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

THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 371
”Spirituality has nothing to do with doing, spirituality is the fragrance of being, and you are not a being yet.
You are still concerned that you have done this, you have done that.
”The ego is a doer, your self-nature is a non-doer. Your self-nature simply allows existence to flow through it,
it simply allows the ultimate law to function through it. Your self-nature is just a hollow bamboo. In the hands
of the ultimate nature it becomes a flute and a beautiful song is born out of it. But the flute cannot say, ’This
is my song. What is my merit? What am I going to gain out of it? To what heaven, to what joys will I attain?’
The bamboo flute is just nothing. Its whole being consists of nothingness. That’s why the song can flow through
it, it is utterly empty.”
Shocked but he could see the point Wu said, ”You are the first man who is not impressed by my great power,
money, my empire. You are the first man with whom I am feeling that something is possible. How can I drop
this ego? Yes, I can understand your point. First, I was claiming a great empire, now I am claiming something of
the beyond. But the claim is the same and the claimer is the same. I can see your point. I bow my head to you.
I am grateful that you have not been polite to me, that you have hit me hard. You have wounded me but I am
thankful. How can I drop this ego?”
And Bodhidharma asked, ”What ego do you want to drop? Again you want to do something. If you drop it,
then the ego will persist. This is the subtle game of ego: if you drop it, the ego starts coming from the back door.
It starts saying, ’Look! I have dropped the ego. Look how humble I am. There is nobody who is more humble
than me. I am the humblest person in the world just dust under your feet.’ But look into the eyes, look into
the heart of the man who is claiming that he is the humblest person it is the same ego. It is not egolessness.
Egolessness cannot claim humbleness. Egolessness cannot claim egolessness. Egolessness cannot claim at all, it
simply falls silent. It cannot even say, ’I am not, I am nobody’ because the ’I’ can exist in any claim whatsoever.”
The emperor asked, ”Then help me because I cannot get out of this ego.”
Bodhidharma said, ”Come early in the morning, three o’clock. Come alone, don’t bring anybody with you.
And don’t be worried I will finish it once and for all.”
The emperor could not sleep the whole night. ”What does he mean? this mad monk. He will finish it once
and for all? And the man looks so dangerous... and three o’clock is not the time to meet such a person. He can
do anything, he’s so unpredictable. And he has asked that I should come alone.”
Many times he decided not to go, but the pull was great, the man had something magnetic. He had to go.
At three o’clock he found himself getting ready. He went. Bodhidharma was staying outside the town in a small
temple. It was dark, and Bodhidharma was waiting... with his staff in his hand.
And he said, ”So you have come! although you hesitated much. You decided many times not to come. You
could not sleep the whole night, neither did you allow me to sleep because I had to go on pulling you. But now
that you have come things can be settled forever. Sit in front of me, close your eyes, go in, and find out where
the ego is! And don’t fall asleep because I am sitting in front of you with my staff. I will hit you on the head
immediately if you go to sleep! Be alert because when I hit I hit really hard. And find out.... If you can find the
ego, just show me that this is the ego and I will finish it. First you have to find it, where it is.”
The emperor followed the logic. He closed his eyes. It was impossible to fall asleep. Bodhidharma was sitting
there. Even with closed eyes he could see Bodhidharma sitting there, and once in a while Bodhidharma would hit
his staff on the ground just to let him know that ”I am here. You go on searching.”
Two hours passed, three hours passed. Wu looked and looked. For the first time he looked inside. In fact if
you look inside and you can remain alert, just for forty-eight minutes.... That is the limit. The ego can go on
eluding you only for forty-eight minutes, not more than that. This has been the experience of all the buddhas
down the ages. Now, don’t ask why forty-eight minutes, because that’s impossible to answer. It is just like at a
hundred degrees water evaporates, nobody asks why. Why not at ninety-nine degrees? Why not at a hundred
and one degrees? There is no question about it, it is simply so, the law of nature. At a hundred degrees water
evaporates. Exactly like that, if you can remain alert and watchful continuously without wavering, for forty-eight
minutes, your whole inner being becomes so quiet, so silent, so peaceful, so alert. For the first time there is clarity,
transparent clarity. You can see everything that is there.
And Wu looked and looked and looked and could not find any ego because ego cannot be found. It is fictitious,
it is just your idea, it has no substance in it. It is not even a shadow, what to say about substance? It exists
only because you have not looked in. Looking in, your light is discovered which is always there, you just have to
look in and find it. He was looking for the ego but he found the light, because the ego is not there and the light
is there. He had gone to search for the ego but he found the light. And once the light was found there was no
darkness.