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

And the other word that you have used in the question also has to be understood: discipline. Discipline does not mean anything imposed upon you. Nothing is imposed in this commune. If you enter this commune it is at your own choice. The doors are open -- you can leave any moment. In fact, entry is difficult and we make every possible effort to help you to leave. Nobody is hindered from leaving, although every possible effort is made to hinder you from entering. Entry is very difficult.

If you choose to become part of this commune it is your decision -- your readiness to commit yourself, to be involved.

Out of this decision a discipline arises. You can choose to get out of the commune, but once you are in the commune it means that you have taken a responsibility. And it is only through responsibility that one grows. By fulfilling one's responsibility totally, growth becomes possible.

There are a few people here, only a few, who go on trying to deceive the commune. They are simply befooling themselves; nobody is befooled! They don't want to work, they try to avoid it in every possible way. They find excuses, they even fall ill just to avoid work. But this is so stupid! You have entered the commune to work upon yourself. You have entered the commune to make a concentrated effort to become an integrated individual. You have entered the commune for your spiritual growth, for enlightenment. And if you avoid...and that seems to be the real question behind the apparent question.

You say, Sudarshan, "Individualism and discipline -- are they not diametrically opposite?"

They are not! An individual is always a disciplined phenomenon. One who is not disciplined is not an individual; he is just a chaos, he is many fragments. All those fragments are functioning separately, even in opposition to each other. That's how people are ordinarily: one part of the mind going to the south, another part going to the north; one part saying one thing, another part opposing it. You know it! I am simply stating a fact -- you can observe it. One part says "Do this." Another part immediately says "No!" Something says "Yes," and something immediately destroys it by saying "No."

This is your situation! You are an individual in such a situation, when you cannot even say a total yes or a total no? Your no is always halfhearted and your yes too -- and you think you are an individual?

An individual means one who can function as a totality, as an organic unity. How are you going to become an organic unity? It can only be through conscious discipline.

That's what Buddha is saying again and again: perseverance, effort, a conscious, deliberate effort to grow -- and total effort, not lukewarm. You have to boil at a hundred degrees. Yes, sometimes it is painful, but it all depends on you, on how you interpret it. If you really want to grow it is not painful -- it is tremendously pleasant. Each step deeper into discipline brings more and more joy, because it gives you more and more soul, being.

Discipline means readiness to learn; hence the word 'disciple', they come from the same root. Who is a disciple? -- one who bows down, surrenders, and is ready to learn. And what is discipline? -- the readiness, the openness, the vulnerability, to learn.

Entering into this commune you are entering into a buddhafield. It is a surrender, it is a trust! I am here to make you individuals, but you will have to pass through many many devices. Many fires you will have to pass through, many tests. Only then, slowly slowly, will you be welded into one unity. And you have remained a multiplicity for so long, for so many lives, that unless concentrated effort is made, unless you are attacked from every nook and corner, unless your sleep is broken in every possible way, you are shaken and shocked, the individual is not going to be born.

The work that is happening in the commune is not really what it appears from the surface. It is something else -- it is a device! We have to use devices.

Somebody comes to me and wants to become part of the commune, and I say to him, "Go to Deeksha." Deeksha is my device! I have given her total power -- and I have given her total power because she is so loving, so soft, so caring. She wounds people, but she heals also. By one hand she hammers, by the other she consoles. She is a device.

And when I say to you, "Go and work with Deeksha," and she shouts at you and in every possible way she provokes you, it is discipline to watch -- not to act in your old ways, as you have always acted. And she is so motherly that it is very simple to react to her as you have been reacting to your own parents. It is very simple that she will create a reaction in you that your mother creates in you. Mothers are intolerable creatures -- and Deeksha is a perfect mother!

I know, Sudarshan, it is difficult -- but growth is difficult. Many more devices are going to be created. You will be sent to many dimensions. No corner of your being has to be left undeveloped, otherwise you will become lopsided.

And the first principle of discipline is surrender. Apparently it looks contradictory, because that's what you have been told: that if you surrender, then you are no longer an individual. And I say to you, if you cannot surrender you are not an individual. Only an individual can surrender. Surrender is such a great phenomenon, only a man of great will can surrender. It is the ultimate in will. To drop your will is bound to be the ultimate in will. To put yourself aside, absolutely aside, and to say to something such a total yes -- which your mind resists, your old habits resist....

And sometimes you are right -- and that's where the whole beauty lies. You are right, and still you have to surrender to something which does not appear at all right logically.

Deeksha is crazy! You may be far more intellectual, far more rational -- but you have to surrender to Deeksha. Her craziness is her quality -- that's why I have chosen her. I have got many more rational people: I could have chosen a Ph.D. who would have convinced you that he is right. But when you are convinced and you follow, it is not surrender. When you are not convinced at all, you see the apparent stupidity of a certain thing, and still you surrender, that is a great step, a great step of getting out of your past.

