The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 1
Chapter #9
Chapter title: Seated in the cave of the heart
29 June 1979 am in Buddha Hall
AS THE FLETCHER WHITTLES
AND MAKES STRAIGHT HIS ARROWS,
SO THE MASTER DIRECTS
HIS STRAYING THOUGHTS.
LIKE A FISH OUT OF WATER,
STRANDED ON THE SHORE,
THOUGHTS THRASH AND QUIVER.
FOR HOW CAN THEY SHAKE OFF DESIRE?
THEY TREMBLE, THEY ARE UNSTEADY,
THEY WANDER AT THEIR WILL.
IT IS GOOD TO CONTROL THEM.
AND TO MASTER THEM BRINGS HAPPINESS.
BUT HOW SUBTLE THEY ARE,
HOW ELUSIVE!
THE TASK IS TO QUIETEN THEM,
AND BY RULING THEM TO FIND HAPPINESS.
WITH SINGLEMINDEDNESS
THE MASTER QUELLS HIS THOUGHTS.
HE ENDS THEIR WANDERING.
SEATED IN THE CAVE OF THE HEART,
HE FINDS FREEDOM.
Freedom is the goal of life. Without freedom, life has no meaning at all. By "freedom" is
not meant any political, social or economicfreedom. By "freedom" is meant freedom
from time, freedom from mind, freedom fromdesire. The moment mind is no more,
you are one with the universe, you areas vast as the universe itself.
It is the mind that is the barrier between you and the reality, and because of this barrier
you remain confined in a dark cell where nolight ever reaches and where no joy can
ever penetrate. You live in misery because you are not meant to live in such a small,
confined space. Your being wants to expand to the very ultimate source of existence.
Your being longs to be oceanic, and you have become a dewdrop. How can you be
happy? How can you be blissful? Man lives in misery because man lives imprisoned.
And Gautama the Buddha says that tanha -- desire -- is the root cause of all our misery,
because desire creates the mind. Desire means creating future, projecting yourself in the
future, bringing tomorrow in. Bring the tomorrow in and the today disappears, you
cannot see it anymore; your eyes are clouded by the tomorrow. Bring the tomorrow in
and you will have to carry the load of all your yesterdays, because the tomorrow can
only be there if the yesterdays go on nourishing it.
Each desire is born out of the past and each desire is projected in the future. The past
and the future, they constitute your whole mind. Analyze the mind, dissect it, and you
will find only two things: the past and the future. You will not find even an iota of the
present, not even a single atom. And the present is the only reality, the only existence,
the only dance there is.
The present can be found only when mind has ceased utterly. When the past no more
overpowers you and the future no more possesses you, when you are disconnected
from the memories and the imaginations, in that moment where are you? who are you?
In that moment you are a nobody. And nobody can hurt you when you are a nobody,
you cannot be wounded -- because the ego is very ready to receive wounds. The ego is
almost seeking and searching to be wounded; it exists through wounds. Its whole
existence depends on misery, pain.
When you are a nobody, anguish is impossible, anxiety simply unbelievable. When you
are a nobody there is great silence, stillness, no noise inside. Past gone, future
disappeared, what is there to create noise? And the silence that is heard is celestial, is
sacred. For the first time, in those spaces ofno-mind, you become aware of the eternal
celebration that goes on and on. That's what the existence is made of.
Except man, the whole existence is blissful. Only man has fallen out of it, has gone
astray. Only man can do it because only man has consciousness.
Now, consciousness has two possibilities: eitherit can become a bright light in you, so
bright that even the sun will look pale compared to it.... Buddha says it is as if a
thousand suns have risen suddenly -- when you look within with no mind it is all light,
eternal light. It is all joy, pure, uncontaminated, unpolluted. It is simple bliss, innocent.
It is wonder. Its majesty is indescribable, its beauty inexpressible, and its benediction
inexhaustible. Aes dhammo sanantano: so is the ultimate law.
If you can only put your mind aside you will become aware of the cosmic play. Then
you are only energy, and the energy is always herenow, it never leaves the herenow.
That is one possibility: if you become pure consciousness.
The other possibility is: you can become self-consciousness. Then you fall. Then you
become a separate entity from the world. Then you become an island, defined, well
defined. Then you are confined, because all definitions confine. Thenyou are in a prison
cell, and the prison cell is dark, utterly dark. There is no light, no possibility of light.
And the prison cell cripples you, paralyzes you.
Self-consciousness becomes a bondage; the selfis the bondage. And just consciousness
becomes freedom.
Drop the self and be conscious! That is the whole message -- the message of all the
buddhas of all the ages, past, present, future.The essential core of the message is very
simple: drop the self, the ego, the mind, and be.
Just this moment when this silence pervades...who are you? A nobody, a nonentity. You
don't have a name, you don't have a form. You are neither man nor woman, neither
Hindu nor Mohammedan. You don't belong to any country, to any nation, to any race.
You are not the body and you are not the mind.
Then what are you? In this silence, what is your taste? How does it taste to be? Just a
peace, just a silence...and out of that peace and silence a great joy starts surfacing,
welling up, for no reason at all. It is your spontaneous nature.
The art of putting the mind aside is the whole secret of religion, because as you put the
mind aside your being explodes into a thousand and one colors. You become a rainbow,
a lotus, a one-thousand-petaled lotus. Suddenly you open up, and then the whole
beauty of existence -- which is infinite! -- isyours. Then all the stars in the sky are
within you. Then even the sky is not yourlimit; you don't have any limits anymore.
Silence gives you a chance to melt, merge, disappear, evaporate. And when you are not,
you are -- for the first time you are. When you are not, God is, nirvana is, enlightenment
is. When you are not, all is found -- and when you are, all is lost.
Man has become a self-consciousness; that is his going astray, that is the original fall.
All the religions talk about the original fall in some way or other, but the best story is
contained in Christianity. The original fall is because man eats from the tree of
knowledge. When you eat of the tree of knowledge, the fruits of knowledge, it creates
self-consciousness.
The more knowledgeable you are, the more egoistic you are -- hence the ego of the
scholars, pundits, maulvis. The ego becomes decorated with great knowledge,
scriptures, systems of thought. But they don't make you innocent; they don't bring you
the childlike quality of openness, of trust, of love, of playfulness. Trust, love,
playfulness, wonder, all disappear whenyou become very knowledgeable.
And we are being taught to become knowledgeable. We are not taught to be innocent,
we are not taught how to feel the wonder of existence. We are told the names of the
flowers, but we are not taught how to dance around the flowers. We are told the names
of the mountains, but we are not taught how to commune with the mountains, how to
commune with the stars, how to commune with the trees, how to be in tune with
existence.
Out of tune, how can you be happy? Out of tune you are bound to remain in anguish, in
great misery, in pain. You can be happy onlywhen you are dancing with the dance of
the whole, when you are just a part of the dance, when you are just a part of this great
orchestra, when you are not singing your song separately. Only then, in that melting, is
man free.
That's what freedom is. It is not political, not economic, not social. Freedom is spiritual.
The social, the economic, and the political freedom are freedoms only if they help
people to be spiritually free. If they don't help people to become spiritually free, then
they are pretenders. Then in the name of freedom man is made more and more a slave.
Beautiful names become facades hiding ugly realities. If you are not spiritually free you
are not free at all. Then all your freedoms are bogus, phony, pseudo. Then you have
been duped. Then you have been given toys to play with.
Buddha is talking about the reality -- the real freedom. He calls it nirvana. The word
'nirvana' is very beautiful; it means cessation of self-consciousness, utter cessation of the
self, the naked state of egolessness. It brings great ecstasies, great harvest; inexhaustible
treasures it brings.
Hence Buddha goes on repeating again and again...two statements he repeats in THE
DHAMMAPADA. One is: aes dhammo sanantano. This is the ultimate law of life: that
you disappear and you will find yourself. Very paradoxical -- that just by disappearing
one finds. By dropping the self one becomes the ultimate self. By disappearing as a
dewdrop one becomes the ocean.
And the other statement that he repeats again and again is: aes dhammo visuddhya --
such is the law of purity, of becoming innocent, pure. What is the law of purity? A
simple law: become disidentified with the mind, don't think of yourself as a mind. Not
that Buddha is against the mind, not that he does not want you to use it -- he wants you
to use it, but not to be used by it. And usually the second is the case: the mind is using
you. You have become a slave. The masterhas become the slave and the slave has
become the master. Everything has gone topsy-turvy.
You are standing on your head! Now how can you walk, how can you move, how can
you dance? Have you seen anybody dancing standing on his head? Your life will not be
a life of movement anymore if you are standing on your head. Your life will be
stagnant, it will become a dirty pool of water. You will start stinking soon. Standing on
your head you are crippled, paralyzed.
If you just stand on your legs again -- a small change, a very small change, but it brings
a radical revolution -- immediately you are capable of movement, and movement is life.
Not to move is to die.
How do you define death? When a person cannot move in any possible way. He cannot
breathe -- that is one kind of movement; hecannot see -- that is another kind of
movement; he cannot walk, he cannot talk -- these are all kinds of movement, different
dimensions of movement. Because all movement has ceased we say the man is dead.
The more movement you have, the more life, the livelier you are. Have
multidimensional movement! But that is possible only if you stop standing on your
head. You have to be put right.
The day you come to me you come in a topsy-turvy state. Initiation into sannyas means
nothing except that I persuade you to stand on your feet and not to go on doing this
shirshasana -- headstand -- your whole life.
Be natural, be part of nature. Don't brag. Don't go on puffing up your egos. We are tiny
parts -- immensely beautiful if we function withthe whole, but absolutely ugly if we
function against it.
But you have been told by your societies to fight, to struggle, because life is a struggle
for survival, because if you don't fight you will be defeated. And you have to be
victorious, and you have to be famous. You have been given great ambitions and all
those ambitions have become chains, all those ambitions are keeping you tethered. All
those ambitions are the root cause of your mind; they create the mind.
Buddha's word 'tanha' contains all the meanings of desire, ambition, achievement.
These are the nourishments of the mind. If you go on nourishing the mind you are
poisoning yourself. And the mind will become bigger and bigger and you will become
smaller and smaller. The mind becomes almost a cancerous growth.
Sannyas means an operation. Buddha transformed thousands of people through
sannyas, through initiation. He was a great surgeon.
