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

THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 367
These few people have released so much consciousness into the world. With each buddha, with each person
becoming enlightened, humanity goes a little ahead, a step ahead. Hence the whole universe exalts him.
HE HAS VANQUISHED ALL THINGS. Buddha means by ”all things” the world of the mind; not that he has
vanquished all the things which are really there. You don’t live in reality, you live in your projections.
”The water is absolutely divine this morning,” enthused the pretty lass as she came out on the beach. ”It is
full of men!”
It is your projection. You live in a world of your own ideas.
”My wife deserted me,” moaned the unhappy husband. ”She took the car and ran off with a traveling salesman.”
”Why, that is terrible!” exclaimed his friend, aghast. ”Your brand new car!”
Everybody lives in his own world of ideas.
Buddha says: HE HAS VANQUISHED ALL THINGS. Now there is no world of ideas, he has vanquished the
mind. Once the mind disappears you can see things as they are in reality. Otherwise you never see them as they
are, you see them according to your ideas. You always look through your own projections; those projections are
subtle, but they color everything. You always look through your own prejudices; those prejudices are so close
to you that you are not aware that they are there. It is as if on the panes of your window a layer of dust has
gathered.
I have heard:
One old woman was looking out of a window and she said to the small boy playing outside, who must have
been her grandson, ”Bobby, today the morning seems to be very cloudy.”
And the boy said, ”Grandma, the day is perfectly fine as it always is. There are no clouds, it is just that on
our window much dust has gathered.”
But the old woman is not aware, may not be able to see; her eyes are weakening. She is not able to see that
the panes are dusty and she thinks the morning is cloudy.
Your window panes are dusty, but when they are so close to your eyes you become unaware of them; they are
colored, hence the whole world looks colored.
Buddha says: When you are full of power and all desires and all possessiveness have disappeared from you, that
means your mind has died, ceased to exist. Now you can see things as they are. HE SEES BY VIRTUE OF HIS
PURITY. Now everything is pure. He does not see through any screen, he sees through purity. Now he regains
the wonder of childhood again, the same awe, the same mystery.
HE HAS COME TO THE END OF THE WAY, OVER THE RIVER OF HIS MANY LIVES, HIS MANY
DEATHS.
And this is the end. When the mind ends, the journey ends. Now there will be no birth anymore and no death
anymore. You have been born millions of times and you have died millions of times. What have you been doing
all this time, all along? Nothing in fact, just playing the same games again and again and forgetting the lessons
again. It seems man never learns a thing. Each time he dies he forgets all the lessons of that life. Next time, next
birth, he starts from ABC again.
It happened:
A great king asked to be initiated by Buddha and became a bhikkhu, became his sannyasin. But he was just
a junior sannyasin; there were elders who had meditated for thirty years, forty years. So where Buddha was
staying in a caravanserai, the younger sannyasins not younger according to age, younger according to the time
of initiation.... This king was old and he was a great king, but in the world of Buddha those things don’t count,
neither the age nor the money nor the kingdom. He was the most junior because just that day he had taken
sannyas, so he had to sleep in the porch because there was no other place.
The king could not sleep; it was difficult, and one can understand his difficulty. He had never slept in such a
place. And you know Indian mosquitoes... and the king had never experienced mosquitoes. And the ground was
hard and the bhikkhus use no pillows, just their hands, their arms. He tossed and turned but he could not go to
sleep.
In the middle of the night he thought, ”What have I done? This seems to be stupid! I should be sleeping in
my palace, I had everything. This seems to be pointless. Tomorrow morning the first thing I am going to do is to
ask permission of the master: ’Please excuse me. I cannot tolerate such unnecessary misery. I am going back to
my palace.’”
But in the middle of the night Buddha came out and he said, ”Why wait for the morning? If you want to drop
sannyas, drop it right now! Why suffer the whole night?”
The king was amazed. He had not said it to anybody there was nobody else, he was alone in the porch. He
said, ”But how did you come to know? It was just a thought in me.”