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

THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 57
Aldous Huxley, one of the most intellectual, philosophic persons, a great scholar, has called the perfect LSD
”soma.” He says that in the twenty-first century we will be reaching to that perfection. From the Vedas to Aldous
Huxley, drugs have been an obsession with humanity, for the simple reason that we are born unconscious and
the problems of life, anxieties of life, dangers of life, make us sometimes conscious. They wake up our deep,
deep slumber, they disturb it. So we need more drugs, more and more drugs, to remain undisturbed in our
unconsciousness. And out of that unconsciousness we act, we live our lives.
Ferguson and Malone decided to go hunting one morning.
”Listen,” said Ferguson, ”I will bring all the guns and such and you bring all the provisions.”
”Fine,” said Malone.
The next morning when they met, Ferguson was loaded down with guns and ammunition. Malone was carrying
a loaf of bread and six bottles of whisky.
Ferguson blew his stack. ”Look what happens when I leave the provisions to you!” he shouted. ”A loaf of bread
and six bottles of whisky! What the hell are we gonna do with all that bread?”
When Buddha says, AND TO HAVE DONE SOMETHING GOOD, he means when you do something consciously.
You cannot do anything bad consciously; that is an impossibility. It is as much impossible to do anything
bad consciously as it is impossible to do good unconsciously.
Before leaving this life be conscious, act out of your consciousness, so that you can beautify this existence a
little bit, so that you can sing a little song, so you can dance a little dance, so the world is enriched, so that
you can be a little more creative, so that the world is a little more divine than it was before you came into it.
Contribute something to it. Don’t be just a wastage.
AND TO LET GO OF SORROW. People think sorrow is clinging to you; that is utter nonsense. You are
clinging to sorrow, because you have invested so much in sorrow. Your greatest investment is your ego. When
you are sad, when you are miserable, your ego can feed on these illnesses, diseases. The ego can keep alive only
through these pathologies; the ego lives on them.
When you are blissful, really blissed out, ego disappears. You are, but there is no ego, no idea of I, no idea of
separation. In bliss there is a merger with the whole; in misery you are alone and separate. Misery makes you an
island and bliss takes all your boundaries away from you. In bliss, the river disappears in the ocean. And we are
very afraid to disappear as an ego. We want to keep our identity intact.
Mulla Nasruddin came across a small boy sitting in the gutter crying loudly. ”My boy, don’t cry like that,”
said the Mulla.
Said the little boy, ”Listen, mate, you cry your way and I will cry mine.”
Sorrow has something very personal about it; bliss is impersonal. Your misery is your misery; it defines you. It
is nobody else’s misery, it is especially yours; it gives you a certain uniqueness. But bliss? Bliss is universal.
Hence Buddha, Jesus, Krishna, Lao Tzu, these people have disappeared into bliss. They don’t have any
personality. They are no-persons, they are nonentities. They are tremendously alive, but they are not separate
from the whole. They have allowed the whole to live through them.
Buddha says: AND TO LET GO OF SORROW.
Please watch how you are clinging to your sorrow, your misery. Drop it, let go of it! And your life will have a
great sweetness.
TO BE A MOTHER IS SWEET, AND A FATHER. IT IS SWEET TO LIVE ARDUOUSLY, AND TO
MASTER YOURSELF.
TO BE A MOTHER IS SWEET.... Why? Just giving birth to a child is not to be a mother, remember.
Otherwise there are millions of mothers on the earth and there seems to be no sweetness. In fact, if you ask the
psychologists they will say just the opposite. They will say the only problem to be solved is the mother. The only
pathology that millions of people are suffering from is the mother. And what they are saying they are saying after
fifty, sixty years of constant analysis of thousands of people. Everybody’s illness basically comes to one point:
that it has been given to you, transmitted to you by your mother.
There are people who are afraid of women; and if you are afraid of women you can’t love them. How can love
arise out of fear? And why are you afraid of women? because your childhood was lived in fear of your mother. She
was constantly after you, she was constantly hammering you. She was constantly telling you to do this and not to
do that of course, for your own good. She has crippled you, she has destroyed many things in you. She has made
you phony because she has told you what is right to do. Whether you like it or not, whether it is spontaneously
arising in you or not, you have to follow the order. And you were so helpless... your survival depended on the
mother so you had to listen to her. She conditioned you. And it is because of the fear of your mother that you
are afraid of women.