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

342 THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12
Never try to cultivate any quality.
Then what has to be done? Should one remain violent, disturbed, insane? No, Buddha says there is another
way, the right way. The right way is that these things should come as consequences consequences of inner
awareness. The magic of awareness is that the more you become alert, naturally, the more a calm surrounds you.
You need not cultivate it, it follows you like a shadow, it is simply your vibe. You are surrounded by a subtle
aura of peace, serenity. When you are aware inside, there is a grace radiating from your being. That grace is
spontaneous, not cultivated. And when something is spontaneous it has tremendous beauty. It is not an artificial
flower, it is not a plastic flower; it is something that has grown in you, that has bloomed in you. It is your own
flowering. It has fragrance because it has roots in your being.
Unless calmness comes as a shadow of awareness, beware of it. It is false, it is utterly futile. The whole effort
that you have put into cultivating it has been a sheer wastage. The same effort could have been put into becoming
aware.
That is the difference between morality and religion. Morality is a social phenomenon; society needs it because
society consists of millions of people. It has to keep a certain order, a certain discipline; otherwise there will
be chaos. Morality keeps that order. Morality creates a conscience in you. Conscience functions as an inner
policeman who does not allow you to do anything that is against the law or against the code or against the
tradition. Society has imprinted in your heart certain ideas and now you are dominated by those ideas. Even if
you go against those ideas they will torture you, they will become a nightmare to you. If you follow them you will
feel you are not tortured so much.
So the immoral person finds himself in two difficulties. One comes from the outside because he starts losing
people’s respect; and in this world respect is the most valuable thing in people’s eyes because it is a nourishment
for the ego. The moment you lose respect your ego starts dying, your ego is hurt, your ego is wounded. Secondly,
something inside you starts creating an inner torture for you your conscience. That conscience is also created by
the same society.
Hence, society pressures you from both sides, outer and inner. You are just crushed between these two rocks.
So cowards cannot be immoral people; cowards are always moral people. In fact they are not moral but only
cowards; because they are cowards they cannot be immoral that is too dangerous, too risky. And the moral
people, the so-called moral people, live a superficial life. They are bound to live a superficial life because their
conscience is not their own what else can be their own? They don’t possess even their own conscience, what else
can they possess? They are the poorest people in the world.
And they are not moral because they understand the beauty of being moral; they are moral simply because
they don’t have guts enough to be immoral. They follow the dictates of the society and the conscience just out of
fear. There is fear of the law and there is fear of hell; there is fear of the policeman and there is fear of God. They
are constantly trembling, their life is nothing but a constant trembling. Their prayers arise out of that trembling
naturally those prayers are false; they are fear-oriented. Even their conception of God is nothing but a projection
of their fear.
That’s why these people are rightly called God-fearing people. They are not God-loving people. And remember,
one who fears God can never love God, and one who loves God need never fear. Fear and love can’t exist together,
it is impossible. Their coexistence is not possible in the nature of things.
But society pays you enough to be moral, gives you as much ego as it is possible to give not only here but in
the afterworld too. There are also places, special places reserved for you in heaven. The sinner is suffering here
and the sinner will suffer in hell too, and the so-called saint is respected here and he is going to be respected in
the other world too.
This is a strategy, a very subtle psychological strategy of society to exploit you. But because of this strategy
you have completely lost track of real morality: a morality that is not dictated by fear, a morality that does not
arise out of cowardice, a morality that is not fear-oriented.
A totally different vision of morality has been given by the buddhas, by the awakened ones of all the ages.
Their vision is that real morality comes not out of conscience but out of consciousness. Become more conscious,
release more conscious energy in your being, explode into consciousness! and then you will see you are living a
life in absolute attunement with existence. Sometimes it may be in tune with society and sometimes it may not
be in tune with society, because society itself is not always in tune with existence. Whenever society is in tune
with existence you will be in tune with society; whenever society is not in tune with existence you will not be in
tune with society.
But the real moral person never cares, he is even ready to risk his life. Socrates did that, Jesus did that.
Buddha was constantly living in danger. This has always been the case, for the simple reason that they were