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


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The master remained silent, utterly silent, as if he had not heard the question. The questioner said, "Are you deaf or something?"

The master said, "I have heard your question, and I have answered it too! Silence is the answer. I remained silent -- that pause, that interval, was my answer."

The man said, "I cannot understand such a mysterious answer. Can't you be a little more clear?"

So the master wrote on the sand "meditation," in small letters with his finger. The man said, "I can read now. It is a little better than at first. At least I have got a word to ponder over. But can't you make it a little more clear?"

The master wrote again "MEDITATION." Of course this time he wrote in bigger letters. The man was feeling a little embarrassed, puzzled, offended, angry. He said, "Again you write meditation? Can't you be a little clear for me?"

And the master wrote in very big letters, capital letters, "M E D I T A T I O N."

The man said, "You seem to be mad."

The master said, "I have already come down very much. The first answer was the right answer, the second was not so right, the third even more wrong, the fourth has gone very wrong" -- because when you write "MEDITATION" with capital letters you have made a god out of it.

That's why the word 'God' is written with capital 'G'. Whenever you want to make something supreme, ultimate, you write it with a capital letter.

The master said, "I have already committed a sin." He erased all those words he had written, and he said, "Please listen to my first answer -- only then I am true."
Silence is the space in which one awakens, and the noisy mind is the space in which one remains asleep. If your mind continues chattering, you are asleep. Sitting silently, if the mind disappears and you can hear the chattering birds and no mind inside, a silence...this whistle of the bird, the chirping, and no mind functioning in your head, utter silence...then awareness wells up in you. It does not come from the outside, it arises in you, it grows in you. Otherwise remember: you are asleep.
A husband and wife were asleep. About 3 AM the wife dreamt of secretly meeting another man. Then she dreamt she saw her husband coming.

In her sleep she shrieked, "Heavens, my husband!"

Her husband, waking suddenly, leapt out of the window.
And remember, it is not a laughing matter; it is the reality, it is how you are living. It is how man exists in his ordinary state.
A wife tries to win back her husband's love, on the advice of a woman friend, by bringing him his slippers and pipe when he comes home late one night, giving him a tall drink, cuddling up in his lap dressed only in a silk dressing gown, and ending with the murmured offer, "Let's go upstairs, darling!"

"I might as well," says her bemused husband, "I'll get hell when I get home anyway!"


We go on living absolutely inattentive to what is happening around us. Yes, we have become very efficient in doing things. What we are doing, we have become so efficient in doing that we don't need any awareness to do it. It has become mechanical, automatic. We function like robots. We are not men yet; we are machines.

That's what George Gurdjieff used to say again and again, that man as he exists is a machine. He offended many people, because nobody likes to be called a machine. Machines like to be called gods; then they feel very happy, puffed up. Gurdjieff used to call people machines, and he was right. If you watch yourself you will know how mechanically you behave.

The Russian psychologist Pavlov, and the American psychologist Skinner, are ninety-nine point nine percent right about man: they believe that man is a beautiful machine, that's all. There is no soul in him. I say ninety-nine point nine percent they are right; they only miss by a very small margin. In that small margin are the buddhas, the awakened ones. But they can be forgiven, because Pavlov never came across a buddha -- he came across millions of people like you.

Skinner has been studying men and rats and finds no difference. Rats are simple beings, that's all; man is a little more complicated. Man is a highly sophisticated machine, rats are simple machines. It is easier to study rats; that's why psychologists go on studying rats. They study rats and they conclude about man -- and their conclusions are almost right. I say "almost," mind you, because that point one percent is the most important phenomenon that has happened: a Buddha, a Jesus, a Mohammed. These few awakened people are the real men, but where can B.F. Skinner find a buddha? Certainly not in America.


I have heard:

A man asked a rabbi, "Why didn't Jesus choose to be born in twentieth-century America?"

