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

THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 159
light and life consists of colors. It is a rainbow. He will remain utterly in the dark. He will not know what colorful
existence was available. He will not know the butterflies and the roses and the marigolds. He will not know the
green and the red and the gold of the trees. He will not know the faces of the people, he will not be able to look
into the eyes of the people. His main bridge is broken.
Destroy your ears, and something more dies in you. Destroy your tongue, and something more dies in you.
When you have destroyed all your senses you are just a corpse, you are no longer alive. Life means sensitivity:
more sensitivity and you have more life. So I cannot say destroy your senses you have already destroyed them.
Revive them, rejuvenate them, pour energy into them. And the method to pour energy into them is by becoming
aware.
Sometimes just become aware of your ears, as if you are just the ears and nothing else, as if your whole body
has become the ears. Just be ears, and you will be surprised that you become aware of such subtle noises, such
subtle happenings around you that you have never been aware of. You may start hearing your own breathing,
your own heartbeat. You may start hearing many things and you have lived always amongst these things, but
you were never aware; you were so occupied into yourself.
Buddha says: WHAT YOU TASTE AND SMELL, WHAT YOU SEE, WHAT YOU HEAR MASTER YOUR
SENSES. Bring your awareness to taste. When you are eating, forget everything else; just become your tongue,
just your taste buds. Exist there in your totality. Taste your food as deeply as possible, and you will be in for a
great surprise not one but many surprises.
First you will become aware that you cannot eat more than is needed. You need not diet only foolish people
diet. And you can diet for a few days, and then you jump upon the food with a vengeance, and you gain more
weight than you have lost! If you are intelligent, bring your awareness to your taste. Why do you eat more? The
simple reason is that you don’t taste, and your hunger for taste remains, so you go on stuffing more. If you really
taste, soon you will be satisfied, contented. Soon the body will say, ”Stop!” And if you are alert you will be able
to listen when the body says stop.
Right now you are not there at all. You are eating, but you are not there, present. You may be in your office
or you may have gone somewhere else, doing a thousand and one things. One thing is certain: that you are not at
the table where you are sitting, you are always somewhere else. You are never where you are; you can’t be found
where you are. If you are really there, totally absorbed in eating, you will be surprised. The first thing will be
that for the first time, food becomes something divine.
The Upanishads say: annam brahma food is God. Such a beautiful statement: Food is God. These people
must have tasted. Without tasting you cannot see God in food. These people can’t be against food, they can’t
be for fasting, they can’t teach you to starve your body. The people who have said: Annam Brahma food is God
cannot be in favor of starving. Starvation cannot be anything spiritual.
Eat, but eat meditatively, silently. When you are eating you are talking. Don’t talk, because if you are talking
you will miss the joy of absorbing God into yourself. You will miss the joy of eating, and when you miss the joy
of eating, your hunger for taste goes on asking for more, so you go on stuffing. And that seems to be nonending.
People are stuffing the whole day and still it seems they are not satisfied. Eating twice may be enough or at
the most thrice, but people are eating the whole day particularly Americans! If they are not eating they won’t
know what else to do. Just doing something with the mouth keeps them occupied. If they are not eating they are
talking, if they are not talking they are smoking, if they are not smoking they are chewing gum as if the mouth
has to remain continuously occupied.
Stan and Sid, both on the road with noncompeting merchandise, usually traveled together, sharing the same
car and hotel rooms to save money.
One evening the two friends registered at a small hotel in Schenectady, and Stan immediately sat down to write
his wife a letter.
Sid happened to notice his buddy’s unusual salutation. ”Tell me something, Stan,” he said curiously. ”How
come you always address your wife as ’Dear AT&T’? Is she a big investor?”
”No, nothing like that,” answered Stan. ”AT&T does not stand for American Telephone and Telegraph. It
means ’Always Talking and Talking’.”
People are continuously talking, particularly women more so for the simple reason that man has taken every
other avenue from them. They are left only with one thing talking; they are not allowed anything else. Every
other door has been closed, so their whole energy is turned into talking. They are talking because their minds are
too noisy and they have to pour them out: it is a kind of catharsis. Even when you are eating you are talking.
How can you taste food and how can you be sensitive to taste?