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

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372 THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 Three hours passed and then the sun was rising, and Wu’s face was transformed. He had a new beauty, a new grace. Bodhidharma laughed and he said, ”Now, open your eyes. You have not been able to find it... so I have finished it forever.” Wu opened his eyes, touched Bodhidharma’s feet and said, ”Master, you have not done anything and yet you have finished it.” That’s the miracle of a master; he never does a thing, and yet the ultimate miracle happens in his presence. His presence is the miracle, his presence has the magical quality. Anand Vedant, you need not drop the ego. Just look in, search for where it is first find it. Don’t worry about self-nature right now. Just go in, search for the ego, and you will not find it; instead you will find your self-nature, luminous, fragrant like a lotus flower. One never comes across such beauty anywhere else. It is the most beautiful experience of life. And once you have seen your own lotus of light, your own lotus blossoming, the ego is finished forever. Then you will not ask such meaningless questions. ”How to distinguish,” you say, ”between what is the ego and what is my true nature?” Either the ego is there, then the true nature is not known; or the true nature is known, then there is no ego left. You cannot have both, hence you cannot make any distinctions; you cannot distinguish them, they can’t both be present together. Only one can be present. Right now, whatsoever you are is ego, so don’t be worried about distinguishing. If there were no ego the question would not have arisen at all. Self-nature knows no questions, self-nature is ecstasy, not a problem. The second question: Question 2 BELOVED MASTER, PLEASE TELL ME WHAT THE DIFFERENCE IS BETWEEN SURRENDERING TO A MASTER AND FOLLOWING A MASTER? Edward Kiefer, there is a great difference. They are poles apart. Surrendering to a master is something of the heart, it is a love affair, it is not an intellectual conviction. It is not that you are convinced intellectually that what the master is saying is right. It is not philosophical. What the master is saying may be absurd in fact, it is bound to be absurd, because he speaks from a totally different kind of vision, from the peak where opposites meet, where the ultimate synthesis has happened, where life and death are one, where man and woman are one, where negative and positive are one. Hence whatsoever he says is bound to be paradoxical. Surrendering to a master means you have felt his grace. It is not a question of his knowledgeability. He may not be knowledgeable at all. Jesus was not knowledgeable. Mohammed was not even able to read or write, he was not even able to sign his own name. But thousands fell in deep love with the man. He had no logical acumen. If you go into the Koran you will not find great philosophy simple statements which can be refuted very easily. But the man must have had something totally different. So many people gravitated towards him. Now you cannot see gravitation; it is an energy, it is a force, invisible. It is a communion, heart-to-heart. The master’s presence overwhelms you, then surrender happens. It is not something that you do. You cannot do surrender, remember. Surrender done is not surrender at all, because you can withdraw. Any day you can say, ”I take back my surrender.” Surrender is something that happens. Sometimes it happens even in spite of you, you never wanted it to happen, you resisted it. People resist to the very end; when it becomes impossible to resist, only then do they surrender, because surrender goes against the ego, it shatters your ego. The very idea of surrendering to someone is against your whole upbringing, your whole education, your whole psychology. You are brought up with the idea of having a strong ego. Surrender means you are dropping your whole upbringing, you are pushing aside all your knowledge, you are bypassing your mind, you are allowing the heart to say ”Yes!” a total yes. It is a happening, not a doing. It is just like falling in love. What is the difference between falling in love and marriage, an arranged marriage? Exactly that is the difference between surrendering to a master and following a master. Surrendering to a master is like falling in love. The force is irresistible. You are behaving like a madman. The master is mad, now you are becoming mad. The master is like a flame, and you are moving towards the flame like a moth, to your own death. Following a master is a safe phenomenon, like an arranged marriage. You are moving on safe ground. You think about everything about the family of the woman or the man, about their economic status, about their social prestige, about everything except love. It is a calculated phenomenon. There is no risk in it. And not to take any chances you go to the astrologer so that he can even predict the future, how things will be going in the future: ”Will I be sailing safely?” You make everything safe before you take the plunge. It is not a jump, it is a calculated step. And that’s what following a master is. It is intellectual, it is of the mind, it is of the head. You are trying to understand intellectually, logically what he is saying. Does it appeal to you?
THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 373 And who are you and what do you know? And how are you going to judge whether he is right or wrong? according to your prejudices, according to your conditioning? A Christian coming across Jesus may be impressed, but not a Jew, because their conditioning differs. I have heard about two hippies: They were hungry and had no money, and on a Sunday morning they were just passing by a church when an idea occurred to them. Both had long hair, beards, tattered clothes they looked exactly like Jesus and his followers would have looked. One said to the other, ”We should find a cross; we should go to the cemetery and take one cross from some grave. You carry the cross, you look more like Jesus, and I’ll go ahead of you proclaiming that the Lord has come. Let’s see, maybe something is possible.” So they entered the church. It was a Protestant church. The first entered and shouted loudly, ”Awake! Behold! The Lord has come back! He has fulfilled his promise.” Everybody looked and then entered the second hippie with the cross. A few women fainted, a few old people fell at his feet. And people started giving money. When they went out they had collected fifty dollars. They were very happy. The week went beautifully marijuana and all. They enjoyed it as spiritually as possible. The next week they entered a Catholic church. Even more things became possible. The Catholics went crazy! They could not believe their eyes. People were crying and weeping and trembling and calling ”Lord!” They collected one hundred and fifty dollars. That week they were really high.... The third week, just for fun, they thought why not try the synagogue? So they went into the synagogue. They proclaimed, ”Behold! The Lord has come back as he promised!” The old rabbi fixed his glasses, looked, and then asked his assistant, ”You go and bring the hammer and nails it seems that fool has come back.” You behave according to your conditioning. If Mahavira appears suddenly on M.G. Road, only Jainas and that too only Digambara Jainas will recognize him. The Svetambara Jainas, another sect of the Jainas, will not recognize him because they don’t believe that he lived naked. He lived in white clothes of course those clothes were invisible. So they will ask, ”Where are the invisible clothes?” And Hindus and Mohammedans and Christians will simply rush to the police station, because a naked man is standing on M.G. Road he seems to be an Osho freak! How are you going to judge? According to your prejudices. When you become convinced that this man is saying the right thing, that simply means he is saying the thing that you think is right. But if you know already what is right, there is no need to bother about this man. Following is useless, it is unnecessary. You are simply collecting support for your own beliefs. It is not going to help, it is not going to change you. Only surrender transforms. Anything that happens through the heart can bring a radical revolution into your being. The head is impotent avoid the head. Sir, avoid the head! Listen to the heart and follow the heart, then surrender happens of its own accord. The third question: Question 3 BELOVED MASTER, WHAT IS MISUNDERSTANDING? Sahajananda, misunderstanding happens only to knowledgeable people, it never happens to the innocent. It never happens to those who know that they know nothing; only to them understanding happens. But to those who think they know already, their very knowledge is a disturbance, a distraction. It is knowledge that creates misunderstanding. If you are already carrying something in your mind, and then you listen to me, there are only two possibilities: either you find me agreeing with you or you find me disagreeing with you. If you find me agreeing with you, you must have misunderstood, because I cannot agree with you. It is impossible, I can agree with you only if you are also awakened, if you are also in the same space, only then. So you must have distorted the words, dropped a few words, added a few words, given them new meanings your meanings, coloring them, dyeing them according to your philosophy, way of life, or whatsoever you call it. It is a kind of adjustment. And then you can be very happy that I agree with you. I cannot agree with you. It is impossible. Agreement is possible only if we both exist in the same space, otherwise not. In your confusion, in my clarity, there is no possibility of agreement. So that is the first kind of misunderstanding, which is far more dangerous than the second kind of misunderstanding. The second kind of misunderstanding is: I say one thing and you immediately jump against it because you have come with a negative approach. The first misunderstanding comes from the one who has come with a positive
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