And once you become aware that you are the cause of your own misery, things start
changing. You no longer help your own misery, you no longer feed it. And once you
become aware that you are not your mind but a witness to it, you start rising above the
mind, you are no longer tethered. You startgrowing wings, you start soaring higher
and higher. Mind remains always groping in the dark valleys of life, but you can
become an eagle, you can soar high. You can be the master and then you can use the
mind -- and very purposely it can be used.
These sutras are how to become the master of your mind. They contain the science of
becoming the master.
The Buddha says:
AS THE FLETCHER WHITTLES
AND MAKES STRAIGHT HIS ARROWS,
SO THE MASTER DIRECTS
HIS STRAYING THOUGHTS.
Now meditate: are your thoughts directing you, or do you direct your thoughts? --
because much depends on that insight. Are you being dominated by your thoughts? Do
they go on driving you hither and thither? Do they suggest to you, do they fascinate
you, do they obsess you? Do they pull your strings and are you simply a slave? Or are
you the master, and can you say to your thoughts "Stop!" and they have to stop -- can
you put them on or off?
People never meditate over it because it makes them feel very humiliated. It shows
them their impotence: they cannot evenstop thoughts, their own thoughts.
There is a famous Tibetan parable:
A man served a master for many many years. The service was not pure; there was a
motivation in it. He wanted some secret from the master. He had heard that the master
has the secret -- the secret to do miracles. With this hidden desire he was serving the
master day in, day out, but he was afraid to say anything. But the master was
continuously watching his motivation.
One day the master asked, "It is better thatyou please speak your mind, because I am
continuously seeing a motive in all your service that you do for me. It is not out of love,
certainly not out of love. I don't see any love in it and I don't see any humility in it. It is
a kind of bribery. So please, just tell me, what do you want?"
The man was waiting for this opportunity. He said, "I want the secret of doing
miracles."
The master said, "Then why did you waste yourtime so long? You could have said it
the very first day you had come. You tortured yourself and you tortured me too,
because I don't like people around me who have motives. They are ugly to look at. They
are basically greedy, and greed makes them ugly. The secret is simple -- why didn't you
ask me the first day? This is the secret...."
He wrote down a small mantra on a piece ofpaper, just three lines maybe: "Buddham
sharanam gachchhami, sangham sharanam gachchhami, dhammam sharanam
gachchhami -- I go to the feet of the Buddha,I go to the feet of the Buddha's commune, I
go to the feet of the dhamma, the ultimate law."
And the master told the man, "You take this small mantra with you, repeat it five times,
just five times. It is a simple process.Just remember one condition: while you are
repeating it, take a bath, close the door, sit silently -- and while you are repeating it,
please don't remember monkeys."
The man said, "What nonsense are you talking about? Why should I remember
monkeys in the first place? I have never remembered them my whole life!"
The master said, "That is up to you, but I haveto tell you the condition. This is how the
mantra was given to me, with this condition.If you have never remembered monkeys,
so far so good. Now go home, and please never come back to me. You have the secret,
you know the condition. Fulfill the condition and you will have miraculous powers,
and whatsoever you want to do you can do: you can fly in the sky, you can read
people's thoughts, you can materialize things, and so on and so forth."
The man rushed home; he even forgot to thank the master. That'show greed functions:
it does not know thankfulness, it does not know gratitude. Greed is absolutely unaware
of gratitude; it never comes across it. Greed is a thief and thieves don't thank.
The man rushed, but he was very much puzzled: even on the way to his home monkeys
started appearing in his head. He saw many kinds of monkeys: small and big, and redmouthed and black-mouthed, and he was very much puzzled -- "What is happening?"
In fact he was not thinking of anything else but the monkeys. And they were becoming
bigger and they were crowding all around.
He went home, he took a bath, but the monkeys were not leaving him. Now he was
becoming suspicious that they were not going to leave him while he would be chanting
the mantra. He had not even chanted the mantra yet, he was simply preparing. And
when he closed his doors the room was full ofmonkeys. It was so crowded that he had
no space for himself! He closed his eyes and there were monkeys, and he opened his
eyes and there were monkeys. He could not believe what was happening! The whole
night he tried. Again and again he would take a bath, and again and again he would try
and fail, and fail utterly.
In the morning he went to the master, returned the mantra and said, "Keep this mantra
with you. This is driving me mad! I don't wantto do any miracles, but please help me to
get rid of these monkeys!"
It is so impossible to get rid of a single thought! And if you want to get rid of it, it
becomes even more difficult, because when you want to get rid of a thought it is a
question -- a very decisive moment -- of who is the master: the mind or you? The mind
will try in every possible way to prove that he is the master and not you.
The master has been a slave for centuries, and the slave has been the master for millions
of lives. Now the slave cannot leave all his privileges, priorities, so easily. He is going to
give you great resistance.
You try it! Today take a bath, close your doors, repeat this simple mantra: Buddham
sharanam gachchhami, sangham sharanam gachchhami, dhammam sharanam
gachchhami -- and don't let the monkeys come to you....
You are laughing at the poor man. You will be surprised: you are that man.
Sigmund Freud used to tell another story:
It happened once in a big hotel that a man came to stay. The manager was a little
hesitant in giving him a room although there was an empty room. The man said, "Why
are you hesitating so much?"
The man said, "The reason is, just below that room there is a politician staying, a very
famous man and very powerful, a big gun. And he is annoyed by small things, so we
have kept the room above him empty for three days since he has been here -- because if
anybody walks some noise is created, if you move something some noise is created, and
he becomes so irritated and so angry that he creates much fuss about it."
The stranger said, "Don't be worried! I will bevery careful. Moreover, I am going to stay
only overnight. I will be coming nearabout twelve in the night because I have much
work to do in the town, and I will be leaving early in the morning, five o'clock. There is
not much possibility that between twelve and five I will do anything which will irritate
the great man. At the most I will be asleepand dreaming, and I don't think my dreams
will disturb him."
The manager was convinced: "If he is going to stay just for five hours there is no
problem." He was allowed.
At twelve the man reached his room exhausted: the whole day's work, a thousand and
one things clamoring in his head. He had completely forgotten the politician. He
entered his room. He was so tired. He sat on his bed, took off one of his shoes and
threw it in the corner of the room. Then suddenly the noise of the shoe reminded him
that maybe the politician, the great leader, would get disturbed, may be awakened. So
the other shoe he put down very silently.
After one hour the politician knocked on his door. He came out of his sleep, opened the
door and said, "Have I done anything? -- because for one hour I have been asleep."
The politician was red with anger. He said; "Yes! Where is the other shoe? I cannot
manage to sleep. That other shoe goes on hanging, a continuous question in my mind --
where has the other shoe gone? Is this man sleeping with one shoeon? One I know you
have thrown, but what happened to the other one? I have tried in every possible way to
get rid of the idea -- that this is not my concern. How am I concerned with his shoe? But
the more I have tried to get rid of the ideathe more I have become possessed by it. Now
there is only one possible way to go to sleep: to come and wake you and ask you what
happened. Unless I know I cannot sleep."
It is very difficult even to get rid of an absurd thought, utterly meaningless to you, of no
purpose, something which is just accidental, none of your business. But still it can
pursue you, it can haunt you, it can torture you. It can become such a powerful thing
that it can drive you mad.
People don't look in. They know that it is better not to look in because it is very
humiliating. To see oneself as a slave is humiliating. And the mind has been on the
throne so long, it has become accustomed tobeing the master. And it is not the master.
You are born as a consciousness, not as a mind. Your innermost core is consciousness,
not mind. Mind is nothing but accumulated thoughts, junk of the past. You are totally
different from it.
Watching it, slowly slowly you will see the distance. A thought arises in you, watch it.
Watch it without any judgment. Don't be for or against, simply look at it, see into it, just
like a mirror reflecting it. And one thing will become certain: that it is separate from
you. It comes and goes, and you abide forever. The reflection in the mirror is not the
mirror. Many reflections come and go, the mirror remains. The mirror is only the
capacity of mirroring. A thought is there -- anger, greed, jealousy -- some thought, some
kind of thought is there. It is not you!
But our whole training, our whole conditioning, is basically wrong. Our languages are
basically wrong because they give us wrong notions. When you see the thought of
hunger arise in your mind you immediately say, "I am hungry," which is utter
nonsense. You have never been hungry and you cannot be hungry, because
consciousness has nothing to do with hunger, food, satiation. What is actually
happening is: the body is hungry -- you are aware of it. You are simply reflecting the
situation of the body.
To be exactly precise you should say, "I am aware that my body is hungry, I am seeing
that my body needs food."
But every language says, "I am hungry, I am thirsty." I know it is simpler to say, "I am
thirsty," than to say again and again, "Iam aware that my body is thirsty."
One of the great Indian mystics visited America -- his name was Swami Ram. He used
to speak of himself in the third person, he never used to use the word 'I'. He would only
call himself Ram. He would say, "Ram is hungry. Ram is thirsty. Now Ram is feeling
sleepy." It is a very strange way because we are not accustomed to it.
When he went to America for the first time, people could not understand him or would
understand him only in a wrong way, misunderstand him. He would say, "Ram is
hungry." They would look all around -- where is Ram? And then he would show them:
"This body is Ram, this body is hungry."
And they would say, "Then why don't you simply say 'I am hungry'? Why go so
roundabout, why go in circles? 'Ram is hungry.' Then we have to ask, 'Who is Ram?'
Then you have to say, 'This body is Ram.'"
But Ram would say, "I cannot assert something which is not true. I cannot say 'I am
hungry' because I am not."
Once it happened that he was sitting in a park, a public park, and a few people who had
gathered around him were asking questions. One man asked, "We have heard about
Krishna that when he used to play on his flute that people would forget their jobs and
just rush towards him enchanted, as if possessed. What was his secret?"
Ram was only wearing one single cloth, he had just wrapped a blanket around himself.
He threw the blanket -- rather than answering he created a situation. That's how great
mystics work. He threw the blanket, he was utterly naked, and he ran away. All the
people ran with him! Not only those who were surrounding him but others also who
were standing here and there or who had come for a morning walk, and people who
were sitting on the benches reading their newspapers, they threw their newspapers. A
great crowd was following him, and he was laughing and giggling, and the whole
crowd was following him.
