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

It is scientific in the sense that art creates objects, and it is religious in the sense that whatsoever art creates is first envisioned in one's own inner being. It is the bridge between science and religion. Religion is absolute inwardness. It is moving into your innermost core, it is subjectivity.

These are the three dimensions.

If you become a scientist and lose contact with aesthetics and religion, you will be a one-dimensional man. You will be only one third; you will not be whole. You may attain to a certain integrity that you will see in a man like Albert Einstein -- a certain individuality, a beauty, a truth, but only partial.

You can choose to be an artist: you can be a Picasso, a Van Gogh, a Beethoven, a Rabindranath, but then too...you will be a little better because aesthetics is the world of in-between, the world of twilight. You will have something of religion in you. Each poet has something of religion in him -- he may be aware of it, he may not be aware of it, but no poet can be without some flavor of religion. It is impossible. Even the most atheistic artist is bound to have some kind of religiousness. Without it he will not be a genius. Without it he will remain only a technician, a craftsman, but not an artist.

Even a man like Jean-Paul Sartre -- who is determinedly an atheist, who will never concede that he is religious -- even he is in some way religious. He has created great novels, and those novels and the characters of those novels have great interiority. That interiority has been lived by this man, otherwise he could not write about it. That interiority is experienced.

And the man that moves into aesthetics is bound to have some scientific qualities around him too. He will be more logical than the religious person, more object-oriented than the religious person -- less object-oriented than the scientist of course, less logical than the scientist, but more logical than the religious person. He will be in a more balanced state.

It is better to move in the world of art because somehow it has something of all the three dimensions -- but only something, still it is not total.

The religious man is again one-dimensional, just as the scientist is. Albert Einstein is one-dimensional, so is Gautama the Buddha. And because the East has become one-dimensionally religious it has suffered much. And now the West is suffering much, and the cause is one-dimensionality. The West is bankrupt as far as the inner world is concerned and the East is bankrupt as far as the outer world is concerned.

The East is not accidentally poor and starving. It has chosen to be that way. It has denied science; it has even denied the world of objective reality. It says the world is illusory. If the world is illusory, how can you create a science? The very first requirement is missing. You cannot create a science out of maya, illusion. How can you create a science out of something which is not, which does not even exist? If you deny the world, you have denied the dimension of science altogether.

That is the reason why the East is poor and starving. And unless the Eastern genius understands this, we can go on importing science from the West but it will not get roots into our beings. If our approach remains the same as it has been for five thousand years, science will only be something foreign. That's how it is.

In India you can find a scientist, world famous in his field of work, and still living a very unscientific life. He may be consulting the palmist and the astrologer. He may be going to take a bath in the Ganges, so his sins of many many lives are washed away. He may still be believing in a thousand and one things which are simply superstitious -- and still he is a scientist! Science remains something peripheral; his soul still remains rooted in the ancient past of the East, which is unscientific.

The East has suffered much because of one-dimensionality. And now the West is suffering again for the same reason: one-dimensionality. The West has chosen to be scientific at the cost of being religious. Now God is denied, the soul is denied. Man is reduced first to an animal and now to a machine. Man loses all glory, all grandeur. Man loses all hope, all future. The moment man loses his interiority he loses depth, he becomes superficial. The Western man is rich as far as things are concerned, but is very poor as far as soul is concerned -- inwardly poor, outwardly rich.

This is the state of affairs right now.

And between these two a few artists exist who have something of both the dimensions. But even the artist is not satisfied, because he is something of both but he is neither a scientist nor a religious person -- just having a few glimpses of both the worlds. He remains in a kind of limbo; he never settles, he remains a vagabond. He moves like a shuttle between these two worlds. He does not contribute much: because he is not a scientist he cannot contribute scientifically and he is not religious so he cannot contribute religiously. At the most his art remains decorative; at the most it can make life a little more beautiful, a little more comfortable, convenient. But that is not much.

I propose the fourth way. The true man will be all three simultaneously: he will be a scientist, an artist, and religious. And I call the fourth man the spiritual man. That's where I differ from Albert Einstein and Gautam Buddha and Picasso -- from them all. You must remember my differences.

Buddha is one-dimensional -- tremendously beautiful! As far as his own inner world is concerned he is the greatest master, the master of the inner, unsurpassable, but he remains one-dimensional. He attains to immense peace, silence, bliss, but does not contribute to the world in any objective way.

