The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 6
Talks given from 21/10/79 am to 30/10/79 am
English Discourse series
10 Chapters
Year published: 1990
The original tape and book title was "The Book of the Books, Vols 1 - 6". Later reissued as twelve volumes under the present title.
The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 6
Chapter #1
Chapter title: The security of insecurity
21 October 1979 am in Buddha Hall
Archive code: 7910210
ShortTitle: DHAM601
Audio: Yes
Video: No
Length: 0 mins
HE IS AWAKE.
THE VICTORY IS HIS.
HE HAS CONQUERED THE WORLD.
HOW CAN HE LOSE THE WAY
WHO IS BEYOND THE WAY?
HIS EYE IS OPEN.
HIS FOOT IS FREE.
WHO CAN FOLLOW AFTER HIM?
THE WORLD CANNOT RECLAIM HIM
OR LEAD HIM ASTRAY,
NOR CAN THE POISONED NET OF DESIRE HOLD HIM.
HE IS AWAKE!
THE GODS WATCH OVER HIM.
HE IS AWAKE
AND FINDS JOY IN THE STILLNESS OF MEDITATION
AND IN THE SWEETNESS OF SURRENDER.
HARD IT IS TO BE BORN,
HARD IT IS TO LIVE,
HARDER STILL TO HEAR OF THE WAY,
AND HARD TO RISE, FOLLOW, AND AWAKE.
YET THE TEACHING IS SIMPLE.
DO WHAT IS RIGHT.
BE PURE.
AT THE END OF THE WAY IS FREEDOM.
TILL THEN, PATIENCE.
IF YOU WOUND OR GRIEVE ANOTHER,
YOU HAVE NOT LEARNED DETACHMENT.
OFFEND IN NEITHER WORD NOR DEED.
EAT WITH MODERATION.
LIVE IN YOUR HEART.
SEEK THE HIGHEST CONSCIOUSNESS.
Gautama the Buddha is talking today about the very essence of buddhahood: the height of buddhahood and the depth of it, the glory and the grace, the tremendous freedom that it brings, the light that it showers, the love, the joy, the bliss, the awakening.
These sutras are rare -- rarest amongst the most rare sutras, because Buddha is opening his own heart to you. He is inviting you to become a guest into his innermost core. He is revealing, in simple words, the fragrance that has happened to him and that is possible for you too -- because each man is born to be a buddha.
Unless one becomes a buddha one has not lived and one has not known what life is. One has dreamed of course -- dreams of a thousand and one things -- but one has been asleep. And whether you dream beautiful dreams or ugly dreams it does not matter. In the morning of buddhahood, all those dreams, both good and bad, sweet and bitter, golden dreams and nightmares, will be known as false, illusory. It was a self-deception, and the capacity to deceive oneself is enormous. Beware of it! One can even dream that one is awake, one can even dream that one has become a buddha. That is the ultimate trick the mind can play upon you.
It happened in Baghdad:
A man was brought to the caliph, because the man had declared that he was the new messenger of God. The caliph was irritated, annoyed, and he said, "You must be mad, because Mohammed is the last messenger of God and there is not going to be anybody else. The message has arrived in the Koran. Yes, before Mohammed there had been other messages, but all those messages were fragmentary because man was not ready and ripe. Mohammed has brought the full message; now there is not going to be any other messenger in the world. You bring yourself to your senses; otherwise you will have to suffer for it!"
The man was thrown into the prison for seven days, tortured, beaten, starved. After seven days the caliph arrived. The man was bound to a pillar, bruised, wounded. The caliph said, "Now you must have come to your senses. What do you say now?"
The man laughed and he said, "All the torture and all the suffering that have been imposed upon me simply prove that I am really the messenger, because when God was sending me to the world he warned me that 'My messengers have always been tortured.' And I was doubting, 'Why are people not torturing me if I am the real messenger?' You have proved it! God was right, there was no need to doubt."
The caliph was at a loss -- what to say to this madman? But suddenly another man who was also bound to another pillar started laughing hysterically. The caliph asked him, "Why are you laughing?"