And then he stood under a tree and he said, "Why are you following me? For what? I
have not even played on the flute! And you had asked me why people used to become
possessed by Krishna's flute."
Wherever something of the beyond happens, people become enchanted. "You are
enchanted," he said. "And Ram has not doneanything special. Ram has only become
naked and has been running like a child in the morning sun."
Somebody who was not acquainted with his way of talking asked, "Who is this Ram?"
And again he said, "This body is Ram, this mind is Ram, and I am a watcher just as you
are a watcher. Just as you watched this bodyrunning naked in the morning sun, I was
also watching. You are watching from without,I am watching from within. We are both
watchers."
This is the way to become disidentified from the mind: be a watcher.
Buddha says: AS THE FLETCHER WHITTLES AND MAKES STRAIGHT HIS
ARROWS, SO THE MASTER DIRECTS HIS STRAYING THOUGHTS. Then it will be
possible and only then: when you have become an observer, when you have reduced
your thoughts to observed objects, the content of the mind is no longer powerful. You
have slipped out of its power, you are standing apart. You are a spectator, a witness.
When you have become a witness, you will be able to direct your thoughts. Then
thoughts can be used, then thoughts are beautiful.
The mind is the most sophisticated mechanism in the whole of existence, and the
human mind more so than any other. It is the most evolved machine, it can be used for
great things. But you have to be the master, only then can you use it.
But the situation is such that the car is driving the driver.
The driver has become completely unaware of himself; maybe he is drunk. He is simply
moving wherever the car is leading him. Now he is bound for a ditch, bound for an
accident! And if your life is so full of accidents it is not an accident at all -- it has to be
so.
You are following a machine. It is a biocomputer, your mind; beautiful if you can use it
as a master, dangerous if it uses you. This is slavery. To be free of it is to know
something of freedom.
And the first effort should be like the fletcher who makes his arrows straight.
Your minds are not in a state of harmony; your minds are in a mess, nothing is straight
there. Everything has become a very complicated labyrinth, a riddle. You don't know
what is what and which is which. You don't know what you are doing and why. And
one moment one thought possesses you, another moment another thought possesses
you, and both may be contradictory. So byone hand you make something and by the
other hand you unmake it. Hence the utter failure of life, a sheer wastage of energy and
time and opportunity.
Watch how contradictory your thoughts are. One part says yes, another part
immediately says no, never misses the opportunity to say no. Now saying yes and no
together is wasting your energy. Either say yes and be total, then your thought is
straight; or say no and be total, then yourthought is straight. But saying yes and no
together, or alternately -- one moment yes, another moment no -- where are you going
to reach? You take one step in one direction,another step in another direction. You will
remain stuck in the same place, or at the mostyou will move in circles, But your life will
not be a life of growth, you will not grow. You may certainly grow old but you will
never grow up, you will never attain to maturity.
Straighten out your thoughts! It is almost a complete jungle in your mind -- all paths are
lost. You don't know what is happening. You can't stop either, because it makes you
frightened to stop. Everybody else is doing so much, everybody else is achieving,
reaching, fulfilling their ambitions, how can you stop? You have to go on, and you have
to go on with great speed and great gusto and enthusiasm. And you don't know where
you are going, what the goal is. What do you really want to achieve in life? Money?
And even if you achieve much money what will you do with it?
You can purchase more misery, of course, when you have more money; that's what you
are going to do. You will go on purchasing the same things that you are purchasing
now. Of course, you can purchase them in bigger quantities, that's all. You will live in
bigger houses, but you will live; the house is not going to live it. If you are anxious in a
small house you may be more anxious in a bigger house, because you will have more
space to be anxious in. If you are ignorant, utterly ignorant of yourself, how is money
going to help? How is being famous going to help? You may become a world-renowned
person, but that will not changeanything. Your inner darkness will remain the same; it
may even become darker.
The first thing Buddha says is: ...THE MASTER DIRECTS HIS STRAYING THOUGHTS.
He does not allow the thoughts to go intocontradictory pathways. He does not allow
one thought to be destroyed by another. He does not allow thoughts to direct him -- he
is the director. He masters them; he uses them as beautiful implements, instruments.
And then certainly he comes to fulfillment, because he knows where he is going and he
knows what he is doing.
On each step of his journey he is perfectly aware of his whereabouts; he has a certain
sense of direction. He does not go on running in all the directions simultaneously; he
has a direction. Naturally he becomes integrated, he becomes a great power. Without
attaining any political power he becomes a great power. His power arises from his own
being, it is his own. Nobody can take it away; it does not depend on anybody. Even
death cannot take it away fromhim, even death is impotent.
But people are living in such aninsane state. This state isinsane! People feel offended
when I say that the whole of humanity is insane, but what can I do? -- it is so. The fact
has to be stated, howsoever painful it is. I am also pained by it, I feel sorry for
humanity, but it has to be said: that the whole of humanity is mad. What you call
normal human beings are not normal at all. They are normally mad, certainly; their
madness is almost the same, hence they are normal. But they are not the norm, they are
not the principle, they are not the criterion of health. The whole earth is a big
madhouse.
Kahlil Gibran has a beautiful story:
One man becomes insane; he is put in an insane asylum. A friend comes to visit him.
The friend is a professor, a professor of philosophy, has written many books, is a wellknown scholar, is also a psychologist. The madman is sitting on a bench under a tree in
the garden, surrounded by a big wall. The professor comes, sits by his side and asks
him, "How are you feeling inside this place?"
The madman laughs. He says, "I am feeling so good -- as I have never felt before."
The professor is puzzled. He says, "Why? Why are you feeling so happy being in this
madhouse?"
The madman says, "Madhouse? This you call a madhouse? I have left the madhouse
outside -- this is the sanest place in the world! The madhouse is outside; this wall
protects us from mad people. If ever you become tired of the mad people outside, you
are always welcome here. Come in! It is verypeaceful here -- nobody interferes in
anybody's work. It is very silent here. Very few people arehere, and I have never seen
such sane people in my whole life -- they are all like me!"
That's his definition of sanity: he is saneand they are like him. The people who are
outside are insane.
But the same criterion is followed by the people outside: you think yourself sane
because you are exactly like your neighbors. But who knows? -- the neighbors may be
insane too.
The whole history of humanity proves that this is an insane humanity; something is
basically wrong with it. In three thousand years man has fought five thousand wars.
Will you call this humanity sane? Everybody is greedy, jealous, possessive -- and you
call this humanity sane? Everybody is at each other's throats -- and you call this
humanity sane? Normal of course -- normal in the sense that they are all alike.
Once Mark Twain advertised, as a hoax, that hehad lost a cat so black that it could not
be seen by ordinary light, and he wanted it back. Nearly a thousand people contacted
him claiming to have seen it.
Just look around, just observe people, and you will be surprised seeing the utterly
insane state which is known as normal. Whatis normal? What is the definition of a
normal human being?
He should be full of love, he should be full ofbliss. He should be fearless. He should be
joyous and ecstatic. He should be able to sing and laugh and dance. He should be able
to enjoy the small things of life. He shouldbe total in whatsoever he is doing. His
thoughts will be straight: if he says no he means no, if he says yes he means yes. He will
not be diplomatic, he will not be political inthat he says one thing, he means another,
and will do a third thing. You cannot figure it out, you can never be sure what the
political person is going to do. He has one face outside and another reality inside. He is
double-faced, in a double bind. He smiles at you, he greets you -- and he hates you, he
curses you inside. He is an enemy, yet he pretends to be a friend.
This is insanity! This hypocrisy is insanity, this split is insanity. This schizophrenic
atmosphere is insane. It is not a healthy human being that we have been able to
produce. We have failed up to now...and we have to do something very drastic now,
otherwise humanity is doomed. Now the insane people have so much destructive
power in their hands that one war more and humanity is finished and this planet is
finished.
Something tremendously drastic is needed, a quantum leap is needed. But this is
possible only through those people who listen to the buddhas.
...THE MASTER DIRECTS HIS STRAYING THOUGHTS.
LIKE A FISH OUT OF WATER,
STRANDED ON THE SHORE,
THOUGHTS THRASH AND QUIVER.
FOR HOW CAN THEY SHAKE OFF DESIRE?
Thoughts cannot live out of desire, just as a fish cannot live out of the sea. Thoughts
cannot live out of the sea of desire: thoughtsare basically instruments of a desiring
state. And we are continuously desiring, desiring this and that. We cannot stop thinking
if we go on desiring. First the desire, the very root, has to be cut.
What is there to desire in life? Those who have known, those who have realized life, say
there is nothing worth desiring in life. Liveit! and live as wholly as possible, and live
each moment to its uttermost. Squeeze it totally. But there is nothing to desire. Desire
leads you astray because it leads you into the future.
Drink out of the present moment, because the present moment is the door to God. God
has only one tense: the present. He knows no past and no future. If you also want to be
part of God...and that's the onlyway to be sane, to be healthy. Only a religious person is
sane and healthy. If you want to be part ofGod, you will have to learn to relax in the
present moment.
Die to the past and die to the future, and live in the present. Don't allow yourself to
move from the present, not even a single inch here and there; otherwise you will always
go on missing the train.
And the mind is continuously running from one object to another, from one person to
another. You have a wife, but the mind is running after other people's wives. You have
children, but they never look sobeautiful as other people's children. The grass is always
greener on the other side of the hedge. Everybody else seems to be happier than you.
And then, of course, you logically deduce: "They have bigger houses, better children, a
beautiful woman, more money, more power, more prestige, so these are the things I
also need. Unless I have all these things, how can I be happy?" You make your
happiness conditional. And the moment a man makes his happiness conditional he is
doomed; he will remain unhappy his whole life.
Happiness is not conditional; nothing is neededto be happy. Only to be alive is needed
-- and that you are, you already are. Only tobe conscious is needed -- and that you
already are. Hence the mystics and the buddhas say that bliss is our very nature. But the
mind is a runner and it keeps dragging you.
The sultan called for his eunuch. "I am in the mood," he said. "Go get me wife number
256."
So the eunuch ran out of the palace and intothe harem. He ran through the garden, past
the orchard, and up the steps. Soon he returned with wife 256. A bit later the sultan sent
for the eunuch again and said, "I want more. Go get me wife 87." The eunuch ran and
got her. Then the king wanted wife 68, and soon after, wife 92.
