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

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228 THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 doubt, we live disconnected from the whole; if we live in trust, a bridge is slowly, slowly made between the part and the whole. Only with trust can one know what one is and what the whole is; and they are not different. The dewdrop contains the whole ocean; in exactly the same way, every man contains the whole of God. Second: vigilance. One has to be very alert. Alertness is Buddha’s method; his only yoga that he has taught is that of being alert. We are living almost mechanically, robotlike. Bring alertness to your actions, to your thoughts, to your feelings. And the third is energy. We go on dissipating energy in stupid things quarreling, arguing, for no reason at all. Preserve your energy because unless you have an overflowing energy you will not be able to take the ultimate jump. The ultimate jump means the river entering into the ocean, the river disappearing into the ocean and becoming the ocean. If you are not full of energy you will not be able to reach the ocean; you will be lost somewhere in a desert. And the fourth is meditation. By ”meditation” he means remaining more and more silent so slowly, slowly a shift happens from mind to no-mind, so slowly, slowly the gestalt changes from noise to silence. And fifth: wisdom. Wisdom is not knowledge. Knowledge is borrowed, wisdom is yours. Knowledge can be gathered from a library; you can contain the whole library in your mind. Still you will remain as ignorant as before; in fact, you will be far more ignorant than before because now the load is bigger. Wisdom comes from your own heart; it is the voice of our own inner being. It happens in meditation: when you are silent you start hearing the still, small voice within. That is wisdom. AND WHEN FIVE HAVE BEEN LEFT STRANDED ON THE SHORE.... What are those five? Greed, anger, delusion, ego, false teachings. ... THE SEEKER IS CALLED OGHATINNOTI ”HE WHO HAS CROSSED OVER.” This is Buddha’s message for the seekers. He is telling his Bodhisattvas to go and give it to the people who are ready, to the people who are prepared, to the people who are willing to listen, to understand, to follow the path. Meditate over these sutras they are for you. Everything that Buddha says is very significant. It is no ordinary religion, it is pure religiousness. Enough for today. The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol. 11 Chapter 4 I goofed again! The first question: Question 1 BELOVED MASTER, THERE IS SOMETHING THAT EVEN YOU CANNOT DO. YOU CAN’T PUT AN ITALIAN IN AN IRISH JOKE. IT IS AGAINST THE DHARMA. Dharma Chetana, it is true, I goofed again! Go on reminding me. These goddamned jokes are dangerous! And I love the Italians so much that wherever I can find a place for them I try to manage. Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I fail, but you caught me. To put the record right, the joke is: Two gentlemen are sitting in a garden, one British, one Irish. The British gentleman asked the Irish, ”If you were not Irish, what would you be?” The Irish says, ”Of course I would be British.” And then he asks the British, ”If you were not British, what would you be?” And the British said, ”I would be ashamed.” But I got mixed up. That’s why I have all my jokes typed with me. That one was not typed with me. About God and about truth and about religion there is no trouble I know them from my personal experience. But these jokes! Yes, Chetana, it is against the Dharma. And I hope it is not going to happen again. The second question: Question 2 BELOVED MASTER, WHY CAN’T I SEE MY OWN FAULTS WHILE I AM IMMENSELY CAPABLE OF SEEING OTHERS’, EVEN THEIR SMALLEST ONES? Prageeta, it is very normal. It is not something exceptional. Our eyes are focused on others; we are otheroriented. We only see the others it is not only a question of faults we never see ourselves. Even if we want to see ourselves we have to look in a mirror, we have to create the image. When the image is there the other has appeared. The mirror helps us to see ourselves because it creates the other. Otherwise we are absolutely extroverts; we have forgotten the language of how to look in. Hence, as a consequence, you cannot see your own faults; nobody can.
THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 229 The moment you start seeing your faults they start dropping like dry leaves. Then nothing else has to be done; to see them is enough. Just to be aware of your faults is all that is needed. In that awareness they start disappearing, they evaporate. One can go on committing a certain error only if one remains unconscious of it. Unconsciousness is a must to go on committing the same errors. Even if you try to change you will commit the same error in some other form, in some other shape. And they come in all sizes and all shapes. You will exchange, you will substitute, but you cannot drop it because deep down you don’t see that it is a fault. Others may be telling you because they can see. That’s why everybody thinks himself so beautiful, so intelligent, so virtuous, so saintly and nobody agrees with him! The reason is simple: you look at others, you see their reality, and about yourself you carry fictions beautiful fictions. About yourself you are very fictitious. All that you know about yourself is more or less a myth; it has nothing to do with reality. The moment one sees one’s faults, a radical change sets in. Hence all the buddhas down the ages have been telling only one thing: awareness. They don’t teach you character. Character is taught by priests, politicians, but not by the buddhas. Buddhas teach you consciousness not conscience. Conscience is a trick played upon you by others. Others are telling you what is right and what is wrong; they are forcing their ideas upon you. And they go on forcing them from your very childhood, when you were so innocent, so vulnerable, so delicate, that there was a possibility to make any impression on you, any imprint on you. They have conditioned you from the very beginning. That conditioning is called conscience and that conscience goes on dominating your whole life. Conscience is a strategy of society to enslave you. Buddhas teach consciousness. Consciousness means you are not to learn from others what is right and what is wrong; there is no need to learn from anybody. You have simply to go in; just the inward journey is enough. The deeper you go, the more consciousness is released. When you reach the center you are so full of light that darkness disappears. When you bring light into your room you don’t have to push the darkness out of the room. The presence of the light is enough because darkness is only an absence of light. So are all your insanities, madnesses. But everybody can see others’ faults, so don’t be worried about it, Prageeta. This is the situation in which everybody is living. A man dressed as Adolf Hitler visited a psychiatrist. ”You can see I have no problems,” he said. ”I have the greatest army in the world, all the money I will ever need and every conceivable luxury you can imagine.” ”Then what seems to be your problem?” asked the doctor. ”It’s my wife,” said the man. ”She thinks she’s Mrs. Weaver.” Don’t laugh at the poor man. It is nobody else but you. A man went into a tailor’s shop and saw a man hanging by one arm from the center of the ceiling. ”What is he doing there?” he asked the tailor. ”Oh, pay no attention,” said the tailor, ”he thinks he’s a light bulb.” ”Well, why don’t you tell him he’s not?” asked the startled customer. ”What?” replied the tailor. ”And work in the dark?” The moment you know you are mad you are no longer mad. That’s the only criterion of sanity. The moment you know you are ignorant you have become wise. The Oracle at Delphi declared Socrates the most wise man on the earth. A few people rushed to Socrates and they told him, ”Be pleased, rejoice: the Oracle at Delphi has declared you the wisest man in the world.” Socrates said, ”That is all nonsense. I know only one thing: that I know nothing.” The people were puzzled and confused. They went back to the temple, they told the Oracle, ”You say that Socrates is the wisest man in the world, but he himself denies it. On the contrary, he says he is utterly ignorant. He says he knows only one thing: that he knows nothing.” The Oracle laughed and said, ”That’s why I have declared him the wisest man in the world, the greatest wise man in the world. That’s why precisely because he knows that he is ignorant.” Ignorant people believe they are wise. Insane people believe they are the sanest. Yes, Prageeta, it happens; it is part of human nature that we go on looking to the outside. We watch everybody except ourselves. Hence we know more about others than about ourselves; we know nothing about ourselves. We are not witnesses to our own functioning of the mind, we are not watchful inside. You need a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn that’s what meditation is all about. You have to close your eyes and start watching. In the beginning you will find only darkness and nothing else. And many people become frightened and rush out because outside there is light. Yes, there is light outside but that light is not going to enlighten you, that light is not going to help you at all. You need inner light, a light which has its source in your
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