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

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284 THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 Once a high court judge came to me. His wife used to come to me. I was surprised, because the wife always used to say that he is very much against me and he does not want her to listen to me or read my books or to go and see me. But whenever I visited that city she was always coming. So I was surprised. I asked him, ”Your wife always says you are very much against me.” He said, ”Not that I am very much against you I am simply afraid that.... My wife is already crazy, and what you are saying, if it gets into her mind, she exaggerates everything. You will create more trouble for me.” I asked him, ”Why have you come?” He said, ”I have just come to say to you that if she says that she has cancer, reduce it to a headache. Don’t be bothered about her cancer. I have suffered my whole life. Then I have learned this lesson: she exaggerates.” And in fact that was the case. Every time she used to come she was talking about cancer. She was telling that she has cancer of the heart and this and that and the husband said she had nothing! Just a hypochondriac... she goes on exaggerating. A hypochondriac died. Before he was dying his wife asked, ”Have you some last words?” He said, ”Yes. On my gravestone write in big letters: Now do you believe me or not?” The first thing for you is to bring things down to the level of reality. It is difficult, Vandan, particularly so for a woman. They live in fancy. When you fall in love you think you have fallen in love with a Greek god, and by the time the honeymoon is finished you know he is nothing but a goddamned Greek! Within seven days the Greek god is nothing but a goddamned Greek. And again it will happen. Again you will fall in love, and again you will create a great fancy, you will create projections. And all your projections are going to be shattered sooner or later, because reality has no obligation to fulfill your projections. So first bring down your idea of misery to the fact, to the real. And then it is not difficult to get out of it. Then the second thing is to be aware of it. Just be aware of it, and you are out of it because you can be aware only if you are not it. That is the miracle of awareness. When you observe something one thing is certain, absolutely certain: that you are not it. The observer is never the observed. The observed is there as an object confronting you. You are the observer, you are the subject. So misery is there, pain is there or pleasure, or whatsoever experience is there you are not it. You are out of it! Two ham actors were moaning about how tough things were in the motion picture business. ”I haven’t had a part for over ten years,” one of the thespians sighed. ”That’s nothing,” the other ham said. ”I’ve not worked since sound pictures came in.” ”That’s really tough.” ”You bet it is. I wish to hell I could figure some way to get out of this business.” For forty years you are not in the business, and you are still figuring out how to get out of it! Just watch. These two steps, Vandan: first, bring your misery to the level of reality, and then watch it because only reality can be observed; fictions cannot be observed, you become identified with them. Once the reality is there, it is objective; watch it, and suddenly a great realization happens. You are the watcher, you are out of it. You ask me, ”How can I get out of it?” Vandan, you are out of it. Right now you are out of it! It is only an illusion that you are in it. If you want to believe you can go on believing that you are in it. Otherwise you can snap out of it any moment. Try. Try to snap out of it. Snap your fingers and slap your face and wake up! The third question: Question 3 BELOVED MASTER, ARE YOU AGAINST GARLIC? I HAVE BEEN EATING IT SINCE MY CHILDHOOD AND I DON’T THINK THAT IT STINKS. Virago, meditate over this story.... Forster sat in the posh offices of Park Avenue’s most famous physician. ”I’ve got this terrible problem,” he explained. ”Everything I eat turns to gas. I just had steak and potatoes and it turned to gas.” ”That could be serious,” countered the doctor. ”But fortunately,” said Forster, ”my gas is noiseless and odorless. Can you cure it?” ”I’m sure that I’ll be able to help, but first I’m going to fit you with a hearing aid and then I’m going to fix your nose.” The fourth question: Question 4
THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 285 BELOVED MASTER, RECENTLY YOU MENTIONED THAT THE SPIRITUAL EGO IS MORE DANGER- OUS THAN THE NORMAL EGO. CAN YOU EXPLAIN? Prem Unmado, all egos are dangerous, because the ego is a false entity. It does not exist, in fact. It is there because you are not aware of who you are. The ego is just like darkness. Darkness has no positive existence of its own; it is only the absence of light. Hence you cannot do anything directly with darkness. If you want to remove darkness you cannot remove it directly; you will have to bring light in. If you want to bring darkness in you cannot bring it directly either; you will have to put the light off. Whatsoever you want to do, you will have to do with the light, because the light has existence. Darkness has no existence, and with the nonexistential nothing can be done. The ego is nonexistential, it is a nonentity. It is the absence of awareness, of alertness. You are not conscious; hence the ego prevails, hence the darkness remains. All egos are dangerous, because you are living in something which is not. You are living for something which is not, you are sacrificing that which is for something that is not. This is the danger. A real life is being sacrificed at the altar of the nonexistential ego. You are running after money, after power, after prestige, but in fact nobody is really interested in power, money, prestige. They are just ways of the ego to exist. If you have more money you can have more ego; if you have more power you can have more ego. The basic desire is to expand the ego, but the more your ego becomes strengthened, the more the darkness becomes dense, the less is the possibility of your becoming aware. And without becoming aware you are missing the whole opportunity of life, a golden opportunity, in which God can be realized, in which truth can be lived. A life which can be a constant celebration, an eternal joy, is sacrificed for something absolutely meaningless. Hence, remember, all egos are dangerous. But the spiritual ego is the most dangerous simply because all other egos are gross. You can see that the politician is after his ego, you can see even the politician in some moments can see it. It is very gross, how can you avoid seeing it? You are bound to stumble on it, it is like a rock. But the spiritual ego is very subtle, it is like fragrance. You don’t stumble, it does not hit you like a rock. You cannot remove it so easily as you can remove a rock. It is a subtle fragrance. The more spiritual you become, the more your ego becomes subtler and subtler. Your ego becomes pious, and when the poison is pious, of course it is more dangerous, because you think it is nectar. Now, the label is nectar; inside the bottle is the same poison. Hence your saints are more egoistic than your sinners. There is every hope for the sinners, they can reach to God far more easily than your so-called saints. Your saints are living with such egoistic attitudes, they are full of holy cow dung, rubbish. The man of the world claims that he has so much money and the religious man claims he has so much virtue. The worldly man claims he has so much power, so much prestige, and your so-called holy man claims he also has power, spiritual power. He tries to show his spiritual power. Once such a so-called spiritual man came to see Ramakrishna. Ramakrishna was sitting on the bank of the Ganges in Dakshineshwar, where he used to live. The spiritual man said to Ramakrishna, ”I have heard that you are a great saint. If you really are, then come with me and walk on the water. If you can walk on the water then I can believe that you are spiritual.” Ramakrishna laughed. He said, ”Can you walk...?” The man said, ”Yes, I can walk.” Ramakrishna asked him, ”How long did it take you to learn to walk on the water?” The man said, ”It took me eighteen years of tremendous effort, austerities, tapascharya, fasting, prayer. I lived in a cave in the Himalayas. I sacrificed everything. Then this spiritual power has been given to me.” Ramakrishna said, ”I am not spiritual, I am a simple man, very ordinary. But one thing I would like to tell you. When I want to go to the other shore, the ferryman takes me for just one paisa. Your whole eighteen years’ effort is not worth much more than that. You wasted your eighteen years. You may be spiritual, but you are a fool, you are utterly stupid! I have never come across such an unintelligent person wasting eighteen years just to walk on water! Then what is the point? Okay, you can walk on water, so what?” This is the spiritual ego, which will go sooner or later to exhibit its powers, to prove that ”I am holier than you.” That man had come with that idea to prove to Ramakrishna that ”I am holier than you, I am higher than you.” It is meaningless. Buddha is not reported to have done any miracle. Mahavira is not reported to have done any miracle. And my own understanding is that all the miracles that are talked of in the name of Jesus are inventions. (the sound fails....) You see? Some Christian got mad! They are all inventions of the Christians.
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