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

THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 327
DESIRING NOTHING, DOUBTING NOTHING, BEYOND JUDGMENT AND SORROW.... The master
goes beyond judgment; hence there is no question of belief or doubt. He never judges; he never says, ”This is right
and that is wrong.” He has dropped the mind which is a constant process of judgment. The mind continuously
judges; its judgment has become an obsession.
You see the roseflower and before you have even seen it, the mind has said, ”It is beautiful.” You see a man
passing by and before you have seen the man rightly, the mind says, ”He is ugly.” The judgment is instantaneous,
it seems to take no time. You are continuously judgmental.
The master looks at the fact but has no judgments, because in fact beauty and ugliness all are our projections.
When you say a rose is beautiful it is your idea, nothing else. The rose is a rose is a rose; it is neither beautiful
nor ugly, it is simply itself. The ugly man is not ugly and the beautiful man is not beautiful; it is only a question
of your idea of what beauty is. Hence with different people different things are thought to be beautiful.
In China beauty has a different color, a different form; in India it has a different form and color, in Europe
obviously it is going to be different. Each country has its own idea of beauty and those ideas go on changing, they
come like fashions. One thing is beautiful today and tomorrow it becomes ugly; today it is ugly and tomorrow
suddenly it becomes beautiful.
Can you believe that Picasso’s paintings would have been thought beautiful just two hundred years ago?
Impossible! Not even a single person would have been found in the whole world who would have said they were
beautiful. And whosoever would have said they were beautiful would have been thought insane.
Vincent van Gogh could not sell one of his paintings, not even one, for the simple reason that everybody thought
they were just insane not only ugly but insane too. Now only two hundred paintings are in existence and each
painting has so much value that if those people come back and see that Vincent van Gogh’s paintings are being
sold for millions of dollars they will not be able to believe their eyes, what has happened to man. ”What kind of
beauty have people started seeing suddenly in Vincent van Gogh’s paintings? Nobody thought them beautiful.”
The idea of beauty has changed.
Modern poetry is not beautiful in the same way as Shakespearian poetry is; it is not beautiful in the same way
as Kalidas or Bhavabhuti, as Byron or Shelley. It is a totally different kind of beauty. Just our idea! If man
disappears from the earth there will be nothing beautiful and nothing ugly. Weeds will be as valuable as roses;
there will be no difference, there will be simple equality.
A master is one who has dropped all human ideas about things, hence he has no judgments. He lives in a
nonjudgmental way. And can you see? when you live in a nonjudgmental way you attain to great serenity,
naturally; nothing disturbs you, nothing offends you, nothing attracts you, nothing infatuates you.
BEYOND JUDGMENT and you are BEYOND SORROW. Buddha says: If you really want to go beyond
sorrow, go beyond judgment. But going beyond judgment means going beyond mind. Mind is judgmental; if you
live in the mind it will keep you tethered to all kinds of judgments. If you drop the mind then suddenly the whole
existence becomes available to you. For the first time you are unclouded.
”Come on, let’s screw,” the Italian told his new date five minutes after he called for her.
”Oh, you’re so sophisticated, Pietro,” she said.
”So sophisticated” after five minutes only! But in Italy it may be sophisticated; after five minutes, in India, it
will be rape and the girl will shout for the police. It will take months for you to woo the woman, to persuade her,
to bring her down to earth. It is a long, long process. But things in Italy seem to be quick: five minutes and she
says, ”You are so sophisticated, so cultured!” It all depends on your ideas.
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.
These four things have to be understood. The first is the senses and their pleasures; that is the lowest kind of
life. And remember, by calling it the ”lowest” Buddha is not judging it, it is not an evaluation it is simply stating
a fact. Just as you say ”the lowest rung of the ladder” there is no judgment. It is not bad, it is no more special
than the highest rung. It is simply a statement of fact. This has to be continuously remembered, otherwise you
will forget; you will start thinking that Buddha himself is judging. Then is he a master or not? He is not judging,
he is simply stating a fact.
Senses are the lowest because they are on the circumference, they are part of your body. There are people who
live only in the senses, they are still living like animals. Again remember, it is not a judgment: animals are not
bad, animals are not immoral. There is no question of hierarchy. But animals live in the body, and the man who
lives only in his senses is living an animal kind of life. He is living in the porch of his palace. Not that he is
immoral, but certainly he is unintelligent. He could have lived in the palace and he is living in the porch and
suffering the heat of the sun, and in the rains he suffers the rains and in the cold he suffers from the cold. He