The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 1 Talks given from 21/06/79 am to 30/04/80 am

HOW HAPPY HE IS! And when one is clear, one is blissful. It is confusion that is the root cause of misery; it is clarity that is the foundation of blissfulness.

FOR HE SEES THAT WAKEFULNESS IS LIFE.

In these moments the seers of the Upanishads declare, "Aham brahmasmi! -- I am the cosmic consciousness!" It is in such spaces that al-Hillaj Mansoor announced, "Ana'l haq! -- I am the truth!"

These are the heights which are your birthright. If you are not getting them, only you are responsible and nobody else.

HOW HAPPY HE IS! FOR HE SEES THAT WAKEFULNESS IS LIFE.

FOLLOWING THE PATH OF THE AWAKENED.

HE MEDITATES, SEEKING

FREEDOM AND HAPPINESS.
Listen to these words very attentively: WITH GREAT PERSEVERANCE.... Unless you bring total effort to waking yourself up it is not going to happen. Partial efforts are futile. You cannot be just so-so, you cannot be just lukewarm. It is not going to help. Lukewarm water cannot evaporate, and lukewarm efforts to be alert are bound to fail. Transformation happens only when you put your total energy into it. When you are boiling at a hundred degrees heat, then you evaporate, then the alchemical change happens. Then you start rising up.

Have you not watched? -- water flows downwards, but vapor rises upwards. Exactly the same happens: unconsciousness goes downwards, consciousness goes upwards. And one thing more: upwards is synonymous with inwards, and downwards is synonymous with outwards. Consciousness goes inwards, unconsciousness goes outwards. Unconsciousness makes you interested in others -- things, people, but it is always the others. Unconsciousness keeps you completely in darkness; your eyes go on being focused on others. It creates a kind of exteriority, it makes you extroverts. Consciousness creates interiority, it makes you introverts; it takes you inward, deeper and deeper.

And deeper and deeper also means higher and higher; they grow simultaneously, just as a tree grows. You only see it going upwards, you don't see the roots going downwards. But first the roots have to go downwards, only then can the tree go upwards. If a tree wants to reach the sky, then it will have to send roots to the very bottom, to the lowest depths possible. The tree grows simultaneously in both directions. In exactly the same way consciousness grows upwards...downwards, it sends its roots into your being.

I talked about nine states of consciousness. Your branches of consciousness will go upwards, from conscious -- so-called conscious -- to real conscious, from real conscious to superconscious, from superconscious to collective conscious, from collective conscious to cosmic conscious. And your roots will be growing from so-called conscious to subconscious, from subconscious to unconscious, from unconscious to collective unconscious, from collective unconscious to cosmic unconscious. The moment your roots reach nature, your flowers start blooming in God. Hence nature and God are not divided -- in the awakened one they are bridged.

The really awakened one is not against nature, cannot be; he is all for nature. In fact, he helps you to go both ways -- on one side into nature, on the other side into God. That's my effort here. I would like you to be natural, so natural that your roots go to the deepest core of your being -- because that is the only way to help you grow upwards. Roots have to be strongly in the soil, so strong that they can support a high-rising cedar of Lebanon. If it has to go hundreds of feet upwards, it will need great roots. Because of this I am being misunderstood all over this country particularly, and all over the world in general.

Roots have to reach to the sex energy, because that is the lowest, the bottom in you; only then can your flowers bloom in superconsciousness, in samadhi. The lotus can bloom only if it is rooted in the mud deep down in the lake. This is possible only with great perseverance. Man as he is is very lazy; because he is asleep he is lazy.

"Alright," the husband cries at that point, "I'll close the goddamn door!"

"On a picnic," replied the man with the bread.

"On a picnic?" said the cop. "The bread I can understand -- you can eat it when you get hungry; the wine you can drink when you get thirsty. But why the car door? -- that I can't understand."

"Well," said the man with the door, "if it gets too cold I can roll up the window."

Greed is a drunkenness, it is a sleep. So is anger. Have you not observed that in anger you can do things which you cannot do ordinarily? You say things for which you repent later on. And you cannot believe later on that you uttered such nonsense, that you are capable of uttering such nonsense. What happens when you are angry? You are in a state of drunkenness.

Become more watchful and anger will be less and greed will be less and jealousy will be less.