When he returned with wife number 92 the eunuch was panting heavily. Then he
suddenly collapsed and died.
Moral: It is not the loving that kills you, it is the running around.
The mind is continuously running around. It never sits, it can't sit. Sitting seems to be
death to it, and in a way it is. That's why Zen people say, if you can sit silently for a few
hours every day, doing nothing, not even chanting a mantra, because that is again a
running of the mind, the same mind.... It can sing pop songs, it can chant a religious
mantra, it makes no difference. It wants some work, it wants activity, it wants
occupation, it wants to run. Its life is in the running.
The Zen people say just sit, don't do anything. The most difficult thing in the world is
just to sit doing nothing. But once you have got the knack of it.... If you go on sitting for
a few months doing nothing for a few hours every day, slowly slowly, many things will
happen. You will feel sleepy, you will dream. Many thoughts will crowd your mind,
many things. The mind will say, "Why areyou wasting your time? You could have
earned a little money. At least you could havegone to a film, entertained yourself, or
you could have relaxed and gossiped. You could have watched the TV or listened to the
radio, or at least you could have read the newspaper you have not seen. Why are you
wasting your time?"
Mind will give you a thousand and one arguments, but if you just go on listening
without being bothered by the mind.... It will doall kinds of tricks: it will hallucinate, it
will dream, it will become sleepy. It will do all that is possible to drag you out of just
sitting. But if you go on, if you persevere, one day the sun rises.
One day it happens, you are not feeling sleepy, the mind has become tired of you, is fed
up with you, has dropped the idea that you can be trapped, is simply finished with you!
There is no sleep, no hallucination, no dream,no thought. You are simply sitting there
doing nothing...and all is silence and all is peace and all is bliss. You have entered God,
you have entered truth.
THEY TREMBLE, THEY ARE UNSTEADY,
THEY WANDER AT THEIR WILL.
IT IS GOOD TO CONTROL THEM.
AND TO MASTER THEM BRINGS HAPPINESS.
Watch, and you will see the trembling mind, the quivering thoughts chasing each other,
running in every possible direction, consistent, inconsistent, meaningful, meaningless.
Just one day sit down in your room, close the doors, and start writing the thoughts that
are happening to you. That will help you to become aware. Just go on writing
whatsoever is happening. Don't edit, don't make them look consistent, beautiful. It is
not to be shown to anybody, it is just for your observation. For fifteen minutes go on
writing, then read it, and you will be puzzled: are you mad or something? What kind of
things are going on in your head? All kinds of things, so irrelevant that you cannot
conceive any possible relationship with them. Anything leads to anything just
accidentally.
The dog starts barking in the neighborhoodand your mind starts functioning. You
remember a dog you used to have in yourchildhood, and suddenly the mind jumps
from the dog to a friend who was also known in the childhood...and from the friend to
the school, and the teacher. And this way the mind goes on hopping, and you will land
nobody knows where. And it was just started by the barking of the dog who knows
nothing about you, who is not interested at all in you, but he triggered a process. You
may reach anywhere! And each time it happens you will reach some other place.
Mind goes on jumping from one place to another, and mind has so much information
that it can produce all kinds of worlds.
Watching it you will see the truth of Buddha's statement: THEY TREMBLE, THEY ARE
UNSTEADY, THEY WANDER AT THEIR WILL. They don't listen to you, they have
their own will. Each thought has its own will and insists on remaining itself. It does not
want to be tinkered with, it does not want you to interfere. If you interfere, it resists, it
protests. Every thought wants its own individuality. And these millions of thoughts in
your head destroy your individuality, because they all claim their own individuality
and they all claim to be autonomous and free. And if you say anything, they ask, "Who
are you?" And each time they will show you your place, they will reduce you to
nothing.
Unless they are controlled, Buddha says, there is no possibility of bliss happening to
you. You will remain in a mess, you will remain a confusion.
Inmate: "I have a mad, insane desire to crush you in my arms."
Lady psychiatrist: "Now you are talking sense!"
It depends on you what you call sense and what you call nonsense. There are
philosophers in the world who say all is nonsense, and there are philosophers in the
world who say everything is sense, sensible. This is the most rational world, they say,
very logical. It all depends on you what you call sense and what you think is sensible. It
depends on your training, your upbringing, your conditioning, the way you have been
hypnotized.
Now, eating meat is sensible if you havebeen brought up in a house where nobody
ever thought of vegetarianism; even if they talked about it, they talked only to laugh at
vegetarians: "These foolish people who think that by becoming vegetarians they are
becoming religious." If you are born in a vegetarian house, in a vegetarian family, then
the people who eat meat are monsters. They arenot people at all; they are untouchable,
they are not human beings, they are animals.
You yourself never know what is right, what is wrong; you know only according to
what others have said to you. This is not a way which can lead you into sanity. You will
have to become more aware, more alert, more watchful. You will have to decide on
your own. You have lived a borrowed life. You will have to reflect -- you become a
human being only when you start reflecting on things on your own. When you observe
accurately, precisely, when you judge, when you value, when you weigh things and
you start living according to your own consciousness more and more, you will attain to
freedom. And freedom brings bliss.
Freedom means you have to control the mind, your so-called mind, which is not yours
at all because it has been given to you by others, in fragments. A part of it belongs to
your mother, another part to your father, another part to your uncle, and so on and so
forth...to the priest, to the teacher, to the neighborhood boy.... You have gathered
fragments from all over the world -- from the books you have been reading and the
films you have been seeing.
If you look into it you will be surprised -- you don't have any mind of your own.
Everything is borrowed! How can you be authentic? You are just a piled-up
phenomenon, fragments from so many different sources that they can never melt and
become one. But one thing is not borrowed in you and that is your consciousness, that is
your awareness. That you have brought with you, that is part of your inner core.
Depend on it and never depend on the mind. Become independent of the mind and
absolutely dependent on consciousness, and you are taking the greatest step of your
life.
BUT HOW SUBTLE THEY ARE,
HOW ELUSIVE!
THE TASK IS TO QUIETEN THEM,
AND BY RULING THEM TO FIND HAPPINESS.
It is not going to be an easy job. It is arduous, because the mind is very cunning and
thoughts are very subtle.
One soldier is explaining transmigration of souls to another and tells him that if he is
killed his body will decay on the battlefield and finally sink into the ground. In the
spring a beautiful flower will come up on the spot.
"And that is me, is it?" asks the other soldier.
"No, wait a minute. Then a cow comes along and eats the flower and leaves behind a
big pile of cowflop. Then I come strolling through the field with my girl, I sees this
cowflop and I taps it with my walking-stick and I says, 'Hello, Bill! Why, you ain't
changed a bit!'"
Mind is very cunning -- it can always find its ways to remain the same. It can find new
ways so that it can remain old. It can find new garments so it can hide behind them; it
can find beautiful rationalizations.
Beware! Mind is not a simple phenomenon, it is complex, subtle, very elusive. If you try
to catch hold of it you will be in difficulty. If you push it out through the front door, it
will come from the back. If you want to control it and repress it, it will start functioning
from your unconscious -- which is far more dangerous because it will control you still,
although now you will be absolutely unaware of its control. The enemy is no longer
visible, that's all, but the enemy is there. And when the enemy is invisible the enemy is
more powerful.
...HOW SUBTLE THEY ARE, and HOW ELUSIVE! THE TASK IS TO QUIETEN
THEM.... So remember, they are not to be repressed, they are not to be caught. THE
TASK IS TO QUIETEN THEM, AND BY RULING THEM TO FIND HAPPINESS.
It is through stilling them that one becomes a ruler, not by ruling them that you quieten
them. Remember that process: it looks similar, it is not. It is very very different,
diametrically opposite in fact. You have to quieten them first, still them first.
And the way to still them is just to watch silently without judgment, without saying this
is good, this is bad. The moment you say good and bad you have jumped into the mire.
The mind has already caught you, you are already entrapped.
You simply watch! Your moral teachers don't allow you watching. You sit and just
look...a thought of murdering somebody comes.Your mind is enjoying the thought of
murdering somebody. This is one part. Another part of the mind says, "This is very bad,
this is a sin. You should not even think such a thought, even tothink it is a sin." This is
another part of the mind. You become identified with the other part, the moral part.
You say, "This is my conscience." It is not your conscience: it has beenput into you. It is
the society controlling you from within; it is a strategy of the society to control you. You
don't know what is right and what is wrong.
Be innocent! Just watch, watch both. One part of the mind is saying, "Murder that man -- he has insulted you!" Another part of the mind is saying, "This is bad, this is immoral.
You will fall into hell, you will suffer in your next birth, you will be punished for it."
Know well, the second is also mind, and there is no choice between two fragments of
the mind. Watch both, enjoy both. See the contradiction of the mind -- don't get
identified with any part.
Remember, the ego wants to be identified with the good part, the moral part. It feels
beautiful: "I am against murder, look! I am not for it." You are just getting caught by
another part of the mind. You are still a slave. Your sinners and your saints, both are
slaves.
The really free man is free from both good and bad. He is beyond good and evil. He is
just consciousness and nothing else. He simply observes. And if you can just observe
without being identified, slowly slowly mind quietens down, and in that quietening is
your power. One day when the mind is completely gone, has become totally still, you
are the sovereign.
WITH SINGLEMINDEDNESS
THE MASTER QUELLS HIS THOUGHTS.
HE ENDS THEIR WANDERING.
SEATED IN THE CAVE OF THE HEART,
HE FINDS FREEDOM.
And when the mind is no more, where do you go? Suddenly, when the mind is no
more, you enter into the heart. You slip out ofthe mind, out of the grip of the head. And
then the heart, the cave of the heart, is yourpalace. The mind is a by-product of the
society: the heart is an extension of God.
This is possible only if you work singlemindedly to still the mind, to be aware of the
mind, to be utterly watchful, without any judgment and without any identification.
THE MASTER QUELLS HIS THOUGHTS. HEENDS THEIR WANDERING. SEATED
IN THE CAVE OF THE HEART, HE FINDS FREEDOM.
The head is a slavery, the heart the freedom. The head is a misery, the heart the ultimate
bliss.
AES DHAMMO SANANTANO.
