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

THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 255
because if you eat from this tree you will be punished, tremendously punished not only you but your progeny
also will be punished for ever and ever.”
And the punishment was going to be great. God had said to Adam and Eve, ”If you eat from the tree of
knowledge, if you eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge, you will become mortal. Right now you are immortal.”
Death was going to be the punishment. What more punishment can there be? Death is the ultimate in punishment.
Buddha would have appreciated them. If Adam and Eve had not rebelled, had not eaten from the tree of
knowledge, there would have been no humanity and there would have been no Christ, no Buddha, no Zarathustra,
no Lao Tzu. Adam and Eve would be still roaming naked like animals in the Garden of Eden. There would have
been nothing like humanity. This consciousness, this awareness, this inquiry nothing would have been there. The
whole credit goes to Adam and Eve.
And the serpent would not have been the devil. In Buddha’s story, the serpent must have been an ancient
buddha provoking Adam and Eve, ”Go without fear and eat the fruit and don’t be afraid, don’t be cowards!”
In the East the serpent has always represented wisdom. Jesus also says: Be ye as wise as serpents. The serpent
in the East represents the inherent power, the seed power of your ultimate flowering; it is your potential. Hence
kundalini is called serpent power.
Kundalini means the serpent lying there fast asleep; it has to be awakened. Once it wakes up it starts rising
upwards. When it reaches to the ultimate center of your being sahasrar the last center, the last rung of the
ladder, you have arrived home. The serpent is not a representative, a disguised form, of the devil. Buddha would
have written the whole story in a totally different way.
But Christianity, Judaism, both are fear-oriented; so is Islam, so is Hinduism. Only two religions in the world,
Buddhism and Jainism, are not; otherwise all other religions are fear-oriented. Only these two religions are rooted
in fearlessness, and I cannot see how a religion can be fear-oriented. In all the languages of the world we have
words like ’God-fearing’ for religious people; that is utter nonsense. A religious person is not God-fearing, he is
God-loving and love and fear don’t exist together. If you love somebody you are not afraid; if you are afraid you
cannot love.
Love does not exist in the world for the simple reason that we have been trying to create love through fear. The
father, the mother, the priest, the politician, they all are trying to create fear in you. The mother says, ”Listen
to me, otherwise you will suffer!” The father says, ”I am powerful.” In a thousand and one ways he proves his
power over the helpless child and then says to the child, ”Love me I am your father!” Of course the child has to
pretend, because he is dependent, he is helpless. He loves the mother out of fear; his love is pseudo. He loves the
father out of fear; it is only a pretension, it is hypocrisy. He loves God out of fear the fear of hell, the fear of
being punished, the fear of being tortured.
And do you know? Christianity believes that if you commit sins you will suffer in hell forever. That seems
such an absurd concept. How many sins can a man commit in one small life? And Christianity believes in only
one life. If Hindus were thinking that you will suffer for a long time in hell one could understand the arithmetic
because they believe in millions of lives, so you can commit as many sins as you like. Of course, the suffering will
be in the same proportion, the punishment will be in the same proportion. But Christianity proposes an eternal
hell. And what sins can you commit? You can smoke cigarettes and then in hell you will be thrown in fire and
you will smoke forever and forever! Or you can be an alcoholic, but how much can you drink in one small life?
Out of seventy years one third goes into sleep; you can’t commit any sin in your sleep unless your dreams are also
counted. Another one third goes into the offices, into the factories, into the fields, into the shops.... How much
time have you got to commit sins? Just count all the days you will not find much time. And your sins will be just
trivia. Yes, you can fall in love with your neighbor’s wife, but for that you will be suffering for ever and ever? It
is utterly unjust, unfair! Maybe three or four years’ imprisonment in hell will do, but eternity? Can you conceive
of eternity? It will never end, the suffering will be unending!
This is just to create fear. And people love God out of this fear, they pray out of this fear.
Buddha is against fear; fear is the original sin according to him. He believes in fearlessness he believes, and
he believes rightly; it is his experience. It is my experience too, that true love happens only when fear disappears
completely.
A true religion has not happened in the world because we have been trying to create a cheap religion based on
fear. True love has not happened in the world. The wife is afraid of the husband, hence she pretends to love; the
husband is afraid of the wife, hence he goes on saying, ”Darling, I love you!” as many times as possible.
That’s what Dale Carnegie suggests to all the husbands: ”Whether you love her or not, that is not the point.
Repeat it as many times in the day as possible, as many opportunities as there are. Once or twice from the office
phone your wife just to say ’I love you.’” And this is all out of fear.