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

66 THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12
dialectical. And in his awareness grows a synthesis between the polar opposites. The synthesis never grows on
the outside, as Karl Marx says.
Karl Marx says life is a dialectical process between thesis and antithesis and it always comes to a synthesis.
Then synthesis turns again into a thesis and creates its antithesis. That is utterly wrong. Outside, life is always
thesis and antithesis; it never comes to any synthesis.
Synthesis is achieved only in the inner vision of an enlightened being. Synthesis is attained when you have
attained to absolute silence. In that silence you are so clear, so transparent, that you can see through and
through. Then you know that life needs both: day and night, birth and death. Then there is nothing wrong
in death; it is perfectly useful, needed, inevitable. Then a deep acceptance arises in you. Buddha calls that
acceptance tathata suchness. Life is such. You understand it and through that understanding you transcend it.
Don’t be a pessimist and don’t be an optimist. Just watch, be a watcher and attain to the ultimate synthesis
where you become a third force rising higher and higher and seeing from above, a bird’s-eye view. Deep down
everything is in conflict, but it is okay because you understand life cannot exist without it. It is not God’s fault.
There is no God as a person who can be blamed for it. It is just the nature of things Tao, dhamma that life
functions through duality. But consciousness can soar so high that it can transcend all duality and can reach to
oneness.
The real meditator is neither pessimist nor optimist. He lives in a kind of suchness, in total ”accept-ability.”
The fourth question:
Question 4
BELOVED MASTER, I AM BORED WITH MY HUSBAND. I HAVE TRIED EVERYTHING, BUT NOTH-
ING SEEMS TO WORK. HAVE YOU ANY SUGGESTIONS?
Geetama, not many, just one. Write a letter to five of your friends like this:
Hello there!
This letter was started by a woman like yourself, in hopes of bringing relief to a tired and discontented wife.
Unlike most chain letters, this one does not cost anything. Just send a copy of this letter to five of your friends
who are equally tired. Then bundle up your husband and send him to the woman at the top of the list and add
your name to the bottom of the list.
When your name comes to the top of the list you will receive 16,478 men and some of them are bound to be a
hell of a lot better than the one you already have.
Do not break the chain... have faith!
One woman broke the chain and got her own sonofabitch back.
At the date of writing this letter, another friend of mine received 183 men. They buried her yesterday.... But
it took three undertakers thirty-six hours to get the smile off her face.
The fifth question:
Question 5
BELOVED MASTER, YOUR MESSAGE IS UNIVERSAL, BUT IS IT ONLY FOR THOSE WITHOUT A
RELIGION? WHY ARE NOT YOUR FELLOW INDIANS CROWDING AT THE GATE TO GET IN?
Charles Gardiner, my message is universal. That does not mean that everybody will be able to understand it.
The more universal a message is, the less people will be able to understand it, because the more universal it is,
the more mysterious it is. It is so beyond the reach of the ordinary, stupid mind just because it is universal.
People can understand things which are not so universal more easily. They can understand racial things, they
can understand national things, they can understand ideological things. But any message that is really universal
is bound to be understood only by a very few chosen people.
Only the most intelligent people will be interested in what I am doing here. Hence you will see gathering around
me intelligent people from all over the world, young, fresh, intelligent.
India is not young, it is not fresh. It is very rare to find an Indian who is young. In India everybody is born
old. It is such an ancient country with such a long, long tradition that everybody is burdened. A younger country
is of course more receptive.
For example, America is more receptive to any new message than any other country for the simple reason that
it is the latest country in the world with only a three-hundred-year tradition, it is nothing. India has lived at
least ten thousand years ten thousand years according to the historians, one hundred thousand years according
to Indians themselves. The truth may be somewhere in between. I can settle on fifty thousand years but that
too is very long. And as the country becomes old it goes on gathering rubbish, junk. And every generation goes
on giving its junk and rubbish to the new generation, thinking that this is heritage, thinking that they are giving
something very valuable.