Enough for today
Chapter #9
Chapter title: Seated in the cave of the heart
29 June 1979 am in Buddha Hall
AS THE FLETCHER WHITTLES
AND MAKES STRAIGHT HIS ARROWS,
SO THE MASTER DIRECTS
HIS STRAYING THOUGHTS.
LIKE A FISH OUT OF WATER,
STRANDED ON THE SHORE,
THOUGHTS THRASH AND QUIVER.
FOR HOW CAN THEY SHAKE OFF DESIRE?
THEY TREMBLE, THEY ARE UNSTEADY,
THEY WANDER AT THEIR WILL.
IT IS GOOD TO CONTROL THEM.
AND TO MASTER THEM BRINGS HAPPINESS.
BUT HOW SUBTLE THEY ARE,
HOW ELUSIVE!
THE TASK IS TO QUIETEN THEM,
AND BY RULING THEM TO FIND HAPPINESS.
WITH SINGLEMINDEDNESS
THE MASTER QUELLS HIS THOUGHTS.
HE ENDS THEIR WANDERING.
SEATED IN THE CAVE OF THE HEART,
HE FINDS FREEDOM.
Freedom is the goal of life. Without freedom, life has no meaning at all. By "freedom" is
not meant any political, social or economicfreedom. By "freedom" is meant freedom
from time, freedom from mind, freedom fromdesire. The moment mind is no more,
you are one with the universe, you areas vast as the universe itself.
It is the mind that is the barrier between you and the reality, and because of this barrier
you remain confined in a dark cell where nolight ever reaches and where no joy can
ever penetrate. You live in misery because you are not meant to live in such a small,
confined space. Your being wants to expand to the very ultimate source of existence.
Your being longs to be oceanic, and you have become a dewdrop. How can you be
happy? How can you be blissful? Man lives in misery because man lives imprisoned.
And Gautama the Buddha says that tanha -- desire -- is the root cause of all our misery,
because desire creates the mind. Desire means creating future, projecting yourself in the
future, bringing tomorrow in. Bring the tomorrow in and the today disappears, you
cannot see it anymore; your eyes are clouded by the tomorrow. Bring the tomorrow in
and you will have to carry the load of all your yesterdays, because the tomorrow can
only be there if the yesterdays go on nourishing it.
Each desire is born out of the past and each desire is projected in the future. The past
and the future, they constitute your whole mind. Analyze the mind, dissect it, and you
will find only two things: the past and the future. You will not find even an iota of the
present, not even a single atom. And the present is the only reality, the only existence,
the only dance there is.
The present can be found only when mind has ceased utterly. When the past no more
overpowers you and the future no more possesses you, when you are disconnected
from the memories and the imaginations, in that moment where are you? who are you?
In that moment you are a nobody. And nobody can hurt you when you are a nobody,
you cannot be wounded -- because the ego is very ready to receive wounds. The ego is
almost seeking and searching to be wounded; it exists through wounds. Its whole
existence depends on misery, pain.
When you are a nobody, anguish is impossible, anxiety simply unbelievable. When you
are a nobody there is great silence, stillness, no noise inside. Past gone, future
disappeared, what is there to create noise? And the silence that is heard is celestial, is
sacred. For the first time, in those spaces ofno-mind, you become aware of the eternal
celebration that goes on and on. That's what the existence is made of.
Except man, the whole existence is blissful. Only man has fallen out of it, has gone
astray. Only man can do it because only man has consciousness.
Now, consciousness has two possibilities: eitherit can become a bright light in you, so
bright that even the sun will look pale compared to it.... Buddha says it is as if a
thousand suns have risen suddenly -- when you look within with no mind it is all light,
eternal light. It is all joy, pure, uncontaminated, unpolluted. It is simple bliss, innocent.
It is wonder. Its majesty is indescribable, its beauty inexpressible, and its benediction
inexhaustible. Aes dhammo sanantano: so is the ultimate law.
If you can only put your mind aside you will become aware of the cosmic play. Then
you are only energy, and the energy is always herenow, it never leaves the herenow.
That is one possibility: if you become pure consciousness.
The other possibility is: you can become self-consciousness. Then you fall. Then you
become a separate entity from the world. Then you become an island, defined, well
defined. Then you are confined, because all definitions confine. Thenyou are in a prison
cell, and the prison cell is dark, utterly dark. There is no light, no possibility of light.
And the prison cell cripples you, paralyzes you.
Self-consciousness becomes a bondage; the selfis the bondage. And just consciousness
becomes freedom.
Drop the self and be conscious! That is the whole message -- the message of all the
buddhas of all the ages, past, present, future.The essential core of the message is very
simple: drop the self, the ego, the mind, and be.
Just this moment when this silence pervades...who are you? A nobody, a nonentity. You
don't have a name, you don't have a form. You are neither man nor woman, neither
Hindu nor Mohammedan. You don't belong to any country, to any nation, to any race.
You are not the body and you are not the mind.
Then what are you? In this silence, what is your taste? How does it taste to be? Just a
peace, just a silence...and out of that peace and silence a great joy starts surfacing,
welling up, for no reason at all. It is your spontaneous nature.
The art of putting the mind aside is the whole secret of religion, because as you put the
mind aside your being explodes into a thousand and one colors. You become a rainbow,
a lotus, a one-thousand-petaled lotus. Suddenly you open up, and then the whole
beauty of existence -- which is infinite! -- isyours. Then all the stars in the sky are
within you. Then even the sky is not yourlimit; you don't have any limits anymore.
Silence gives you a chance to melt, merge, disappear, evaporate. And when you are not,
you are -- for the first time you are. When you are not, God is, nirvana is, enlightenment
is. When you are not, all is found -- and when you are, all is lost.
Man has become a self-consciousness; that is his going astray, that is the original fall.
All the religions talk about the original fall in some way or other, but the best story is
contained in Christianity. The original fall is because man eats from the tree of
knowledge. When you eat of the tree of knowledge, the fruits of knowledge, it creates
self-consciousness.
The more knowledgeable you are, the more egoistic you are -- hence the ego of the
scholars, pundits, maulvis. The ego becomes decorated with great knowledge,
scriptures, systems of thought. But they don't make you innocent; they don't bring you
the childlike quality of openness, of trust, of love, of playfulness. Trust, love,
playfulness, wonder, all disappear whenyou become very knowledgeable.
And we are being taught to become knowledgeable. We are not taught to be innocent,
we are not taught how to feel the wonder of existence. We are told the names of the
flowers, but we are not taught how to dance around the flowers. We are told the names
of the mountains, but we are not taught how to commune with the mountains, how to
commune with the stars, how to commune with the trees, how to be in tune with
existence.
Out of tune, how can you be happy? Out of tune you are bound to remain in anguish, in
great misery, in pain. You can be happy onlywhen you are dancing with the dance of
the whole, when you are just a part of the dance, when you are just a part of this great
orchestra, when you are not singing your song separately. Only then, in that melting, is
man free.
That's what freedom is. It is not political, not economic, not social. Freedom is spiritual.
The social, the economic, and the political freedom are freedoms only if they help
people to be spiritually free. If they don't help people to become spiritually free, then
they are pretenders. Then in the name of freedom man is made more and more a slave.
Beautiful names become facades hiding ugly realities. If you are not spiritually free you
are not free at all. Then all your freedoms are bogus, phony, pseudo. Then you have
been duped. Then you have been given toys to play with.
Buddha is talking about the reality -- the real freedom. He calls it nirvana. The word
'nirvana' is very beautiful; it means cessation of self-consciousness, utter cessation of the
self, the naked state of egolessness. It brings great ecstasies, great harvest; inexhaustible
treasures it brings.
Hence Buddha goes on repeating again and again...two statements he repeats in THE
DHAMMAPADA. One is: aes dhammo sanantano. This is the ultimate law of life: that
you disappear and you will find yourself. Very paradoxical -- that just by disappearing
one finds. By dropping the self one becomes the ultimate self. By disappearing as a
dewdrop one becomes the ocean.
And the other statement that he repeats again and again is: aes dhammo visuddhya --
such is the law of purity, of becoming innocent, pure. What is the law of purity? A
simple law: become disidentified with the mind, don't think of yourself as a mind. Not
that Buddha is against the mind, not that he does not want you to use it -- he wants you
to use it, but not to be used by it. And usually the second is the case: the mind is using
you. You have become a slave. The masterhas become the slave and the slave has
become the master. Everything has gone topsy-turvy.
You are standing on your head! Now how can you walk, how can you move, how can
you dance? Have you seen anybody dancing standing on his head? Your life will not be
a life of movement anymore if you are standing on your head. Your life will be
stagnant, it will become a dirty pool of water. You will start stinking soon. Standing on
your head you are crippled, paralyzed.
If you just stand on your legs again -- a small change, a very small change, but it brings
a radical revolution -- immediately you are capable of movement, and movement is life.
Not to move is to die.
How do you define death? When a person cannot move in any possible way. He cannot
breathe -- that is one kind of movement; hecannot see -- that is another kind of
movement; he cannot walk, he cannot talk -- these are all kinds of movement, different
dimensions of movement. Because all movement has ceased we say the man is dead.
The more movement you have, the more life, the livelier you are. Have
multidimensional movement! But that is possible only if you stop standing on your
head. You have to be put right.
The day you come to me you come in a topsy-turvy state. Initiation into sannyas means
nothing except that I persuade you to stand on your feet and not to go on doing this
shirshasana -- headstand -- your whole life.
Be natural, be part of nature. Don't brag. Don't go on puffing up your egos. We are tiny
parts -- immensely beautiful if we function withthe whole, but absolutely ugly if we
function against it.
But you have been told by your societies to fight, to struggle, because life is a struggle
for survival, because if you don't fight you will be defeated. And you have to be
victorious, and you have to be famous. You have been given great ambitions and all
those ambitions have become chains, all those ambitions are keeping you tethered. All
those ambitions are the root cause of your mind; they create the mind.
Buddha's word 'tanha' contains all the meanings of desire, ambition, achievement.
These are the nourishments of the mind. If you go on nourishing the mind you are
poisoning yourself. And the mind will become bigger and bigger and you will become
smaller and smaller. The mind becomes almost a cancerous growth.
Sannyas means an operation. Buddha transformed thousands of people through
sannyas, through initiation. He was a great surgeon.
