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The first question: "YOU SAID THAT EITHER ONE
SEES THE WORLD OR THE BRAHMAN AND THAT NO GRADUALLY INCREASING PERCEPTION OF THE BRAHMAN
IS POSSIBLE. BUT IN EXPERIENCE WE FEEL THAT AS WE BECOME AWARE AND MORE SILENT AND STILL,
THE FEELING OF THE DIVINE PRESENCE BECOMES GRADUALLY CLEARER AND CLEARER. WHAT IS THIS
GRADUAL GROWTH AND CLARITY IF THE AUTHENTIC EXPERIENCE IS NEVER GRADUAL, BUT SUDDEN?"
This has been a
very ancient problem: "Is enlightenment sudden or gradual?" Many things have to
be understood. There has been a tradition which says that enlightenment is gradual and
that everything can be divided into degrees, everything can be divided into steps -- that
like anything else, knowledge can also be divided; you can become more and more wise, you
can become more and more enlightened. This has been widely accepted because the human mind
cannot conceive of anything sudden. Mind wants to divide, analyze. Mind is a divider.
Degrees can be understood by the mind, but suddenness is non -- mental-beyond mind.
If I say to you
that you are ignorant and that gradually you will become wise, this is comprehensible, you
can comprehend it. If I say to you, "No, there is no gradual growth. Either you are
ignorant or you become enlightened, there is a sudden jump," then the question arises
of HOW to become enlightened. If there were no gradualness, there could be no progress. If
there were no degree of growth, no degrees, then you could not make progress, you could
not proceed. From where to begin? In a sudden explosion, the beginning and the end are
both the same. There is no gap between the beginning and the end, so from where to begin?
The beginning is the end.
It becomes a puzzle
for the mind, it becomes a koan. But sudden enlightenment seems to be impossible. It is
not that it is impossible, but that the mind cannot conceive of it. And, remember, how can
the mind conceive of enlightenment? It cannot. It has been widely accepted that this inner
explosion is also gradual growth. Even many enlightened persons have conceded that to your
minds, and they have said, "Yes, there is a gradual growth."
It is not that
there is. They have said it and accepted your attitude, your way of perception. They have
been in a deep compassion for you. They know that if you start thinking that it is
gradual, the start will be good, but there will be no gradual growth. But if you start, if
you go on seeking it, someday the sudden thing will happen to you. And if it is said that
enlightenment is only sudden and no gradual growth is possible, you are not even going to
start and it will never happen. Many enlightened persons have said that enlightenment is a
gradual thing just to help you, just to persuade you to start.
Something is
possible through gradual process, but not enlightenment -- not enlightenment, something
else. And that something else becomes helpful. For example, if you are making water to
evaporate it, heating it, evaporation will come suddenly. At a certain point, at a hundred
degrees, evaporation will happen -- suddenly! There will be no gradual growth between
water and vapor. You cannot divide; you cannot say that this water is a little vapor and a
little water. Either it is water or it is all vapor. Suddenly the water jumps into the
state of vapor. There is a jump -- not gradual growth. But by heating you are gradually
giving heat to the water. You are helping it to reach the hundred-degree point, the
evaporating point. This is a natural growth. Up to the evaporating point, the water will
grow in the sense of being more and more hot. Then evaporation will happen suddenly.
So there have been
masters who were wise, compassionate, who used the language of the human mind which you
can understand, telling you, "Yes, there is a gradual growth." It gives you
courage and confidence and hope, and a possibility that it can happen to you also. You
cannot attain in a sudden explosion, but by and by, step by step, with your limitations,
with your weaknesses, you can grow to it. It may take many lives, but still there is hope.
You will just get heated by all your efforts.
The second thing to
remember: even hot water is still water. So even if you become more clear in your mind,
more pure in your perceptions, more moral, more centered, you are still man, not a buddha,
not enlightened. You become more silent, more still, calmer. You feel a deep bliss, but
still you are a man, and your feelings are really negative, not positive.
You feel calm
because you are now less tense. You feel blissful because now you are clinging less to
your miseries; you are not creating them. You feel collected. It is not that you have come
to realize the one, but only because now you are less divided. Remember this: your growth
is negative. You are just hot water. The possibility is there that at any moment you will
come to the point where evaporation happens. When it happens, you will not feel calmness,
you will not even feel blissful, you will not feel silent, because these attributes are
relative to their opposites. When you are tense, you can feel silence. When you feel
noise, you can feel stillness. When you are divided, fragmentary, you can feel oneness.
When you are in suffering, anguish, you can feel bliss.
That is why Buddha
was silent -- because language cannot now express that which is beyond polarities. He
cannot say, "Now I am filled with bliss," because even this feeling that
"Now I am filled with bliss" is possible only with a background of suffering and
anguish. You can feel health only with a background of illness and disease; you can feel
life only with a background of death. Buddha cannot say, "Now I am deathless,"
because death has disappeared so completely that deathlessness cannot be felt.
If the misery has
disappeared so completely, how can you feel blissful? If the noise and the anguish are so
absolutely non-existent, how can you feel silence? All these experiences, feelings, are
related to their opposites. Without their opposites they cannot be felt. If darkness
disappears completely, how can you feel light? It is impossible.