Albert Einstein contributes to the world in a very objective way, but cannot contribute anything of the inner -- hence his contribution becomes a curse. He suffered his whole life because he was the man who proposed that atom bombs should be made. He had written a letter to the American president: "Now it is time -- unless atom bombs are made the war can go on for years and years and will be very destructive. Just making the atom bombs, the very threat of it, will stop the war."

But once the power -- any kind of power -- reaches into the hands of the politicians, you cannot control them, you cannot prevent them from using it. The politician is the most stupid kind of person -- monkeyish, power-mad.

Once the atom bomb was in the hands of the American politicians it had to be dropped somewhere. Hiroshima, Nagasaki, were bound to happen. And when they happened it was a wound, a great wound, for Albert Einstein. He repented his whole life.

In the last moments, when somebody asked him, "Would you like to become a scientist again if God gives you an opportunity to be born in the world again?"

He said, "No, certainly no, absolutely no! I would like rather to be a plumber than to be a physicist, a scientist. Enough is enough! I have not been a blessing to the world, I have been a curse."

He enriched the outer world certainly, but without inner growth, the outer growth creates a lopsidedness. You possess many things, but you don't possess yourself. You have all that can make you happy but you are not happy, because happiness cannot be derived from your possessions. Happiness is an inner welling-up; it is an awakening of your own energies. It is an awakening of your soul.

Buddha contributed tremendously to the subjective dimension. He is a master par excellence. Whatsoever he says is absolutely true, but it is one-dimensional -- never forget it.

My effort here is to create the fourth way: a man who joins all these three dimensions of life into himself, who becomes a trinity, a trimurti, who has all these three faces of God to him. Who has as much of a logical mind as is needed by science and who is also as poetic as is needed by aesthetics, and who is also as meditative and watchful as is proposed by the buddhas.

The fourth man is the hope of the world. The fourth way is the only possibility if man is to survive. If man is still to exist on this earth, we have to find a great synthesis between these three dimensions. And if all these three dimensions are meeting, merging, melting into one, of course that synthesis is the fourth.

I am speaking on Buddha, on Mahavira, on Jesus, on Patanjali, on Lao Tzu, and many more. But always remember that all these people are one-dimensional. I want to enrich your life through their teachings, but I don't end with them. I would like you to go a little deeper into other dimensions too.

Hence the new commune is going to be a meeting place of East and West, of the subjective and the objective. In the new commune we are going to have scientists, artists, poets, painters, singers, musicians, meditators, yogis, mystics -- all kinds of people pouring their energies into one great river. And that's how I would like the whole world to be.

Buddha is to be incorporated in it, that's why I am speaking on him. And, of course, the third dimension, the religious, is one of the most important, the most important dimension. Without it everything is soulless.
Today's sutras:
THE FOOL IS CARELESS.

BUT THE MASTER GUARDS HIS WATCHING.

IT IS HIS MOST PRECIOUS TREASURE.
Buddha calls a man foolish, not because he is ignorant, not because he is not knowledgeable. According to Buddha, a man is a fool if he is unconscious, if he behaves unconsciously, if he lives in sleep, if he is a somnambulist. If he goes on behaving without any mindfulness, then he is a fool. The word has a special meaning, remember: unconsciousness, unawareness, unmindfulness -- that's Buddha's definition of the fool.

He moves in life like driftwood, at the mercy of the winds. He does not know who he is, he does not know from where he comes, he does not know to where he is going. He is accidental; he simply lives by accident. He has no conscious, deliberate search for being, for truth, for reality. He follows the crowd; he remains a part of the mob psychology. He is not an individual. He has no authentic intelligence of his own; he simply follows others. The parents have said something, the teachers, the priests, the politicians, and he goes on following all kinds of advice. He has no idea why he is here, for what, and what he is doing, and why. He never raises such questions.

These questions are very uncomfortable to him. They create anxiety in him; he avoids these questions. He simply believes in the answers that are handed over to him; he never doubts those answers. Not that he has attained to trust -- no, he has no trust either -- but he simply represses his doubt because doubt creates discomfort.

He remains a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Christian. He never inquires and he never risks anything for his inquiry. He never goes into exploration. He is not an adventurer, his life is not an adventure. He is stuck, he is dormant, stagnant. You cannot separate him from his crowd; he is like a sheep. Buddha calls him the fool.

The fool can be very knowledgeable -- in fact almost always he is. He can be a pundit, a scholar, a great professor -- that's how he hides his foolishness. By gathering knowledge on the circumference he hides the ignorance that exists at the center.