And once you become aware that you are the cause of your own misery, things start
changing. You no longer help your own misery, you no longer feed it. And once you
become aware that you are not your mind but a witness to it, you start rising above the
mind, you are no longer tethered. You startgrowing wings, you start soaring higher
and higher. Mind remains always groping in the dark valleys of life, but you can
become an eagle, you can soar high. You can be the master and then you can use the
mind -- and very purposely it can be used.
These sutras are how to become the master of your mind. They contain the science of
becoming the master.
The Buddha says:
AS THE FLETCHER WHITTLES
AND MAKES STRAIGHT HIS ARROWS,
SO THE MASTER DIRECTS
HIS STRAYING THOUGHTS.
Now meditate: are your thoughts directing you, or do you direct your thoughts? --
because much depends on that insight. Are you being dominated by your thoughts? Do
they go on driving you hither and thither? Do they suggest to you, do they fascinate
you, do they obsess you? Do they pull your strings and are you simply a slave? Or are
you the master, and can you say to your thoughts "Stop!" and they have to stop -- can
you put them on or off?
People never meditate over it because it makes them feel very humiliated. It shows
them their impotence: they cannot evenstop thoughts, their own thoughts.
There is a famous Tibetan parable:
A man served a master for many many years. The service was not pure; there was a
motivation in it. He wanted some secret from the master. He had heard that the master
has the secret -- the secret to do miracles. With this hidden desire he was serving the
master day in, day out, but he was afraid to say anything. But the master was
continuously watching his motivation.
One day the master asked, "It is better thatyou please speak your mind, because I am
continuously seeing a motive in all your service that you do for me. It is not out of love,
certainly not out of love. I don't see any love in it and I don't see any humility in it. It is
a kind of bribery. So please, just tell me, what do you want?"
The man was waiting for this opportunity. He said, "I want the secret of doing
miracles."
The master said, "Then why did you waste yourtime so long? You could have said it
the very first day you had come. You tortured yourself and you tortured me too,
because I don't like people around me who have motives. They are ugly to look at. They
are basically greedy, and greed makes them ugly. The secret is simple -- why didn't you
ask me the first day? This is the secret...."
He wrote down a small mantra on a piece ofpaper, just three lines maybe: "Buddham
sharanam gachchhami, sangham sharanam gachchhami, dhammam sharanam
gachchhami -- I go to the feet of the Buddha,I go to the feet of the Buddha's commune, I
go to the feet of the dhamma, the ultimate law."
And the master told the man, "You take this small mantra with you, repeat it five times,
just five times. It is a simple process.Just remember one condition: while you are
repeating it, take a bath, close the door, sit silently -- and while you are repeating it,
please don't remember monkeys."
The man said, "What nonsense are you talking about? Why should I remember
monkeys in the first place? I have never remembered them my whole life!"
The master said, "That is up to you, but I haveto tell you the condition. This is how the
mantra was given to me, with this condition.If you have never remembered monkeys,
so far so good. Now go home, and please never come back to me. You have the secret,
you know the condition. Fulfill the condition and you will have miraculous powers,
and whatsoever you want to do you can do: you can fly in the sky, you can read
people's thoughts, you can materialize things, and so on and so forth."
The man rushed home; he even forgot to thank the master. That'show greed functions:
it does not know thankfulness, it does not know gratitude. Greed is absolutely unaware
of gratitude; it never comes across it. Greed is a thief and thieves don't thank.
The man rushed, but he was very much puzzled: even on the way to his home monkeys
started appearing in his head. He saw many kinds of monkeys: small and big, and redmouthed and black-mouthed, and he was very much puzzled -- "What is happening?"
In fact he was not thinking of anything else but the monkeys. And they were becoming
bigger and they were crowding all around.
He went home, he took a bath, but the monkeys were not leaving him. Now he was
becoming suspicious that they were not going to leave him while he would be chanting
the mantra. He had not even chanted the mantra yet, he was simply preparing. And
when he closed his doors the room was full ofmonkeys. It was so crowded that he had
no space for himself! He closed his eyes and there were monkeys, and he opened his
eyes and there were monkeys. He could not believe what was happening! The whole
night he tried. Again and again he would take a bath, and again and again he would try
and fail, and fail utterly.
In the morning he went to the master, returned the mantra and said, "Keep this mantra
with you. This is driving me mad! I don't wantto do any miracles, but please help me to
get rid of these monkeys!"
It is so impossible to get rid of a single thought! And if you want to get rid of it, it
becomes even more difficult, because when you want to get rid of a thought it is a
question -- a very decisive moment -- of who is the master: the mind or you? The mind
will try in every possible way to prove that he is the master and not you.
The master has been a slave for centuries, and the slave has been the master for millions
of lives. Now the slave cannot leave all his privileges, priorities, so easily. He is going to
give you great resistance.
You try it! Today take a bath, close your doors, repeat this simple mantra: Buddham
sharanam gachchhami, sangham sharanam gachchhami, dhammam sharanam
gachchhami -- and don't let the monkeys come to you....
You are laughing at the poor man. You will be surprised: you are that man.
Sigmund Freud used to tell another story:
It happened once in a big hotel that a man came to stay. The manager was a little
hesitant in giving him a room although there was an empty room. The man said, "Why
are you hesitating so much?"
The man said, "The reason is, just below that room there is a politician staying, a very
famous man and very powerful, a big gun. And he is annoyed by small things, so we
have kept the room above him empty for three days since he has been here -- because if
anybody walks some noise is created, if you move something some noise is created, and
he becomes so irritated and so angry that he creates much fuss about it."
The stranger said, "Don't be worried! I will bevery careful. Moreover, I am going to stay
only overnight. I will be coming nearabout twelve in the night because I have much
work to do in the town, and I will be leaving early in the morning, five o'clock. There is
not much possibility that between twelve and five I will do anything which will irritate
the great man. At the most I will be asleepand dreaming, and I don't think my dreams
will disturb him."
The manager was convinced: "If he is going to stay just for five hours there is no
problem." He was allowed.
At twelve the man reached his room exhausted: the whole day's work, a thousand and
one things clamoring in his head. He had completely forgotten the politician. He
entered his room. He was so tired. He sat on his bed, took off one of his shoes and
threw it in the corner of the room. Then suddenly the noise of the shoe reminded him
that maybe the politician, the great leader, would get disturbed, may be awakened. So
the other shoe he put down very silently.
After one hour the politician knocked on his door. He came out of his sleep, opened the
door and said, "Have I done anything? -- because for one hour I have been asleep."
The politician was red with anger. He said; "Yes! Where is the other shoe? I cannot
manage to sleep. That other shoe goes on hanging, a continuous question in my mind --
where has the other shoe gone? Is this man sleeping with one shoeon? One I know you
have thrown, but what happened to the other one? I have tried in every possible way to
get rid of the idea -- that this is not my concern. How am I concerned with his shoe? But
the more I have tried to get rid of the ideathe more I have become possessed by it. Now
there is only one possible way to go to sleep: to come and wake you and ask you what
happened. Unless I know I cannot sleep."
It is very difficult even to get rid of an absurd thought, utterly meaningless to you, of no
purpose, something which is just accidental, none of your business. But still it can
pursue you, it can haunt you, it can torture you. It can become such a powerful thing
that it can drive you mad.
People don't look in. They know that it is better not to look in because it is very
humiliating. To see oneself as a slave is humiliating. And the mind has been on the
throne so long, it has become accustomed tobeing the master. And it is not the master.
You are born as a consciousness, not as a mind. Your innermost core is consciousness,
not mind. Mind is nothing but accumulated thoughts, junk of the past. You are totally
different from it.
Watching it, slowly slowly you will see the distance. A thought arises in you, watch it.
Watch it without any judgment. Don't be for or against, simply look at it, see into it, just
like a mirror reflecting it. And one thing will become certain: that it is separate from
you. It comes and goes, and you abide forever. The reflection in the mirror is not the
mirror. Many reflections come and go, the mirror remains. The mirror is only the
capacity of mirroring. A thought is there -- anger, greed, jealousy -- some thought, some
kind of thought is there. It is not you!
But our whole training, our whole conditioning, is basically wrong. Our languages are
basically wrong because they give us wrong notions. When you see the thought of
hunger arise in your mind you immediately say, "I am hungry," which is utter
nonsense. You have never been hungry and you cannot be hungry, because
consciousness has nothing to do with hunger, food, satiation. What is actually
happening is: the body is hungry -- you are aware of it. You are simply reflecting the
situation of the body.
To be exactly precise you should say, "I am aware that my body is hungry, I am seeing
that my body needs food."
But every language says, "I am hungry, I am thirsty." I know it is simpler to say, "I am
thirsty," than to say again and again, "Iam aware that my body is thirsty."
One of the great Indian mystics visited America -- his name was Swami Ram. He used
to speak of himself in the third person, he never used to use the word 'I'. He would only
call himself Ram. He would say, "Ram is hungry. Ram is thirsty. Now Ram is feeling
sleepy." It is a very strange way because we are not accustomed to it.
When he went to America for the first time, people could not understand him or would
understand him only in a wrong way, misunderstand him. He would say, "Ram is
hungry." They would look all around -- where is Ram? And then he would show them:
"This body is Ram, this body is hungry."
And they would say, "Then why don't you simply say 'I am hungry'? Why go so
roundabout, why go in circles? 'Ram is hungry.' Then we have to ask, 'Who is Ram?'
Then you have to say, 'This body is Ram.'"
But Ram would say, "I cannot assert something which is not true. I cannot say 'I am
hungry' because I am not."
Once it happened that he was sitting in a park, a public park, and a few people who had
gathered around him were asking questions. One man asked, "We have heard about
Krishna that when he used to play on his flute that people would forget their jobs and
just rush towards him enchanted, as if possessed. What was his secret?"
Ram was only wearing one single cloth, he had just wrapped a blanket around himself.
He threw the blanket -- rather than answering he created a situation. That's how great
mystics work. He threw the blanket, he was utterly naked, and he ran away. All the
people ran with him! Not only those who were surrounding him but others also who
were standing here and there or who had come for a morning walk, and people who
were sitting on the benches reading their newspapers, they threw their newspapers. A
great crowd was following him, and he was laughing and giggling, and the whole
crowd was following him.
