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

362 THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12
Whenever you have time, whenever you are unoccupied, suddenly the inner hollowness starts opening up and
you become afraid. It is like an abyss, you are afraid you may slip into it. Hang onto something, invent something
if there is nothing else to hang on to.
That’s why people are even ready to cling to their misery; nobody is ready to drop his misery easily. That’s
my experience of working with thousands of people. All their problems can be reduced to one problem, that
they cling to their misery. It is very difficult for them to drop their miseries because their miseries keep them
occupied. Their miseries help them to avoid themselves and their inner hollowness, emptiness, meaninglessness.
Their miseries are nothing but a way to escape. Of course those miseries are hurting; hence they talk about how
to get rid of them, but they cannot drop them because dropping them means they will be left empty.
So they are in a double bind: they don’t want to be miserable and yet they cannot drop their miseries. Miseries
are not clinging to you, remember you are clinging to your miseries.
You can drop your miseries only when some inner meaning starts flowering in you. Miseries can be dropped
only when meditation starts blooming in you because then you start enjoying your emptiness, it is no longer
empty. Emptiness itself starts having a positive fragrance; it isn’t negative anymore. That’s the whole magic
of meditation: it transforms your emptiness into a positive fulfillment, into something overwhelming. Emptiness
becomes silence, emptiness becomes peace, and emptiness becomes divine, it becomes godliness.
There is no greater magic than meditation. To transform the negative into the positive, to transform darkness
into light, that is the miracle of meditation. To transform a trembling person into a fearless soul, to transform
a person who was clinging to every stupid thing into a nonclinger, into a nonpossessor, that is what happens
through meditation.
Buddha used to call meditation a great sword, it cuts your problems at the very root. It makes you aware that
you need not be afraid of your inner abyss. It is beautiful, it is blissful. You have not experienced its bliss and
beauty because you have never gone into it, you have always been escaping. You have not tasted of it; it is nectar,
it is not poison. But how are you going to know without tasting it? You are running away from something which
can become your life’s fulfillment. You are running away from something which is the only thing worth achieving.
You are running away from yourself.
POSSESSING NOTHING, WANTING NOTHING.... Buddha says that’s where meditation brings the master.
He is no longer interested in possessing and he is no longer desiring anything. All desires have left him because
he has found the ultimate beyond which there is nothing else. He has found the inexhaustible treasure of joy,
of bliss, of ecstasy. What else can he desire? He has found a mine of diamonds; now he cannot go on collecting
colored stones and seashells on the seabeach. Now that whole activity is stupid not that he renounces it.
That is one of the most significant things to be remembered: the real sannyasin never renounces anything, he
simply understands his own inner world its beauty, its benediction, its blissfulness. And understanding it, great
renunciation happens of its own accord. All that is futile slips out of his hands, he cannot cling to it anymore.
He becomes nonpossessive. Nothing is so important to cling to anymore. Everything of this world becomes just
a toy to play with, good for those who are not yet grown up but a meditator has become adult.
Only a meditator becomes adult. Otherwise, your chronological age may be seventy, eighty or ninety, it does not
matter you are only an old child... ninety years old but still immature because still interested in toys, still carrying
your teddy bears, still interested in possessing more and more toys. Children can be forgiven, but you cannot
be forgiven. Only a meditator comes of age; for the first time he becomes mature, grown-up. All childishness
disappears from him.
And the beauty is, when all childishness disappears from you, you again become childlike but on a different
plane. No childishness but absolutely childlike the same purity, the same innocence, the same wonder, the same
awe. Again existence becomes a mystery. But it is not that you are childish you are childlike. It is a totally
different phenomenon. Childishness is immaturity; to have a childlike purity is maturity. They are polar opposites.
POSSESSING NOTHING, WANTING NOTHING... the master is at home. He is no longer running after
shadows, he is not running at all. Just now to say to you that you are also buddhas will look absurd; at least to
you it will look absurd. You will listen, you love me and you will try to understand what I am saying, but deep
down you will not be convinced that you are buddhas.
That’s why we have been finding every possible rationalization to prove to ourselves that buddhas are a totally
different race. Every country has tried to prove to its own heart’s content that ”Buddha belongs to some other
plane of existence, Christ belongs to some other plane of existence. They are amongst us, but they are totally
different from us. They are strangers, they are outsiders. Whatsoever they say is true, but it is not applicable
to us, it has no relevance to our world. We live in an ordinary world and they come from some extraordinary
existence from the beyond.”