The rabbi shrugged his shoulders and said, "In America? It would have been impossible. Where can you find a virgin, firstly? And secondly, where will you find three wise men?"
And without a virgin mother and three wise men, how can Jesus be born?
I have heard:

In a church, the priest asked the audience, "Please stand up, all the women who are virgins!"

Just one woman with a small baby girl stood up. Certainly she was a mother, and the priest said, "Do you think yourself to be a virgin? You are a mother!"

She said, "Yes, I am -- but this girl is a virgin, and she cannot stand on her own."


Where is B.F. Skinner going to find a buddha? And even if he can find a buddha, his preconceived prejudices, ideas, will not allow him to see. He will go on seeing his rats. He cannot understand anything that rats cannot do. Now, rats don't meditate, rats don't become enlightened. And his conception of man is only a magnified form of a rat. And still I say that he is right about the greater majority of people; his conclusions are not wrong. And buddhas will agree with him about the so-called normal humanity: the normal humanity is utterly asleep. Even animals are not so asleep.

Have you seen a deer in the jungle -- how alert he looks, how watchfully he walks? Have you seen a bird sitting on the tree -- how intelligently he goes on watching what is happening all around? You move towards the bird -- there is a certain space he allows; beyond that, one step more, and he flies away. He has a certain alertness about his territory. If somebody enters into that territory then it is dangerous.

If you look around you will be surprised: man seems to be the most asleep animal on the earth.
A woman buys a parrot at an auction of the furnishings of a fancy whorehouse, and keeps the parrot's cage covered for two weeks to make it forget its profane vocabulary. When the cage is finally uncovered, the parrot looks around and remarks, "Awrrk! New house. New madam." When the woman's daughters come in, he adds, "Awrrk! New girls."

When her husband comes home that night, the parrot says, "Awrrk! Awrrk! Same old customers. Hello, Joe!"


Man is in a very fallen state. In fact, that is the meaning of the Christian parable of the fall of Adam, his expulsion. But why were Adam and Eve expelled from paradise? They were expelled because they had eaten the fruit of knowledge. They were expelled because they had become minds, and they had lost their consciousness. If you become a mind you lose consciousness -- mind means sleep, mind means noise, mind means mechanicalness.

If you become a mind you lose consciousness. Hence, the whole work that has to be done is: how to become consciousness again and lose the mind. You have to throw out of your system all that you have gathered as knowledge. It is knowledge that keeps you asleep; hence, the more knowledgeable a person is, the more asleep.

That has been my own observation too. Innocent villagers are far more alert and awake than the professors in the universities and the pundits in the temples. The pundits are nothing but parrots; the academicians in the universities are full of nothing but holy cow dung, full of absolutely meaningless noise -- just minds and no consciousness.

People who work with nature -- farmers, gardeners, woodcutters, carpenters, painters -- they are far more alert than the people that function in the universities as deans and vice-chancellors and chancellors. Because when you work with nature, nature is alert, trees are alert; their form of alertness is certainly different, but they are very alert.

Now there are scientific proofs of their alertness. If the woodcutter comes with an axe in his hand and with the deliberate desire to cut the tree, all the trees that see him coming tremble. Now there are scientific proofs about it; I am not talking poetry, I am talking science when I say this. Now there are instruments to measure whether the tree is happy or unhappy, afraid or unafraid, sad or ecstatic. When the woodcutter comes, all the trees that see him start trembling. They become aware that death is close by. And the woodcutter has not cut any tree yet -- just his coming....

And one thing more, far more strange: if the woodcutter is simply passing by there with no deliberate idea to cut a tree, then no tree becomes afraid. It is the same woodcutter, with the same axe. It seems that his intention to cut a tree affects the trees. It means that his intention is being understood; it means the very vibe is being decoded by the trees.

And one more significant fact has been observed scientifically: that if you go into the forest and kill an animal, it is not only the animal kingdom around that becomes shaken, but trees also. If you kill a deer, all the deer that are around feel the vibe of murder, become sad; a great trembling arises in them. Suddenly they are afraid for no particular reason at all. They may not have seen the deer being killed, but somehow, in a subtle way, they are affected -- instinctively, intuitively. But it is not only the deer which are affected -- the trees are affected, the parrots are affected, the tigers are affected, the eagles are affected, the grass leaves are affected. Murder has happened, destruction has happened, death has happened -- everything that is around is affected.

