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

230 THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12
very being, a light which cannot be extinguished even by death, a light which is eternal. And you have it, the
potential is there! You are born with it, but you are keeping it behind you; you never look at it.
And because for centuries, for many lives, you have looked outside, it has become a mechanical habit. Even
when you are asleep you are looking at dreams. Dreams mean reflections of the outside. When you close your eyes
you again start daydreaming or thinking; that means again you become interested in others. This has become
such a chronic habit that there are not even small intervals, small windows into your own being from where you
can have a glimpse of who you are.
In the beginning it is a hard struggle, it is arduous, it is difficult but not impossible. If you are decisive, if you
are committed to inner exploration, then sooner or later it happens. You just have to go on digging, you have to
go on struggling with the darkness. Soon you will pass the darkness and you will enter into the realm of light.
And that light is true light, far truer than the light of the sun or the moon, because all the lights that are outside
are temporal; they are only for the time being.
Even the sun is going to die one day. Not only do small lamps exhaust their resources and die in the morning,
even the sun with such an immense resource is dying every day. Sooner or later it will become a black hole; it will
die and no light will come from it. Howsoever long it lives it is not eternal. The inner light is eternal; it has no
beginning, no end. It is synonymous with God.
And I am not interested in telling you to drop your faults, to make yourself good, to improve your character
no, not at all. I am not interested in your character at all; I am interested only in your consciousness.
Become more alert, more conscious. Just go deeper and deeper into yourself till you find the center of your
being. You are living on the periphery, and on the periphery there is always turmoil. The deeper you go, the
deeper the silence that prevails. And in those experiences of silence, light, joy, your life starts moving into a
different dimension. The errors, the mistakes start disappearing.
So don’t be worried about the errors and the mistakes and the faults. Be concerned about one single thing, one
single phenomenon; put your total energy into one goal, and that is how to be more conscious, how to be more
awakened. If you put your total energy into it, it is going to happen, it is inevitable. It is your birthright.
The third question:
Question 3
BELOVED MASTER, WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY CALLING SARJANO A BIGMOUTH?
Nirmal, exactly that: a big mouth!
I will tell you a fictitious story:
I was going to the Himalayas; Radha was accompanying me. The train was stopped in the middle of the night
in the jungle and the whole train was robbed. The robbers came to our compartment also.
I told them, ”Don’t disturb us. Take whatsoever you want.”
So they carried away the two suitcases. I was worried about Radha, that she might get very much frightened,
might become very much concerned about her things, but I was surprised. When they left she started laughing,
”Ha, ha! Ha, ha!”
I said, ”What is the matter, Radha? What’s-a matta?”
She said, ”I befooled them! I have saved your fifty-thousand-dollar diamond watch, I have saved my Rolex, I
have saved my earrings, I have saved my gold and diamond ring, and all the valuables.”
I said, ”How did you manage?”
She said, ”I kept all of them in my mouth.”
I said, ”That makes me feel very sad.”
She said, ”Why?”
I said, ”If we had brought Sarjano with us, he would have saved the two suitcases! Next time we come to the
Himalayas never forget: Sarjano has to accompany us!”
The fourth question:
Question 4
BELOVED MASTER, DOES IT MEAN THE SAME TO WEAR A MALA OR A CROSS?
Jan, it does not mean the same they are polar opposites. The people who have become interested in the cross
are pathological. They are not interested in Christ, they are interested in the cross. If they were really interested
in Christ they would have also been interested in Buddha, in Lao Tzu, in Krishna, in Kabir. But they are not
interested in Christ, they are interested in the cross.
Hence I don’t call Christianity ”Christianity,” I call it ”Crossianity.” If Jesus had not been crucified there
would have been no such thing as you find all over the world in the name of Christianity. These people became
interested in death; this interest is morbid. They became interested in worshipping death. Jesus is secondary, the