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

THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 191
by Patanjali, by yoga, by meditation, and the East is influenced by Playboy! People are reading Playboy, hiding
it inside their Gitas!
Prem Karin, you ask, ”The West seems to be obsessed with sex.”
It is not true only about the West. The whole of humanity, up to now, has remained obsessed with sex, and it
is going to remain so unless we change the whole gestalt. Up to now the gestalt has been repression/indulgence,
indulgence/repression, going on moving between these two. We have to stop exactly in the middle. Have you ever
tried to stop the pendulum of a clock in the middle? What happens? The clock stops. The time stops.
That’s my effort here. I don’t want you to be indulgent and I don’t want you to be repressive. I would like
you to be balanced, just in the middle. It is in the middle that transcendence is possible, and it is in the middle
that we can create a humanity which will be neither Eastern nor Western. And it is immensely needed, urgently
needed, that a man comes on the earth which is neither Eastern nor Western: a new kind of man with a new
vision, freed of all the bondage of the past.
You ask, ”Why, in all this time, are people still stuck and unable to move into the Tantric experience of sex, of
love and of life?”
Tantric experience means neither to be repressive nor to be indulgent. Tantric experience is possible only if you
move deep into meditation, otherwise not. When you become very, very still, silent, aware, alert, then only is it
possible that you will know something of Tantra. Otherwise, Tantra can also become an excuse for indulgence a
new name, a religious name. And you can move into indulgence behind the name of Tantra. Names won’t make
much change; your being needs change.
Zelda, the Hebrew zebra, was walking down a country lane, some place in the boondocks of Pennsylvania. Soon
she came upon a flock of sheep.
”Yoo-hoo, may I speak to you, please?” she called out.
One of the sheep came to the fence.
”What do you want to speak about?”
”I represent the Hadassah Zebra Association of South Africa. You are Jewish?”
”Oh yes, we are all Jewish here.”
”Well, I am on a fact-finding tour. Our zebras are interested in learning how Jewish animals in America earn
a living. Would you mind telling me what kind of work you do?”
”What do I do?” exclaimed the sheep. ”What kind of a question is that? I give wool, what else? Every year
they shear it off and next season they do the same thing. Is it any different there in South Africa?”
”Oh no, it is just the same. Well, I must be running along. Ta-ta, and thank you most kindly.”
Zelda continued on her fact-finding mission until she met a cow.
”Excuse me, madam, I am from the Hadassah Zebra Association of South Africa. I am interviewing Jewish-
American domestic animals. Would you be so kind as to describe your work?”
”Glad to,” murmured the cow. ”I am employed by a strictly kosher dairy, being orthodox myself, of course.
My work, you ask? Well, I am a purebred Guernsey, and I give Grade A milk. I live up there in that pretty white
barn. Sorry I can’t ask you in, but we were not expecting company and the place is a mess.”
”That’s perfectly all right. Thank you for your information. You have been most helpful. Toodle-oo.”
A short time later, Zelda saw a stallion in a pasture, and there was no mistaking his Jewishness. He happened
to see her at just about the same moment. He charged toward the fence, skidded to a four-footed stop and loomed
over the zebra with nostrils flaring.
”And just what is it that you do, sir?” asked the zebra demurely.
”Honey, you just slip out of those fancy pajamas,” he said, ”and I will show you what I do!”
The whole humanity is suffering from obsession, either through indulgence or through repression. The whole
humanity is concerned with sex twenty-four hours a day.
Psychologists have discovered that every man thinks of women at least once in three minutes, and every woman
thinks of man at least once in six minutes. That may cause enough problems the difference; that may be the
whole trouble between man and woman.
Tantric sex is not sex at all; it is meditation. Meditation has to spread all over your life. Whatsoever you do,
do meditatively. Walk meditatively, eat meditatively. If you are making love, make love meditatively. Meditation
has to become your life twenty-four hours a day; then only the transformation. Then you go beyond sex, you go
beyond body, you go beyond mind. And for the first time you become aware of godliness, of ecstasy, of bliss, of
truth, of liberation.
The last question:
Question 5