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

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332 THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 it away. He sees it now. And all that is not his is going to be taken away whether you cling to it or not, so what is the point of clinging? Why waste time? He never hesitates his clarity is such. For a master it is never a question of deciding between alternatives; he simply sees... and he acts. It is not a question of either/or. Never! He sees the door and goes out through it. It is not a question of deciding whether to go through the wall or through the door. It is always a question for you to decide whether to go through the wall or through the door. In fact, the wall looks more appealing because millions of times you have tried through the wall and you are really angry at the wall and you want to prove that one day you are going to defeat this wall. This dumb wall has been defeating you again and again; you want to take revenge. In fact, you can’t see the door; you only see this wall and that wall. It is always a question of choosing which wall you want to go through. For the master it is never a question of choice. He lives choicelessly because he lives consciously. He is alert, he has eyes to see, and you are blind; hence you always hesitate. Because he has no fear, no clinging, no hesitation: HE HAS FOUND PEACE. Naturally, there is tremendous peace in his being. CALMLY HE LETS GO OF LIFE, OF HOME AND PLEASURE AND DESIRE. CALMLY HE LETS GO OF LIFE.... He does not make any fuss about it, he does not brag about renunciation. Whatsoever he sees is futile, he drops it. In fact, to say he drops it is not right he lets it go, he allows it to be dropped. He does not resist, that’s all. He makes no effort to keep it. And very calmly, without any effort. His life is effortless. OF HOME.... Home represents security he drops the idea of security. What security can there be here when death is going to take everything away? In this life there can be no security, on this shore there is no security; hence he does not bother about security. AND PLEASURE... because he knows pleasure always brings pain. He has seen it clearly, that pleasure is only a facade; behind it comes hidden pain. He can see through and through; hence he lets it go. And desire he has lived for many, many lives and seen that it is unfulfillable. It is always after more: the more you have, the more you ask for. It is an absolutely absurd exercise in futility. Seen, all these things start disappearing from his life. Not that he renounces.... That’s what my emphasis is: never renounce anything. If things are worthless they will fall of their own accord. And when things fall of their own accord there is tremendous beauty in them, because they leave you peaceful, calm and quiet, collected and centered. NOTHING OF MEN CAN HOLD HIM. NOTHING OF THE GODS CAN HOLD HIM. NOTHING IN ALL CREATION CAN HOLD HIM. When there is no desire, what can hold him? What can make him a prisoner? Neither this world nor the other world, neither the earth nor paradise. All the religions of the world talk about heaven and hell. Buddha says there is something beyond heaven and hell and that is the true existence. He calls it nirvana. No other religion talks about nirvana; nirvana is a totally different vision. It means you are not hankering for heavenly desires, heavenly joys and pleasures, because it is the same stupidity again repeated on a bigger scale, on a higher plane, but the stupidity is the same. The master knows the futility of desire; hence he has no desire for heaven, he has no desire at all. Nothing binds him and nothing holds him. DESIRE HAS LEFT HIM, NEVER TO RETURN. ... Because he has seen that it is futile. If you drop it because I am saying it, then it will return again and again. If you drop it out of your own experience through meditation, then it has gone forever, NEVER TO RETURN. SORROW HAS LEFT HIM, NEVER TO RETURN. And sorrow is only a shadow of desire. Remember it always: everything has to happen to you through your own experience. Buddha’s last words to his disciples were: Be a light unto yourself. And how can you be a light unto yourself? Go beyond the body, the mind, the heart. Find the center of your being and suddenly there is light. It is already there, it is already burning bright. It is your very being; you just have to discover it. Discovering it one discovers truth. Discovering it one discovers peace. Discovering it one discovers bliss, nirvana. Enough for today. The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol. 12 Chapter 6 Life, love, laughter Audio:Yes Video:Yes Length:40 mins
THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 333 The first question: Question 1 BELOVED MASTER, RAMAKRISHNA STAYED IN HIS BODY THROUGH SHOWING INTEREST IN FOOD. NOW TELL ME THE TRUTH IS IT THE JOKES THAT KEEP YOU HERE? Anand Masta, yes, in a way it is true. Religion has for centuries lacked many things. One of the most important of them all is laughter; religion has been too serious. Seriousness is a kind of disease: it is the cancer of the soul. It is very destructive, it is suicidal. Hence, if you don’t see religion flowering on the earth although there are three hundred religions, millions of churches, temples, mosques, still the earth goes on missing religious consciousness the simple reason is that seriousness has killed religion. Seriousness tends to become sad. You cannot be serious without being sad; they are two sides of the same coin. And you can be serious and sad only if you have missed your roots in life and existence. Only the pathological people are serious; the healthy, the whole will never be serious, cannot be serious. It was one of the most unfortunate accidents in human history that religion became associated with seriousness. That association has to be destroyed, mercilessly destroyed. Religion has to be freed from the imprisonment of seriousness. Only then will it be healthy, only then will it be able to sing and dance and rejoice. The serious religion has always been rooted in the idea that there is something wrong in life, something basically wrong in life, as if life is a punishment. Life is a gift of God, not a punishment. And there is nothing wrong in life. If something is wrong it must be in you. You don’t know the art of living, you are incapable of moving into the depth and into the mystery of life. You must be a coward; hence you cling to the shore, to the known, to the familiar. And life always goes on moving into the unknown. Life is adventurous and you are a coward, hence you soon part company. Life goes on its way of adventure and you cling to your security. Clinging to your security you become dead, and when you become dead, life seems to be a drag, a dull affair. In fact, you have lost contact with life. It is as if you uproot a rosebush from the earth soon it will start dying, it will lose its greenness, its roses will wither away. Nothing is wrong with the rosebush, nothing is wrong with the earth either, only you have disconnected them. The rosebush needs nourishment, then it can bloom in thousands of flowers, it can have all the green of the world and all the red and all the gold. Man also is a rosebush. He needs his own soil, he needs roots into existence. When you are born you are born only with the potential to exist, to survive, not with the art of making life a joy, a bliss, a celebration. That art has to be learned. To me, religion is that very art, the supreme art: the art of transforming the lower into the higher. Religion to me is alchemy. It is the process of transforming the potential into the actual. Man has lived at the minimum; hence he looks so dull. Man can live at the maximum and then there will be great brilliance and great radiance and then there will be great flowering. Laughter is as precious as prayer or even more precious than prayer, because the man who cannot laugh cannot pray either. A prayer that does not come out of a joyous heart is already dead. It cannot reach God, it cannot leave the earth, it has no wings. It is like a rock: it will fall back to the earth, it cannot fly into the sky. Religion has lived without laughter, that’s why religion has been a corpse. And you are worshipping corpses in your churches and in your temples and in your mosques, you have become worshippers of death. Rather than worshipping life you have been worshipping death. My approach is totally different I bring you a new vision. Religion is against laughter, is against love, is against rejoicing, is against celebration. The religious person, the so-called religious person, condemns everything of this world; he lives surrounded by a thousand and one condemnations. He lives in fear, in trembling. He does not live, he only vegetates. Your so-called saints and mahatmas are not real people, they don’t have the guts to be real, they are phony. But you have worshipped them for so long, and you still go on worshipping them. And the reason you worship them is because they are so dead, because they are so serious, because they are so ugly, because their whole approach towards life is so negative. They are anti-life, anti-love, anti-laughter how can they be for God? It is only through love and laughter and a tremendous joy in life that you start feeling the presence of something that is beyond. When life becomes an adventure, a dance of ecstasy, then only do you move beyond the confinement of the body and the mind and soar high towards the infinite. Yes, Masta, you can say I live on your laughter. I rejoice seeing you dance, sing and laugh. I rejoice seeing you in deep love. I rejoice seeing you dropping the garbage of centuries, the rotten, stupid superstitions of centuries. I rejoice seeing you getting out of the old, being born anew.
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