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

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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.
THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 267 The Bible says God created man in his own image. The truth is just the contrary: man creates God in his own image. Hence the Negro God will have a Negro form, the Hindu God will have a Hindu form, the Chinese God will have a Chinese form. The Chinese God cannot have a Hindu form; it is impossible. The Chinese cannot think that God can have another form than the Chinese of course, the most beautiful Chinese form, but it is going to be Chinese. These are our ideas projected onto God. God is not a form, God is formlessness. God is absolute nothingness, God is total void. Out of that voidness everything arises trees, people, mountains, earths, stars, creations. They come, for the time being they are there, and then they again disappear into the ultimate void. That is the beginning and the end; it is before the beginning and after the end. Buddha calls it the beyond, the ultimate beyond, beyond the beyond. You ask me, Bruce, ”Why, despite appearances, is the void more tangible than the form, consciousness more than thought, silence more than the word?” Consciousness is God because consciousness is nothingness. Thought is a world; hence Buddha calls mind ”the world.” The moment a thought arises, a wave has arisen in the lake of consciousness, a form has arisen, and the form is only temporal, momentary. Soon it will disappear; it is not going to abide, it is not eternal. Don’t cling to it. Watch it come in and watch it go out. Watch it arising and watch it disappearing, but don’t cling to it. Remember consciousness, in which it arises and in which it dissolves again. That is your reality, that is your truth. The thought can be good, the thought can be bad, but good or bad it makes no difference. A thought is a thought; it is not eternal and that is the only criterion of reality. That’s how the mystics have always been judging reality: whatsoever is eternal is real and whatsoever is momentary is only a dream phenomenon. There is no difference between the dream that you see in the night and the dream that you see in the day, the dream that you see with closed eyes and the dream that you see with open eyes. Yes, there is a little difference: one dream is absolutely private. In the night with closed eyes you see a private dream; in the day with open eyes you see a collective dream, an objective dream. There are many participants in it, hence it gives you the feeling as if it is real. It is not so. What happens when you fall asleep? You forget all about the day. It is said about Chuang Tzu that one morning he woke up and started laughing. His disciples gathered together and they asked, ”What is the matter?” Chuang Tzu said, ”I have come across a problem that I cannot solve. Help me to solve it.” That was the first time that he was asking the help of the disciples to solve a problem. Otherwise he was always solving their problems. The disciples said, ”It must be a really great, complicated problem you tell us.” He said, ”The problem is simple, but in a way very complicated and I don’t think it can be solved, it seems insoluble. That’s why I am laughing. I have looked at it from every side; it seems absolutely insoluble. The problem is, in the night I dreamed that I had become a butterfly.” The disciples said, ”That’s nothing. We all dream all kinds of things dreams are dreams. Now you are awake the dream is finished. Why make so much fuss about a dream?” He said, ”I am not making much fuss about a dream. The problem is: if Chuang Tzu can dream that he is a butterfly now the problem arises the butterfly may have fallen asleep and is dreaming that she is Chuang Tzu! Now what is what? Am I Chuang Tzu who dreamed about the butterfly or am I the butterfly who is dreaming of being Chuang Tzu?” In fact there is no difference. The butterfly is also a form and Chuang Tzu is also a form. One form arose when you were asleep, another form arose when you were awake, but both are forms. Chuang Tzu is neither he is neither the butterfly nor Chuang Tzu. He is the consciousness, he is the awareness; the awareness of the dream, the awareness of the butterfly and Chuang Tzu. That awareness he is. And that awareness is far more real, the only reality in fact. No thought is real. And the same is true about silence. Words arise in the lake of silence, beautiful words, but they are just forms. Hence the insistence of all the mystics: move from words to wordlessness, move from sound to silence, move from form to formlessness, move from thought to consciousness. Don’t get entangled with the forms, thoughts, words. That’s what meditation is all about. Don’t get identified with all that arises in you and disappears. Remain centered in that which never appears and never disappears, which is always there. Remain centered in the abiding reality of your being, and you will know the greatest bliss possible and you will know the truth that liberates. You will know freedom from all forms because all forms create bondage. You will know you are neither a man nor a woman, neither white nor black, neither this nor that neti, neti. You will know that you are only the pure awareness which has no name, no form.
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