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

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180 THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 be otherwise. So I don’t take much care whether I am literally true to Buddha, to Jesus, or not. I take every freedom. Sometimes I change the stories because when I see that this story is not possible, it can’t happen to a buddha... sometimes I invent stories too. Once a great Buddhist scholar, Bhadant Anand Kausalyayan, came to see me. He said, ”Everything you say is beautiful, but a few stories I have come across which I have not found in any scriptures.” I asked him, ”For example?” He said, ”For example, just the other day I was reading a beautiful story you have told: Buddha is passing down a street talking to his disciple, Ananda, and a fly sits on his head. He goes on talking and just moves his hand to scare away the fly, and then he stops suddenly in the middle of the road. The fly is gone, but he moves his hand again slowly as if the fly is there. ”Ananda is very much puzzled. He says, ’What are you doing? The fly is no longer there!’ ”Buddha says, ’Yes, I know, but this is how I should have done it before. I continued to talk with you and automatically I allowed my hand to move. That is not right for me. I should move my hand with more awareness. So now I am doing it as I should have done.’” Anand Kausalyayan said, ”I have never come across this story. I have read all the scriptures.” I asked him, ”But do you think the story is beautiful?” He said, ”The story is beautiful.” Then I said, ”It is perfectly right. Then why bother about the scriptures? Don’t you see a Buddhist flavor in it?” He said, ”I can see.” ”So that is the whole point!” I am not functioning here as a man of knowledge, but only as a man of knowing. The fifth question: Question 5 BELOVED MASTER, I AM LOSING MY MEMORY AND IT IS WORRYING ME TO DEATH. WHAT SHOULD I DO? Mamta, nonsense! Just forget all about it! The sixth question: Question 6 BELOVED MASTER, WHAT WOULD YOU SAY WAS WRONG WITH THE INDIANS? Madhuri, almost everything! The seventh question: Question 7 BELOVED MASTER, YES! I WAS NOT SURE UNTIL NOW! I SAID THE SAME WORDS TO ASEEMA A MONTH AGO: ”YOU HAVE DRIVEN TWO OTHER MEN MAD. DON’T LET IT BE ME.” WOW! WE HAVE BEEN IN LOVE FOR MAYBE ONE YEAR NOW, AND TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH I AM RE- ALLY ALLOWING HER TO AFFECT ME IN ALL POSSIBLE WAYS. BOTH NIKUNJ AND SARVESH ARE AFFECTED BY HER, AND FOR MYSELF I SEE WHAT IT IS: LOVE WITH A WITCH! RELEASE ME, BELOVED MASTER. AH... WHAT SHALL I DO? Narayana, it is too late! And I am not a witch doctor! Now, nothing can be done. In fact, you are already mad. Mulla Nasruddin plays on the sitar, but he goes on playing the same note continuously for hours. His wife has gone mad, his children have gone mad, his parents have gone mad. One day he continued to play the same note, and a neighbor asked him, ”Mulla, we have seen many people playing sitar, but they change notes.” Nasruddin said, ”I know they go on changing because they have not yet found the right note. And I have found it, so why should I change?” The neighbor said, ”But now it is two o’clock in the night. Please! Just one hour more and I will go mad. Stop it!” Nasruddin said, ”It is too late because I have stopped already. It is almost two hours since I stopped! What are you talking about?” Narayana, one year with Aseema... you are finished! She is dangerous all beautiful women are. All women are witches! In fact, the word ’witch’ means wise. It is exactly the equivalent of ’buddha’. If a woman becomes enlightened she becomes a witch.
THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 181 Aseema is just on the verge of becoming enlightened, and on the way she is giving whatsoever help she can. Whosoever meets her, she helps him. You have been helped by her, and there is no way now for you to be released. All is finished! You had better settle in it. Nikunj and Sarvesh got mad because they tried to escape. Only then they became aware that they were mad. If they had remained with Aseema, there would have been no problem. So don’t try to escape from Aseema, that’s my only advice. Remain with her. She is beautiful and I love her. The eighth question: Question 8 BELOVED MASTER, IS THERE ANY GOOD QUALITY IN THE INSTITUTION OF MARRIAGE OR NOT AT ALL? Jagdeesh, an ancient scripture says... this is knowledge: Marriage is an institution that teaches a man regularity, frugality, temperance, forbearance and many other splendid virtues he would not need had he stayed single. The venerable old man was celebrating his one-hundredth birthday and was asked by a reporter, ”To what do you attribute your advanced age and remarkable physical condition?” ”I will tell you,” replied the centenarian. ”When my wife and I were first married, the rabbi who performed the ceremony suggested that whenever I saw an argument coming I should take a walk around the block. I took the rabbi’s advice and I want you to know that for seventy years the constant exercise did wonders for my health.” The last question: Question 9 BELOVED MASTER, ABOUT THIS TALK YOU GAVE IN FAVOR OF MIXED MARRIAGES. I COME FROM GOOD OLD TRADITIONAL DUTCH STOCK AND HAVE RECENTLY GOTTEN TOGETHER WITH A SIMPLE-MINDED, BEER-BOOZING COCKNEY. SINCE THEN I HAVE TAKEN UP DISCO DANCING, ROCK ’N’ ROLL SINGING, PARTIES AND BEER. I AM HAVING A BALL BUT ARE YOU SURE THIS IS THE WAY TO RAISE THE CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE WORLD? Arup, I am absolutely sure! Enough for today. The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vole 10 Chapter 12 A new man with a new vision The first question: Question 1 BELOVED MASTER, I AM AN UNEDUCATED MAN. CAN I STILL BECOME ENLIGHTENED? John, there is more possibility for you than for an educated man. The education that exists in the world is not true education. True education will be a help towards enlightenment because it will make you more meditative, more silent, more aware, more inward-looking. The education that exists in the world makes you more ambitious, outward-looking, more egoistic, more superficial. It gives you all kinds of wrong values. It is a kind of poisoning. It does not help you, in any way, to be yourself. It is destructive. It helps you to be somebody else, and that’s its very destructive foundation. It is a poisoning, but so slow that you never become aware. It begins the day you are born and it goes on slowly, slowly destroying you, distracting you from your nature. By the time you come out of the university you are no longer a natural being. You are artificial, arbitrary. Universities are like factories, assembly lines, where man is destroyed and machines are created, where man is reduced to a machine. Enlightenment means discovering your being. It has nothing to do with education. In fact, those who are educated will have to become, in a certain sense, uneducated again. Those who are knowledgeable will have to cease to be knowledgeable. They will have to become again childlike, innocent, so their eyes can be full of wonder, surprise, so they can again see the tremendous beauty of existence, the eternal joy, the celebration that surrounds you. But the knowledgeable person is absolutely unaware because he thinks he knows; that is his barrier. The more you know, the less you are surprised by anything. The more you know, the less you wonder. And God is only for those whose wonder is total, who know the experience of being in awe; those who can dance with the wind and the sun and the rain; those who, seeing a roseflower, are so struck by its beauty that they become speechless, that for a moment their minds stop functioning. Only those few can know God. Only those few can become enlightened. John, you are fortunate. Of course, if you are educated you will be able to earn more money but not more meditation. You will be able to have more political power because you will be more cunning, more clever but not insight into your own being. You may be able to possess many things, but that will be only a deception. In
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