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

THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 249
is needed on your part; just the gravitational pull is enough. When you are coming down from the hill towards
the plains you can just turn your car engine off, no gas is needed; the car will go on rolling down. But if you are
going uphill then effort is needed, great effort is needed.
Creativity needs the greatest effort because many things have to be dropped when you are moving upwards;
unnecessary weights have to be dropped. And you are carrying so much luggage; it is all unnecessary, it is useless.
But people go on collecting, people are great collectors. They will collect any kind of rubbish, hoping that maybe
some day it will prove of some use. They are greedy and they feel empty so they go on stuffing themselves with
every kind of thing. You are so full of ego and ego is a great weight. You cannot move upwards. You will have to
put the ego aside and that is the greatest pain.
To be a creator means you drop the very idea that ”I am separate from existence.” Creation happens only when
you are one with the existence. Creation happens only when you are so in tune with the creator that there is no
disturbance from your side. And the greatest disturbance comes from the ego. It nourishes itself on disturbance,
it lives on disturbance. Ego means the idea that ”I am separate.” And if you think you are separate, you are
living in a lie and creativity flows out of the experience of truth.
You have to know the truth, that you are not separate. No man is an island, we are all part of one vast
continent. The whole existence is one, it is one organic unity; hence all that is great has come out only in those
moments when the creator was dissolved into the whole. Great paintings, great poems, great music, great dance,
all happen only when you are dissolved, when you are no more. If you are, suddenly you become the block, you
stop the flow. Then God cannot use you as a flute, he cannot sing through you. The flute has to be just a
hollow bamboo, just an open space, just a vehicle. The great poets, the great musicians, the great dancers, are all
vehicles. They don’t dance, they are being danced. They don’t sing, some unknown energy sings through them.
That’s why creativity is painful, because nobody wants to melt and merge and dissolve. We cling to our
identities. In fact, we want to be creative so that we can hang a few more awards around our egos so the ego can
become more famous, so that you can say, ”I am somebody special. I am a great poet or a great composer or a
great author” or something. And that’s the greatest problem to be faced by any creator: that he has to drop his
ego.
And in the beginning it is for the ego that you want to be creative. It is a very paradoxical process: you have
to drop the very ego that was the impetus in the beginning, that wanted to be famous, that wanted to leave its
name resounding down the corridors of time, that wanted to make history. That very same ego becomes the cause
of stopping the flow of unknown energies in you. Otherwise God is always pouring; you have just to be open,
available. You are not to be separate.
It hurts in the beginning; it hurts more if you are resisting. If you are not resisting much it hurts less; if you
are not resisting at all it doesn’t hurt at all. Then dropping the ego can be one of the most joyous acts.
That’s what sannyas is all about. The whole message is based on this single phenomenon: dropping the ego
joyously. It is not a question of surrendering your ego to me. Ego is not something that you can surrender; it is
just a fiction, it is not a reality. So when the master says, ”Surrender your ego to me,” he is simply giving you a
device, because you live with the idea that ego is very substantial. He knows it is nothing, so he says, ”Surrender
it to me, give it to me, and you be free of it.” Not that you are giving anything there is nothing to give; not
that he is receiving anything there is nothing to receive. But to help you to get rid of a false notion, a device is
created. Once you have dropped the idea, suddenly you see the whole thing: nothing has been given, nothing has
been taken. You are the same, only the old wrong notion has disappeared. People are very reluctant to surrender.
Just the other day one sannyasin wrote to me saying, ”I can do everything you are saying, but I cannot
surrender.” Then how can you do everything that I am saying? That is the first thing that I am saying! And he
says, ”I can do everything you are saying, but I cannot surrender.” And he is thinking he is making a very clear
statement. That is the only thing that I am saying: Surrender the ego. And it is not a question of surrendering
it to me surrender it to a tree, but surrender. Surrender it to the river, go and drown it in the river. Burn it,
bury it, cremate it! Do whatsoever you want to do, but be finished with it.
I am not interested in collecting your egos. What will I do with so many egos? If you are suffering so much
with one, I will be in the seventh hell with so many egos! I am not an ego collector. It is just a device, a simple
device. You say, ”Where can I put my ego?” I say, ”Okay, give it to me,” because I know that there is nothing to
give, but you will be happy in giving it. At least you will feel great that you have surrendered; at least you have
given your ego into the right hands.
But this sannyasin says, ”I cannot surrender.” And people coming from the West, particularly, find it very
difficult.