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

THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 93
thing: creating chains, creating misery, creating pain for yourself and for others. You are sadomasochistic; that is
your whole art. Either you will torture others or you will torture yourself, but you will torture. You don’t know
that life can be a dance, a celebration. You can’t know it till you drop your desiring.
Desire exists like a cloud of smoke around you; you can’t see anything. And you go on giving more fuel, you go
on creating more and more smoke around yourself. Your eyes are burning, your eyes are full of tears, you can’t
see, but still you think what you are doing is going to help you one day attain all the joys of life. What you are
doing to yourself is only going to give you more pain, more misery, more suffering.
YOU HAVE COME OUT OF THE HOLLOW INTO THE CLEARING. THE CLEARING IS EMPTY. WHY
DO YOU RUSH BACK INTO THE HOLLOW?
Once in a while, it happens to you too; that you come out of your black hole the black hole of desiring into
the clearing. Once in a while you can see.
Right now many of you can see that yes... a deep yes arises in you. You know perfectly well that you have been
creating your misery, and you don’t want.... It is just that you have become very skillful in the art; you don’t
know what else to do so you go on doing it. Without doing it you feel very empty and you are very afraid of
being empty.
For centuries emptiness has been condemned. Emptiness is beautiful. And the foolish people have been telling
you, ”The empty mind is the devil’s workshop.” The empty mind is God’s workshop! The occupied mind is the
devil’s workshop.
But one has to be truly empty. Just being lazy does not mean that you are empty; not doing anything does
not mean that you are empty. Thousands of thoughts are clamoring inside. You may be lazy on the outside, but
inside much work is going on. Many walls are being created, new prisons are being prepared, so that when you
get fed up with the old you can enter into the new. Old chains may break any time so you are creating new chains
in case the old chains break; then you will feel very empty.
Once in a while it happens naturally because it is your very nature to be free. So once in a while, in spite of
you... seeing a sunset, suddenly you forget all your desires. You forget all lust, all hankering for pleasure. The
sunset is so beautiful, so overwhelming, that you forget the past and the future; only the present remains. You
are so one with the moment, there is no observer and no observed. The observer becomes the observed. You are
not separate from the sunset.
You are bridged; in such a communion you come into a clearing, and because of the clearing you feel joyous. But
again you are back into the black hole for the simple reason that coming out into the clearing you need courage
to remain in the empty sky.
That’s what I call sannyas.
This courage I call sannyas not escaping but coming into the clearing, seeing the sky unclouded, listening to
the songs of the birds without distorting. And then again and again you are becoming more and more attuned
with the emptiness and the joy of being empty. And slowly, slowly you see that emptiness is not just emptiness;
it is fullness, but a fullness of which you have never been aware, a fullness of which you have never tasted. So in
the beginning it looks empty; in the end it is full, totally full, overflowingly full. It is full of peace, it is full of
silence, it is full of light.
YOU HAVE COME OUT OF THE HOLLOW INTO THE CLEARING. Sometimes while meditating it happens,
sometimes while listening to music it happens, sometimes while dancing it happens, sometimes while just
sitting doing nothing it happens. That’s what meditation is all about: allowing these moments to come more and
more, welcoming these moments, cherishing these moments, so that you become easily capable of coming out of
the black hole. And as you become accustomed to the clearing and the beauty of it and the blessing of it, you
move less and less into the black hole. One day, suddenly you abandon the black hole; it is no more your home.
The clearing becomes your home, clarity becomes your home. That is the day of great rejoicing.
DESIRE IS A HOLLOW AND PEOPLE SAY, ”LOOK! HE WAS FREE. BUT NOW HE GIVES UP HIS
FREEDOM.”
I can see it happening in you. Many times I see a certain person coming into the clearing and then moving
again into the black hole.
This is what is happening to Somendra. He was coming into the clearing, he had tasted something of the
clearing, but then the very experience of the clearing made him egoistic. It gave him a certain pious egoism. He
started feeling special; hence, just the other day he was asking for recognition. He used to sit here in the third
row; he wanted to sit in the first row. Now he has disappeared from the third row. He sits somewhere in the back,
and there too he sits not facing towards me; his BACK is towards me! Moving into the black hole again!