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

THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 177
Jesus says to his disciples, ”Look at the lilies in the field, how beautiful they are!” And what is their secret?
The secret is, they never think of the morrow, they live in the present. The whole existence lives in the present,
except man. Hence, except man, there is no anxiety, no anguish. All anxiety, all anguish is man-created; it is
our own doing. It simply exists in our own minds. Either we are worried about the past which is so stupid
because you can’t do anything about it; whatsoever has happened has happened, you cannot go back. But we
go on thinking, ”Had I done this, had I said this....” You are simply wasting more time. People go on repenting
about the past that which is not is not worth repenting about. People feel guilty about their past. That which
is gone is gone forever. Feel disconnected, become discontinuous.
Each moment, Samarpan, one has to become discontinuous with the past. And if you become discontinuous
with the past, only then do you stop worrying about the future, because the future is nothing but a projection
of the past. The people who live in the past also live in the future. The future is a reflection of the past. What
exactly is your idea of future? It means you are not going to commit the mistakes that you committed in the past
delete those mistakes. And you are going to enjoy all that was pleasant in the past more deeply. That’s what
your future is: intensifying your pleasures of the past and deleting your pains of the past.
But you don’t understand life. Pains and pleasures are joined together. If you want the same pleasures that
you enjoyed in the past and you want them to be more intense, you are asking for the pain that you also suffered
in the past. And, of course, the pain will be as intense as the pleasure. They are always balanced, they move
together, they are inseparable. They are two sides of the same coin.
So you are simply wasting time, whether you are thinking of the past or of the future. And the future is not
going to be according to you. Who are you to decide about the future? This vast universe can’t be decided by
your private will, by your ego. You have to stop pushing the river. You have to learn how to go with the river,
how to go with the wind.
Lao Tzu says: Be like a dead leaf, so wherever the wind blows the leaf goes with it. It has no destiny of its own,
it has no private goals of its own, it has no will of its own. It is utterly surrendered. That is the meaning of your
name, Samarpan. Samarpan means ”totally surrendered”: one who has lost his will into the will of the whole.
Jesus says on the cross, ”Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.” That is samarpan, that is surrender. ”Thy
will, not mine.” That is his last prayer and the very essence of prayer, the very soul of a religious man.
There is no need to prepare for the future. Live in the present so totally, that’s all. That is preparation for
the future without preparing at all. Why? because when you live totally in the present, the future is going to
be born out of the present. From where is it going to come? It is going to grow out of this moment. If you have
lived this moment in its total beauty, joy, celebration, the next moment will come out of it and you will be able to
live it even more totally, even more joyously. But you don’t think about it and you don’t prepare for it because
thinking and preparing means missing this moment. And if you miss this moment you will miss the next too,
because it will be coming out of this empty moment which you absolutely missed.
So a strange phenomenon happens, a very strange law of life: those who prepare for the future are the ones
who go on missing, and those who don’t prepare but live in the present, utterly surrendered to the whole, they
never miss anything. Their future comes out of the present, flows out of the present. Then the whole takes care.
When you are surrendered, the whole takes care; when you are not surrendered, you have to take care of yourself.
And that is like trying to pull yourself up by pulling your shoestrings.
Mulla Nasruddin went for his first airplane flight. When he came back he was looking very tired and just a
fifteen-minute flight from Bombay to Pune he was trembling, his face was looking so pale.
I asked, ”What is the matter?”
He said, ”What is the matter! Those two plane flights!”
I said, ”What two plane flights? You have been only on one plane flight.”
He said, ”Two my first and my last! I am finished with this nonsense! I was so afraid, I had to sit just on the
edge of the chair.”
”But why on the edge?” I asked him.
He said, ”So that my whole weight was not on the plane, that’s why.”
And this is the way millions of people are living in the world: so their whole weight is not on the whole;
otherwise something may go wrong.
The whole is capable of carrying you. You are almost nothing; it is not a problem for the whole.
A man who had finished his life went before God. God reviewed his life and showed him the many lessons he
had learned. When he had finished God said, ”My child, is there anything you wish to ask?”