your life; eighty
percent of your sensibility depends on your eyes. Hence we feel so much sympathy for the blind man. You don’t
feel that much sympathy for the dumb or for the deaf. Why, all over the world, do we feel so much sympathy for
the blind man? because he is really suffering much. He can’t see colors, he can’t see the light and life consists of