I don't say to you: Don't be angry, because that's what has been said to you down the ages. Your so-called saints have been telling you, "Don't be angry!" so you have learned ways of repressing anger. But the more you repress anger, the bigger the unconscious you are creating in yourself. You are throwing things into the basement, and then you will be afraid to enter into the basement, because all these things -- anger and greed and sex -- are there. You know! You have been throwing them there. All kinds of rubbish are there, and dangerous, poisonous. You will not be ready to go in.

That's why people don't want to go in, because going in means encountering all these things. And nobody wants to encounter these things; one wants to avoid them. For thousands of years you have been told to repress, and because of repression you have become more and more unconscious. I cannot say to you repress. I would like to say to you just the opposite: don't repress -- watch, be alert. When anger arises, sit down in your room, close your doors and watch it.

You know only two ways: either to be angry, be violent, destructive, or to repress it. You don't know the third way, and the third way is the way of the buddhas: neither indulge nor repress -- watch. Indulgence creates habit. If you become angry today and again tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow again, you are creating a habit; you are conditioning yourself to be more and more angry.

So indulgence cannot take you out of it. That's where the modern growth movement is stuck. Encounter groups, primal therapy, gestalt, bioenergetics...and so many beautiful things are happening in the world, but they are stuck at a certain point. Their problem is: they teach expression -- and it is good, it is far better than repression. If there is only this choice, repress or express, then I would suggest express. But this is not the real choice; there is a third alternative far more important than both these. If you express, you become habitual; you learn by doing it again and again -- you can't get out of it.

In this commune there are at least fifty therapy groups running, for a certain reason. It is just to balance the thousands of years of repression; it is just to balance. It is just to bring to light all that you have repressed as Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans, Jainas, Buddhists. It is just to undo the centuries' old harm that has been done to you.

But remember, these groups are not the end; they only prepare you for meditation. They are not the goal; they are just simple means to undo the wrong of the past. Once you have thrown out of your system all that you have been repressing all along, I have to lead you into watchfulness. Now it will be easier to watch.

But you are not to become a group-addicted person, you are not to become a groupie. There are people now in the world who are group-addicted; they go from one group to another. One encounter finishes -- then another marathon, then gestalt, then this and that.... After just a few days the itch arises -- because where to express? In the normal society they cannot express, they have to repress.

So the group becomes just an outlet. The normal society forces you to repress, the group helps you to express but you are not really growing. Again you will be back in the normal society, again repressing. And if you express in the normal society, you will be getting into far more dangerous situations. You may murder somebody -- you have so much anger. You will be in jail, imprisoned forever. Or if you go on fighting with everybody -- if you slap the boss in the office, if you beat your wife, your children, your husband -- then your whole life will become a chaos, it will be impossible to live it. So after a few days of accumulation you need another encounter. A few days of encountering and you feel unburdened; back in society you will be burdened again.

This is not going to help. This is a temporary relief. You can scream to your heart's desire in a primal therapy group, but if you start screaming on the road, then you will be taken to the police station. You can scream in a group context -- it is allowed, helped, provoked; you are persuaded to scream, because since your childhood you have been repressing it. It has become a wound; it needs to be opened. If the pus oozes out and the wound is left open to the winds and to the sun and to the rain, it will heal itself, because you have a healing energy; it is inbuilt. But back in the society again...how long can you remain in a primal therapy group? Back in the same old society again, you will have to repress; you cannot go on screaming there.

Then the scream gathers, then the steam gathers. Then one day you have to go into the group again. This is a temporary relief; good as far as it goes, but it cannot make you a buddha. That's where this commune is different from institutes like Esalen. They end with groups -- we begin with groups. Where they end, that's exactly the point from where we begin.

And it is not a coincidence that thousands of therapists have become interested in my work. They have come here.... Among my sannyasins, the greatest group from any profession is that of psychotherapists. A great need is felt now all over the world that encounter, primal therapy, gestalt, can help a little bit to unburden people, but they cannot help to make them buddhas -- they cannot help them to become awakened.

Indulgence creates habit, repression gathers the poison within. In indulgence you throw the poison on others, but they are not going to remain silent -- they will throw it back. It becomes a match: you throw your anger on others, they throw their anger on you -- but nobody is helped, everybody is harmed and hurt.

And if you repress.... Because of this futility of indulgence, priests invented repression. It keeps you out of danger. Repression keeps you a good citizen, a gentleman. It keeps you out of the dangers of getting caught by the law, getting caught into enmity; it keeps you smooth. Repression helps you to become a better social person, that's true. But it makes you a wound inside, just a wound, and the pus goes on gathering inside. Outside it functions as a lubricating agent, but inside you become more and more mad.