Buddha cannot say,
"I have become light!" He cannot say, "Now I am filled with light." If
he says such things, we will say he is not yet a buddha. He cannot utter such things.
Darkness must be there if you want to feel light; death must be there if you want to feel
deathlessness. You cannot avoid the opposite. It is a basic necessity for any experience
to exist. So what is Buddha's experience? Whatsoever we know, it is not that. It is
neither negative nor positive, neither this nor that. And whatsoever can be expressed, it
is not that.
That is why Lao Tzu
insists so much that truth cannot be said, and the moment you say it you have falsified
it. Already it is untrue. Truth cannot be said because of this: it cannot be divided into
polar opposites, and language is meaningful only with polar opposites. Language becomes
meaningless otherwise. Without the contrary, language loses meaning.
So there is a
tradition which says that enlightenment is gradual, but that tradition is not really the
truth. It is just a half-truth uttered in compassion for human minds. Enlightenment is
sudden, and it cannot be otherwise. It is a jump! It is a discontinuity from your past!
Try to understand: if something is gradual, the past goes on remaining in it. If something
is gradual, then there is a continuity. There is no gap. If from ignorance to knowledge
there is gradual growth, the ignorance cannot completely disappear. It will remain, it
will continue, because there has been no discontinuity, there has been no gap. So the
ignorance may become more polished, the ignorance may become more knowledgeable. The
ignorance may appear wise, but it is there. The more polished it is, then, of course, the
more dangerous. The more knowledgeable it is, then the more cunning one is and the more
capable of deceiving oneself.
Enlightenment and
ignorance are absolutely separate, discontinuous. A jump is needed -- a jump in which the
past dissolves completely. The old is gone; it is no more, and the new has appeared which
was never there before.
Buddha is reported
to have said, "I am not that one who was seeking. The one who has appeared now never
was before." This looks absurd, illogical, but it IS so. It is so! Buddha says,
"I am not he who was seeking; I am not he who was desiring enlightenment; I am not he
who was ignorant. The old man is dead completely. I am a new one. I never existed in that
old man. There has been a gap. The old has died and the new is born."
For the mind to
conceive of this is difficult. How can you conceive of it? How can you conceive of a gap?
Something must continue. How can something disappear completely and something new appear?
It was absurd for logical minds, it was absurd for scientific minds, just two decades
before. But now, for science, it is not absurd. Now they say that deep down in the atom
electrons appear and disappear, and they take jumps. From one point the electron takes a
jump to another; in between the two it is not. It appears at point A, then disappears and
reappears at point B, and within the gap it is no more. It is not there. It becomes
absolutely non-existent.
If this is so, it
means that non-existence is also a sort of existence. It is difficult to conceive of, but
it is so: non-existence is also a sort of existence. It is as if something moves from the
visible to the invisible, as if something moves from form to formlessness.
When Gautam
Siddharth, the old man who died in Gautam Buddha, was seeking, he was a visible form. When
the enlightenment happened, that form completely dissolved into the formless. For a moment
there was a gap; there was no one. Then from that formlessness a new form arose. This was
Gautam Buddha. Because the body continues in the same way, we think that there is a
continuity, but the inner reality changes completely. Because the body continues in the
same way, that is why we say "Gautam Buddha" -- that "Gautam Siddharth has
now become Gautam the awakened; he has become a buddha." But Buddha himself says,
"I am not he who was seeking. I am a totally different one."
It is difficult for
the mind to conceive of this -- and for the mind many things are difficult, but they
cannot be denied just because they are difficult for the mind. The mind has to yield to
those impossibilities which are incomprehensible to it. Sex cannot yield to the mind; the
mind has to yield to sex. This is one of the most basic inner facts -- that enlightenment
is a discontinuous phenomenon. The old simply disappears and the new is born.
There has been
another tradition, a later tradition, of those who have been insisting all through history
that Enlightenment is sudden -- that it is not gradual. But those who belong to it are
very few. They stick to the truth, but they are bound to be very few because no following
can be created if sudden Enlightenment is the case. You simply cannot understand it, so
how can you follow it? It is shocking to the logical structure and it seems absurd,
impossible. But remember one thing: then you move into deeper realms. Whether of matter or
of mind, you will have to encounter many things of which a superficial mind cannot
conceive.
Tertullian, one of
the greatest Christian mystics, has said, "I believe in God because God is the
greatest absurdity. I believe in God because mind cannot believe in God." It is
impossible to believe in God; no proof, no argument, no logic can help the belief in God.
Everything goes against him, against his existence, but Tertullian says, "That is why
I believe -- because only by believing in an absurdity can I move away from my mind."
This is beautiful.
If you want to move away from your mind, you will need something of which your mind cannot
conceive. If your mind can conceive of it, it will absorb it into its own system, and then
you cannot transcend your mind. That is why every religion has insisted on some point
which is absurd. No religion can exist without some absurdity just as a foundation in it.
From that absurdity you either turn back and say, "I cannot believe so I will go
away." Then you remain yourself -- or you take a jump, you turn away from your mind.
