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

THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 185
no connection between a bell and saliva glands, but Pavlov did one thing: whenever he would give food to his
dogs he would ring a bell. Whenever he would ring a bell he would give food to the dogs. The bell and the food
became associated, linked, hooked with each other. After fifteen days he just rang the bell and the dogs started
salivating and their tongues hanging out. Now, there is no natural connection between the bell and the tongue,
but a new, unnatural connection has been created.
Pavlov became the founder of communist psychology. That’s how in Soviet Russia, in China and other communist
countries, people are being conditioned. They don’t think that man is any different from dogs; maybe a
little more developed, a little more complicated, but still a dog.
Skinner goes on working on rats and goes on finding how to condition rats, and he says the same is applicable
to human beings. You just create fear and then they will not do certain things; and you create greed.... And
that’s why paradise, heaven were created. These are simple strategies for dominating people. Create fear for that
which you want people not to do and create the idea of reward for that which you want them to do and you have
created a mechanical behavior. They will not do the bad and they will do the good.
But what kind of good is this? It is exploitation by the society, by the church, by the state by the vested
interests. It has not changed the being of the man. It has not made him more aware, alert, more joyous, more
celebrating. It has not given him any taste of bliss. It has not opened any window for him from where he can
have a little glimpse of God. I don’t call it goodness, virtue. My idea of virtue is that it should be a by-product
of consciousness. You should become so conscious that you can’t do wrong not because you are conditioned but
because you can see it is wrong.
For example, I was born in a Jaina family. Now, Jainas are the most fanatic vegetarians in the world. In my
house even tomatoes were not allowed because their redness reminds you of meat and blood. Even poor tomatoes,
so innocent! In my childhood, the very idea of somebody eating meat was enough to make me sick. In my family
there was no possibility to eat in the night. Jainas don’t eat in the night. Who wants to suffer in hell just for
eating in the night?
When I was eighteen years old, for the first time I ate in the night. It was so much against my whole background,
but I had to because we had gone for a picnic and all the other boys were Hindus. They were not interested the
whole day in preparing food, and I don’t even know how to prepare tea! So I had to depend on them. I told them
many times, but they were not interested. They were interested in exploring the mountains we had gone to, the
fort, a very ancient fort, and the statues and there were many other things.
The day was tiring and by the evening we were utterly tired. Then they started cooking food. The food was
ready in the night. Tired, hungry... and the delicious food that they were preparing... and the aroma! And I was
the only one who was in such suffering! I could not eat because just one night’s wavering and you suffer in hell
for eternity. But I was wavering naturally. On the surface I was keeping calm and cool as I was supposed to, but
they were persuading me and deep down I was ready to be persuaded. In fact, I was hoping that they would be
able to persuade me! Finally they persuaded me and I ate. But I have never suffered so much. The whole night I
was sick and vomiting. Nobody else was vomiting, nobody else was sick. It was just my conditioning.
Now, this kind of vegetarianism is not good. It does not come out of your consciousness it is mechanical.
Mechanical goodness is not real goodness; it is just a facade. Intelligence is needed to be good, awareness is
needed to be good.
The unshaven and booze-smelling Polack was arrested for public drunkenness, and now he stood in front of the
judge.
”Your honor,” he pleaded, ”I honestly didn’t mean to drink a whole quart of vodka at one time.”
”Then why did you do it?” demanded the judge.
”I lost the cork.”
A contractor working for the U.S. government in Vietnam submitted a bill for the tiling of a roof. The
government office was astonished at the total of over twenty thousand dollars, most of it for medical expenses
incurred on the job. A lieutenant was dispatched to the hospital to investigate.
This was the contractor’s explanation: ”At the outset of the job I attached a pulley to the edge of the roof and
ran a rope through it. To one end I attached a large barrel; the other end I tied to a stake in the ground. I then
filled the barrel half full with tiles, untied the rope, hoisted the barrel up to the roof, retied the rope to the stake,
climbed up the ladder, unloaded the tiles on the roof, lowered the barrel, climbed down the ladder, and repeated
this process several times until all the tiles were on the roof.
”Early in the evening the job was completed and I began loading the unused tiles into the barrel. I had
overestimated the number of tiles needed and so had a full barrel of extras. I climbed down the ladder and
unhooked the rope.