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

266 THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12
like flowers, fragile but they seem to be so energetic, so vital, so overflowing with energy. From where do they
get so much energy?
So they tried an experiment. They arranged that a very strong man would follow a child, and he would do
exactly whatsoever the child was doing. And they were going to pay him; whatsoever he wanted they were going
to pay him. He was a really big man, a wrestler, a famous wrestler, so he was not worried about following a
child. What can a child do? But within four hours he was flat on the ground, because once the child knew that
he was imitating him, the child jumped and the child ran and the child rolled on the floor and the child laughed
uproariously.... And the child did so many things that the wrestler, within four hours, was finished!
He said, ”Never in my life have I been so tired. I have been fighting my whole life, I have fought great fights, I
have been always a winner. This is my first defeat!”
And that small child was not tired at all; he was still ready, he was still challenging the man. He said, ”Come
on! Let us have a little more fun! Are you finished? Why are you lying down on the ground?”
Every child is born with such great energy, but we destroy it. We paralyze every child, we cripple every child.
And our churches and our temples and our priests have done the greatest wrong to humanity. They are the greatest
criminals in the world, they are the real sinners. They have sinned against humanity they have paralyzed every
human being. You don’t know who you would have been if you had been allowed total freedom from the very
beginning if your laughter had been free, your love had been free, your joy had been free, and you had not been
hindered, interfered with, distorted, manipulated, forced, channeled in certain directions....
No child is interested in money, because no child is foolish. No child is interested in being the president of a
country or the prime minister, because no child is so stupid. His interests are far more natural. He is interested
in the flowers, he is interested in the butterflies, he is interested in the pebbles on the seashore. He is interested
in dancing under the stars, in dancing in the sun, in dancing in the wind. He is interested in climbing the tree or
in climbing the mountain. He is interested in swimming the river or in going into the ocean.
His interests are totally different, but we divert all his energies. We say, ”No need to climb the tree, no need to
climb the mountain. Climb the ladder of success!” which is an absolutely mediocre process, which is an absolutely
unintelligent process. ”Climb the ladder of success. Be more rich than others. Be competitive. Be jealous. Be
possessive. Fight!” a fight for things which are meaningless. Then you lose your joy, then you lose your laughter.
Then life seems more like a nightmare than like a beautiful joke.
Vimalkirti, it is a cosmic joke.
And my vision is that the future religiousness is bound to be rooted more in life than in death, more in laughter
than in sadness, more in dance than in dragging your life.
The second question:
Question 2
BELOVED MASTER, WHY, DESPITE APPEARANCES, IS THE VOID MORE TANGIBLE THAN THE
FORM, CONSCIOUSNESS MORE THAN THOUGHT, SILENCE MORE THAN THE WORD?
Deva Bruce, the void is the source of all forms. The void is eternal, forms are temporary. Forms are like ripples
in the lake, the void is the lake itself. Forms come and go, the void remains. Forms are only appearances, the
void is the reality.
Hence Buddha calls reality shunya. Shunya means the ultimate void. Yes, it is far more tangible than your
so-called real things, because these real things come from the void and will go back down to the void. The void
is the source and the goal. Everything comes out of nothingness and disappears back into nothingness.
Hence, remember, nothingness does not mean that it is nothing; nothingness simply means that it is all.
Nothingness means ”no-thingness.” Things are forms; nothingness is a formless energy. It can manifest in millions
of forms, and it can only manifest in millions of forms because it has no form of its own. It is fluid, it is available
for any form, it has no resistance to any form. It can express itself in millions of ways because it has no obsession,
it has no fixation. It can bloom as a rose, it can bloom as a lotus. It can be a song, it can be a dance, it can
be silence. All is possible because nothingness simply means that no form has yet been taken. Once a form is
taken, things become limited, alternatives become limited. Once a form is taken you are not totally free; your
form becomes your bondage. Hence, meditation is an entry into nothingness.
The Western religions have missed the point completely. Even their God has a form; God cannot have a form.
To give God a form is anthropocentric, it is projecting our own form onto God.
If horses were philosophers and who knows, a few horses may be then God would be a horse, a beautiful horse,
with all the great qualities of a horse. Horses cannot think of God as a man, impossible. Man has not been good
to the horses at all. They can think of the devil as man, but not of God as man. Man thinks of God as man.