And unless your mind is killed the enlightenment cannot happen.
Your mind is the
problem, your logic is the problem, your arguments are the problem. They are on the
surface. They look true, but they deceive. They are not true. For example, look how the
mind's structure functions. The mind divides everything in two, and nothing is divisible.
Existence is indivisible; you cannot divide it -- but mind goes on dividing it. It says
that "this" is life and "this" is death. What is the actual fact? The
actual fact is that both are the same. You are both alive and dying this very moment; you
are doing both. Rather, you ARE both -death and life.
Mind divides. It
says, "this" is death and "this" is life. Not only does it divide; it
says that both are opposites, enemies, and that death is trying to destroy life. And it
looks okay: death is "trying to destroy life." But if you penetrate deeper,
deeper than the mind, death is not trying to destroy life! You cannot exist without death.
Death is helping you to exist. It is every moment helping you to exist. If for a single
moment death stops working, you will die.
Death is every
moment throwing away many parts in you which have become non-functional. Many cells die;
they are removed by death. When they are removed, new ones are born. You are growing:
something is dying and something is being born continuously. Every moment there is death
and life, and both are functioning. In language I have to call them both two. They are not
two; they are two aspects of one phenomenon. Life and death are one;
"life-death" is a process. But mind divides. That division looks okay for us,
but that division is false.
You say
"this" is light and "that" is dark; you divide. But where does
darkness start and where does light end? Can you demarcate them? You cannot demark them.
Actually, whiteness and blackness are two poles of a long greyness, and that greyness is
life. On one pole blackness appears and on another pole whiteness appears, but the reality
is grey, and that grey contains both in itself.
Mind divides and
then everything looks clear-cut. Life is very confusing; that is why life is a mystery.
And because of this, mind cannot understand life. It is helpful to create clear-cut
concepts. You can think easily, conveniently, but you miss the very reality of life. Life
is a mystery, and mind demystifies everything. Then you have dead fragments, not the
whole.
With the mind you
will not be able to conceive of how enlightenment is sudden, how you will disappear and
something new will be there which you had never known before. But don't try to understand
through mind. Rather, practice something which will make you more and more hot. Rather,
try to attain some fire which will make you more and more hot. And then one day suddenly
you will know that the old has disappeared; the water is no more. This is a new
phenomenon. You have evaporated, and everything has changed totally.
Water was always
flowing downwards, and after evaporation the new phenomenon is rising upwards. The whole
law has changed. You have heard about one law, Newton's law of gravity, which says that
the earth attracts everything downwards. But the law of gravity is only one law. There is
another law. You may not have heard about it because science has yet to uncover it, but
yoga and tantra have known it for centuries. They call it levitation. Gravity is the pull
downwards and levitation is the pull upwards.
The story of how
the law of gravity was discovered is well known. Newton was sitting under a tree, under an
apple tree, and then one apple fell down. Because of this he started thinking, and he felt
that something is pulling the apple downwards. Tantra and yoga ask, "How did the
apple reach upwards in the first place? How?" That must be explained first -- how the
apple reached the upward position, how the tree is growing upwards. The apple was not
there; it was hidden in a seed, and then the apple traveled the whole journey. It reached
the upward position and only then did it fall down. So gravity is a secondary law.
Levitation was there first. Something was pulling the apple upwards. What is that?
In life we easily
know gravity because we are all pulled downwards. The water flows downwards; it is under
the law of gravity. When it evaporates, suddenly the law also evaporated. Now it is under
levitation, it rises upwards.
Ignorance is under
the law of gravity: you always move downwards, and whatsoever you do makes no difference.
You have to move downwards. In every way you will have to move downwards, and struggle
alone will not be of much help unless you enter a different law -- the law of levitation.
That is what SAMADHI is -- the door for levitation. Once you evaporate, once you are no
more water, everything changes. It is not that now you can control: there is no need to
control, you simply cannot flow downwards now. As it was impossible before to rise
upwards, now it is impossible to flow downwards.
It is not that a
buddha tries to be non-violent; he cannot do otherwise. It is not that he tries to be
loving; he cannot do otherwise. He has to be loving. That is not a choice, not an effort,
not any cultivated virtue, it is simply that now this is the law: he rises upwards. Hate
is under the law of gravity; love is under levitation.
This sudden
transformation doesn't mean that you are not to do anything and that you are simply to
wait for the sudden transformation. Then it will never come. This is the puzzle. When I
say -- or someone else says -- that enlightenment is sudden, we think that if it is sudden
nothing can be done that we must simply wait. When it will happen, it will happen, so what
can one do? If it is gradual you can do something.
But I say to you
that it is not gradual, and yet you can do something. And you have to do something, but
that something will not bring you enlightenment. That something will bring you near the
phenomenon of enlightenment. That something will make you open for the phenomenon of
enlightenment to happen. So enlightenment cannot be an outcome of your efforts; it is not.
Through your efforts you simply become available for the higher law of levitation. Your
availability will come through your effort, not enlightenment. You will become open, you
will become non-resistant, you will become cooperative for the higher law to work. And
once you are cooperative and non-resistant, the higher law starts functioning. Your
efforts will yield you, your efforts will make you more receptive.
