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

86 THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12
by any greed, by any lust for more. By ”freedom” he means a consciousness without mind, a state of no-mind. It
is utterly empty, because if there is something, that will hinder freedom; hence its utter emptiness.
This word ’emptiness’ shunyata has been very much misunderstood by people, because the word has a
connotation of negativity. Whenever we hear the word ’empty’ we think of something negative. In Buddha’s
language, emptiness is not negative; emptiness is absolutely positive, more positive than your so-called fullness,
because emptiness is full of freedom; everything else has been removed. It is spacious; all boundaries have been
dropped. It is unbounded and only in an unbounded space, freedom is possible. His emptiness is not ordinary
emptiness; it is not only absence of something, it is a presence of something invisible.
For example, when you empty your room: as you remove the furniture and the paintings and the things inside,
the room becomes empty on the one hand because there is no more any furniture, no more paintings, no more
things, nothing is left inside; but on the other hand, something invisible starts filling it. That invisibleness is
”roominess,” spaciousness; the room becomes bigger. As you remove the things, the room is becoming bigger and
bigger. When everything is removed, even the walls, then the room is as big as the whole sky.
That’s the whole process of meditation: removing everything; removing yourself so totally that nothing is left
behind not even you. In that utter silence is freedom. In this utter stillness grows the one-thousand-petaled lotus
of freedom. And great fragrance is released: the fragrance of peace, compassion, love, bliss. Or if you want to
choose the word ’God’ you can choose it. It is not Buddha’s word, but there is no harm in choosing it.
Meditate over these beautiful sutras:
THIRTY-SIX STREAMS ARE RUSHING TOWARD YOU!
”Thirty-six” is only a Buddhist metaphor; it stands for ”many.” Many streams are rushing towards you. Each
moment you are surrounded by a thousand and one desires, and they are all pulling you in different directions.
You are a victim and you are falling apart.
A young man entered an hotel. He saw a very beautiful woman sitting alone in the corner drinking coffee. She
was so beautiful and so attractive, the young man could not resist the temptation. He went close to her and asked
her, ”Can I join you?”
The woman looked at him for a few seconds and said, ”Do you think I am falling apart?”
But that’s exactly the case: everybody is falling apart, even that woman. If I had been in the place of that
young man I would have said, ”Yes. You need to be glued together.”
Everybody is falling apart. You are not one; you have become many, many fragments, and all the fragments are
going in different directions. That’s why there is so much misery in your being, because when your parts, which are
essentially your intrinsic parts, are being pulled in different directions you feel the pain of it. That’s what misery
is: the pain of falling into different directions simultaneously, rushing into different directions simultaneously.
That is what creates craziness, insanity.
Buddha says: THIRTY-SIX STREAMS ARE RUSHING TOWARD YOU! Beware! Not only one but many
streams are rushing toward you. And if you don’t take care, if you are not alert, you will be possessed by them.
If you remain unconscious, if you remain sleepy, you will be defeated by those streams. Those streams are not
basically enemies to you. They are pure energy, and energy is always neutral. But when you are asleep those same
streams are dangerous; when you are awake, those same streams become great creative energies for you. They
are rushing towards buddhas too, but in the hand of a buddha, dust turns into gold. The touch of awareness is
alchemical. In your hands, even if by chance you come across gold, it turns into dust. You are so asleep, you
impart your sleepiness to whatsoever comes to you.
Those thirty-six streams he is talking about are gifts of existence, gifts of great energy. It is coming from
everywhere. Now, it depends on you whether you can transform those energies into a synthesis, whether you can
transform those energies into an integrated whole, whether you can create an orchestra out of all those energies.
Then you become a song, you create great music. Your life becomes a melody.
But if you cannot transform those energies, then you will be a victim and you will be divided into so many
parts. You will lose all integrity. You will become a crowd; you will not be an individual anymore.
THIRTY-SIX STREAMS ARE RUSHING TOWARD YOU!
DESIRE AND PLEASURE AND LUST....
And so on, so forth. What is desire? Desire means greed for more. It is unfulfillable. It is impossible to fulfill
the greed for more because that ”more” has no limitation. ”More” simply means an unlimited phenomenon. You
have ten thousand rupees, you want one hundred thousand rupees. One day you get one hundred thousand rupees
now you want more. You want more and more and more. Whatsoever you get, the distance between you and
your goal will remain the same; it is never reduced, not even by a single inch.