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

210 THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12
is of no value, it is borrowed. You are like a parrot. Even a parrot can be very knowledgeable, but that does not
make him a buddha.
Rastus, the hot, black Harlem stud, decided that he needed an exotic parrot for his classy apartment.
After searching for some time, he finally found a pet shop that sold talking parrots. The shopkeeper showed
him one for twenty-five dollars.
”Polly wanna cracker?” inquired Rastus, to which the parrot did not respond. ”This parrot doesn’t talk,” said
Rastus, ”I wants me a talking parrot. Do you have any others?”
The owner said there was one for seventy-five dollars. He brought out a cage from behind the counter and
uncovered a most attractive bird.
”Polly wanna cracker?” asked Rastus again, and again there was no response. ”This parrot don’t talk!” shouted
Rastus with annoyance. ”Don’t you have any birds that talk?”
The shopkeeper told him that he did keep another one in the back room, but that it was quite expensive two
hundred and fifty dollars.
He brought out the most beautiful bird Rastus had ever seen, and he excitedly asked, ”Polly wanna cracker?”
There was no response. Rastus was outraged. ”Do you or don’t you have any talking birds?” he asked.
The shopkeeper hesitated and then replied that he did have one bird that was quite exceptional, and although
he had not planned to sell it, for two thousand dollars he would consider it. He led Rastus to a room at the very
back of the shop. There, surrounded by one of the most complete libraries Rastus had ever seen, was the parrot.
He was sitting in an overstuffed chair under a reading lamp, book in his lap, wearing glasses, a smoking jacket
and slippers. He was smoking a pipe, deeply involved in his reading.
”Polly wanna cracker?” inquired Rastus breathlessly from the doorway.
Slowly, slowly the parrot looked up from his reading and wryly responded, ”Nigger want a watermelon?”
Even then a parrot is a parrot!
Unless you have experienced, whatsoever beliefs you have are absolutely worthless. Hence Buddha says: FOL-
LOW THE TRUTH OF THE WAY. He means that which you have experienced by moving on the way of
meditation, REFLECT UPON IT. Before you start helping others, reflect upon the experience that has happened
to you through meditation because it is one thing to experience, it is totally another to express. Meditation is
not so difficult as expressing the experience of meditation and persuading people to meditate. Mystics have been
many, masters are very few.
A master has a golden touch. The moment he touches you, something in you starts growing. He is like a
gardener who has green fingers.
REFLECT UPON IT. MAKE IT YOUR OWN.
Absorb it totally. Meditation in the beginning is just an experience and you are the experiencer. Slowly, slowly
the distance between the experiencer and the experience disappears; it takes time. Unless the experience and the
experiencer become one you cannot help others. Unless meditation becomes your very heartbeat you will not be
able to persuade anybody. It is almost a seduction! MAKE IT YOUR OWN.
LIVE IT.
Before you start helping others, live it in all possible ways. Walk meditatively, eat meditatively, sit meditatively,
even sleep meditatively. Let meditation be spread all over your life. It should become a twenty-four-hour
phenomenon, like breathing so much so that you need not remember to meditate. It becomes so much your own
that it is always there like an undercurrent. Only then can you help.
LIVE IT.
IT WILL ALWAYS SUSTAIN YOU.
DO NOT TURN AWAY WHAT IS GIVEN YOU....
Remember, meditation will give you many joys, many blessings, many gifts will descend on you.
DO NOT TURN AWAY WHAT IS GIVEN YOU. Don’t be a miser in receiving. People are miserly in giving,
they are miserly in receiving too. When great gifts descend on you, you shrink away, you back away; you become
afraid because those great gifts are so great that you feel you may be drowned. When bliss comes to you it is like
a flood.
Hence Buddha says: DO NOT TURN AWAY WHAT IS GIVEN YOU... because if you turn it away you will
miss the opportunity, and it may not knock on your door again for a long time. One never knows when the
moment will come again. So whenever something happens to you in meditation, open your heart. Even if you
are afraid of the unknown, still go into the unknown. And go dancing, go joyously, because in meditation nothing
wrong can ever happen to you. In meditation, only blessings are possible.
NOR REACH OUT FOR WHAT IS GIVEN TO OTHERS....