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

THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 87
That’s why beggars are beggars, obviously, but emperors are also beggars. Both are still hankering for more.
What is the difference? No difference as far as the quality of their consciousness is concerned. Of course, the
beggar does not possess much and the emperor possesses much, but that is not the point. The distance between
the beggar’s possessions and what he wants and the emperor’s possessions and what he wants is exactly the same.
One is a poor beggar, the other is a rich beggar; that much difference you can make. But both are beggars all the
same.
To be in the grip of ”more” is to be really eccentric, off-center. If you can’t see it then you are not intelligent
at all. It is such a simple phenomenon that just a little intelligence is needed to see it. In your whole life you
have been trying and it is not that you have always failed; it only looks as if you have always failed. You have
succeeded many times, but each time you succeed, your desire for more is projected again and you remain in the
same position: miserable, unhappy, frustrated. If you don’t get what you want, you will be frustrated; if you get
what you want, you will be frustrated. It seems frustration is the destiny, the absolute destiny, of the unconscious
man.
A psychiatrist was going around a mental hospital. He saw one man beating himself, pulling his hair, looking
very suicidal. He was kept in a cell he was dangerous. He asked the superintendent, ”What happened to this
man?”
The superintendent said, ”He loved a woman, he loved her very much, but he could not get her. She married
somebody else. Since then he has been in this state. He wants to commit suicide, he does not want to live. He
says there is no meaning in life: ’My meaning was in that woman. If I could not get that woman, that means my
life is finished!’”
Feeling sorry for the man he was young and beautiful they moved ahead. They saw another cell and another
man was inside it, and he was even more ferocious, very murderous.
The psychiatrist asked, ”What has happened to this man?”
The superintendent said, ”This is the man who married that same woman! Since he has married her he wants
to kill her, and if he cannot kill her then he wants to kill anybody instead, but he wants to kill and destroy. He
wants to kill the whole world! That woman drove him mad.”
One is mad because he could not get her, the other is mad because he could get her. This is the whole history
of every human being, more or less. It may not be so extreme, so you don’t see it, but the differences are only in
degrees. The man in the grip of desire is bound to become insane.
And Buddha says: PLEASURE.... Pleasure means that you think the body is the only source of happiness.
That is sheer stupidity. The body’s pleasures are very momentary; they are not real pleasures. But everybody
is caught in the net of the body. We are born as bodies, but we need not die as bodies. If we die as bodies, our
whole life was a sheer wastage. You have to grow up.
And remember: growing old is not growing up. Everybody grows old, but very few people, very rare people
grow up. One who really grows up becomes a buddha. Growing up means you start becoming alert about bodily
pleasures that they are momentary and they can change into their opposite very easily.
For example, you love eating and you can go on eating too much. Then it becomes a pain. It was pleasure in
the beginning, but there is a limit to that pleasure. It is said of Nero that he used to have four physicians always
with him. Even when he was going into war those four physicians used to accompany him. When Nero would
eat, their whole work was to help him to vomit so that he could eat again. He used to love eating so much that
he would eat twenty times, twenty-five times per day. You will call him mad and he was mad.
Now, what is the pleasure of eating? Maybe just a little pleasure of taste.... On your tongue there are little
buds which experience taste. They can be operated on very easily and then you will not feel anything at all. Then
the whole pleasure of eating disappears. That’s what happens when you are in fever: your buds become dull,
insensitive, so you eat but you don’t feel any taste. People are living for eating; there are very few people who
eat to live. Millions are living only to eat.
Humanity can be divided into two types of mad people: one type is obsessed with food, another type is obsessed
with sex. And there is a deep relation between the two. The person who is obsessed with sex will not bother
much about food and the person who is repressive of sex will become obsessed with food.
Whenever a country is repressive of sex it becomes very obsessed with food. That’s what has happened in this
country: for centuries it has been repressive of sex. That’s why Indians have been very inventive about food new
sweets, thousands of sweets. The world is completely unaware of all those sweets! And their food is so spicy....
When a foreigner comes he cannot eat it; he cannot see how people can eat it. It is burning hot! Why so much
spicy food? It is repression of sex! If your sex is not repressed you will not eat such spicy food.