This commune is a lab, this commune is an alchemical process. You come here as a crowd and I have to weld you into unity. Much hammering is going to happen, and you will come out of this whole process as pure individuals.

Discipline is the way to create individuality. But remember: to be an individual is not to be an individualist. Individualism is an ego trip. And the people who believe in individualism are not individuals, remember -- remember well. Deep down they know they are not individuals, hence they create a facade of philosophy, of logic, of argument, because deep down they don't feel they are individuals. They pretend on the outside that they are individuals -- they believe in individualism. Believing in individualism is not becoming an individual. Belief is always false.

When you are an individual you need not believe in individualism. When it is a truth of your being, belief is not needed. Belief is needed only to cover things: you don't know about God and you believe in God. The believer is an atheist. He may be a Christian, a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Buddhist, it doesn't matter: a believer is an atheist. He does not know about God, and still he believes. That means he is even trying to deceive God! He is a hypocrite, he is a parrot. Parrotlike he goes on repeating what the scriptures say, what others say. And parrots can repeat beautifully, without understanding a thing, without knowing a thing, mechanically.

The Negro asked to see a fifty-dollar parrot. "Polly wanna cracker? Polly wanna cracker?" he called as soon as the parrot appeared. The parrot said nothing.

"I wanna parrot that talks good," he said. "Show me a good one."

So the proprietor brought out a two-hundred-dollar parrot: "Polly wanna cracker? Polly wanna cracker?" No answer.

"You gotta better parrot than this?" asked the Negro.

The proprietor said yes, and led the Negro behind the counter, to where the thousand-dollar parrot, beautifully plumaged with sparkling beady eyes, clearly a very special parrot, sat proudly in a luxurious cage.

"Polly wanna cracker? Polly wanna cracker?" came from the Negro, but the parrot didn't even look up.

"Man, this your best parrot?" asked the Negro, "because I wanna a good talker and this one looks dumb."

The proprietor took him to the back of the shop where in a special polished brass cage the size of a small room sat the pride of the proprietor's collection -- a five-thousand-dollar parrot. The parrot, dressed in a silk smoking jacket and sitting on a quilted perch, was smoking a pipe and reading the FINANCIAL TIMES.

"Polly wanna a cracker? Polly wanna cracker?" the Negro yelled.

The parrot sniffed and looked at him over his gold-rimmed spectacles with aristocratic disdain.

"Polly wanna cracker? Polly wanna cracker?" the Negro yelled again.

"Polly wanna cracker?" said the parrot in an impeccable Oxford accent. "Nigger wanna watermelon?"
The believer is a parrot. The believer knows nothing. The believer is an atheist in disguise. He is trying to befool himself, the world and even God.

The man who believes in individualism is not an individual. The man who is really an individual need not believe -- he knows it, so what is the point of believing? Belief is always needed in ignorance, and individualism is a belief. To be an individual is an experience! Individualism is very cheap, but to be an individual needs arduous discipline. It needs great perseverance, work, watchfulness. It comes only out of years of effort in awareness, in meditation.

And whatsoever is happening here in this commune, Sudarshan, is nothing but different ways to introduce you to meditation. In the kitchen, in the carpentry shop, in the soap workshop, in the boutique -- whatsoever is happening, apparently it looks as if it is the same ordinary thing as happens everywhere else. It is not. If you go and see the carpenters working, of course they go on working like any other carpenters anywhere else -- but with a different quality. That quality cannot be seen. You will have to become a participant, only then will you slowly feel it. That quality is of trust, love.

My sannyasins are here because they love me, for no other reason. They are simply here with me to be here with me. For the sake of being here with me they are ready to do anything. But whatsoever they are doing is only the outer part. You will see the body of the work but you will not be able to see the spirit of the work. For that you will have to become a participant.

And, Sudarshan, it seems that you are still a spectator. Maybe you are working in the commune, but still you have not become a participant -- otherwise such a question would have been impossible.
The third question:

Question 3

BELOVED MASTER,

WHY AM I FEELING I AM MISSING SOMETHING? THAT I SHOULD BE SOMETHING ELSE? PLEASE HELP ME LET GO OF THIS GARBAGE.

But is seems that you have heard me say that it is garbage. It has become a belief in you; it is not your own knowing, it is not your own experience. You are still clinging to it.

Deep down you still think it is precious, it is not garbage. Deep down you still think these are diamonds not pebbles. Deep down somewhere you still believe it is a treasure to be protected and guarded.

