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

324 THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12
”My boy has taken up meditation,” said one.
The other replied, ”Well, I suppose it’s better than sitting around doing nothing.”
But that’s exactly what meditation is: sitting around doing nothing really nothing, not even inside, not even
thinking, not even feeling. When action as such stops in toto, meditation begins. When doing ceases utterly,
categorically, when there is no movement in your being, then for the first time there is the flowering of meditation.
So listen to these words. These words are beautiful if understood rightly which is very difficult because you
are so unconscious, you are so blind. You are living in a state of stupor. You are almost drunk although you
never think of it that way. You may see the drunkenness of others, but you never think that you are also drunk
drunk with greed, lust, ambition, ego. And these are more alcoholic than any alcohol.
One of the greatest problems with man is: he can see very easily that others are wrong but he cannot see that
he himself is in the same boat.
Two pink elephants walked into a pub.
The barman looked up and said, ”He’s not here yet!”
Get it? He is thinking of some other drunkard who sees pink elephants. He is not drunk, it is some other guy
who gets drunk and starts seeing pink elephants. Now he is seeing them, but he is telling the elephants, ”Wait,
he has not come yet. He must be coming sooner or later.”
The moment you start seeing your own state, a great, radical change sets in.
So listen to these sutras with great alertness, awareness, not in a kind of half-asleep, half-awake state. People
are mostly in that state twenty-four hours a day: half asleep, half awake. Something they hear, something is
always missed. And the trouble is that whatsoever is more significant is always missed because that is beyond
their capacity. Whatsoever is nonessential is immediately heard, is understood by them; that is within their
capacity. But they go on forgetting the essential even if they hear it.
Just watch yourself. Understanding a Buddha, a Christ, a Krishna is one of the greatest exercises in awareness.
Paul was riding his bicycle on a blistering hot summer day. But the heat and fatigue had finally so gotten to
him that he stopped and sat down beside the road. Minutes later, a small Mercedes pulled up.
”Anything wrong?” asked the man behind the wheel.
”No, sir, I’m on my way to town,” replied the black boy. ”I’m just plumb tuckered out.”
”As you can see I don’t have enough room for you and your bicycle,” said the occupant of the Mercedes. ”But
if you tie your bike to my rear bumper you can sit on it and I will tow you.”
In a few moments the car, pulling the black boy on his bicycle, headed down the highway. At the first stop-light
a Jaguar pulled alongside. ”Hey,” said the man inside, ”wanna race?”
”You got it!” was the reply.
They were soon racing at over one hundred and twenty miles an hour, the Mercedes driver having completely
forgotten about the black boy behind him on the bike.
Both cars were up to one hundred and forty when they passed a squad car. The bewildered police officer quickly
picked up his radio mike. ”Hey, Sarge, you ain’t gonna believe this!” he shouted. ”A Jaguar’s racing a Mercedes
all hell bent for leather, and there’s some white kid keeping up with them on a bicycle!”
Listen to these beautiful sutras very consciously, meditatively, in tremendous reverence, in deep trust, because
Buddha is revealing the greatest secrets of life.
DESIRING NOTHING, DOUBTING NOTHING, BEYOND JUDGMENT AND SORROW AND THE PLEA-
SURES OF THE SENSES, HE HAS MOVED BEYOND TIME. HE IS PURE AND FREE.
Go slowly each word is significant. DESIRING NOTHING, DOUBTING NOTHING.... You have been told
by the priests down the ages, ”Don’t doubt, drop doubting.” But why in the first place do you doubt? You doubt
because you desire. Buddha is bringing the very root of the problem to your consciousness. If a man desires
nothing he has no need to doubt anything at all; it is desire that brings doubt in its wake.
This is something very special, nobody has said it so clearly. In fact, nobody had said it before Buddha. If you
desire you cannot get rid of doubt because desire brings belief and belief brings doubt. And what your priests are
doing is simply ridiculous. They insist that you should believe and you should not doubt. They are putting you
in a difficult situation which is impossible to maintain. If you believe, you are bound to doubt; all believers are
doubters. This is the great insight of Buddha: no believer can ever get rid of doubt.
Belief means basically that there is doubt and you are covering it with belief. Doubt is there like a wound and
you are covering it with beautiful flowers of belief. But by covering a wound with flowers you are not curing it,
it is not being healed. In fact by covering it you will make it far more dangerous. It will be growing deep inside
you, it will go on spreading; it will become a cancer finally. Why do you believe in the first place? If you don’t
doubt, what is the need to believe?