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

THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 313
them. You will remain afraid your whole life if you repress anything. Repression creates fear, because you know
it is there any opportunity and it can arise again.
My approach is also the same: don’t repress anything watch. Nothing has to be repressed, everything has to
be watched. Just by being watchful things start dropping on their own. And then there is a beauty because a
silence comes to you, a stillness comes to you which is not forced, not cultivated.
HE OFFENDS NO ONE. YET HE SPEAKS THE TRUTH. HIS WORDS ARE CLEAR BUT NEVER HARSH.
HE OFFENDS NO ONE he cannot because all violence has disappeared from him but HE SPEAKS THE
TRUTH. If truth offends you, then he is helpless. There is no intention to offend you, but if you are living in lies
then truth offends. About that the master cannot do anything, he has to say the truth. In fact, he says only the
truth; otherwise he is not interested in saying anything to you.
The little baby was very quiet. He never cried or chuckled or said ”Mama” or ”Dadda.”
When he was three, the parents began to get rather worried, thinking he might never talk at all.
At last, when the child was seven years old, he suddenly spoke. They were sitting having lunch when he said,
”Not enough salt.”
”Good gracious!” exclaimed his mother. Then she asked, ”How is it that in seven years you have never said a
word?”
”Well,” said the child, ”up to now everything has been all right!”
The master speaks only if something is wrong; otherwise he keeps quiet, he remains silent. He speaks only if
something is wrong. But that can hurt you, that can offend you. To show that something is wrong with you seems
to be offensive to you. You love to be appreciated, not criticized. You love to be buttressed, not to be criticized.
You love that your lies should be supported, not destroyed. But about that the master cannot do anything. He
has to shatter your lies, he has to bring the truth to your notice. If truth hurts, then that is another matter;
otherwise, the master has no intention of hurting anybody. HIS WORDS ARE CLEAR BUT NEVER HARSH.
”How was Lady Hastings’ party?” Lord Peter was asked.
With an absentminded, faraway glance in his eyes, he said, ”Had the soup been as warm as the wine, had the
wine been as old as the chicken, had the chicken been as tender as the maid and had the maid been as willing as
the Lady, it would have been a great party!”
The master will not be that roundabout. He will simply say it clearly, although he is not harsh. But he can
appear harsh to you that is your problem. He is always sweet, and if sometimes he appears harsh to you, ponder
over it, why he appeared harsh to you. Maybe something was inside you that started pinching, that started
hurting. Maybe there was a wound inside you that you were hiding and the master hit the wound. He has to hit
your wounds. He has to pull much pus out of your being. It hurts. The master is a surgeon.
Buddha himself has said again and again: I am not a preacher but a physician.
WHATEVER IS NOT HIS HE REFUSES, GOOD OR BAD, GREAT OR SMALL.
That’s exactly the definition of meditation according to Buddha and according to all other buddhas too. Watch
your mind, and whatever is not yours, whether it is good or bad, great or small, don’t get identified with it, don’t
accept it, go on refusing.
In the East this method is called even prior to Buddha it was called neti, neti, neither this nor that. Go on
saying that ”I am not this, I am not this, I am not that either.” Go on rejecting inside your being whatsoever you
can observe you are not.
Slowly, slowly eliminating all that you are not, one day only that is left which you are. That day is a day of
great rejoicing. Then the watcher turns over onto itself. Nothing else to watch, it starts watching itself. Nothing
else to see, it starts seeing itself. That is the moment you become a seer. That is the moment your wisdom
explodes. That is the moment when darkness disappears and there is just light and light and nothing else.
HE WANTS NOTHING FROM THIS WORLD AND NOTHING FROM THE NEXT. HE IS FREE.
Once you know that all that the mind contains is not you, all that the mind craves is not you, all that the
mind is hungry for is not you, you are becoming free. Slowly, slowly desires disappear. Seeing that all desires are
basically futile, that all desires end in frustration, seeing it on your own not because I say it or the Buddha says
it seeing it on your own, desiring evaporates. You are left without any desire and there is no smoke of desire.
Your flame of awareness burns bright, and freedom is the fragrance of that flowering of awareness.
Ordinarily we are living like robots. Ordinarily we are living mechanically. We are not conscious at all, although
we believe that we are conscious. We are not conscious at all. And because we are not conscious, if we drop the
desires of this world, then we start desiring something in the other world. It is absolutely ridiculous.
See your so-called saints and mahatmas desiring the same things that they have dropped desiring in this world,
but now they are desiring the same things in the other world.... Mohammedans believe that in their paradise there