It is just like
this: you are sitting in your room with closed doors. The sun is outside, but you are in
darkness. You cannot do anything to bring the sun in, but if you simply open the doors
your room becomes available. You cannot bring the sun in, but you can block it out. If you
open your doors, the sun will enter, the waves will come; the light will come into the
room.
You are not really
bringing the light, you are simply removing the hindrance. The light comes by itself.
Understand it deeply: you cannot do anything to reach enlightenment, but you are doing
many things to hinder it -- to hinder it from reaching to you. You are creating many
barriers, so you can only do something negatively: you can throw the barriers, you can
open the doors. The moment the doors are open, the rays will enter, the light will touch
you and transform you.
All effort in this
sense is to destroy the barriers, not to attain enlightenment. All effort is negative. It
is just like medicine. The medicine cannot give you health; it can only destroy your
diseases. Once the diseases are not there, health happens; you become available. If
diseases are there, health cannot happen.
That is why medical
science, Eastern or Western, has not yet been able to define what health is. They can
define each disease exactly -- they know thousands and thousands of diseases and they have
defined them all -- but they cannot define what health is. At the most they can say that
when there is no disease you are healthy. But what is health? Something which goes beyond
mind. It is something which is there: you can have it, you can feel it, but you cannot
define it.
You have known
health, but can you define it -- what it is? The moment you try to define it you will have
to bring disease in. You will have to talk something about disease, and you will have to
say, "No-disease is health." This is ridiculous. To define health you need
disease? And disease has definite qualities. Health also has its own qualities, but they
are not so definite because they are infinite. You can feel them; when health is there you
know it is there. But what is it? Diseases can be treated, destroyed. Barriers are broken
and the light enters. Similar is the phenomenon of enlightenment. It is a spiritual
health. Mind is a spiritual disease, and meditation is nothing but medicine.
Buddha is said to
have said, "I am a medicine man, a VAIDYA -- a physician. I am not a teacher and I
have not come to give you doctrines. I know a certain medicine which can cure your
diseases. And don't ask about health. Take the medicine, destroy the disease, and you will
know what health is. Don't ask about it." Buddha says, "I am not a
metaphysician, I am not a philosopher. I am not interested in what God is, in what soul
is, in what KAIVALYA, aloneness, MOKSHA, liberation, and NIRVANA is. I am not interested!
I am simply interested in what disease is and in how it can be cured. I am a medicine
man." His approach is absolutely scientific. He has diagnosed human dilemma and
disease. His approach is absolutely right.
Destroy the
barriers. What are the barriers? Thinking is the basic barrier. When you think, a barrier
of thoughts is created. Between you and the reality a wall of thoughts is created, and
thoughts are more dense than any stone wall can be. And then there are many layers of
thought. You cannot penetrate through them and see what the real is. You go on thinking
about what the real is and you go on imagining what the real is, and the real is here and
now waiting for you. If you become available to it, it will happen to you. You go on
thinking about what the real is, but how can you think if you don't know?
You cannot think
about something which you don't know; you can only think about something which you already
know. Thinking is repetitious, tautological; it never reaches to anything new and unknown.
Through thinking you never touch the unknown; you only touch the known, and it is
meaningless because you already know it. You can go on feeling it again and again; you may
enjoy the feeling, but nothing new comes out of it.
Stop thinking.
Dissolve thinking, and the barrier is broken. Then your doors are open and the light can
enter. And once the light enters, you know that the old is no more. You know now that that
which you are is absolutely the new. It never was before, you had never known it; but you
may even say that this is the "ancient-most" -- it was there always, not known
to you.
You can use both
expressions, they mean the same. You can call it the "ancient-most" -- the
BRAHMAN who has always been there, and you can say that you were missing it continuously.
Or you can say that this is the most new -- that which has happened only now and never was
before. That too is right because for you this is the new. If you want to speak about the
truth, you will have to use paradoxical expressions. The Upanishads say, "This is the
new and this is the old. This is the most ancient and this is the most new. It is the far
and the near both." But then language becomes paradoxical, contradictory.
And you ask me,
"WHAT IS THIS GRADUAL GROWTH AND CLARITY IF THE AUTHENTIC EXPERIENCE IS NEVER
GRADUAL, BUT SUDDEN?" This clarity is of the mind; this clarity is of a lessening of
disease; this clarity is of the falling of barriers. If one barrier falls you are less
burdened, your eyes are less clouded. If another barrier falls you are still more
unburdened, your eyes become still more clear. But this clarity is not of enlightenment;
this clarity is only of a lessening disease, not of health. When all barriers disappear,
with those barriers your mind also disappears. Then you cannot say, "Now my mind is
clear, it is no more." Then you simply say, "Now there is no mind."
When there is no
mind, then the clarity is of enlightenment. Then the clarity is of enlightenment! that is
absolutely different. Then another dimension has opened. But you will have to pass through
clarities of mind. Remember always that no matter how clear your mind becomes, it is still
a barrier. No matter how transparent your mind becomes, even if it becomes a transparent
glass and you can look to the other side, still it is a barrier and you will have to break
it completely. So sometimes it happens that when one is meditating one becomes more and
more clear, more sane, more still; silence is felt. Then one clings to meditation and
thinks that everything is achieved. Great masters have always been emphasizing that a day
comes when you have to throw your meditation also.