Man seems to be the most asleep....


These sutras of Buddha have to be meditated on deeply, imbibed, followed.
WAKEFULNESS IS THE WAY TO LIFE.
You are alive only in the proportion that you are aware. Awareness is the difference between death and life. You are not alive just because you are breathing, you are not alive just because your heart is beating. Physiologically you can be kept alive in a hospital, without any consciousness. Your heart will go on beating and you will be able to breathe. You can be kept in such a mechanical arrangement that you will remain alive for years -- in the sense of breathing and the heart beating and the blood circulating. There are now many people around the world in advanced countries who are just vegetating in the hospitals, because advanced technology has made it possible for your death to be postponed indefinitely -- for years, for centuries, you can be kept alive. If this is life, then you can be kept alive. But this is not life at all. Just to vegetate is not life.

Buddhas have a different definition. Their definition consists of awareness. They don't say you are alive because you can breathe, they don't say you are alive because your blood circulates; they say you are alive if you are awake. So except for the awakened ones nobody is really alive. You are corpses -- walking, talking, doing things -- you are robots.

WAKEFULNESS IS THE WAY TO LIFE, says Buddha. Become more wakeful and you will become more alive. And life is God -- there is no other God. Hence Buddha talks about life and awareness. Life is the goal and awareness is the methodology, the technique to attain it.
THE FOOL SLEEPS....
And all are asleep, so all are foolish. Don't feel offended. The facts have to be stated as they are. You function in sleep; that's why you go on stumbling, you go on doing things you don't want to do. You go on doing things you have decided not to do. You go on doing things you know are not right to do, and you don't do things which you know are right.

How is this possible? Why can't you walk straight? Why do you go on getting trapped into bypaths? Why do you go on going astray?


A young man with a fine voice is asked to take part in a pageant play, though he tries to beg off, saying he always gets embarrassed under such circumstances. He is assured it will be very simple, and he will have only one line to say: "I come to snatch a kiss, and dart into the fray. Hark! I hear a pistol shot..." and then stride offstage.

At the performance he comes onstage, very embarrassed already by the tight-fitting colonial knee-breeches he has been made to put on at the last moment, and becomes completely unstrung at the sight of the beautiful heroine lying back on a garden seat, awaiting him, in a white gown. He clears his throat and announces: "I come to kiss your snatch -- no! -- snatch a kiss, and fart into the dray -- I mean, dart into the fray! Hark! -- I hear a shistol pot -- no! -- a shostil pit, a pistil shit. Oh, bat shit, rat shit, shit on you all! I never wanted to be in this damned play anyhow!"


This is what is happening. Watch your life: everything that you go on doing is so confused and so confusing. You don't have any clarity, you don't have any perceptiveness. You are not alert. You can't see! You can't hear! Certainly, you have ears so you can hear, but there is nobody inside to understand it. Certainly you have eyes so you can see, but there is nobody present inside. So your eyes go on seeing and your ears go on listening, but nothing is understood.

If you really had eyes you would see God everywhere. And if you could hear you would hear the celestial music, you would hear the harmony of existence.

And on each step you stumble, on each step you commit something wrong. And still you go on believing that you are aware. Drop that idea completely. Dropping it is a great leap, a great step, because once you drop the idea that "I am aware" you will start seeking and searching for ways and means to be aware. So the first thing to sink into you is that you are asleep, utterly asleep.

Modern psychology has discovered a few things which are significant; although they have been discovered only intellectually, still it is a good beginning. If intellectually they have been discovered, then sooner or later existentially also they will be experienced.

Freud is a great pioneer; of course, not a buddha, but still a man of great significance, because he was the first to make the idea accepted by the larger part of humanity that man has a great unconscious hidden in him. The conscious mind is only one tenth, and the unconscious mind is nine times bigger than the conscious.

