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

72 THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12
In fact, everybody misses the point; it is bound to be so. Coming from the peaks of awakening to the dark
valleys of sleep one cannot expect that it will be understood rightly.
Hence Buddha insisted, he always emphasized to his disciples, ”Before you start trying to understand what I
am saying and what I am doing, be silent at least for two years, utterly silent, thinking nothing. When you have
attained to stillness, then you will be able to communicate with me. Then if you have any questions you can ask,
and then it will be possible for me to pour my heart into your heart.”
But it used to happen that whenever somebody would come and would stay for two years in silence, he would
never ask anything because silence is the answer of all the answers. Silence is the answer for all the questions.
There would be no need to ask Buddha because in silence he would see the glory, the splendor of Buddha, and it
would start permeating his being like a flood, taking away all dust accumulated down the centuries.
The first sutra:
IF YOU SLEEP, DESIRE GROWS IN YOU LIKE A VINE IN THE FOREST.
Desire cannot be dropped unless you wake up. Millions of people have tried to drop desiring without waking
up. In fact, the very idea of dropping desire was another desire and nothing else. They heard from the buddhas,
from the awakened ones, that there is great peace if you drop desire, there is great bliss if desires wither away; that
you will attain to eternity, that you will not know any birth, any death anymore, that you will become part of the
universal celebration that goes on and on if you drop desire. Millions became greedy, thinking that by dropping
desire they will attain all these joys. Now, this is a new desire taking root in you. The desire for God, the desire
for truth, the desire for liberation, the desire for becoming desireless, is still a desire. You have misunderstood
the whole point again. A new greed religious greed has taken possession of you.
Millions of people have lived in the monasteries monks and nuns and all kinds of ascetics torturing themselves
in the hope, in the desire, that this is the way to destroy desires. When all desires are destroyed they are going to
attain to heavenly pleasures. And those pleasures are real pleasures; they are not momentary like the pleasures
on this earth, they are eternal. How can you drop desire by creating a new desire, a bigger desire, a far more
dangerous desire?
As I see it, the religious people are more in the grip of desire than the nonreligious. The nonreligious is satisfied
with small things a good house, a beautiful wife, children, a little bank balance small things. But religious people
go on condemning these people that they are sinners. And they themselves are saints because they want a bank
balance in the other world, and a bank balance which will be inexhaustible!
It is very difficult to drop desire; unless you wake up you cannot drop desire. Desire is a natural phenomenon
when you are asleep. Desire is dreaming and nothing else. When you wake up dreams disappear, and when you
wake up desires disappear.
Hence it has to be understood: the real point is not to fight with your desires but to fight with your sleep. That
is cutting the very root; otherwise you remain the same. You will function out of your unconsciousness and you
will go on doing the same; it does not matter what it is.
Three men were riding in a bus on a hot summer day in Israel. One of them was a rabbi, a Jew, another a
Greek, and the other a Palestinian.
The bus departed, and a fly flew onto the shoulder of the Greek. He simply slapped it away. The fly then
flew over to the rabbi’s shoulder and he did the same. The fly then flew over to the Palestinian. The Palestinian
immediately grabbed the fly and ate it.
A second fly flew into the bus and exactly the same thing happened: the fly landed on the Greek, the Greek
slapped it away over to the Jew, the Jew also slapped it away, and finally it landed on the Palestinian who grabbed
it and ate it.
At this point, the Greek and the Jew both looked at the Palestinian in amazement.
Sure enough, a third fly flew into the bus. It flew over to the Greek and was slapped away. It flew over to the
rabbi and this time the rabbi grabbed the fly, went over to the Palestinian and asked, ”You want to buy a nice
fly?”
Rabbi or no rabbi, a Jew is a Jew! If there is some business he is not going to miss it.
You are living in dreams. Your priests, your rabbis, your monks, your nuns, your bishops, your popes, they are
all living in the same sleep. Maybe your dreams are a little bit different from each other, but the quality of the
dream is the same.
Why do you dream? because there are so many desires unfulfilled, and to live with unfulfilled desires is painful.
In dream you try to fulfill them; in dream you create a false feeling of fulfillment. Hence your dreams show much
about you: what your desires are, what you want to become. But if you want to become anything in life, you are
asleep.