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

THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 81
And just see the stupidity of the idea.... Christians say that once you are in hell you are there for eternity.
Nobody comes out of hell. It has no exit, only the entrance. And then for eternity! the very idea is absurd. Even
the greatest criminal need not be punished for eternity.
Bertrand Russell has said, ”When I look at my sins, if I confess all my sins that I have committed, they are
not many, they are not very big. I have not murdered people. Then the cruelest magistrate can send me to jail
at the most for four years. And if my thoughts are also to be included, not only my actions, then eight years jail,
that’s all.” He has written a beautiful book, Why I Am Not A Christian. And among the many that he has given,
this is one of the reasons: ”I cannot agree with the idea of eternal hell. Nobody has committed such a sin that he
should be thrown for eternity into hell forever, no escape. And nobody has done so much good that he should
be enjoying paradise for ever and ever.”
But religions have existed, and they are powerful, for the simple reason that they create fear in you fear of
hell and they create greed in you greed for heaven. They wound you deeply. The more you bleed, the more your
wound bleeds, the more powerful they are over you.
My effort here is to redeem you from all your wounds, to redeem you from the fear of hell and the greed for
heaven. There is no hell and no heaven. Those are not places somewhere, those are just your own states of mind.
Whenever you are in anger, in rage, you are in hell; and whenever you are in love, in compassion, you are in
heaven. So you can move from heaven to hell many times in a day.
It is not a question to be decided after death; it is to be decided each moment. And it is absolutely within your
capacity to decide.
One Sufi mystic was dying. His disciples had gathered and they said, ”One thing we want to know. You
are departing forever and then we will never know what was the secret. We have never seen you sad, unhappy,
miserable. It seems so superhuman. We have watched you for thirty years, forty years; there are a few people who
have lived with you for fifty years, sixty years” the man was almost a hundred years old ”and nobody remembers
that you were ever sad, not even a small sadness. What is your secret?”
He said, ”There is no secret at all. Every morning when I get up, before I open my eyes I say to myself, ’Listen,
old man, a new day is there. What do you want? to be sad or to be happy?’ And I always say, ’To be happy.’ So
then I remain happy! I decide in the morning and I remain happy. I have to follow my decision. This I do every
day. It is a decision.”
You choose misery; it is not a punishment, it is your choice. And you choose joy; it is not a reward, it is your
choice.
Jews have suffered very much; they are wounded. Of course, two thousand years of suffering have made them
very mature, intelligent, alert. Hence they can recognize me better than anybody else. That’s why, Alexandra,
they are here.
In July 1974, President Nixon was in the Soviet Union, hoping to achieve a nonaggression pact between that
country and the United States, but he was having a hard time of it.
”Before we sign,” declared Prime Minister Brezhnev, ”you Americans will have to announce to the world that
Adam and Eve were communists.”
Nixon, uncertain as to how he should cope with this dilemma, decided to consult an authority on Genesis in
this case, Henry J. Kissinger who assured him that he had read several pages of the Bible in his younger days.
Kissinger retired to his study, pored over the Old Testament and the text. Next day he told Nixon to go
ahead and sign the pact with the Soviet Union. ”The Russians are right,” he said, ”Adam and Eve were indeed
communists. After all, they did not have a stitch on their backs, they had nothing to eat but apples, and they
still thought they were in paradise!”
Three boys, a Catholic, a Presbyterian and a Jew, were discussing how they each spent Christmas Day. The
Catholic boy had gone to mass, come back, kissed all his family and given them presents, and later on had
Christmas dinner. The Presbyterian boy had not gone to church, but had kissed all the family, given out his
presents, and then had Christmas dinner.
The Jewish boy said, ”Well, dad and I went down to our toy factory, looked at all the empty shelves, sang
two verses of ’What a friend we have in Jesus!’ and then caught a plane for Osho Commune International, Pune,
India.”
The third question:
Question 3
BELOVED MASTER, IF YOU WERE HERE RIGHT NOW, I THINK I WOULD HIT YOU. IF YOU DON’T
RECOGNIZE ME SOON AND START SAYING YES TO ME INSTEAD OF NO, I AM GOING TO HAVE TO
KILL YOU.