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

334 THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12
All the religions were born thousands of years ago; everything has changed. Those religions don’t fit anymore,
they have no relevance, their context has disappeared. But they go on sitting on your head, heavy mountains,
and they don’t allow you to move. In fact, the older the religion, the more precious you think it is. It is not so:
the older the religion, the more irrelevant it is.
Religion has to be as new as life itself. Religion has to be new every day, each moment. And that’s how the
religious person lives: he goes on dying to the past every moment, he is born anew every moment. He moves with
life. He has no clinging to the Vedas and no clinging to the Bible and no clinging to the Koran. He can read
them as beautiful literature, but he does not cling to them. Those who cling to them are being stupid because
something may have been relevant two thousand years ago, but it has no meaning anymore. And you know it
perfectly well, but you don’t have courage enough to get out of the old fold.
All the vested interests are against you getting out of the old fold. All the vested interests want you to remain
committed to the past because then you can be exploited more easily. If you are not committed to the past
the priests will disappear, because they represent the past. Who will pay any attention to the pope or to the
shankaracharya? They will become laughingstocks! In fact they are ridiculous, utterly ridiculous. All their ideas
are so out-of-date that you go on tolerating them only because it is risky to say that they are out-of-date. It is
risky because you may lose something in your business, in your investment. You may start falling apart from the
society. You are afraid of being individuals, you want to remain part of the crowd.
And religion’s whole purpose is to make you individuals. Religion loses all meaning when it starts making
you, forcing you, in fact, to be part of the crowd. Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, Buddhist these are crowds.
You have not chosen to be a Christian; it is accidental that you are born a Christian or a Jew or a Hindu. How
can religion be accidental? Is such an important phenomenon decided by the accident of birth? You have to be
consciously alert to choose your path towards God. You have not chosen your path, you have not even chosen
God. You have been forced to choose, and you have allowed all this to happen. It is a bondage! Your being a
Christian is a bondage.
The people gathered around Christ were real Christians, were the only Christians, because they had chosen.
They were going against the crowd, they were risking their lives, they were moving in danger. They were born as
Jews. They would have been more comfortable, they would have lived more conveniently if they had not followed
Jesus. Following Jesus was dangerous. It proved dangerous to Jesus himself; he was crucified. His disciples were
victimized in every possible way. Those were real people, authentic people. To be a Christian now means nothing.
The people who were gathering around Gautama the Buddha were real Buddhists. They were religious people,
because going against the whole crowd of the Hindus, against the whole pattern of the society and following a
very rebellious man, being with him, was accepting the life of insecurity. They were genuine, authentic seekers.
But the man who is born a Buddhist has not risked anything; it is just a coincidence that he is born a Buddhist.
If you had been adopted by a Mohammedan when you were a small child you would have been a Mohammedan;
if you had been adopted by a Jew you would have been a Jew. And you would have never known who you were
by your birth, because nobody is born as a Christian or a Buddhist or a Hindu everybody is born free. God gives
you freedom to choose.
But society does not want you to be free. Neither the state nor the church nor other vested interests want you
to be free. They want to cripple you and paralyze you, they want to destroy your intelligence. They don’t want
you to be very happy either because happy people can be dangerous. Miserable people are good, miserable people
are always controllable, miserable people are always ready to become enslaved. They are so miserable, they are
always seeking somebody who can give them support, who can make their lives a little easier. The happy person
becomes independent; the happier he is, the more independent.
A Jesus or a Buddha or a Krishna or a Confucius, these are the most blissful people the earth has known.
They are utterly independent people. They don’t care a bit about what others say; they don’t bother about their
opinions for the simple reason that they don’t depend on anybody else. Their bliss is inner.
The society does not want you to be really blissful. It wants you to be sad and ill; it wants you to be pathological,
neurotic. Only a neurotic society can be dominated by the priests and the politicians. Only people who have lost
all intelligence can be led by idiots like Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. People who have intelligence can’t be
led by such people. These people are insane! In a better world, there won’t be any possibility of Adolf Hitlers.
The moment there is somebody like that he will be put in a mental asylum: he has to be treated, he is mad. But
right now these mad people have become very influential. Their very madness makes them powerful. They are so
mad that the people who are not so mad start following them. They look like leaders.
And people are different only in degrees. Somebody is more mad than you and you are a little less mad than
him; of course, one who is more mad than you is going to be your leader. He will be more stubborn, more