There are two types of people: one, very knowledgeable people -- knowledgeable, but they know nothing. They have a kind of ignorant knowledge. And there is the other category: the people who are not knowledgeable -- but they know. They have a kind of knowing ignorance.

When Buddha uses the word 'fool', he is not talking about the second category -- because Buddha himself is not very knowledgeable, neither is Jesus, nor is Mohammed. They are innocent people, simple people, but their simplicity is such, their innocence is such, their childlike quality is such, that they have been able to penetrate into the innermost core of their beings. They have been able to know their truth; they have been able to reach the very core of their existence. They know, but they are not knowledgeable. Their knowing is not through scriptures. Their knowing has happened through watchfulness. Remember the source: real knowing comes through meditation, awareness, consciousness, mindfulness, watchfulness, witnessing. And unreal knowledge comes through scriptures. You can learn the unreal knowledge very easily and you can brag about it, but you will remain a fool -- a learned fool, but a fool all the same.

If you really want to know you will have to drop all your knowledge, you will have to unlearn it. You will have to become ignorant again, like a small child, with wondering eyes, with alertness. You will be able to know not only your own being but also the being that exists in the world...the being that exists in the trees and the birds and the animals and the rocks and the stars. If you are able to know yourself, you will be able to know all that is.

God is another name for all that is.

THE FOOL IS CARELESS. By "carelessness" Buddha means he behaves unconsciously. He does not know what he is doing. He simply goes on doing things because he cannot remain unoccupied; he wants constant occupation. He cannot remain alone; he wants constant company. He cannot remain unengaged even for a single moment, because whenever he is unengaged, unoccupied, alone, he starts facing himself -- and he is very afraid of that.

He does not want to go into the abyss of his own being. All that he knows is meaningless there. All that he knows, he cannot carry it there. All his knowledge, all his efficiency, all his scriptures, all his theories, are utterly futile in the inner world. He clings to the outer because there he is somebody. In the inner world he is a nobody.

Just watch people! In fact it is the greatest entertainment: stand by the side of the road and just watch people. What are they doing? Why are they doing it? And then watch yourself -- what are you doing? and why?

He chases her for two hours, but cannot catch her and leaves in disgust.

The next night he sees her pick up another victim in the same lobby and he sneaks up on the fire-escape to watch the new sucker's discomfiture through the window. As he watches the bare legs flashing by under the partly-drawn window shade, he says to himself out loud, "Ah, brother, get a load of that!"

"You said it!" breathes a man's voice in his ear, "but you should have seen the sonofabitch that was here last night!"

And the other woman laughed. She said, "There is nothing to worry about: his chasing women is like dogs chasing cars."

The other woman said, "I don't understand. What do you mean, dogs chasing cars?"

She said, "Yes, dogs chasing cars -- once they have caught one they don't know what to do with the car, and that's how my husband is. He will chase a woman, he will catch hold of her. Then he does not know what to do with her. I know him! That's why I am not worried."

Just a few days ago Jimmy Carter said that if Kennedy stands against him in the presidential election he will "whip his ass." Now he is being condemned all over the world for using that word. You cannot even use an innocent word. Now he must be feeling very repentant for what he has done. He has committed a crime.

You don't have a private life when you are famous -- when you are a president of a country, a Nobel Prize winner, you are a public thing. You are always on show, in the show-window; you always have to keep dressed up. You cannot make a simple gesture in freedom.

People have money...and then they don't know what to do with it.

The accidental man is foolish. The wise man moves deliberately, takes each step consciously. His life is a constant inquiry for truth. He does not go astray. He remains alert in every one of his acts -- not because of others. He remains alert because it is only by being alert that he will become integrated, that he will become crystallized.

THE FOOL IS CARELESS. The wise man cares -- he cares about himself, he cares about his life, and he cares about others too. He cares about everything, because he values his life. He knows that it is very precious, that it is a God-given opportunity to grow, that is has not to be lost in a kind of drunkenness.

"That's right, sister," cries a drunk in the back row, "fuck 'em all!"

We go on uttering things which we don't mean, and then we suffer for them. We go on saying things which we never wanted to say. We go on doing things -- even while we are doing them we know that we don't want to do these things, still we go on doing them. Some unconscious force goes on driving us. Sometimes we even decide not to do a certain thing, not to say a certain thing -- still we do it, even against our own decisions. We don't have any resolution, we don't have any resolve, we don't have any will.

