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

238 THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12
like science: it experiments, it emphasizes experience. Science is the religion of the objective world, and religion
is the science of the subjective world.
Philosophy is going to die one day; it is already on its deathbed. You can go to the universities and see: every
year less and less people are turning to the departments of philosophy. Many philosophy departments are empty,
deserted. People are going to science or to religion. Those who are interested in knowing the truth about the world
are going to scientific inquiries, to physics, to chemistry, to mathematics, to biology. Or, people who are interested
in their own interiority, in their own subjectivity, in their own consciousness, are moving towards religion, more
and more towards religion.
Religion is the science of the inner. Philosophy is neither: it is neither the science of the outer nor the science
of the inner; it is just in between. It only thinks; it thinks about everything about science, about religion but
it only thinks. And just by thinking, nothing ever happens. You can make very clever answers, but they are not
going to solve your real problems; the problems are real and the answers are just abstract. Real problems can be
solved only by real answers.
Hence Buddha says: The seeker can be persuaded to meditate only the seeker can be persuaded to meditate.
Meditation means you start changing your inner world. You start removing dust from the inner world, you start
removing all that is unnecessary in the inner world. You remove all that clutter, all the rubbish you are full of.
Meditation means emptying yourself of all that the society has put inside you so that you can have a clean, clear
vision, so that you can have a mirrorlike quality. When a mirror is without any dust it reflects reality; so is the
case with meditation.
Meditation means making your consciousness a mirror. Thoughts are like dust, they have to be removed.
And thoughts contain everything belonging to the mind: desires, ambitions, memories, fantasies, dreams... all
mindstuff is different forms of thoughts, different kinds, different layers of dust. And the dust is so thick that the
mirror is not functioning at all hence you have to ask others. Once the dust is removed you need not ask anyone,
you yourself can see. Existence has given you the magic mirror it is within you.
I have heard a beautiful parable; it must be a parable, it cannot be an historical phenomenon:
When Alexander the Great came to India he collected many valuable treasures. And when he was leaving he
came across a fakir, a naked fakir. He asked him, ”Do you see my treasures? Have you ever seen anybody with
so many treasures?”
The fakir said, ”All your treasures are nothing, but I can give you one thing that will really make you rich!”
Alexander could not imagine what this naked fakir could give him. In his begging bowl he had a small mirror.
He gave the mirror to Alexander.
Alexander said, ”This mirror will make me the richest man in the world? You must be mad!”
The fakir said, ”First look in the mirror.”
And Alexander looked into the mirror: it did not show his face it showed his inner being, it showed his
interiority, it showed his subjectivity. His being was reflected in the mirror.
He touched the feet of the fakir and said, ”You are right all my treasures are nothing before this mirror.”
And it is said he kept that mirror continuously with him.
The parable is beautiful. That mirror represents meditation. The fakir must have given him some meditation
because only meditation can make you aware of who you are.
But Buddha says meditation has to become something constant. Buddha brings a totally new vision of meditation
to the world. Before Buddha, meditation was something that you had to do once or twice a day, one hour
in the morning, one hour in the evening, and that was all. Buddha gave a totally new interpretation to the whole
process of meditation. He said: This kind of meditation that you do one hour in the morning, one hour in the
evening, you may do five times or four times a day, is not of much value. Meditation cannot be something that
you can do apart from life just for one hour or fifteen minutes. Meditation has to become something synonymous
with your life; it has to be like breathing. You cannot breathe one hour in the morning and one hour in the
evening, otherwise the evening will never come. It has to be something like breathing: even while you are asleep
the breathing continues. You may fall into a coma, but the breathing continues.
Buddha says meditation should become such a constant phenomenon; only then can it transform you. And he
evolved a new technique of meditation.
His greatest contribution to the world is Vipassana; no other teacher has given such a great gift to the world.
Jesus is beautiful, Mahavira is beautiful, Lao Tzu is beautiful, Zarathustra is beautiful, but their contribution,
compared to Buddha, is nothing. Even if they are all put together, then too Buddha’s contribution is greater
because he gave such a scientific method simple, yet so penetrating that once you are in tune with it, it becomes
a constant factor in your life.