If this society and this century are the maddest in the whole history, the credit goes to the past. Five thousand years of saintly advice to people -- the credit goes to those saints. If people are becoming mad, if people are becoming insane, if people are committing suicide, if people are becoming murderous, the credit certainly goes to all your so-called saints, priests, preachers, leaders. They are responsible for it.

Just the other day I was telling you the Canadian government wants to investigate, make a deep investigation of this commune because one American citizen who was a sannyasin has committed suicide, and another American who was a sannyasin has gone mad too. Now, I wonder: the person who has committed suicide was sixty years old. He has been a Christian for sixty years, but Christianity is not investigated. And he has been a sannyasin for not even sixty days! The credit goes to Christianity, not to me.

The man who went mad was a Protestant. Now, I am condemned because he was a sannyasin, but the Protestant church is not condemned. And he was brought up as a Protestant, he lived as a Protestant for thirty-five years, and for just a few days he was a sannyasin. Now, American society is not condemned.

This is strange logic...and I am trying to help people. When he had come here, he was already mad. He has come here after six years of psychoanalysis; because psychoanalysis could not help him he had come here and became a sannyasin. Because the Protestant church and the priests could not help him, he had come here and become a sannyasin. But they had done such a good job that it was difficult to bring him back down to earth.

And he did not remain here for long; he was here for only three weeks. Now, the credit cannot go to me. If he becomes mad, I cannot be held responsible. But this strange logic is there.

Here, also, the same logic continues. If a sannyasin misbehaves, I am condemned. But so many Hindus are put in jail every day -- Hinduism is not condemned. So many Mohammedans misbehave, but Mohammedanism is not condemned. If a Sikh murders somebody, Sikhism is not condemned. This is a very stupid and absurd world.

People come to me for help. Many are helped. Ninety-nine percent of people are helped. But the one percent has been damaged so much that it is almost impossible to help them. They can also be helped, but I am not allowed to help them.

For example, an exhibitionist comes here who once in a while exposes himself naked. Now, he can be helped, easily helped -- if he is allowed to move naked. He is not dangerous; he is not doing any harm to anybody. He simply has this eccentric idea...he enjoys it to shock you. This is the way of shocking you, this is the way of gaining attention: he exposes himself naked. If he is simply allowed to move naked and nobody pays any attention to him, he will be cured.

The cure is simple, very simple! Don't be shocked, and don't pay attention. It is to shock you and to get your attention that he is an exhibitionist. If nobody pays any attention, if he comes naked to you and you talk to him as if he is not naked, he will be puzzled. He will not be able to believe what is happening. He will go and look in the mirror to see whether he is naked or not! And what is the point? If nobody pays any attention and nobody is shocked, he may try wearing clothes -- maybe these are strange people and they can be shocked by wearing clothes!

People can be helped, but the society does not allow me to help them. Even that one percent can be cured, because nobody is really incurable. But time will be needed, perseverance will be needed.

Buddha says: WITH GREAT PERSEVERANCE HE MEDITATES, SEEKING FREEDOM AND HAPPINESS.

Meditate -- meditation means watchfulness -- and you will attain to freedom and bliss.

WORK WITH CARE AND ATTENTION.

LIVE IN THE WAY

AND THE LIGHT WILL GROW IN YOU.

THE MASTER MAKES FOR HIMSELF AN ISLAND

WHICH THE FLOOD CANNOT OVERWHELM.
Your watchfulness becomes an island, a citadel, which no passion, no lust, no greed, no anger, can possess. With that island, for the first time you become an integrated individual. For the first time you become a human being.

This human being is absolutely needed today, this new human being -- homo novus.

Enough for today.
The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 1

Chapter #6

Chapter title: Through a glass darkly

26 June 1979 am in Buddha Hall

ShortTitle: DHAM106

Audio: Yes

Video: No

Length: 107 mins

The first question:

Question 1

BELOVED MASTER,

I FEEL LIKE I KNOW THE ANSWERS. WHY DO I STILL ALLOW THE QUESTIONS TO BECOME PROBLEMS?
Savita, there are not answers, there is only the answer. And that answer is not of the mind, that answer cannot be of the mind. Mind is a multiplicity. Mind has answers and answers, but not the answer.

That answer is a state of no-mind. It is not verbal. You can know it but you cannot reduce it to knowledge. You can know it, but you cannot say it. It is known in the innermost recesses of your being. It is light that simply illuminates your interiority.