Don't start believing me, because that will make no difference. You were believing in Mohammed, or you were believing in Christ, or in Buddha, and then you come and you start believing in me. That is not a revolution, that is not conversion. You simply change the object of your belief, but the belief remains -- the same believing mind. You believe in Jesus, but Jesus speaks the language which is now two thousand years old. You cannot make much sense out of it; the context is lost in which it was relevant. I speak the language of the twentieth century. You can make sense out of it, so you withdraw your belief from Jesus and you start believing in me. This is very simple and cheap.

I am not saying believe in me. I am saying drop all believing and start seeing, because belief will remain a blindness -- start seeing! Is it really garbage that you are carrying? Is it your understanding that it is garbage? Then you will not ask how to drop it. Nobody asks how to drop garbage. The problem arises only because deep down you know yourself that it is gold. And somebody says that it is garbage and says it very convincingly, and you cannot argue, and he silences you. And the man has such authenticity, such integrity, that in his presence you simply become overflooded with his being. You simply start saying, "Yes, it is garbage." But deep down you still know it is not garbage, it is gold! Hence the problem arises: how to drop it?

If you understand on your own that it is garbage, you will never ask how to drop it. Seeing it as garbage is dropping it, knowing it as garbage is dropping it! The garbage is not clinging to you -- you are clinging to it. The garbage cares nothing about you, the garbage is not interested in you. If you drop it, it is not going to make much fuss about it -- "Why are you dropping me?" It will not say a single word, it will not create any problem for you. It will not go to the court. You need not have a divorce! If you drop it, the garbage will be really more happy than it is now. It will be finished with you, it will be free from you. It must be getting tired of you. It is you who are clinging to it. Why are you clinging to it? Why does one cling to something? -- because deep down one goes on believing it is precious.

Dhyana Yogi, you say, "Why am I feeling I am missing something?"

Because from your very childhood you have been told that in yourself, intrinsically, you are worthless. As you are you have no value. The value has to be attained, the worth has to be proved. From your very childhood you have been taught this millions of times. The parents, the teachers, the priests, the politicians, they are all in a secret conspiracy to destroy the child. And the best way to destroy a child is to destroy his trust in himself.

To destroy the trust in the child you have to prove to the child that worth is not a given phenomenon, that it has to be achieved in life and you can miss it. Unless you work, unless you are very ambitious, unless you struggle with others.... It is a tooth and nail fight and you have to cut each other's throats to achieve it. You are being conditioned to be violent, ambitious, full of desires: to have more money, to have more power, to have more prestige. Because you have been told that intrinsically you don't have any worth, this problem has arisen.

And I say that you are intrinsically worthy, that you are born as buddhas. Unaware you are, utterly oblivious of the reality of your own being, but you are hidden gods. What I am saying is so totally different from what has been told to you, that a problem has arisen. I say you are buddhas -- right now you are buddhas! -- but the whole training and teaching, conditioning is: How can you be a buddha right now? Tomorrow maybe, one day certainly, in some future life it is going to happen...but right now? It seems impossible.

You have believed too much in your parents, in your teachers, in your politicians, in your priests, and whatsoever they have told you, you have collected it. It is garbage, but you have carried the garbage for so long that suddenly to drop it seems impossible -- so long you have remained attached to it, so long you have thought it beautiful, precious, nourishing. Now I say: It is all nonsense! Drop it, and just be a buddha from this very moment! It is not a question of attaining, it is only a question of becoming aware. It is only a question of becoming conscious, alert, awake, not a question of achievement.

So you listen to me: one part of your mind says, "Yes, the Master must be right!" One part of you simply nods yes, because what is being said is a simple truth of life. But all your training is against it. When you are close to me you start feeling it is true. When you go away from me the mind jumps back upon you -- with vengeance. And of course it is very powerful. The mind is so powerful, that's why it destroys your intelligence.

Intelligence has nothing to do with the mind; intelligence has something to do with the heart. It is the quality of the heart. Intellectuality is the quality of the head. The intellectual is not necessarily an intelligent person and the intelligent person is not necessarily an intellectual.

Your intellect is full of garbage -- and I am trying to wake up your intelligence. And the whole society has tried to make you unaware of your intelligence. The society is against your intelligence. It wants you to be mediocre, because only mediocre people can be good slaves. It wants you to be unintelligent and stupid, because only stupid people can be dominated.

And stupid people are obedient, stupid people are never rebellious, and stupid people simply vegetate. They don't make any effort to live their lives at the optimum. They don't try to burn their torch of life from both ends simultaneously. They don't have intensity. Stupidity is obedient, and obedience creates stupidity.
A rather simple dude rode into town in the middle of the day stark naked. The sheriff called him over and said, "Jake, what are you doing riding into town with no clothes on?"