And then he stood under a tree and he said, "Why are you following me? For what? I
have not even played on the flute! And you had asked me why people used to become
possessed by Krishna's flute."
Wherever something of the beyond happens, people become enchanted. "You are
enchanted," he said. "And Ram has not doneanything special. Ram has only become
naked and has been running like a child in the morning sun."
Somebody who was not acquainted with his way of talking asked, "Who is this Ram?"
And again he said, "This body is Ram, this mind is Ram, and I am a watcher just as you
are a watcher. Just as you watched this bodyrunning naked in the morning sun, I was
also watching. You are watching from without,I am watching from within. We are both
watchers."
This is the way to become disidentified from the mind: be a watcher.
Buddha says: AS THE FLETCHER WHITTLES AND MAKES STRAIGHT HIS
ARROWS, SO THE MASTER DIRECTS HIS STRAYING THOUGHTS. Then it will be
possible and only then: when you have become an observer, when you have reduced
your thoughts to observed objects, the content of the mind is no longer powerful. You
have slipped out of its power, you are standing apart. You are a spectator, a witness.
When you have become a witness, you will be able to direct your thoughts. Then
thoughts can be used, then thoughts are beautiful.
The mind is the most sophisticated mechanism in the whole of existence, and the
human mind more so than any other. It is the most evolved machine, it can be used for
great things. But you have to be the master, only then can you use it.
But the situation is such that the car is driving the driver.
The driver has become completely unaware of himself; maybe he is drunk. He is simply
moving wherever the car is leading him. Now he is bound for a ditch, bound for an
accident! And if your life is so full of accidents it is not an accident at all -- it has to be
so.
You are following a machine. It is a biocomputer, your mind; beautiful if you can use it
as a master, dangerous if it uses you. This is slavery. To be free of it is to know
something of freedom.
And the first effort should be like the fletcher who makes his arrows straight.
Your minds are not in a state of harmony; your minds are in a mess, nothing is straight
there. Everything has become a very complicated labyrinth, a riddle. You don't know
what is what and which is which. You don't know what you are doing and why. And
one moment one thought possesses you, another moment another thought possesses
you, and both may be contradictory. So byone hand you make something and by the
other hand you unmake it. Hence the utter failure of life, a sheer wastage of energy and
time and opportunity.
Watch how contradictory your thoughts are. One part says yes, another part
immediately says no, never misses the opportunity to say no. Now saying yes and no
together is wasting your energy. Either say yes and be total, then your thought is
straight; or say no and be total, then yourthought is straight. But saying yes and no
together, or alternately -- one moment yes, another moment no -- where are you going
to reach? You take one step in one direction,another step in another direction. You will
remain stuck in the same place, or at the mostyou will move in circles, But your life will
not be a life of growth, you will not grow. You may certainly grow old but you will
never grow up, you will never attain to maturity.
Straighten out your thoughts! It is almost a complete jungle in your mind -- all paths are
lost. You don't know what is happening. You can't stop either, because it makes you
frightened to stop. Everybody else is doing so much, everybody else is achieving,
reaching, fulfilling their ambitions, how can you stop? You have to go on, and you have
to go on with great speed and great gusto and enthusiasm. And you don't know where
you are going, what the goal is. What do you really want to achieve in life? Money?
And even if you achieve much money what will you do with it?
You can purchase more misery, of course, when you have more money; that's what you
are going to do. You will go on purchasing the same things that you are purchasing
now. Of course, you can purchase them in bigger quantities, that's all. You will live in
bigger houses, but you will live; the house is not going to live it. If you are anxious in a
small house you may be more anxious in a bigger house, because you will have more
space to be anxious in. If you are ignorant, utterly ignorant of yourself, how is money
going to help? How is being famous going to help? You may become a world-renowned
person, but that will not changeanything. Your inner darkness will remain the same; it
may even become darker.
The first thing Buddha says is: ...THE MASTER DIRECTS HIS STRAYING THOUGHTS.
He does not allow the thoughts to go intocontradictory pathways. He does not allow
one thought to be destroyed by another. He does not allow thoughts to direct him -- he
is the director. He masters them; he uses them as beautiful implements, instruments.
And then certainly he comes to fulfillment, because he knows where he is going and he
knows what he is doing.
On each step of his journey he is perfectly aware of his whereabouts; he has a certain
sense of direction. He does not go on running in all the directions simultaneously; he
has a direction. Naturally he becomes integrated, he becomes a great power. Without
attaining any political power he becomes a great power. His power arises from his own
being, it is his own. Nobody can take it away; it does not depend on anybody. Even
death cannot take it away fromhim, even death is impotent.
But people are living in such aninsane state. This state isinsane! People feel offended
when I say that the whole of humanity is insane, but what can I do? -- it is so. The fact
has to be stated, howsoever painful it is. I am also pained by it, I feel sorry for
humanity, but it has to be said: that the whole of humanity is mad. What you call
normal human beings are not normal at all. They are normally mad, certainly; their
madness is almost the same, hence they are normal. But they are not the norm, they are
not the principle, they are not the criterion of health. The whole earth is a big
madhouse.
Kahlil Gibran has a beautiful story:
One man becomes insane; he is put in an insane asylum. A friend comes to visit him.
The friend is a professor, a professor of philosophy, has written many books, is a wellknown scholar, is also a psychologist. The madman is sitting on a bench under a tree in
the garden, surrounded by a big wall. The professor comes, sits by his side and asks
him, "How are you feeling inside this place?"
The madman laughs. He says, "I am feeling so good -- as I have never felt before."
The professor is puzzled. He says, "Why? Why are you feeling so happy being in this
madhouse?"
The madman says, "Madhouse? This you call a madhouse? I have left the madhouse
outside -- this is the sanest place in the world! The madhouse is outside; this wall
protects us from mad people. If ever you become tired of the mad people outside, you
are always welcome here. Come in! It is verypeaceful here -- nobody interferes in
anybody's work. It is very silent here. Very few people arehere, and I have never seen
such sane people in my whole life -- they are all like me!"
That's his definition of sanity: he is saneand they are like him. The people who are
outside are insane.
But the same criterion is followed by the people outside: you think yourself sane
because you are exactly like your neighbors. But who knows? -- the neighbors may be
insane too.
The whole history of humanity proves that this is an insane humanity; something is
basically wrong with it. In three thousand years man has fought five thousand wars.
Will you call this humanity sane? Everybody is greedy, jealous, possessive -- and you
call this humanity sane? Everybody is at each other's throats -- and you call this
humanity sane? Normal of course -- normal in the sense that they are all alike.
Once Mark Twain advertised, as a hoax, that hehad lost a cat so black that it could not
be seen by ordinary light, and he wanted it back. Nearly a thousand people contacted
him claiming to have seen it.
Just look around, just observe people, and you will be surprised seeing the utterly
insane state which is known as normal. Whatis normal? What is the definition of a
normal human being?
He should be full of love, he should be full ofbliss. He should be fearless. He should be
joyous and ecstatic. He should be able to sing and laugh and dance. He should be able
to enjoy the small things of life. He shouldbe total in whatsoever he is doing. His
thoughts will be straight: if he says no he means no, if he says yes he means yes. He will
not be diplomatic, he will not be political inthat he says one thing, he means another,
and will do a third thing. You cannot figure it out, you can never be sure what the
political person is going to do. He has one face outside and another reality inside. He is
double-faced, in a double bind. He smiles at you, he greets you -- and he hates you, he
curses you inside. He is an enemy, yet he pretends to be a friend.
This is insanity! This hypocrisy is insanity, this split is insanity. This schizophrenic
atmosphere is insane. It is not a healthy human being that we have been able to
produce. We have failed up to now...and we have to do something very drastic now,
otherwise humanity is doomed. Now the insane people have so much destructive
power in their hands that one war more and humanity is finished and this planet is
finished.
Something tremendously drastic is needed, a quantum leap is needed. But this is
possible only through those people who listen to the buddhas.
...THE MASTER DIRECTS HIS STRAYING THOUGHTS.
LIKE A FISH OUT OF WATER,
STRANDED ON THE SHORE,
THOUGHTS THRASH AND QUIVER.
FOR HOW CAN THEY SHAKE OFF DESIRE?
Thoughts cannot live out of desire, just as a fish cannot live out of the sea. Thoughts
cannot live out of the sea of desire: thoughtsare basically instruments of a desiring
state. And we are continuously desiring, desiring this and that. We cannot stop thinking
if we go on desiring. First the desire, the very root, has to be cut.
What is there to desire in life? Those who have known, those who have realized life, say
there is nothing worth desiring in life. Liveit! and live as wholly as possible, and live
each moment to its uttermost. Squeeze it totally. But there is nothing to desire. Desire
leads you astray because it leads you into the future.
Drink out of the present moment, because the present moment is the door to God. God
has only one tense: the present. He knows no past and no future. If you also want to be
part of God...and that's the onlyway to be sane, to be healthy. Only a religious person is
sane and healthy. If you want to be part ofGod, you will have to learn to relax in the
present moment.
Die to the past and die to the future, and live in the present. Don't allow yourself to
move from the present, not even a single inch here and there; otherwise you will always
go on missing the train.
And the mind is continuously running from one object to another, from one person to
another. You have a wife, but the mind is running after other people's wives. You have
children, but they never look sobeautiful as other people's children. The grass is always
greener on the other side of the hedge. Everybody else seems to be happier than you.
And then, of course, you logically deduce: "They have bigger houses, better children, a
beautiful woman, more money, more power, more prestige, so these are the things I
also need. Unless I have all these things, how can I be happy?" You make your
happiness conditional. And the moment a man makes his happiness conditional he is
doomed; he will remain unhappy his whole life.
Happiness is not conditional; nothing is neededto be happy. Only to be alive is needed
-- and that you are, you already are. Only tobe conscious is needed -- and that you
already are. Hence the mystics and the buddhas say that bliss is our very nature. But the
mind is a runner and it keeps dragging you.
The sultan called for his eunuch. "I am in the mood," he said. "Go get me wife number
256."
So the eunuch ran out of the palace and intothe harem. He ran through the garden, past
the orchard, and up the steps. Soon he returned with wife 256. A bit later the sultan sent
for the eunuch again and said, "I want more. Go get me wife 87." The eunuch ran and
got her. Then the king wanted wife 68, and soon after, wife 92.
