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

THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 225
And three things Buddha mentions particularly which are making you loaded, much too loaded. The first he
calls passion, the second, desire and the third, hatred.
Passion means animal lust, biological, unconscious lust. Every animal has it, there is nothing special about it.
If man has it he simply remains part of the animal kingdom; it is an animal heritage. You don’t really become
human unless you go beyond lust. You think that it is your love and you have great, romantic words to describe it
and you use great poetry, but that is all rubbish. If you look deep down it is biology, it is chemistry, it is hormones
and nothing else. If your hormones are changed you will not be interested in any woman anymore, or if you are
a woman and your hormones are changed you will not be interested in any man anymore, and all poetry and all
romance will disappear. The Don Juan simply needs a small operation... and he will disappear.
Buddha says the first thing that keeps your mind full of junk is lust. And it is, in a way, natural because for
millions of years we have been in animal bodies; we are still carrying those imprints, we are full of animal heritage.
We are ninety-nine percent animals; only one percent perhaps that too is a perhaps are we human beings. Just
a little part of us has risen a little above.
A fiery-tongued Italian priest was laying down some heavy stuff about sex and morality. Stabbing his bony
finger at his Little Italy congregation, the guinea padre bellowed, ”Sex is-a dirty! I want-a see only good-a girls
tonight. I want-a every virgin in-a church to-a stand up.”
Furious at the lack of his parishioners’ response, he repeated the exhortation.
After a long pause, a sexy-looking chick with an infant in her arms got to her feet.
”Virgins is what I want-a!” the outraged preacher said.
”Hey, Father,” the lady asked, ”you expect a two-month-old baby to stand by herself?”
It is said that’s why Jesus chose to be born two thousand years before us, because now where can you find a
virgin? And, moreover, where will you find three wise men? Even if you find a virgin a two-month-old baby, okay
but three wise men? The conditions cannot be fulfilled now.
People tell me again and again, ”Jesus has promised he will come again.” I say to you, forget all about it! he
cannot come. The conditions cannot be fulfilled. If he drops his conditions, then it is okay. But then he won’t be
a Jesus, remember he will be just another hippie, maybe a Jesus freak but not Jesus!
Remember, Buddha does not want you to repress your lust, he wants you to understand, he wants you to
meditate over it. He wants you not to repress it, because repression has never helped. It is repression that has
made this sad situation in which humanity is living. It is repression that has driven humanity mad.
Buddha wants you to transform sex energy, not to repress it, because it is the only energy you have got. It
can be refined, it can be uplifted, it can be channeled in new directions; it can be moved towards higher planes of
being. And it all happens through a simple process of meditation.
The process of meditation is not complicated at all. If your mind can drop its load and if it can become
absolutely empty, immediately your sex energy starts rising upwards to fill the gap, as if the emptiness pulls it
upwards. A new law starts functioning: the law of levitation. Ordinarily we live under the law of gravitation:
everything goes downwards. And you are so top-heavy that nothing can go towards the top; the top is already
full, everything goes downwards. Make the top light.
In Japan they make a daruma doll. Daruma is the Japanese name of Bodhidharma, one of Buddha’s greatest
disciples, who founded Zen in China; he is the first patriarch of Zen. Bodhidharma was his Indian name, Daruma
is his Japanese name. They have made a doll in his name, in his memory; for centuries the doll has been made.
It is one of the most beautiful dolls; it has a great message. You throw the doll any way, it always sits back in a
Buddha posture; you cannot put it upside-down. You can throw it, you can tilt it, you can do anything with it,
but you cannot shake or make Daruma fall. He always sits back again in the lotus posture, as Buddha used to sit.
The secret is: his top is not heavy, his bottom is heavy. He has a hollow head, an empty head; there is nothing
inside. The head is so empty and the bottom is so heavy that naturally he settles back again into the Buddha
posture. It is a beautiful doll. It was invented by the Zen monks for children to play with, and the children are
bound to ask, ”What is the secret?” And the secret is that the head is totally empty the secret is meditation.
The second thing is desire. Desire is psychological; just as lust is biological, desire is psychological. Desire
means more and more, always for more. Nothing satisfies, nothing fulfills; you go on running for more and more.
And you know it, because many times you have achieved your target but your discontent remains the same. Again
the desire arises for more, and you start running without giving it a second thought.
Buddha says: Wait, contemplate. Where is it going to end? You are chasing an illusion. The desire for more
can never be fulfilled. You can have ten thousand rupees and your mind asks for one hundred thousand; you can
have one hundred thousand, the mind starts asking for more and so on and so forth. Whatsoever you have, the
distance between what you have and what the mind asks for remains the same. It is unfulfillable. It is driving