"I know," she said, "that you and mother have never gotten along. But would you as a special favor to me, ride to the cemetery in the same car with her?"

"Alright," replied the unhappy husband. "But it will spoil my whole day."
This is not really a joke -- this happens every day. You say things which you should have known are not right to say. But you know only later on, when the harm is done. Unconscious utterings.

Now, this man may have been crying and saying to his wife, "Without you it will be impossible to live. I will always remain empty without you, a part of my soul will die with you..." and things like that. But now, in this moment, he has forgotten all.

THE FOOL IS CARELESS. BUT THE MASTER GUARDS HIS WATCHING. IT IS HIS MOST PRECIOUS TREASURE. The fool remains a slave -- a slave of the instincts, a slave of unconscious desires, a slave of whims, a slave of the society in which he is born, a slave of the fashions -- a slave of anything that happens around him. He simply picks it up. If the neighbor is buying a new car, he has to buy a new car too. He does not need it. If the neighbor has purchased a house in the hills, he has to purchase one. It may be difficult and hard to manage for the money. He may have to borrow, it may take years for him to pay, but he has to purchase it. His ego is hurt. People are living imitatively, very carelessly.

Among the Eskimos there is a tradition, a very beautiful tradition, that each year, the first day of the year, every family looks in the house for what is unnecessary and what is necessary -- they sort things out. And only what is absolutely necessary is saved; all that is unnecessary is given as gifts to people.

And you will be surprised to know that the Eskimo's home is the cleanest home in the world, has a purity about it -- no garbage, nothing accumulates. Spacious -- small but spacious; only that much which is necessary, absolutely necessary....

Just think of all the things that you go on accumulating: are they really necessary? do you really need them? Or is it just because people are accumulating that you also become accumulative?

The watchful man becomes the master of his life. He lives it according to his light, not according to others' lives. He lives it according to his own needs. And remember, your needs are not many. If you are wise, watchful, you will have a very very contented life, and very simple, and with small things.

But if you are imitative, then your life will become very complex, unnecessarily complex. And I am not giving you particular directions about what you should have and what you should not have. I am simply saying go on watching...whatsoever is necessary for you, have it; and whatsoever is not necessary for you, forget about it. This is the way of a sannyasin.

I am not for renouncing things, but I am certainly for renouncing unnecessary garbage. And it is not only that you collect unnecessary things -- you desire unnecessary things, and you never meditate whether those things are really necessary. Are they going to help in any way? Are they going to make you more happy, more blissful?

Before you start desiring a thing, think it over thrice...and you will be surprised. Out of a hundred of your desires, ninety-nine are absolutely useless. They simply keep you occupied; that is their only function. They keep you away from yourself; that is their only utility. They don't allow you time, space to be with yourself. They are dangerous. It is because of these unnecessary things that you will waste your life, and you will die a bankrupt.

...THE MASTER GUARDS HIS WATCHING.
I have heard:

The husband and wife are being driven crazy by the continued presence of the wife's brother, who came to spend the weekend but is still there six months later. They decide that the wife will cook a chicken and the husband will pretend it is overdone. They will put the matter to the brother-in-law. If he says the chicken is good, the husband will throw him out; if he says the chicken is bad the wife will throw him out. It can't fail!

The scene is set up as planned, with much pretended shouting and recrimination, while the brother-in-law silently stows away his food. Suddenly the husband and wife stop shouting and turn to him.

"Harry," says the husband, "what do you think?"

"Me?" says Harry, biting into the chicken leg. "I think I am staying another three months."
Must have been a very watchful man. Must have been very careful, alert. He is not caught in the trap. The trap was certainly very subtle. Unless he was very alert, it was bound to trap him. He does not give any opinion. He simply states a fact, that "I am going to stay three more months."

Live watchfully and you will not be trapped. Live unconsciously and on each step you are trapped; your life becomes more and more imprisoned. And nobody is responsible except you.

BUT THE MASTER GUARDS HIS WATCHING. IT IS HIS MOST PRECIOUS TREASURE. Whatsoever he does, he does with total awareness. Whatsoever you do, you do almost mechanically. You will have to de-automatize yourself. That's what meditation is all about: the process of de-automatization.

You have become automatic. You go on driving the car, smoking the cigarette, talking to the friend, and thinking a thousand and one thoughts inside. Most accidents happen because of this. More men are dying every year in car, train, airplane and similar accidents than die in war. Adolf Hitler may not have killed as many people as are being killed every year by the mechanical behavior of man around the earth.