When he returned with wife number 92 the eunuch was panting heavily. Then he
suddenly collapsed and died.
Moral: It is not the loving that kills you, it is the running around.
The mind is continuously running around. It never sits, it can't sit. Sitting seems to be
death to it, and in a way it is. That's why Zen people say, if you can sit silently for a few
hours every day, doing nothing, not even chanting a mantra, because that is again a
running of the mind, the same mind.... It can sing pop songs, it can chant a religious
mantra, it makes no difference. It wants some work, it wants activity, it wants
occupation, it wants to run. Its life is in the running.
The Zen people say just sit, don't do anything. The most difficult thing in the world is
just to sit doing nothing. But once you have got the knack of it.... If you go on sitting for
a few months doing nothing for a few hours every day, slowly slowly, many things will
happen. You will feel sleepy, you will dream. Many thoughts will crowd your mind,
many things. The mind will say, "Why areyou wasting your time? You could have
earned a little money. At least you could havegone to a film, entertained yourself, or
you could have relaxed and gossiped. You could have watched the TV or listened to the
radio, or at least you could have read the newspaper you have not seen. Why are you
wasting your time?"
Mind will give you a thousand and one arguments, but if you just go on listening
without being bothered by the mind.... It will doall kinds of tricks: it will hallucinate, it
will dream, it will become sleepy. It will do all that is possible to drag you out of just
sitting. But if you go on, if you persevere, one day the sun rises.
One day it happens, you are not feeling sleepy, the mind has become tired of you, is fed
up with you, has dropped the idea that you can be trapped, is simply finished with you!
There is no sleep, no hallucination, no dream,no thought. You are simply sitting there
doing nothing...and all is silence and all is peace and all is bliss. You have entered God,
you have entered truth.
THEY TREMBLE, THEY ARE UNSTEADY,
THEY WANDER AT THEIR WILL.
IT IS GOOD TO CONTROL THEM.
AND TO MASTER THEM BRINGS HAPPINESS.
Watch, and you will see the trembling mind, the quivering thoughts chasing each other,
running in every possible direction, consistent, inconsistent, meaningful, meaningless.
Just one day sit down in your room, close the doors, and start writing the thoughts that
are happening to you. That will help you to become aware. Just go on writing
whatsoever is happening. Don't edit, don't make them look consistent, beautiful. It is
not to be shown to anybody, it is just for your observation. For fifteen minutes go on
writing, then read it, and you will be puzzled: are you mad or something? What kind of
things are going on in your head? All kinds of things, so irrelevant that you cannot
conceive any possible relationship with them. Anything leads to anything just
accidentally.
The dog starts barking in the neighborhoodand your mind starts functioning. You
remember a dog you used to have in yourchildhood, and suddenly the mind jumps
from the dog to a friend who was also known in the childhood...and from the friend to
the school, and the teacher. And this way the mind goes on hopping, and you will land
nobody knows where. And it was just started by the barking of the dog who knows
nothing about you, who is not interested at all in you, but he triggered a process. You
may reach anywhere! And each time it happens you will reach some other place.
Mind goes on jumping from one place to another, and mind has so much information
that it can produce all kinds of worlds.
Watching it you will see the truth of Buddha's statement: THEY TREMBLE, THEY ARE
UNSTEADY, THEY WANDER AT THEIR WILL. They don't listen to you, they have
their own will. Each thought has its own will and insists on remaining itself. It does not
want to be tinkered with, it does not want you to interfere. If you interfere, it resists, it
protests. Every thought wants its own individuality. And these millions of thoughts in
your head destroy your individuality, because they all claim their own individuality
and they all claim to be autonomous and free. And if you say anything, they ask, "Who
are you?" And each time they will show you your place, they will reduce you to
nothing.
Unless they are controlled, Buddha says, there is no possibility of bliss happening to
you. You will remain in a mess, you will remain a confusion.
Inmate: "I have a mad, insane desire to crush you in my arms."
Lady psychiatrist: "Now you are talking sense!"
It depends on you what you call sense and what you call nonsense. There are
philosophers in the world who say all is nonsense, and there are philosophers in the
world who say everything is sense, sensible. This is the most rational world, they say,
very logical. It all depends on you what you call sense and what you think is sensible. It
depends on your training, your upbringing, your conditioning, the way you have been
hypnotized.
Now, eating meat is sensible if you havebeen brought up in a house where nobody
ever thought of vegetarianism; even if they talked about it, they talked only to laugh at
vegetarians: "These foolish people who think that by becoming vegetarians they are
becoming religious." If you are born in a vegetarian house, in a vegetarian family, then
the people who eat meat are monsters. They arenot people at all; they are untouchable,
they are not human beings, they are animals.
You yourself never know what is right, what is wrong; you know only according to
what others have said to you. This is not a way which can lead you into sanity. You will
have to become more aware, more alert, more watchful. You will have to decide on
your own. You have lived a borrowed life. You will have to reflect -- you become a
human being only when you start reflecting on things on your own. When you observe
accurately, precisely, when you judge, when you value, when you weigh things and
you start living according to your own consciousness more and more, you will attain to
freedom. And freedom brings bliss.
Freedom means you have to control the mind, your so-called mind, which is not yours
at all because it has been given to you by others, in fragments. A part of it belongs to
your mother, another part to your father, another part to your uncle, and so on and so
forth...to the priest, to the teacher, to the neighborhood boy.... You have gathered
fragments from all over the world -- from the books you have been reading and the
films you have been seeing.
If you look into it you will be surprised -- you don't have any mind of your own.
Everything is borrowed! How can you be authentic? You are just a piled-up
phenomenon, fragments from so many different sources that they can never melt and
become one. But one thing is not borrowed in you and that is your consciousness, that is
your awareness. That you have brought with you, that is part of your inner core.
Depend on it and never depend on the mind. Become independent of the mind and
absolutely dependent on consciousness, and you are taking the greatest step of your
life.
BUT HOW SUBTLE THEY ARE,
HOW ELUSIVE!
THE TASK IS TO QUIETEN THEM,
AND BY RULING THEM TO FIND HAPPINESS.
It is not going to be an easy job. It is arduous, because the mind is very cunning and
thoughts are very subtle.
One soldier is explaining transmigration of souls to another and tells him that if he is
killed his body will decay on the battlefield and finally sink into the ground. In the
spring a beautiful flower will come up on the spot.
"And that is me, is it?" asks the other soldier.
"No, wait a minute. Then a cow comes along and eats the flower and leaves behind a
big pile of cowflop. Then I come strolling through the field with my girl, I sees this
cowflop and I taps it with my walking-stick and I says, 'Hello, Bill! Why, you ain't
changed a bit!'"
Mind is very cunning -- it can always find its ways to remain the same. It can find new
ways so that it can remain old. It can find new garments so it can hide behind them; it
can find beautiful rationalizations.
Beware! Mind is not a simple phenomenon, it is complex, subtle, very elusive. If you try
to catch hold of it you will be in difficulty. If you push it out through the front door, it
will come from the back. If you want to control it and repress it, it will start functioning
from your unconscious -- which is far more dangerous because it will control you still,
although now you will be absolutely unaware of its control. The enemy is no longer
visible, that's all, but the enemy is there. And when the enemy is invisible the enemy is
more powerful.
...HOW SUBTLE THEY ARE, and HOW ELUSIVE! THE TASK IS TO QUIETEN
THEM.... So remember, they are not to be repressed, they are not to be caught. THE
TASK IS TO QUIETEN THEM, AND BY RULING THEM TO FIND HAPPINESS.
It is through stilling them that one becomes a ruler, not by ruling them that you quieten
them. Remember that process: it looks similar, it is not. It is very very different,
diametrically opposite in fact. You have to quieten them first, still them first.
And the way to still them is just to watch silently without judgment, without saying this
is good, this is bad. The moment you say good and bad you have jumped into the mire.
The mind has already caught you, you are already entrapped.
You simply watch! Your moral teachers don't allow you watching. You sit and just
look...a thought of murdering somebody comes.Your mind is enjoying the thought of
murdering somebody. This is one part. Another part of the mind says, "This is very bad,
this is a sin. You should not even think such a thought, even tothink it is a sin." This is
another part of the mind. You become identified with the other part, the moral part.
You say, "This is my conscience." It is not your conscience: it has beenput into you. It is
the society controlling you from within; it is a strategy of the society to control you. You
don't know what is right and what is wrong.
Be innocent! Just watch, watch both. One part of the mind is saying, "Murder that man -- he has insulted you!" Another part of the mind is saying, "This is bad, this is immoral.
You will fall into hell, you will suffer in your next birth, you will be punished for it."
Know well, the second is also mind, and there is no choice between two fragments of
the mind. Watch both, enjoy both. See the contradiction of the mind -- don't get
identified with any part.
Remember, the ego wants to be identified with the good part, the moral part. It feels
beautiful: "I am against murder, look! I am not for it." You are just getting caught by
another part of the mind. You are still a slave. Your sinners and your saints, both are
slaves.
The really free man is free from both good and bad. He is beyond good and evil. He is
just consciousness and nothing else. He simply observes. And if you can just observe
without being identified, slowly slowly mind quietens down, and in that quietening is
your power. One day when the mind is completely gone, has become totally still, you
are the sovereign.
WITH SINGLEMINDEDNESS
THE MASTER QUELLS HIS THOUGHTS.
HE ENDS THEIR WANDERING.
SEATED IN THE CAVE OF THE HEART,
HE FINDS FREEDOM.
And when the mind is no more, where do you go? Suddenly, when the mind is no
more, you enter into the heart. You slip out ofthe mind, out of the grip of the head. And
then the heart, the cave of the heart, is yourpalace. The mind is a by-product of the
society: the heart is an extension of God.
This is possible only if you work singlemindedly to still the mind, to be aware of the
mind, to be utterly watchful, without any judgment and without any identification.
THE MASTER QUELLS HIS THOUGHTS. HEENDS THEIR WANDERING. SEATED
IN THE CAVE OF THE HEART, HE FINDS FREEDOM.
The head is a slavery, the heart the freedom. The head is a misery, the heart the ultimate
bliss.
AES DHAMMO SANANTANO.
Enough for today
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