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

THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 19
to remain unfulfilled again; hence you will have to do the same damage to your own children. It is from one
generation to another generation that the poison is passed on.
For centuries man has lived in this mad situation. Now it has reached to a climax. The whole earth has become
almost a madhouse.
If Buddha was not understood twenty-five centuries ago, it will be even more difficult to understand him now,
because the unfulfilled ambitions of twenty-five centuries are overwhelmingly there, they are surrounding you.
You are flooded with them. All the people who have lived and died have left their ambitions as a heritage for you.
Your eyes are blind, your ears are deaf, your hearts only pump the blood, they no more feel....
The vicar was driving home one night when suddenly his car made a terrible noise and ground to a halt.
Taking out his flashlight and a box of tools, he pulled up the bonnet and started to look over the engine.
While he was tinkering away with a spanner in hand, the local drunk staggered by and stopped to ask, ”Anything
wrong, Vicar?”
”Yes. Piston broke.”
”So am I,” replied the drunk.
You are not in your senses. Hence buddhas have been misunderstood, and to understand them has become
more and more difficult. Keep it in your mind when you meditate on these beautiful words simple words, because
buddhas have always used simple words, but with tremendous meaning.
The Buddha says:
I SHALL ENDURE HARD WORDS AS THE ELEPHANT ENDURES THE SHAFTS OF BATTLE. FOR
MANY PEOPLE SPEAK WILDLY.
I SHALL ENDURE HARD WORDS.... Buddha expects that that is going to be his reward. He will shower
you with his love and compassion and all that you can do is insult him, throw hard words or stones at him. All
that you can do is some kind of harm. You are going to hurt him. Hence he says in the beginning: I SHALL
ENDURE HARD WORDS. He expects that, and every buddha has expected that down the ages.
Once a disciple of Buddha was going to preach his word to the masses. He had become enlightened, and Buddha
said, ”Now you are ready to go, you need not accompany me any longer. Once in a while you can come to see
me; otherwise you can help people on your own. Go and help people to become more aware, more meditative.”
But he said also, ”One thing I would like to ask: What part of the country would you like to go to?” There
was a part of Bihar, where Buddha lived, where no sannyasin of Buddha’s had ever gone. The name of the part
was Suka. This newly enlightened sannyasin said, ”I will go to Suka.”
Buddha said, ”Please don’t go there. Nobody has gone there yet for a certain reason. The people there are
very wild, uncultured, stupid, mischievous, murderous, very violent. Don’t go there.”
But the disciple said, ”If they are in such a bad situation they need us more than anybody else. The physician
is needed only where people are ill.”
Buddha said, ”That I can understand, but before you go, before I bless you to go, I will ask three questions.
First: If they insult you, what will be your response?”
The young man said, ”I will thank them, I will feel grateful that they are only insulting me. They could have
beaten me. They are good people. They are not beating me; they are simply insulting me and what can words
do? Words are words, they can’t hurt me.”
Buddha said, ”The second question: If they beat you, what will be your response?”
The young man said, ”I will thank them, I will feel grateful that they are beating me. They could have killed
me. They are only beating me they are so compassionate, so kind. It would have been so easy for them to kill
me.”
Buddha said, ”Now, the last question. If they kill you, dying, in the last moments, what will be your response?”
The young man said, ”Still I will be grateful and thankful to them because they are taking a life away from
me in which I may have done something wrong. If I had lived more I may have committed some crime, some sin;
I may have fallen from my peak of awareness. They are simply taking that life which is useless to me. I have
attained the treasure, I don’t need life anymore. They are taking something useless away from me and I will be
grateful because, who knows, if I had lived more, in some situation I may have gone astray.”
Buddha said, ”Now you can go anywhere you like with my blessings. You have not only become enlightened,
you have become capable of being a master.”
Remember it, that every enlightened person is not a master, although every master has to be enlightened.
Many enlightened people have lived on the earth without ever becoming masters for the simple reason that to be
a master needs certain qualities which are not necessary for being enlightened. Enlightenment is an individual
process; it is something inward, subjective, it can happen within you. To be a master means the capacity to