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

THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 269
Question 4
BELOVED MASTER, CAN INNOCENCE IN AN ADULT HAPPEN WITHOUT AWARENESS?
Anand Manuel, it is impossible for innocence to happen to an adult without awareness. Awareness is the only
method that can help you to destroy all the conditionings that the society has imposed on you. Society has
hypnotized you, but the hypnosis is done in such a subtle way, for such a long time, and it starts when you are
so small, that you never become aware of it. You are hypnotized with the milk of your mother, you are given all
kinds of conditionings, and those conditionings destroy your innocence.
Unless you become aware, you will not be able to see that you are a conditioned human being, that you are
living with borrowed ideas ideas which have been imposed by others on you against your will that you are almost
a prisoner. Not that you live in a prison, but you live in an ideology which is a subtle prison. You are a Hindu
how can you be innocent? You are a Christian how can you be innocent? The ideology keeps you away from
innocence; it makes you knowledgeable, and knowledgeability is the only thing that destroys innocence. It takes
all wonder away from you.
There are millions of people who don’t feel any wonder in life. They will see a roseflower and yet they will not
see anything no beauty, no awe. They will not even stop for a single moment. The rose seems to have no message
for them, as if they have not seen it at all.
Every day you pass by beautiful trees, birds singing in the early morning sun, flowers releasing their fragrance,
but you are a robot. You go on chattering inside your mind, yakkety-yakkety-yak... you go on and on. And what
you are chattering inside has been put inside you. Your mind has been used like a computer: just as they feed a
computer they have fed you.
In communist Russia they will feed you with communism. They will also teach you the holy trinity, their
own holy trinity. They will teach you their own Bible, they will teach you their own religion. Communism is a
religion, a substitute for other religions. Marx, Engels, Lenin, that is their trinity; Das Kapital is their Bible. And
they believe in all these things as fanatically as any Catholic, any Hindu, any Mohammedan. The Mohammedan
believes in Kaaba and the communist believes in the Kremlin. The objects differ, but the belief is there. Both
are knowledgeable, both have lost their purity, their innocence, their childlike quality.
Once you are full of knowledge you think you know all the answers. You don’t know anything because unless
you know yourself, nothing is known. And the beauty of self-knowledge is that it deepens the mystery of life, it
does not demystify it; it makes it more mysterious, more miraculous. The person of wisdom, one who has dug deep
into his own consciousness, becomes more and more full of wonder and awe. But the ordinarily knowledgeable
person goes on living in absolute unawareness; nothing makes him wonder. He knows all the answers.
A dog walked into a restaurant and ordered a steak.
”How would you like it cooked?” asked the waiter.
”I like it well done, with crushed cherries on top. Then put some marinated tomatoes on it and soak it in
pepper.”
The waiter brought the food.
”Did you enjoy your dinner?” the waiter asked when he was finished.
”Very much,” answered the dog. ”By the way, don’t you think this is all very odd?”
”No,” answered the waiter, ”I like my steak the same way.”
The waiter knows too much about the steak he is not looking at the dog at all.
It was two o’clock in the morning and Gedalia the goniff was trying to break into a house. He tried all the
doors and windows but he could not pry any of them open. Cautiously he climbed up to the second-floor balcony.
Peering through a locked window, he saw a baby in its crib. By this time he was quite desperate so he decided to
enlist the aid of the infant.
”Hoo-hoo, bay-bee,” he called softly. ”Itsy-bitsy boo-boo, is oo gonna open window for nice mansi-wansie,
hmm?”
”Open the window?” yelled the baby. ”Why, ya dumb schnook, I can’t even walk yet!”
The baby cannot walk, but he has become knowledgeable, he can talk.
You have all become knowledgeable. You know nothing and yet you are full of knowledge. Your knowledge
simply covers your ignorance, it does not make you wise. It simply makes your foolishness a little decorated, a
little polished.
A troubled young man went to see a doctor. The doctor told him to take off his clothes for an examination,
then said, ”Ah, you have orange candle wax in your navel? I know about this problem. Just the other day a
girl came to see me; she also had wax in her navel because her boyfriend likes to eat by candle-light. Does your
girlfriend like to eat by candlelight too?”