"Well, sheriff," said Jake, "it is a long story. I was riding into town to get some provisions for my pa, when I came across this lady on the side of the road who asked me for some help. Now my daddy always told me to help gentle lady folk, so I got off my horse and helped her carry her picnic basket down to the river. Then I helped her lay out her blanket, and helped her with everything she asked me to do. Then she said, 'How about taking your boots off, cowboy?' So I did, sheriff, and then she said, 'How about taking your clothes off, cowboy?' And I said, 'Sure thing, Ma'am.' And she was there on that rug, naked as the day she was born. Then she lay back and said, 'Go to town cowboy!'...and so here I am, sheriff."

For example, this country has been poor for centuries, starving, suffering. But because people are religious, obedient, stupid, they have been given any kind of explanation and they have accepted it. Some believe that God has made them poor because poverty is something very pious. They worship poverty; in India poverty is worshipped. If you renounce your riches and you become a naked fakir, millions of people will think you are a great sage. You may be simply stupid, but just because you have renounced riches you are a great sage. I have seen many stupid sages.

Now it is a contradiction in terms -- how can a stupid person be a sage? A sage has to be wise! But it is very difficult in this world to be wise and be worshipped. Wise people are to be murdered, crucified, poisoned. Stupid people are worshipped. Stupid people simply follow whatever the society says. Whatsoever the society wants them to do, they simply do it. So a few people have been worshipping poverty.

Gandhi used to call poor people daridra narayana -- "the poor are divine." Poverty is divine! The poor people are gods! If this is true then who would not like to be poor? If poor people are gods, who would not like to be a god?

And then there are other explanations: that you are poor because in your past lives you have committed sins. Those explanations have been invented for those people who don't believe in God. The Jainas, the Buddhists, they don't believe in God so you cannot give the first explanation to them. They need another explanation: the theory of karma. But the purpose is the same! If you have committed sins in your past life, then it is better to be finished with the karma. Go through poverty, and go through poverty without any resistance. If you create any resistance, you will again be creating bad karma and you will suffer in your future life. Enough, after all, is enough! Now be finished with the whole thing -- suffer at this moment contentedly. So people have become cows and buffaloes; they are suffering contentedly, no resistance, no rebellion.

The society wants you to be stupid, not intelligent. Intelligence is dangerous. Intelligence means you will start thinking on your own, you will start looking around on your own. You will not believe in the scriptures; you will believe only in your own experience.

Dhyana Yogi, please don't believe in what I say.

Experiment, meditate, experience -- unless it becomes your own understanding, nothing is going to help.

You ask me, "Why am I feeling that I am missing something?"

...Because you have been told always that you have to find something. Now you are not finding it, so the feeling arises that you are missing. And I am telling you, you have never lost it in the first place! Please stop trying to find it, stop seeking and searching. You have it already! Whatsoever is needed, you have it already. Just look within and you will find infinite treasures, inexhaustible treasures of joy, love, ecstasy.

Nothing is being missed if you look in, but if you go on searching outside you will feel more and more frustrated. And as you grow older, of course, you will feel that your life is slipping out of your hands and you have not found it yet. And the whole irony is that you have not lost it in the first place. It has always been within you...it is this moment within you.

But don't believe me. I am not here to create believers, I am here to help you experience. The moment it becomes your experience, it liberates. Truth liberates, says Jesus -- not belief but truth.

But my truth cannot be your truth; my truth will be your belief. Only your truth can be true to you. Truth certainly liberates, but let me add that the truth has to be your truth. Nobody else's truth can liberate you. Somebody else's truth will become only an imprisonment.

Dhyana Yogi, you are not missing anything. Nobody is missing. In the nature of things we cannot miss it. We are part of God and God is part of us. There is no way, no possible way to miss it. How can you escape from yourself? Where? Wherever you go you will remain yourself. Even in hell you will remain yourself, because you cannot escape from yourself, you cannot escape from God.

It is there waiting, patiently waiting for you to look in.

You say, "...that I should be something else?"

That has been told to you again and again: "Be somebody! Look at Gautam Buddha, at Krishna, at Christ. Be a Buddha, be a Krishna, be a Christ!" Then certainly you will die in misery, in anguish, frustrated -- utterly frustrated, crying and weeping -- because you cannot be a Buddha. You are not meant to be a Buddha! You cannot be a Christ, you cannot be a Krishna. You can only be yourself.
A great Hassid master, Zusiya, was dying. People had gathered -- disciples, sympathizers. Somebody asked, an old man, "Zusiya, when you are facing God -- and soon you will be facing God because you are dying -- will you be able to say to him that you followed Moses absolutely, truthfully?"