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

THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 91
whole day, ”This is a dream, this is a dream....” It takes three to nine month for the idea to sink into your heart.
Then one day, suddenly, in your dream you remember and you say, ”This is a dream!” and that is a moment of
great illumination. Immediately, the dream disappears. The moment you say it is a dream, it disappears and you
are awake, fully awake, in the middle of the night.
Of course, these trees and the people on the road are not a dream so they don’t disappear. You can go on
saying, ”This is a dream.” That was just a method to practice. But when you really remember in a dream that
”This is a dream,” the dream disappears. The dream can exist only if believed; the dream disappears if you don’t
believe in it. Our imagination is intoxicating.
Lend an ear to this exchange of dialogue, circa 1936, when Dr. William Goldman was professor of English at
Brandeis University.
It was Graduation Day, and the father of one of the students had celebrated, not wisely, but all too well. He was
in the parking lot adjacent to the university campus, peering owlishly at the cars, when Dr. Goldman appeared.
”Say, mister,” called the weaving celebrant. ”Is my car the one on the left or on the right?”
”Yours is the car on the right, sir,” replied the professor. ”The car on the left is a subjective phenomenon.”
It does not exist just a subjective phenomenon. That’s exactly the meaning of the Indian word maya: a
subjective phenomenon, it does not exist. But if you believe, it exists. It depends on you. You can make it almost
function as real. And there are many things which don’t exist, but you are believing in them and for you they
are realities. And you are surrounded by fictions religious, spiritual, metaphysical. There are so many fictions
surrounding you and you have to wake up from all these.
POWERFUL STREAMS! Buddha says.
They are everywhere....
THEY FLOW EVERYWHERE.
These streams are powerful, and your sleep is so deep. It seems very difficult to wake up but you can wake up.
My own observation is that these streams are powerful only in the proportion that you are asleep. If you become
less sleepy they are less powerful. If you become fully awake, their power disappears totally.
A drunk was passing a bus intersection when a large Saint Bernard brushed against him and knocked him down.
An instant later a foreign sports car skidded around the corner and inflicted more damage.
A bystander helped the poor fellow up and said, ”Are you hurt?”
”Well,” he answered, ”the dog did not hurt so much, but that tin can tied to his tail nearly killed me.”
Now, when you are not in your senses you go on seeing things which are not there at all or you go on projecting
things. The world becomes a screen and you live in a private world. That’s exactly the meaning of the word
’idiot’: to live in a private world, to live in a subjective phenomenon. That’s the meaning of ’idiot’.
After each drink at the local pub, Murphy took a small, furry kitten from his pocket, put it on the counter and
stared at it. Finally the barman could no longer contain his curiosity and asked Murphy what he was up to.
”Well, you see, it is this way,” said Murphy. ”So long as I can see one kitten it is all right. But when I see two
of them I have to do something.”
”Like what?”
”I pick up the two of them, put them in my pocket, and go home,” said the Irishman.
If you are intoxicated you will see the same world but in a different way. Your imagination will get mixed with
it. You will not be able to make any distinction between what is fiction and what is fact. You will not have any
power of discrimination. That’s exactly what makes these streams so powerful. THEY FLOW EVERYWHERE.
STRONG WINE! IF YOU SEE IT SPRING UP, TAKE CARE! PULL IT OUT BY THE ROOTS.
So whenever you see some imagination arising in you, be alert. Don’t let it grow, don’t let it become a big
tree. It will be far more difficult then for you to get rid of it because you may become attached to it; you may
have invested many things in it; you may have started liking its company; you may feel unsheltered without it.
It is better to cut it from the very roots in the very beginning. The moment you see it arising in you, take care,
beware beware means be aware PULL IT OUT BY THE ROOTS.
People go on changing. They don’t pull out things by their roots; they substitute one fiction with another
fiction. That may give you a relief for the moment, but it does not transform your life. Somebody is running after
money, then he stops running after money; he starts running after power. Then he stops running after power and
starts running after God or meditation or enlightenment. But he goes on running after something or other. He
goes on substituting a new fiction for the old; the old functions no more. He has seen it is fictitious, but he has
not yet got the point that one has to uproot all imagination in one’s being.
Lovebirds are supposed to be so devoted to one another that if one dies the other dies of a broken heart. A
woman who owned a very cute pair had a fire in the house and one of the lovebirds was suffocated. Right away