I will tell you one story -- one Zen story. Bokuju was meditating -- meditating very deeply, meditating with his whole
heart. His master would come every day, and he would just laugh and go back. Bokuju became
annoyed. The master would not say anything, he would just come and look at him, laugh and
go away. And Bokuju was feeling very good in meditation. His meditation was deepening, and
he needed someone to appreciate him. He was waiting for the master to pat him and say,
"Good, Bokuju. You did well." But the master just laughed. The laughter felt
insulting -- as if Bokuju was not progressing, and he was progressing. As he progressed
more, the laughter grew more and more insulting. It was impossible to tolerate it now.
One day the master
came, and Bokuju was feeling absolutely silent as far as mind can go; there was no noise
within, no thought. The mind was absolutely transparent; no barrier was felt. He was
filled with a subtle deep happiness, joy was bubbling all over, he was in ecstasy. Thus,
he thought, "Now my master will not laugh. Now the moment has come, and he is going
to tell me, `Now Bokuju, you have become enlightened.'"
That day the master
came: the master came with a brick in his hand, and he started rubbing that brick on the
rock on which Bokuju was sitting. He was so silent, and the rubbing of the brick created
noise. He became annoyed. At last he couldn't tolerate it, so he opened his eyes and asked
his master, "What are you doing?"
The master said,
"I am trying to make this brick a mirror, and by continuously rubbing it I hope that
someday this brick will become a mirror."
Bokuju said,
"You are behaving stupidly. This stone, this brick, is not going to become a mirror.
No matter how much you rub it, it is not going to become a mirror."
The master laughed
and said, "Then what are you doing? This mind can never become enlightened, and you
go on rubbing and rubbing it. You are polishing it, and you are feeling so good that when
I laugh you feel annoyed." And suddenly, as the master threw his brick, Bokuju became
aware. When the master threw his brick, suddenly he felt that the master was right, and
the mind broke. Then from that day on there was no mind and no meditation. He became
enlightened.
The master said to
him, "Now you can move anywhere. Go, and teach others also. First teach them
meditation; then teach them non-meditation. First teach them how to make the mind clear,
because only a very clear mind can understand that now even this clear mind is a barrier.
Only a deeply meditative mind can understand that now even meditation has to be thrown.
You cannot
understand it right now. Krishnamurti goes on saying that there is no need of any
meditation, and he is right. But he is talking to wrong persons. He is right; there is no
need for any meditation, but he is wrong because of to whom he is saying this. Those who
cannot even understand what meditation is, how can they understand that there is no need
for any meditation? This is going to be harmful for them because they will cling to this
idea. They will feel that this idea is very good, there is no need of meditation, so
"We are already enlightened."
Listening to
Krishnamurti, many feel that now there is no need of meditation and that those who are
meditating are foolish. They may waste their whole life because of this thought, and this
thought is right. There comes a point when meditation has to be thrown; there comes a
point when meditation becomes a barrier. But wait for this point to come. You cannot throw
something which you don't have. Krishnamurti says, "No need of meditation; don't
meditate." But you have never meditated, so how can you say, "Don't
meditate"?
A rich man can
renounce his riches, not a poor man. To renounce you need something to renounce in the
first place. If you meditate, you can renounce it one day -- and that is the last
renunciation, and that is the greatest. Wealth can he renounced, it is easy. Family can be
renounced, it is not difficult. The whole world can be renounced because everything is
outer and outer and outer. The last thing is meditation, the innermost wealth. And when
you renounce it, you have renounced yourself. Then no self remains -- not even the
meditating self, the great meditator. Even that image is broken. You have fallen into
nothingness. Only in this nothingness, the discontinuity. The old has disappeared and the
new has happened. You become available through meditation.
Whatsoever is felt
through meditation, don't think that it is enlightenment. These are just glimpses of a
lessening disease, of a dispersing disease. You feel good. The disease is less, so you
feel relatively healthy. Real health is not yet there, but you are more healthy than
before and it is good to be more healthy than before.
The second
question:
"YOU SAID THAT LIFE EXISTS
IN POLAR OPPOSITES LIKE LOVE AND HATE, ATTRACTION AND REPULSION, VIRTUE AND VICE,
ETCETERA. BUT WHAT HAPPENS TO THESE POLAR OPPOSITES WHEN ONE IS IN THE WITNESSING
CONSCIOUSNESS?"
Don't ask, wait for
the happening, for what happens. You can ask and some answer can be given, but that answer
cannot become an authentic answer for you. And never jump ahead. Don't ask what happens
when one dies. What happens? Whatsoever is said will be meaningless because you are still
alive. What happens when someone is dead? You will have to pass through it. Unless you are
dead you cannot know it. Whatsoever is said can be believed on trust, but this is
meaningless.
