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

THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 213
You can watch yourself have you lived? You can watch others around you are they really living? People only
become aware that they were alive when they die. When death knocks on your door, suddenly you become aware:
”My God, I was alive! And now death has come.” But when death comes, millions of people feel relieved relieved
of the burden, of the anxiety, of the constant fear of life.
Death has no fear in it. When you are no more, what fear can there be? Death cannot hurt you life can hurt
you. Life hurts because one needs to be very intelligent, alert, to live. If you live unconsciously, life is bound to be
a painful experience, an agony. Life can be ecstatic too, but only when you are alert, aware. Life is an opportunity,
but it demands; it is a challenge, it is an adventure, a moment-to-moment adventure into the uncharted.
You cannot be imitators if you really want to live. You cannot be Christians and Hindus and Mohammedans.
If you really want to live you have to be yourself simply yourself. You cannot be anybody else; that is a way of
avoiding true life.
God never repeats. He creates each and every individual unique, absolutely unique. You are not manufactured
like cars on an assembly line. Hence Jesus will never be again, Krishna will never be again, howsoever beautiful
they were. God does not believe in carbon copies; he always creates individuals. He is a creator and no creator
would like to repeat.
But that’s what you have been told to do, and you are doing it. Somebody is trying to be like Krishna or like
Confucius or like Mohammed; these have become your ideals. Then you go on missing that which you are and
that is the only way you can be. You become pseudo. Yes, to be pseudo seems to be a little more comfortable
than to be original, because you can adjust to a pseudo society more easily, more comfortably. When everybody
is false like you, you can easily become part of the crowd. When you are true and authentic, living your life on
your own, in your own light, with no blueprints given by others to you by the parents, by the priests, by the
politicians when you are moving every day into the unknown with no idea of what is going to happen, with great
creativity, sensitivity, awareness, but with no fixed ideology; when you are exploring newer pastures, new peaks
of being, then certainly you are no more a part of the crowd.
And the crowd hates individuals for the simple reason that they are so different. It hates them because they
are rebels. It hates them because they cannot be enslaved easily; in fact, it is impossible to enslave them. It hates
them for their intelligence, it hates them for their joy, it hates them for their creativity. It wants to destroy them.
Yogananda, that’s why people are afraid of life: life has many dangers. The path of life is full of hazards. One
never knows what is going to happen the next moment; everything is possible. You cannot live with expectations
because life has no obligation to fulfill your desires. You can live with an open heart, but you cannot live with
expectations. The more expectations you have, the more frustrated you will be.
And then you can go astray. In death, nobody can go astray; in life you can go astray. In life you can commit
errors, mistakes. In fact, if you really want to live you will have to commit many errors and many mistakes.
Remember it: never be afraid of committing errors and mistakes; otherwise you will be paralyzed because of the
fear. Go on committing mistakes and errors. Remember only one thing: don’t commit the same mistake again.
Once is enough. Invent new mistakes, discover new errors! Don’t go on falling in the same ditch find new ditches!
By committing mistakes, by going astray, you grow. That’s the only way to grow.
Life is dangerous; death is very cozy, very comfortable. Lying down in your grave, what danger is there? There
is no problem, no anxiety. You can’t go bankrupt, your wife cannot leave you, you cannot die anymore. You are
so safe in death! Life is not safe anything is possible. Life is full of accidents. Some madman may cut off your
head...!
I have heard:
A great psychoanalyst was reading, sitting in his garden underneath a tree, and his only daughter, just eight,
nine years old was playing with one of her friends on the lawn. Suddenly she hit her friend on the head with a
stick so hard that blood started coming out of her head. The psychoanalyst rushed over, but before he could say
anything his daughter turned towards him and asked, ”Daddy, now tell me why I did this!”
She must have been hearing again and again that her father goes on finding reasons for every act, unconscious
reasons and this and that, so now she asks, ”Now tell me why I have done this.”
Life can do anything and you cannot even ask why: you have to accept it. There is nobody to answer. Hence
the fear, Yogananda. You say, ”I am more afraid of living than of dying.”
Everybody is more afraid of living; that’s why people are dead. People die nearabout the age of thirty. Of
course, they are not put into their graves at that time; they go to their graves nearabout seventy, eighty. The
fifty years between their death and their entry into the grave are just a drag. It is a miracle to see dead people
walking, talking, doing all kinds of things. It certainly is a miracle!