Then his disciple, Jung, went a little further, a little deeper, and discovered the collective unconscious. Behind the individual unconscious there is a collective unconscious. Now somebody is needed to discover one thing more which is there, and I hope.... Sooner or later the psychological investigations that are going on, on both sides of the Iron Curtain, are bound to discover it -- the cosmic unconscious. Buddhas have talked about it.

So we can say: the conscious mind, a very fragile thing, a very small part of your being. Behind the conscious is the subconscious mind -- vague. You can hear its whispering but you cannot figure it out. It is always there, behind the conscious, pulling its strings.

Third: the unconscious mind which you come across only in dreams or when you take drugs. Then, the collective unconscious mind. You come across it only when you go into a very deep inquiry into your unconscious mind; then you come across the collective unconscious. And if you go still further, deeper, you will come to the cosmic unconscious.

The cosmic unconscious is nature. The collective unconscious is the whole of humanity that has lived up to now, it is part of you. The unconscious is your individual unconscious that the society has repressed in you, that has not been allowed expression. Hence it comes by the back door in the night, in your dreams. And the conscious mind...I will call it the so-called conscious mind because it is only so-called. It is so tiny, just a flicker, but even if it is just a flicker it is important because it has the seed; the seeds are always small. It has great potential.

Now a totally new dimension is opening up. Just as Freud opened the dimension below the conscious, Sri Aurobindo opened the dimension above the conscious. Freud and Sri Aurobindo are the two most important people of this age. Both are intellectuals, neither of them is an awakened person, but both have done a great service to humanity. Intellectually they have made us aware that we are not so small as we appear from the surface, that the surface is hiding great depths and heights.

Freud went into the depths, Sri Aurobindo tried to penetrate into the heights. Above our so-called conscious mind is the real conscious mind; that is attained only through meditation. When your ordinary conscious mind is added to meditation, when the ordinary conscious mind is plus meditation, it becomes the real conscious mind. Beyond the real conscious mind is the superconscious mind.

When you are meditating you have only glimpses. Meditation is a groping in the dark. Yes, a few windows open up, but you fall back again and again. Superconscious mind means samadhi -- you have attained a crystal-clear perceptiveness, you have attained an integrated awareness. Now you cannot fall below it; it is yours. Even in sleep it will remain with you.

Beyond the superconscious is the collective superconscious; the collective superconscious is what is known as "gods" in religions. And beyond the collective superconscious is the cosmic superconscious which even goes beyond gods. Buddha calls it nirvana, Mahavira calls it kaivalya, Hindu mystics have called it moksha; you can call it the truth.

These are the nine states of your being, and you are just living in a small corner of your being -- the tiny conscious mind; as if somebody has a palace and has completely forgotten about the palace and has started living on the porch -- and thinks this is all.

Freud and Sri Aurobindo are both great intellectual giants, pioneers, philosophers, but both are doing great guesswork. Instead of teaching students the philosophy of Bertrand Russell, Alfred North Whitehead, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, it would be far better if people were taught more about Sri Aurobindo, because he is the greatest philosopher of this age. But he is completely neglected, ignored by the academic world -- for a certain reason.

The reason is, even to read Sri Aurobindo will make you feel that you are unaware; and he himself is not a buddha yet, but still he will create a very embarrassing situation for you. If he is right, then what are you doing? Then why are you not exploring the heights of your being?

Freud was accepted with great resistance, but finally he was accepted. Sri Aurobindo is not even accepted yet. In fact there is not even any opposition to him; he is simply ignored. And the reason is clear. Freud talks about something below you -- that is not so embarrassing; you can feel good knowing that you are conscious, and below your consciousness there is subconsciousness and unconsciousness and collective unconsciousness. But those states are all below you; you are at the top, you can feel very good. But if you study Sri Aurobindo, you will feel embarrassed, offended, because there are higher states than you -- and man's ego never wants to accept that there is anything higher than him. Man wants to believe that he is the highest pinnacle, the climax, the Gourishankar, the Everest -- that there is nothing higher than him....