Rather, ask how to
be dead so that you can know what happens. No one else can die for you; no one else's
experience can be an experience for you. You will have to die. Death cannot be another's
experience for you, it has to be your own. Similar is the case here. What happens when
polarities disappear? In a way nothing happens. "Happening" dissolves because
all happening is polar. When love and hate both dissolve -- and they DO dissolve -- , what
happens? When you love, you hate also -- and you hate the same person you love. Hate is
just hidden, and when hate comes up love goes down.
Jesus says,
"Love your enemies," and I say that you cannot do otherwise. You DO love your
enemies. You hate them so much, and without love that is impossible. Love is just the
other aspect of the coin. And where is the demarcation where love ends and hate begins?
There is just a grey extension. When do you hate someone and when do you love? Can you
demark it? You love and hate the same person; any moment hate can become love and love can
become hate. This is the polarity of mind, this is how mind functions. Don't become
worried about it. If you know, you will never become worried. If you love someone, you
know hate will be there. If someone loves you, you will expect both -- love and hate.
But what happens in
a buddha-like consciousness when love and hate both disappear? What happens? It is
difficult to express what happens, but whatsoever has been felt around Buddha is more like
love without hate. It has been felt around Buddha; it is not that Buddha feels it so.
Buddha cannot feel love now because he cannot feel hate. He cannot feel love, but around
him everyone has felt a deep love flowing. We can describe it as love without hate, but
then the quality is different.
With our love, hate
is inevitably present. It colors it, it changes the quality of it. Hate gives a passion to
love, a force, an intensity, a focused quality, a concentration, while Buddha's love
becomes a dispersed phenomenon. Intensity is not there. It cannot burn you, it can only
warm you. It is not a fire, it is just a glow. It is not a flame, it is just like the
morning light when the sun has not yet risen and the night has disappeared. It is just the
moment of interval -- light without any fire, without any flame. We have felt it as love,
and as the purest because there is no hate. Even to feel this type of love, you have to be
a very deeply meditative mind. You need a mind which can meditate; otherwise such a
delicate and diffuse phenomenon will not be felt. You have to be very deeply sensitive.
You can only feel
gross love, and that grossness is given by hate. If someone simply loves you without any
hate, it will be difficult for you to feel his love. You will have to grow to become more
transparent, delicate, sensitive. You will have to become like a very sensitive musical
instrument; only then will the breeze sometimes come to you. And the breeze is so
non-violent now that it will not hit you. It will be just a delicate touch. If you are
very, very aware, you will feel it; otherwise you will miss it.
But this is our
feeling around a buddha, not Buddha's feeling. Buddha cannot feel love or hate. Really,
the polar opposites disappear, and simple presence remains. Buddha is a presence, not a
mood. You are moods, not a presence. Sometimes you are hate, one mood, sometimes you are
love -- another mood; sometimes you are anger, another mood, sometimes you are greed --
another mood. You are moods, you are never a pure presence, and your consciousness goes on
being modified by your moods. Each mood becomes the master. It modifies the consciousness,
cripples it, changes it, colors it, deforms it.
A buddha is without
moods. Now hate has gone, love has gone, anger has gone, greed has gone -- and non-greed
also, non-anger also. They have disappeared! They both have disappeared! He is a simple
presence. If you are sensitive, you will feel love flowing from him, you will feel
compassion. If you are not sensitive, if you are gross, if your meditation has not
developed, you will not feel him at all. A buddha will move amidst you, and you will not
even become aware that some phenomenon is passing -- something rare, something which
passes only once in centuries. You will not become aware!
Or, if you are very
gross, anti-meditative, you will even become angered by his presence. Because his presence
is subtle, you may even become violent because of his presence. His presence may be
disturbing to you. If you are very gross, anti-meditative, you will become an enemy of a
Buddha and he will not have done anything. If you are open, sensitive, you will become a
lover, and he will not have done anything. Remember this: when you become an enemy, it is
you; when you become a friend, it is you. A buddha is a simple presence, he is available.
If you become an enemy, you turn your back. You will simply miss something for which you
may have to wait for lives to come again.
Ananda was weeping
the day Buddha was passing away, and Buddha said in the morning, "Now this is my last
day. Now the body is going to be finished." Ananda was near. He was the first to whom
Buddha said, "This is my last day, so go and tell everyone that if they have to ask
something they can ask."
Ananda started
weeping and crying, so Buddha said, "Why are you weeping? For this body? I have been
teaching and teaching and teaching that this body is false, it is already dead -- or are
you weeping for my death? Don't weep, because I have died forty years ago. I died the day
I became enlightened, so this body is only disappearing now. Don't weep."
Ananda said a
beautiful thing. He said, "I am not weeping for your body or for you, I am weeping
for myself. I am yet unenlightened, and now how many lives will pass before again a buddha
will be available? And I may not be again able to recognize you."
Unless you become
enlightened, your clarity of mind can be clouded at any moment. Before you become
enlightened, you can fall back again and again. Nothing is certain. So Ananda said,
"I am weeping for myself. I am yet unenlightened, I have not yet reached the goal,
and you are entering nothingness."
