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

THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 221
any form, so don’t become attached to any form. Don’t become attached to any name and don’t become attached
to any form.
This is the beginning of sannyas. This is the beginning of initiation into the path.
In fact, you don’t have any father, you don’t have any mother; you can’t have. The father fathered your body
and the mother mothered your body; they both contributed to your body, to your form, but not to your essential
core. Your body is accidental. You have been in many bodies before, thousands of bodies. You have passed
through, you have lived in many, many houses, and when you were living in a certain house you became identified
with it.
Hence the pain of death. It is not because of death, remember; it is just because of your identification with the
body, with the form. If you understand the message of Buddha, there is no pain in death. If you are not identified
with any name or form there is nobody who is born and there is nobody who is dying.
In fact, that should be the real meaning of Jesus’ virgin birth. Everybody is born in the same way. It is not
only that you don’t have a father, you don’t have a mother either. The day you discover your original being you
will know that you pass through the mother and the father, you come through them, but you are not created by
them.
A snoopy social worker investigating conditions in an old tenement stopped a ragged, neglected-looking youngster
and asked him where his mother lived.
”Ain’t got no mother,” replied the child.
”What about your father, then?”
”Ain’t got none, lady.”
”What, both your father and your mother dead!” exclaimed the social worker.
”Nope, never had any.”
”Good grief, but that’s impossible, my boy!”
”If you’ve gotta know, lady,” said the urchin contemptuously, ”some damned racketeer played a dirty trick on
my aunt.”
In fact, nobody has a father or a mother and no dirty racketeer has played any trick on your aunt either. You
are eternal beings: you are never born and you never die. Death and birth are episodes in the long journey, in
the eternal journey of your life. Life does not begin with birth and does not end with death.
But this is possible to know only if you become a little detached from the form with which you have become so
much attached. You are not man and you are not woman either; your body is male or your body is female. You
are not man, you are not animal, you are not vegetable. These are all forms, accidental forms, just circumferences,
not the centers of your being. The centers of your being are totally different from the circumferences. And we
have become so attached to the circumferences that we have completely forgotten the centers.
This is the basic and fundamental cause of our insanity. A man who does not know his center is insane.
Buddha says, tell the people:
YOU HAVE NO NAME AND NO FORM. WHY MISS WHAT YOU DO NOT HAVE?
How much people suffer if they are not famous, if they are not well-known! To be anonymous feels so humiliating.
If nobody knows you, you feel as if you are no longer alive. The more people know you, the more alive you feel.
If the whole world knows you, your ego is puffed up to the extreme, it is bursting.
That’s why politics has so much interest for people, because that is the easiest way to become world-famous.
You don’t need to be very intelligent to be a politician; in fact, if you are very intelligent you cannot be a politician.
You need a certain stupidity, in good quantity, to be a politician. You need to be stubborn, you need to be violent,
you need to be utterly mediocre so that you can’t see what you are doing, so that you can’t see how you are
wasting your life, and you go on and on.... You have to be utterly blind, you have to be very gross. Politics has
great appeal because it can give you both a great name and great fame; it can make you a world figure.
I have heard:
A pope and a politician both showed up in heaven one day. Saint Peter greeted them and led the pope to his
quarters where he would be spending eternity. Upon opening the door, the pope found a small, plainly furnished
room with but one window. When he looked out he noticed the politician being shown to the luxury apartments
across the way, which were equipped with hot tubs, saunas, swimming pools, tennis courts and the like.
Filled with righteous indignation, he turned to Saint Peter and protested vehemently, ”I am a pope! Why is
this politician being treated like this while I get almost nothing?”
”Well,” replied Saint Peter, ”we have over two hundred popes up here, but this is the first time we’ve seen a
politician!”