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

THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 283
The Jewish proprietor came back with a nice Harris tweed. ”Look at this,” he said, ”and it’s not fifty pounds,
not even forty. Thirty pounds and it’s yours.”
The Scot examined it carefully. ”I wouldn’t give you twenty-five pounds for it, not even twenty. My price is
eighteen pounds.”
”Right,” said the Jew. ”That’s the way I like to do business no haggling.”
Then there were the two Jews who bumped into each other after forty years, and rushed to the nearest pub to
celebrate.
”It will be magic to have a drink together after all these years,” said one.
”Yeah,” said the other, ”but don’t forget, it’s your round.”
The rich widow needed a blood transfusion, so a Jew donor saved her life. She was so grateful, she gave him a
hundred pounds, but after a relapse she needed another one and this time gave the donor fifty pounds.
The third time he saved her life she had so much Jewish blood in her that she just thanked him very much.
The second question:
Question 2
BELOVED MASTER, I AM UTTERLY MISERABLE. HOW CAN I GET OUT OF MY MISERY?
Vandan, I have never come across a person who is utterly miserable. You are tolerating it, you are existing
with it, you are living with it. If it is so bad one should stop breathing! Why should one go on living?
It can’t be so bad. Maybe you love to exaggerate. There are people who always like superlatives, who magnify
everything. Small miseries of course there are, but what big misery can you have? Where will you have it? I
cannot conceive of any misery that can be so bad that you can call it absolute; otherwise one will simply die,
immediately.
So one thing, remember, stop exaggerating. That is also a way of the ego. The ego is so strange that it wants
to exaggerate everything. Even if it is misery it will magnify it, it will make a big fuss about it. There may be
nothing much in it: if you go to the roots you may find a mouse, but you are talking about elephants.
And I know you, Vandan. I have never seen you utterly miserable. You look perfectly normal. Unless all
normal people are utterly miserable... just the ego has the habit of magnifying.
A boy came running home from school. He was breathing hard, puffing, perspiring. He told his mother,
”Somehow God saved me. A tiger is following me, a very dangerous tiger, a very ferocious tiger.”
The mother said, ”You stop exaggerating! I have told you a million times not to exaggerate, and again you are
doing it. Where is that tiger?”
The boy showed her from the window. A very small dog, thin, lean, hungry, was standing outside. And the
mother said, ”This is the tiger? You go upstairs, pray to God and ask his forgiveness. And never exaggerate
again. Enough is enough!”
So the boy went upstairs. After five minutes he went back to the mother, and the mother said, ”Did you pray?”
He said, ”Yes, I prayed, and do you know what God said? He said, ’You don’t be worried. When for the first
time I saw that dog I myself thought that it was a ferocious tiger. So nothing to be worried about. I myself was
deceived, so what about you? And I am so big, still I thought it is a very dangerous tiger. I was just getting
ready to run away, then I had another look and found: oh no, it is just a dog. And you are a small child, so if
you got frightened it is natural.’”
Misery is not so big as you make out. So the first thing is to reduce it to the right proportions. Before you can
get out of it let the tiger disappear. Be very factual. If you really want to transform your life, be factual. You
cannot get out of fictions. You can get out of facts; facts can be tackled, but fictions cannot be tackled.
But this is the way of the mind, the way of the ego, to magnify everything. It makes everything look big. And
then of course you start suffering in a big way. The cause is not so big, but the effect can be very big it depends
on you.
Look again, consider again, reconsider the whole situation. What is it that you are calling ”utterly miserable”?
And then you will find ordinary facts of life. But we don’t want to be ordinary. The ego hankers to be extraordinary.
Even if it is misery we would like to be extraordinary.
Somebody asked George Bernard Shaw, ”Where would you like to go when you die, to heaven or to hell?”
He said, ”Wherever it is, that does not matter. What matters is: I want to be the first. Even if it is hell, I
want to be the first. I don’t want to be second to anybody. Hence I think hell will be better, because in heaven
Buddha and Jesus and Zarathustra... and there are so many competitors. And I will have to stand in a queue,
and that I hate! I am ready to go to hell, I am ready to suffer in hell, but I want to be the first.”
The ego is always hankering to be the first. It says, ”My misery is bigger than anybody else’s. Whatsoever I
am, I am bigger, I am special, I am extraordinary.”