Many, even Buddha's
own father, couldn't recognize that his son was no more his son -- that something had
happened into this body which rarely happens. The darkness had disappeared and the eternal
light was burning there, but he couldn't recognize it. Many were against him; many tried
to kill him. But it is all up to you: whether you become a friend, a lover or an enemy
depends on you, on your sensitivity, on your mind -- how your mind feels.
But a buddha is not
doing anything, he is simply a presence. Just by his presence much happens around him.
Those who can feel love, they will feel he is in deep love with them. And the deeper you
can feel, the more you will grow in the feeling that his love is deepening towards you. If
you can become a real lover, you will feel that a buddha is a lover to you. If you become
an enemy, and you feel hate, you will feel that a buddha is an enemy and you will feel
that he has to be killed, destroyed. It depends on you. A buddha is a non-doer; he is
simply being, he is there. So what happens is difficult to say because whatsoever we say
will be a mood. If we say he becomes a lover, that he has a great love, it will be false.
That will be our feeling.
Jesus's followers
felt that he was simply love and Jesus' enemies thought he had to be crucified -- so it
depends on you. It depends on you how you take it, how you are capable of taking it, how
much open you are. But from the side of an enlightened one, nothing can he said. He can
simply say that now he is: without doing anything he is -- just a presence, a being.
The third question:
"YOU SAID THAT WHEN A
PERSON IS TOTALLY IN THE PRESENT MOMENT WITHOUT ANY THOUGHT IN THE MIND, THEN HE IS A
BUDDHA-MIND. BUT EVEN WHEN THERE IS NO THOUGHT IN ME AND I AM IN THE MOMENT, ABSORBED,
WITH NO PAST OR FUTURE, I DO NOT FEEL THE BUDDHA-NATURE. PLEASE EXPLAIN WHEN IN THIS
THOUGHTLESS AWARENESS THE BUDDHA-MIND IS REVEALED."
The first thing: if
you are aware that there is no thought in your mind, there is thought. Even this is a
thought, that now there is no thought in you. This thought is the last thought. Allow it
also to disappear. And why are you waiting for when the buddha-nature is going to happen
to you? That again is a thought. It will not happen in that way -- never!
I will tell you one story. One
king came to Gautam Buddha. He was a devotee, a great devotee, and he had come for the
first time for his darshan -- for his audience. In one of his hands, in his left hand, he
had one beautiful golden ornament, priceless, with many jewels in it. It was the most
precious that he had -- a rare piece of art. He had come to present it to Buddha just to
show his devotion. He came near. In his left hand was that priceless jeweled ornament; he
was going to present it. Buddha said, "Drop it!" He was disturbed. He never
expected this. He was shocked. But because Buddha was saying "Drop it", he
dropped it.
In his other hand,
in his right hand, he had brought a beautiful rose. He thought that Buddha might not like
stones. He might just think that this was a childish thing that he had brought. But it was
good to have an alternative, so he brought a beautiful rose. A rose is not so gross, not
so material. It has a spirituality, something of the unknown is there. And Buddha might
like it because he says life is flux, and the flower is in the morning and in the evening
it is no more. It is the most flux-like thing in the world. So he put his other hand in
front of Buddha and he wanted to present the flower. Buddha again said, "Drop
it!" Then he felt very disturbed. Now he had nothing to present. But when Buddha
again said to drop it, he dropped it.
Then suddenly he
became aware of the "I." He thought, "Why am I presenting things when I can
present myself?" When he became aware, with both his hands empty he presented
himself. But Buddha again said, "Drop it!" Now he had nothing to drop -- just
empty hands -- and Buddha said, "Drop it!"
Mahakashyapa, Sariputta, Ananda and his other disciples were
there, and they started laughing. The man became aware that even to say that "I
present myself to you" is egoistic. Even to say, "Now I am here and I surrender
to you," is not surrender. So he himself fell down. Buddha smiled and said, "You
understand well."
Unless you drop
even this idea of surrendering, unless you drop even this idea of empty hands, it is not
surrender. One has to drop even emptiness in the hand. It is easy to understand the
dropping of things... but then the hands were empty and Buddha said, "Drop it! Don't
even cling to this emptiness!" When you do meditation, you have to drop thoughts.
When thoughts are dropped, a thought remains and the thought is, "Now I have become
thoughtless." There is a subtle feeling, a thought that "Now I have achieved and
now there is no thought. Now the mind is vacant. Now I am empty."
But this emptiness
is filled with this thought. And whether thoughts are there or a thought is there makes no
difference. Drop the thought also. And why are you waiting for the buddha-nature? YOU
cannot wait because you will not be there. You will never meet Buddha; when Buddha happens
you will not be there, so your hopes are futile. You are wasting time, you will not be
there.
Kabir has said,
"When I was you were not. Now you are, and where has Kabir gone? When I was seeking
and seeking and desiring and hungering for you, you were not. I was there. Now you are
there, and please tell me where has Kabir gone? Where is that seeker who was seeking and
seeking and hungering and weeping and crying for you? Where has that Kabir gone?"