The man said, "This guy is a cheat -- because I am God myself, and I have never sent this man to the world as my messenger!"
That man had been imprisoned one month before, declaring himself God.
Mohammedans are very fanatic; they can't allow -- sometimes even when it is the truth. When al-Hillaj Mansoor declared, "ANA'L HAQ! -- I am God himself!" it was a truth, he was not dreaming. But he was crucified. When Sarmad, another Sufi mystic, declared, "I am God!" his head was cut off. And these people were not dreaming. But it is very difficult from the outside to decide who is dreaming, who has gone mad, who is imagining, and who is declaring the truth. Because sometimes the dreamer believes in his dream, believes absolutely, so belief cannot prove anything. It may be just an ego trip.
The last deception that the mind can play on you is to say to you, "Why are you unnecessarily bothering? You are a buddha!" And I want you to be aware of it, because this is going to happen to many people. People can believe anything.
Just the other day a man wrote a letter to me saying, "I want to become a sannyasin, but I am a little afraid because I know that I am a Judas and I will prove to be a Judas to you." People can believe they are Christ, they can believe they are Judas. And he must be believing it really deeply.
I have sent him a message that "You can become a sannyasin. I already have many other Judases, so what difference does it make? One more is welcome!" Jesus had only one Judas: I have many, and it is better to have many -- one can prove more dangerous. If you have many Judases, first they will have to compete with each other. Their energies will be wasted amongst themselves. They will fight with each other; they will betray each other first. And Judas could betray Jesus because Jesus had only twelve disciples; I have one hundred thousand disciples.
I cannot take too much care as to who is a Judas and who is not; and I need not, because whatsoever happens is God's will. If a Judas is needed then he will have to come, that is the way God wants it to be. But your mind can play tricks with you. You can't just be a nobody -- if you cannot be Christ, at least you can be Judas. You can't accept the fact of anonymity.
And that is the very fundamental -- the first basic requirement, to enter into the world of religion: to accept oneself as anonymous, as if you have no name, no form, no identity. Then the mind cannot deceive you. Then the mind cannot seduce you into some idea, into some imagination.
Buddha is talking about what happens when a person becomes awakened. Ordinarily man is asleep, all men are asleep. Irrespective of their religion, nation, race, on one thing they all agree: they are all fast asleep -- dreaming different dreams, but the sleep is the same. The difference of dreams makes no difference to the quality of the sleep. One is dreaming Christian dreams, another is dreaming Jewish dreams, another is dreaming Hindu dreams, and so on and so forth, but dreams can't change your consciousness. In fact they are hindrances.
The sleep has to be broken, the sleep has to be shattered; otherwise you don't know who you are, you don't know what you are doing. You don't know where you are coming from, you don't know where you are going. You don't know what you are saying and what you are doing, to yourself and to others. You are accidental. You are like driftwood at the mercy of the blind winds -- there is no destiny. The winds throw you on this shore or on that shore, but you are not the master of your own being. You are a slave, a slave of blind forces.
The first thing to be done is to come out of your sleep.
Buddha says... the first sutra:
HE IS AWAKE.
He is defining buddhahood, or you can call it christhood; it is the same. Buddha and Christ are synonymous.
HE IS AWAKE. That is the most essential quality: he is no longer asleep, he is no longer dreaming. He has no thoughts, no memories, no imagination. He is utterly silent and alert. His silence is not a dead, cold silence; his silence is wakeful, warm, alive.
HE IS AWAKE: you are not -- you are so full of junk. Unless you become empty of the junk you will not be awake. And you go on doing the same things again and again, you go on repeating. You move in circles, never seeing the fact that you are functioning like a robot, like a machine.
The legend goes that in the days of ancient Rome an officer called away to the wars locked his beautiful young wife in a chastity belt and gave the key to his best friend with the admonition, "If I don't return in a year, use this key. To you, my dear friend, I entrust it."
He then galloped off to the wars. Ten miles away from home he heard the clatter of hoofbeats behind him and he waited. His friend on horseback galloped up saying, "You gave me the wrong key!"