It is not an answer to any particular question. It is the end of all questioning, it refers to no question at all. It simply dissolves all the questions and a state is left without any question...that's the answer. Unless that is known, nothing is known.

Hence, you may feel that you know the answers, but still questions will go on popping up, still questions will go on torturing you. Still questions are bound to arise because the root is not cut yet. New leaves will be sprouting, new branches will be arising.

The root is cut only when you disconnect yourself from the mind, when you become so aware, so watchful that you can see the mind as separate from you. When all identity with the mind is dropped, when you are a watcher on the hills and the mind is left deep down in the darkness of the valleys, when you are on the sunlit peaks, just a pure witness, seeing, watching, but not getting identified with anything -- good or bad, sinner or saint, this or that -- in that witnessing all questions dissolve. The mind melts, evaporates. You are left as a pure being, just a pure existence -- a breathing, a beating of the heart, utterly in the moment, no past, no future, hence no present either.

Unless that state arrives you will feel many times that you know the answers, but each answer will only create new questions. Each answer will trigger new chains of questions in you. You can read, you can study, you can think, but you will get more and more in the mire of the mind, more entangled, more entrapped. Slip out of the mind!

Hence, I am not giving you answers, I am trying to point out the answer. You cannot use the plural for it because it is one. It is a state of utter silence, peace, no-thought. Buddha calls it right mindfulness -- sammasati. And he says that those who are rightly mindful, alert, aware, the truth comes to them of its own accord. You need not go anywhere, it comes. You need not even seek and search, because how can you seek and search? Out of your ignorance, whatsoever you do will bring more ignorance. Out of your ignorance, wherever you go you will go astray. Out of your confusion, how can you find clarity? Out of your confusion you will become more and more confused -- in search of clarity.

Hence Buddha says: The master watches, the master is clear. Aes dhammo sanantano -- this is the law, the ultimate, eternal, inexhaustible law.

To be silent is to have the answer. To be silent is to be without questions...and the root is cut, then no leaves arrive anymore.

Savita, you say, "I feel like I know the answers."

That is only an illusion. And the mind is very clever in creating new illusions. The mind is very deceptive: it can deceive you in knowledge too. It can deceive you in everything! It can even make you believe that you are enlightened, that you are a buddha already. Beware! The only enemy is the mind; there is no other enemy.

The old scriptures talk about the mind. They have a special name for it -- they call it the Devil. The Devil is not somebody outside you; it is your own mind that goes on tempting you, that goes on cheating you, deceiving you, that goes on creating new illusions in you. Beware, watch the mind! And in watching, questions disappear -- not that they are answered, let me repeat it again.

The buddha knows no answers -- not that he has come to the conclusion of all questions, no, not at all. On the contrary, he has no questions anymore. Because he has no questions anymore, his whole being has become the answer.

Savita, that moment is possible.

That's my whole work here. I am not here to give you more information; that you can get anywhere. Thousands of universities exist, thousands of libraries exist. Information you can get anywhere, you can become knowledgeable anywhere. My effort is to make you unlearn whatsoever you have learned up to now, to make you innocent so that you can start functioning from a state of not-knowing. So that you don't have any answers, so that you act spontaneously, not out of the past and out of the conclusions already arrived at. So that you don't have any ready-made formula for anything...so that you are like a small child mirroring reality.

And when you are silent, no knowledge clamoring inside you, your perception is clear -- no dust on the mirror...you reflect that which is. And out of that reflection whatever action arises is virtue.

Question 2

BELOVED MASTER,

YOU WANT US TO BE INDIVIDUALS, BUT DURING WORK IN THE ASHRAM WE HAVE TO BE VERY DISCIPLINED. DISCIPLINE AND INDIVIDUALISM -- ARE THEY NOT DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSITE?

The ego is such an ordinary phenomenon -- everybody has it! There is nothing special about it, there is nothing unique about it. Everybody has the ego. It is so common! The uncommon thing is egolessness.

Only an egoless consciousness attains to individuality. And by individuality I simply mean the literal meaning of the word: individual means indivisible, individual means integrated; individual means one who is not many, who is not a crowd, who is not multipsychic; one who has attained to unity, one who has become a crystallized being. Gurdjieff uses the word 'crystallization' for individuality. But the basic requirement for crystallization is to drop the ego, because ego is a false entity. It won't allow you to be real, it won't allow you to be authentically real. It won't allow you to grow. It is false, it is a deception, it is an illusion. You are not separate from existence, but the ego goes on pretending separation.