You will not be
there when Buddha happens. So don't wait, don't desire, because your desire of "When
will Buddha happen to me?" and "When will I become a buddha-nature? When will I
become enlightened?" -this very desire will create a barrier, the last barrier. For
the achieving of total freedom, the desire for freedom is the last barrier. To be
enlightened, even this desire for enlightenment has to be thrown, has to be cast away.
One of the great
Zen masters, Lin-Chi, used to say, "If you meet Buddha anywhere, kill him
immediately! If you meet Buddha anywhere in your meditation, kill him immediately!"
He means it. This desire to be a buddha, to be enlightened, if you meet it anywhere, kill
it immediately. Only then does it happen. Total desirelessness is needed, and when I say,
"total desirelessness," I mean that even the desire for total desirelessness
must be dropped. You are, without any desire. You are, without any thought, not even aware
that there is no thought, that there is no desire. Then it happens.
The last question:
"WHAT ARE THE POSSIBLE
REASONS FOR NOT HAVING AN EXPLOSIVE CATHARSIS? I CONSTANTLY, EVEN WITH TODAY'S SHAKTIPAT
MEDITATION, HAVE ONLY A VERY MILD CATHARSIS. DOES IT NECESSARILY MEAN THAT I AM NOT OPEN
OR NOT OPEN ENOUGH, OR ARE THERE OTHER POSSIBLE REASONS? MY CONCERN OVER THIS THEN BECOMES
A DISTRACTION TO ME DURING THE MEDITATION AND AFTER."
The first thing to
be noted, to be remembered: catharsis will happen deeply if you just help it to happen, if
you just cooperate with it. Mind is so suppressed, and you have so much pushed things
down, that to reach them your cooperation is needed. So whenever you feel even a light
catharsis, help it to become stronger. Don't just wait. If you feel that your hand is
trembling, don't just wait, help it to tremble more. Don't feel, think that it has to be
spontaneous, so you have to wait. If it has to be spontaneous, then you will have to wait
for years, because for years you have been suppressing and the suppression was not
spontaneous. You have done it on purpose.
You will have to do
quite the opposite now. Only then can the suppressions be brought to the surface. You feel
like weeping; you weep mildly. Help it along! Make it a deep scream! You don't know that
from the very beginning you have been suppressing your crying, you have not cried really.
From the very beginning the child wants to cry, to laugh. The crying is a deep necessity
in him. Through crying, every day he goes through catharsis.
The child has many
frustrations. This is bound to be; it is of necessity. The child wants something, but he
cannot say what, he cannot express it. The child wants something, but the parents may not
be in a position to fulfill it. The mother may not be available there. She may be engaged
in some other work, and he may not be cared for. At that moment no attention is paid to
him, so he starts crying. The mother wants to persuade him, to console him, because she is
disturbed, the father is disturbed, the whole family is disturbed. No one wants him to
cry, crying is a disturbance; everyone tries to distract him so that he may not cry. We
can bribe him. The mother can give him a toy; the mother can give him milk -- anything to
create a distraction or to console him -- but he should not cry.
But crying is a
deep necessity. If he can cry and is allowed to cry, he will become fresh again; the
frustration is thrown through crying. Otherwise, with a stopped crying, the frustration is
stopped. Now he will go on piling it up, and you are a "piled-up" cry. Now
psychologists say that you need "a primal scream." Now a therapy is developing
in the West just to help you to scream so totally that every cell of your body is involved
in it. If you can scream so madly that your whole body screams in it, you will be relieved
of much pain, much suffering that is accumulated. You will become just like a child --
fresh and innocent again.
But that primal
scream is not going to come suddenly. You will have to help it. It is so deep down, and
there are so many layers of repression, that don't just wait: help it. When you want to
cry, cry wholeheartedly! Give total energy to it and enjoy it. Help it. And the second
thing -- enjoy it, because if you are not enjoying what you are doing it cannot go deep.
It will be superficial. If you are screaming, then enjoy it. Enjoy the very thing; feel
good. If you are feeling somewhere that "What I am doing is not good; what will
others say? What a childish thing I am doing," even a slight feeling like this will
become repression. Enjoy it and be playful about it. Enjoy and be playful. Just inquire
more and more whether it can become deeper, whether you can help it along more -- in what
ways you can help it along more.
If you are sitting
and crying, then maybe if you start jumping the cry will become deeper. Or if you lie down
on the floor and start thrashing about maybe it will become deeper. Try, help it along,
and enjoy it -- and you will feel there are many ways in which you can help it along.
Enjoy trying to deepen it, and once it takes over then you will not be needed. Once it
comes to the right source where energy is hidden, once you touch the right source and the
energy is released, then you are not needed. You can flow automatically, spontaneously.
And when it starts flowing spontaneously, you will be cleansed completely.
It is just like flowers being cleansed after a rain. Then
they become new. Every bit of dust, whatsoever has gathered upon one, is no more there;
they are themselves. In life we gather dust. This catharsis is just a cleansing. Help it
along, enjoy it and one day the primal scream will come. Just go on doing it. It cannot be
predicted when it will come. When the primal scream will come cannot be said because man
is very complex. It can come this very moment; it may take years. One thing is certain: if
you help it, enjoy it and play with it, it is going to come. |
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