That's why the modern man wants to deny God, because to accept God means you have to accept something higher than you. And the modern ego is so puffed up that the modern mind says there is no God and there is no beyond and there is no afterlife. And it feels very good -- denying your own kingdom, denying your own heights, you feel very good. Look at the foolishness of it.

Buddha is right. He says:
THE FOOL SLEEPS

AS IF HE WERE ALREADY DEAD,

BUT THE MASTER IS AWAKE

AND HE LIVES FOREVER.


Awareness is eternal, it knows no death. Only unawareness dies. So if you remain unconscious, asleep, you will have to die again. If you want to get rid of this whole misery of being born and dying again and again, if you want to get rid of the wheel of birth and death, you will have to become absolutely alert. You will have to reach higher and higher into consciousness.

And these things are not to be accepted on intellectual grounds; these things have to become experiential, these things have to become existential. I am not telling you to be convinced philosophically, because philosophical conviction brings nothing, no harvest. The real harvest comes only when you make great effort to wake yourself up.

But these intellectual maps can create a desire, a longing in you; can make you aware of the potential, of the possible; can make you aware that you are not what you appear to be -- you are far more.

THE FOOL SLEEPS AS IF HE WERE ALREADY DEAD, BUT THE MASTER IS AWAKE AND HE LIVES FOREVER.


HE WATCHES.

HE IS CLEAR.


Simple and beautiful statements. Truth is always simple and always beautiful. Just to see the simplicity of these two statements...but how much they contain -- worlds within worlds, infinite worlds. HE WATCHES. HE IS CLEAR.

The only thing that has to be learned is watchfulness. Watch! Watch every act that you do. Watch every thought that passes in your mind. Watch every desire that takes possession of you. Watch even small gestures -- walking, talking, eating, taking a bath. Go on watching everything. Let everything become an opportunity to watch.

Don't eat mechanically, don't just go on stuffing yourself -- be very watchful. Chew well and watchfully...and you will be surprised how much you have been missing up to now, because each bite will give you tremendous satisfaction; if you eat watchfully, it will become more tasteful. Even ordinary food tastes if you are watchful; and if you are not watchful, you can eat the most tasteful food but there will be no taste in it, because there is nobody to watch. You simply go on stuffing yourself.

Eat slowly, watchfully; each bite has to be chewed, tasted. Smell, touch, feel the breeze and the sunrays. Look at the moon and become just a silent pool of watchfulness, and the moon will be reflected in you with tremendous beauty. Move in life remaining continuously watchful.

Again and again you will forget. Don't become miserable because of that; it is natural. For millions of lives you have never tried watchfulness, so it is simple, natural, that you go on forgetting again and again. But the moment you remember, again watch.
Remember one thing: when you remember that you have forgotten watching, don't become repentful, don't repent; otherwise, again you are wasting time. Don't feel miserable: "I missed again." Don't start feeling, "I am a sinner." Don't start condemning yourself, because this is a sheer waste of time. Never repent for the past! Live in the moment. If you had forgotten, so what? It was natural -- it has become a habit, and habits die hard. And these are not habits imbibed in one life; these are habits imbibed in millions of lives. So if you can remain watchful even for a few moments, feel thankful to God -- feel thankful. Even those few moments are more than expected.

HE WATCHES. HE IS CLEAR.

And when you watch, a clarity arises. Why does clarity arise out of watchfulness? Because the more watchful you become, the more all your hastiness slows down. You become more graceful. As you watch, your chattering mind chatters less, because the energy that was becoming chattering is turning and becoming watchfulness -- it is the same energy! Now more and more energy will be transformed into watchfulness and the mind will not get its nourishment. Thoughts will start becoming thinner, they will start losing weight. Slowly slowly, they will start dying. And as thoughts start dying, clarity arises. Now your mind becomes a mirror.

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