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

298 THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12
subtle. It was gross before, now it is very subtle...” seeing it, he laughed. These six years he had not laughed at
all, he had been serious. He laughed at the whole ridiculousness of the effort.
Spiritual effort is more ridiculous than the worldly effort. The worldly effort has a certain relevance, but the
spiritual effort has no relevance.
He relaxed obviously, naturally. Not that he made an effort to relax: relaxation came to him because there
was nothing to achieve, nowhere to go. Relaxation simply came to him; from the beyond something descended.
He fell into deep rest.
That night he slept for the first time without dreams. When there are no desires there are no dreams; dreams
are reflections of desires. That night there was no nightmare; for six years he had been suffering from many
nightmares. A nightmare simply says that you are desiring impossible things; hence your night is disturbed, your
sleep is disturbed. There is no rest; it is feverish, it is pathological, it is not healthy. For the first time in his life
he relaxed and slept well, totally, like a small child newly born.
Deeply rested, in the morning when he opened his eyes the last star was disappearing from the sky. Seeing the
last star disappear, the last trace of the ego disappeared in him. He had found it but he had found it without
any effort. It had happened, but it had happened not as a goal, not as an achievement it had happened out of
deep relaxation.
But remember, don’t start trying to relax; that is the most absurd thing in the world. And there are many
stupid people writing books about relaxation. I have come across one book the name of the book is You Must
Relax! Now that very word ’must’ is enough to keep you tense. Relaxation cannot be a ”must,” it cannot be an
effort.
Try one night to go to sleep, make an effort to go to sleep, and it will become more and more impossible for
you. Every night you go to sleep very easily. If you want to suffer from insomnia this is the sure method to suffer
from insomnia. Try, make an effort to go into sleep. Toss and turn and take long breaths and count sheep and
jog in the room and take a bath and do some Transcendental Meditation. And then naturally sleep will become
impossible, because all these things will be disturbances, distractions. How do you go to sleep? If somebody asks
you, will you ever be able to explain? How do you manage? Every night when you fall asleep you are doing a
miracle! You are moving from doing to nondoing, from action to no-action. How do you manage it? Is there any
art? Have you learned it? What is the trick in it? Try to think about it, and then you will never be able to sleep.
I have heard about one centipede the centipede has one hundred legs. The centipede was taking a morning
walk and a spider became very much intrigued. The spider must have been a mathematician or something like
that. He said, ”Uncle, can you satisfy my curiosity? How do you manage? One hundred legs! Which one to
put first and which one to put next and then... a hundred legs! You don’t fall, you don’t get confused? Do you
keep counting inside? If I had one hundred legs I am certain I would not be able to walk. My legs would become
entangled with each other, I would fall immediately.”
The centipede laughed. He said, ”You mathematicians, you are always asking nonsense questions! You know
that I am managing perfectly well but I have never thought about it. Let me think it over.”
So he tried to walk and think and he fell down immediately. He was very angry at the spider and he said,
”Listen! Never ask a centipede this question again now for my whole life I will be in trouble! I had never thought
about it, things were going perfectly well. I had never looked into the matter. Now that you have asked me I will
never be at ease until I have found the answer. Trying to figure it out... you see I am in a mess! Please never ask
any centipede. You have crippled me for my whole life. Now I don’t think that I will ever be able to walk. One
hundred legs! Of course you are right, and I don’t know how everything was being managed.”
If somebody asks you how you go to sleep, don’t try to find out the answer; otherwise you will suffer from
insomnia from that very day. People who suffer from insomnia, all that they need is to forget about sleep; there
is no need to worry about it. If you are not feeling sleepy, be happy, enjoy. Read something, listen to music, sing,
dance, go for a walk you are more fortunate than the people who are fast asleep and snoring. But forget all about
sleep. Watch the stars, enjoy the stars, feel yourself far more fortunate than the others, and you will fall asleep
without any effort on your part. But don’t make any effort.
Enlightenment is something like that. It is not a question of making effort.
Dharmapriya, you say, ”To me it feels like a very slow process.” It is not a process at all it is a jump, a
quantum leap! And it has nothing to do with learning; it is unlearning. You are conditioned. Enlightenment
means becoming unconditioned again, becoming a child again. You were a child once so you can be a child again.
You have just to put aside all kinds of rubbish that you have gathered around yourself. You have to jump out of
it, that’s all. It is not a question of a slow process of learning, it is simply a question of seeing the point.