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

THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 73
The man who is awake knows there is nowhere to go, nothing to become. He is already that which he ever can
become. Seeing the grandeur of his being, desires wither away on their own accord. You are not even expected to
drop them; they drop by themselves, like dry leaves falling from the trees.
IF YOU SLEEP, says Buddha, DESIRE GROWS IN YOU....
Remember: desire grows only when you are asleep, unconscious, unaware, unmeditative. And this is natural. It
grows... LIKE A VINE IN THE FOREST. And whatsoever you do in this sleep is going to be wrong, remember.
You can become an ascetic, you can fast, you can pray, but your prayers will be wrong.
Hence, Buddha never says pray; he says meditate. What can you pray? You will always pray for something;
it will be a desire. You can go to the churches and the temples and listen to people’s prayers, and you will be
surprised: they are always asking and asking. Their prayers are superficial. They had not gone there to thank
God; their prayers are not full of gratitude but full of complaints. They want more and they are ready to pray.
Their prayer is nothing but buttressing: they praise the Lord; they hope that this buttressing will help their
prayers to be fulfilled. And behind the prayer there is a desire.
Buddha says: Don’t be bothered with prayers, because you are asleep and your prayer is bound to be nothing
but a desire. Your asceticism is bound to be nothing but an expression of your desire. Your asceticism is going to
be nothing but a deep hedonism. Hence all religions talk about the joys and the pleasures of heaven and paradise.
These are the allurements which keep people going to the temples and to the churches and to the mosques.
Buddha says: Go into silence, because silence creates the right space to wake up. Silence goes to the very center
of your being like an arrow and wakes you up. And when you are awake, your whole life is a prayer! And don’t
go on doing things in your sleep because you can do much more harm. It is better to be ordinary when you are
asleep your harm will be ordinary. Don’t try to be extraordinary, don’t try to be a saint or a mahatma; your
harm will be far bigger.
Contemplate on this maxim of Murphy:
If two wrongs don’t make a right, try three.
What else can you do when you are asleep? Try and try and try again; go on trying. But if the fundamental
is wrong, whatsoever you do is going to be wrong.
And the problem with desire is this: if you don’t get it which is almost inevitable because all your desires are
impossible.... You ask for the impossible; it can’t happen in the nature of things; hence you feel frustrated when
it doesn’t happen. And if at all it happens by some miracle, by some accident... if it happens, then, too, it is
not going to fulfill you or make you contented because the moment it happens, again your mind starts asking for
more; or, by the time it happens you are no longer interested in it.
The soldier boy was unhappy.
”But this is Christmas time,” I tried to cheer him up. ”Santa Claus and all that!”
”What Santa Claus?” he cried. ”Twenty years ago I asked Santa for a soldier suit now I get it!”
Murphy’s maxim: Being frustrated is disagreeable, but the real disaster in life begins when you get what you
want.
Blessed are those who don’t get what they want, because at least they can hope. The real disaster happens
when you get what you want, because then there is no possibility to hope; then you are stuck with it. And it is
you who have desired it, who had worked for it. But out of sleep nothing else is possible.
Sleep is our common disease; we are born with this disease. It is so common, that’s why we don’t think about
it at all as a disease; otherwise this is the greatest disease, according to all the awakened ones.
Buddha’s suggestion is: Be conscious. Bring more consciousness to your inner being and also to your outer
actions. He does not want you to create new desires holy desires instead of unholy desires. He does not want you
to become a saint as against being a sinner. He does not want you to substitute your mundane desires with sacred
desires. He wants you to do something totally different, that is his great contribution to humanity: he wants you
to become conscious.
Out of consciousness a radical transformation happens: desires disappear and peace descends the peace of
desirelessness.
LIKE A MONKEY IN THE FOREST YOU JUMP FROM TREE TO TREE, NEVER FINDING THE FRUIT
FROM LIFE TO LIFE, NEVER FINDING PEACE.
Observe what you have been doing: LIKE A MONKEY IN THE FOREST....
Charles Darwin became aware of the phenomenon very late: that man is a descendant of monkeys. And he
may not be right, because he thinks that physically man is a descendant of the monkeys. That does not seem to
fit the reality: man seems to be essentially different from monkeys as far as the body is concerned.