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

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256 THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 Because of fear the world is missing the roses of love. Love can happen every man is born with infinite capacity for love but fear cripples everybody, paralyzes everybody. Buddha says to his Bodhisattvas: Go and teach people these few fundamental things. The first thing he says: WANTING NOTHING WITH ALL YOUR HEART STOP THE STREAM. These sayings are his code words; you will have to understand his code words. In those old days things had to be remembered, so only very small sutras, very condensed sutras were given. Each sutra is expressed in a code language; you have to decode it. You have to translate it into contemporary language; otherwise you will miss the significance of it. WANTING NOTHING.... How is it possible wanting nothing? That is the most fundamental truth in Buddha’s teachings. He is not saying don’t want anything, remember; that will be a misunderstanding. He is saying: WANTING NOTHING WITH ALL YOUR HEART STOP THE STREAM. By ”the stream” he means the mind. He always calls the mind the stream because it goes on flowing; whether you are awake or asleep it goes on flowing. It is the stream of thoughts. In the modern world, William James, one of the great psychologists, used for the first time a Buddhist expression for the mind; he called it ”stream of consciousness.” Buddha says it is like a river constantly flowing. How can you stop it? The old methods are to repress, to control, but they have failed, utterly failed; they had failed even in Buddha’s time. In a sense Buddha is the first psychologist of the world, not Sigmund Freud. And Buddha’s insight into the mind is far deeper than all your psychologists put together. There is no way to get rid of the constant overpowering flood of mind energy, of mindstuff, just by controlling it or by repressing it. Repression is absolutely destructive. If you repress something it will come up again and again and you will have to repress it again and again. Your whole life will become a kind of civil war; you will be constantly fighting with yourself. And the fight is going to be unending because you cannot destroy the mind in this way; this is not the way to get rid of the mind. In fact, you are giving mind great energy by fighting with it. Mind can be given energy in two ways: either by fighting with it or by indulging in it. One leads to repression, the other leads to identification, and both go on nourishing the mind. The stream becomes bigger and bigger. You can repress repression is easy and the whole of humanity has learned to repress because you always fall for the easy. Repression is not a difficult thing. Anger arises: you can sit upon it, you can go on smiling a false smile, and sooner or later you will forget about it. But it is there boiling within you and you are accumulating every day more and more anger. Anger has a beauty of its own if it is spontaneous, but you are accumulating anger which will become irrelevant, it will not be spontaneous. Something may have happened ten years ago; now it has no reference to reality, no context and suddenly you explode. You look insane. That’s how people go insane. If they had been angry ten years before when the right context was there, nobody would have called them insane, but for ten years they were sitting on it; then it became too much. And then for ten years continuously they were accumulating more and more anger. Every day they were repressing, they were sitting on a volcano; sooner or later it was going to erupt. Either that, or you have to become so dead and dull, so unalive that nothing can erupt. You have to withdraw yourself so totally from life, into a monastery, you have to become so insensitive to life that people can go on insulting you and you gather such a thick skin that nothing penetrates you.... Giovanni was sentenced to jail for having made love with his wife’s body a few hours after her death. ”Do you have anything to say in your own defense?” asked the judge. ”Honest, Mista Your Honor,” replied the Italian, ”I didn’t know she was-a dead. She has-a been like-a that for the last-a twenty years!” There are millions of people who are not really alive afraid of being alive because if they are alive then their anger, their lust, their greed, all become alive. To keep them repressed they have to remain at the minimum; they never live at the maximum. And not to live at the maximum is to miss God, is to miss all all the beauties and the benedictions of life. You should live at the maximum; only then do you come to know the tremendous beauty of existence. Only from that height do you become aware of the immense splendor, of the constant celebration that goes on and on. But you cannot live to the maximum; you are afraid because if you live so totally then all that you have repressed will come up. Millions of people have decided for a dead life; before they really die they are dead. They live only for the minimum, to earn a livelihood; not to live but just to vegetate. They are so afraid the priests have made them so afraid.
THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 257 Buddha is against repression. And if you repress something it will start finding some other way to come up, some perverted way. That’s why I say that all sexual perversions have religious origins, for the simple reason that all religions have been against sexuality. Sex has to be transformed, not repressed. It is pure energy, it is fire! But you need not burn your house with the fire. You can heat your house when it is too cold, you can make your house full of light when it is dark. It is the same fire which becomes light, which becomes heat, but it can also burn your house. You have to be very alert, careful, cautious. Your life energies are neutral: they can harm you, they can help you; it all depends on you. Don’t condemn them. You are responsible and only you! But people go on condemning sex as if sex has something to do with you. Sex has nothing to do with you; sex is pure energy. But if you repress it it will become a perversion; then it will find ways. If you close the natural way, then it comes through some unnatural way. And you are the same stupid person, you have not changed at all; your understanding has not grown up. Mulla Nasruddin came from his village to the big city, and a rich friend invited him to his box at the opera. Said the friend, ”We will be sitting close to other people, so be sure to change your socks before you come!” A short time after they entered their opera seats, the neighbors started turning their noses up at the bad smell. ”I told you to change your socks,” said the friend to Mulla. ”I most certainly did,” said Nasruddin. ”And furthermore I knew you wouldn’t believe me, so I brought the old socks right here in my pocket to prove it!” If you are the same old stupid guy it does not matter what you do with your sex, with your greed, with your jealousy. They will be coming back in some other form, by some other route; they will become even more subtle. Buddha says what is needed is more awareness, more understanding neither repression nor control. If you can become aware of your desires, if you can watch your desires, then a miracle happens, the greatest miracle of all. The moment you become aware of your desires you can easily see that no desire can ever be fulfilled; its very nature is unfulfillable. Every desire is just a hankering for something which cannot be, every desire means more and more and more. Now, how can you fulfill this constant hankering for more? You can have all the wealth of the world, still the desire will be there. I have heard that when Diogenes said to Alexander the Great, ”Have you ever thought about one thing? although it is a very remote possibility, have you thought about it? You may really conquer the whole world then what? There is no other world to conquer, there is only one world. If you really succeed have you ever pondered over the matter? then what will you do?” And it is said that Alexander became very sad. Diogenes laughed and he said, ”Look! You have not yet conquered it, but the very idea that if you conquer the whole world... what are you going to do next? because there is no other world. You will be quite at a loss, because the mind will ask for more. It is not going to be satisfied with this world only it is not going to be satisfied.” Mind means discontent; it is its very nature. Desires are only manifestations of this discontent. When you watch your desires you slowly, slowly become aware of the futility of desiring, you become aware of the absurd nature of desiring. You become aware that by their very nature desires are unfulfillable. Seeing this, a transformation happens, a miracle happens, a radical change sets in; but by seeing this not by repression, not by control but by understanding. A violinist was convinced he could use his art in music to tame wild animals. So, violin in hand, he traveled to the heart of the African jungle to prove it. He had no sooner begun to play than the jungle clearing was filled with animals of all kinds gathering to hear him play. Birds, lions, hippos, elephants all stood round entranced by his beautiful music. Just then a crocodile crept out of the nearby river and into the clearing and snap! gobbled up the violinist. The other animals were extremely irate. ”What on earth did you do that for?” they demanded. ”We were enjoying that.” ”Eh?” said the crocodile, cupping its hand to its ear. The mind is absolutely deaf; it goes on and on doing the same stupid things, never seeing, never listening to the message. Every desire brings you to a point where a radical change can happen, but the mind can neither see nor can it hear. It is blind, it is deaf. As one desire fails it simply jumps on another desire. If one desire fails, the mind thinks, ”If this desire has failed that does not mean that all other desires are going to fail.” It goes on hoping that there must be some desires which can be fulfilled, maybe not this time but next time; if not today then tomorrow; if not in this life then in the life after death, in heaven. But the mind goes on and on thinking in the same old rut.
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