Man is so deeply unconscious!
A couple of drunks in a bar started talking about sex. "Say," said the first one, "have you ever gotten so drunk you kissed a broad's navel?"
"Drunker!" answered his pal.
Just watch your life and you will be absolutely in agreement with him: "Drunker!" What have you been doing? Can you say you have lived your life with awareness? Can you say your actions have the quality of awareness? Somebody insults you: do you respond or do you react? If you react, you are asleep; if you respond, you are awake.
And what is the difference between reaction and response? -- the difference is great.
Once Buddha was being insulted very much by a few people. They were shouting at him, saying all kinds of dirty words to him, and he was standing there listening to them as totally as possible.
After a few minutes they felt frustrated, because he was not saying anything, and one of them asked, "Are you deaf or something? Why don't you answer?"
Buddha said, "I am answering, but my answer is a response, not a reaction."
Naturally they asked, "What is the difference between reaction and response?"
And Buddha said, "Sit down and I will explain it to you."
And the enemies turned into disciples! They were listening to Buddha, sitting silently; listening to what he was saying. They were converted. Buddha said, "If you had come ten years ago, when I was asleep just as you are, I would have reacted. You would have pushed my buttons."
When you push the button and the fan goes on it is not a response; it is a reaction, it is mechanical. When you push the button and the lights go on or off, it is a reaction not a response. The light, the fan, or any other mechanism, has no freedom to choose; it simply reacts. Response means choice, response means "chosen with consciousness."
Buddha said, "Ten years ago if you had said these words to me I would have cut off your heads -- I used to carry a sword with me. But now I am awake. I listened to your words and I felt deep compassion for you -- that you were torturing yourselves unnecessarily. You cannot force me to do something -- I am not a machine, now I am a man. You cannot force me to do anything; I act out of my own choice. Hence it is not reaction, it is action, and action is a response. I see the whole situation, then out of my consciousness I act. At this moment I am feeling so compassionate for you, so sorry for you, that I cannot speak the same language that you are speaking to me."
The man who is asleep reacts; he knows nothing of action. And reaction is a binding: it binds you into new prisons, new chains. Response is out of freedom, hence it brings more freedom. Reaction is out of the past; you act according to your memories, built-in by your experiences, conditionings. You react not to the present, not in the present. You don't reflect the real situation as it is; you go on interpreting it according to your past, your past experiences.
The man who is awake is like a mirror: he reflects that which is the case. HE IS AWAKE.
THE VICTORY IS HIS.
HE HAS CONQUERED THE WORLD.
And Buddha says: It is only by awakening that one becomes victorious; not by conquering the world but by conquering one's unconsciousness.
There are only two types of people in the world: the Alexander the Great type and the Buddha type. There are millions... in fact ninety-nine point nine percent of people belong to the Alexander type -- small Alexanders and big Alexanders, but Alexanders all. Everybody is trying to conquer the world in his own way, big or small, through money, power, prestige. And everybody is carrying a deep desire, a great longing to succeed one day in becoming the most famous man in the world, the most powerful man in the world. This is the Alexander type, the extrovert, the worldly; he accumulates money, possessions, but he loses his soul.
And there are very rare, very few people in the world who belong to the Buddha type, who are no longer interested in the world, whose whole interest is in self-actualization, in self-realization, in becoming more aware of the reality that they are.
These are not fixed types, they are liquid. Anyone who belongs to the Alexander category can move to the category of being a buddha. And all the buddhas, in their past, had belonged to the Alexander category, and all those who are Alexanders now can become buddhas one day. It all depends on you; a conscious, deliberate choice is needed: that you turn your energies from extroversion into introversion, that you become more interested in the inner reality, that you become more interested in your subjectivity rather than in objects. You start moving, diving deeply into your interiority to find the center of your being.
And the magic is, the moment you find the center of your being you have found the center of the whole existence -- because there is only one center; my center and your center are not two centers. Anybody who moves inwards comes to the same center. On the periphery we are different people; at the center we are one.