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

THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 3
Yes, out of fear and greed you can give a little meaning to life, but it is so arbitrary, so artificial, that there is
not a single individual on the earth who is so stupid that sooner or later he will not see the falsity of it.
And now man has come of age; hence religions are disappearing. There is no possibility in the future for
Christianity, for Islam, for Hinduism, for Judaism, to exist. And if they want to exist they will have to change
their whole outlook, their very foundations.
But there is every possibility for Buddha and his message to prevail. In fact, his day has come. He came
twenty-five centuries ahead of his time. Now is the time, the right time for him. He does not talk of fear, he
does not talk of greed, he does not talk of hell and heaven, he does not talk even about God. He is so modern,
so contemporary; he belongs to our century. Even we are not so contemporary as he is. He destroys all the old
structures. He frees religion from all frozen ideologies. He brings many revolutionary changes in the religious
outlook.
First he says there is no need to be knowledgeable; one has to be innocent. It is through innocence that the
truth is known, not through knowledge.
A neighbor was saying, ”Your cat was making an awful noise last night.”
The other replied, ”You are right. Ever since she ate the canary, she thinks she can sing.”
You can go on eating the scriptures; you will not be able to sing at all. You can know all the Vedas, the
Upanishads, the Gitas, the Korans, the Bibles, but you will remain as stupid as ever. Of course you will start
bragging about your knowledgeability. You will start showing it, you will become an exhibitionist. Even when
you don’t know anything you will pretend that you know.
Spinster Peabody’s proudest possession was Count, her exquisite cat. Unfortunately, he had been missing for
two days. When she opened the freezer door, Miss Peabody nearly died of shock. There was Count frozen solid.
She immediately called the priest, who said there still might be a chance to save the poor animal. ”Give it two
tablespoons of gasoline,” he told her.
With trembling hands, Miss Peabody opened Count’s mouth and carefully spooned in the priest’s strange
prescription.
The seconds ticked away and nothing happened. She was about to give up hope when suddenly the cat opened
his eyes, let out an ear-piercing screech and shot across the room at a hundred miles per hour, running over the
furniture, the walls, even the ceiling. Count kept this up for two minutes and then suddenly stopped dead in his
tracks, not moving a muscle.
Miss Peabody called the priest again.
”What do you think happened?” she asked.
”Simple,” said the priest. ”He ran out of gas.”
The priests have all the answers. Ask them anything, any stupid thing. They can’t say, ”We don’t know,”
that is impossible. The priests have never said that they are ignorant; their whole business depends upon their
knowledgeability.
Socrates says: I know only one thing, that I know nothing. That is exactly Buddha’s approach too and Socrates
and Buddha were contemporaries; they have much in common. If Socrates was born in India he would have been
called a buddha. He also trusts innocence, the innocence of a child who knows nothing. If you can become a child
again, then only the doors of the mysterious can open for you. You can see. The dust on your eyes is nothing but
knowledge, information, scripture.
The psychotherapists are called by people ”shrinks”; they are! A psychotherapist’s whole effort is to reduce
you; he is a reductionist. He studies rats, and whatsoever he comes to know about the rats he applies to you. It
is so disgusting, so humiliating, so absurd, illogical! He studies the lowest to know the highest.
You can know nothing of the flower by studying the seed, by dissecting the seed, by analyzing the seed. For
thousands of years you can go on analyzing the seed; you will never come across the colors of the rose, the lotus,
or the fragrance. You will never know what fragrance was hidden in the seed. Analysis cannot yield it to you.
Studying rats and then applying that knowledge to man is simply saying that man is nothing but a kind of
animal, a little more complex maybe, but nothing more than that. Reductionism means always bringing things
to ”nothing buts.”
The real understanding of man is only possible not by studying the rats but by studying the buddhas, the
christs, the krishnas the highest. By studying the peaks you will know exactly who you are, not by the lowest
denominator but by the highest manifestation. When you study a buddha, a great longing arises in you to reach
to those heights. When you study rats, then there is no longing. In fact, you feel very satisfied whatsoever you
are. In fact, you feel greatly contented that you are a little better than the rats, a little more complex, a little
more clever. You feel gratified. Religion disappears.