Bin Bati Bin Tel #9

There was a man who understood the language of animals.
One day he was walking down a road.
There a donkey and a dog were quarreling loudly with each other.
The dog was saying, “Stop all this talk of grass and pastures!
Say something about rabbits or bones. I’m sick of it.”
The man could not hold back and said,
“Dry grass can be used too; it can be made to taste just like meat.”
Both animals turned toward him; they could not hear his words,
so the dog began barking with all his might, and the donkey let fly
a hard kick that knocked the man unconscious. Then they returned to their quarrel.

What is the meaning of this senseless tale by Majnu Qalandar?
Majnu Qalandar must have written this story after many experiences of life. It is necessary to peel it layer by layer.

First: the world is to us only as much as our desire is, as our desire shapes it. We cannot see the whole of existence because on our eyes sits the lens of desire. That is our boundary.

People say the world is limited and God is unlimited; but is God outside this limited world? He is hidden right here, sitting in your neighborhood. Then how can the world be limited if the Unlimited created it? And when the Unlimited pervades it, is concealed within it, the world too cannot be limited. It appears limited because desire never sees the whole. Desire only sees that much with which it is concerned. For a donkey the world is no more than grass. For a dog the world is bones and meat. Ask your desire and you will discover how big your world really is.

Majnu Qalandar told many such stories. He was a unique man. He wrote that one day he heard a cat and a dog arguing. The dog was saying, “At night I had such a wondrous dream, the likes of which are hard to find even in fairy tales. An extraordinary dream. It was raining—not water—but bones were raining, and chunks of meat were falling from the sky. What an astonishing dream!”
The cat said, “Stop talking nonsense! I am familiar with scriptures. I know history. We have heard that sometimes rats fall during a rainstorm, but bones and meat? Never heard, never seen.”
The world a cat sees is a world where she is looking for a rat; that is her dream. The dreams of cat and dog cannot be the same because their desires differ. The cat’s world ends at the rat; that is her limit.

Your world too ends at your desire. That is why the Buddhas have said: until all your desires fall, you will not see the truth. Until then you will see only as much truth as is necessary for your desire. It will be incomplete. And incomplete truths are more dangerous than untruths. Incomplete truths look like truths, but because they are partial—and the mind takes the partial to be the whole—delusion arises.

The world is not separate from God; the world is that portion of God which your desire can see. Hence the dog’s world is different, the cat’s world is different, your world is different. A man’s world is different, a woman’s world is different, because their desires are very different. What a man sees a woman may not see; what a woman sees a man may not see.

A woman had a bad throat, cough and cold, and had been coughing continuously for two or three days. The husband could not sleep at night. In the morning he said, “Now don’t worry, today I will bring something for your throat.” She said, “Do bring it—without fail. That jeweled necklace we saw in the shop.”
Worlds differ. The thought that the husband would bring medicine for her throat never entered the wife’s mind. The thought arose: the necklace—the jeweled necklace seen long ago. And perhaps because of that very necklace she had to cough all night. And it may even be that the jeweled necklace proves more useful than medicine. Perhaps medicine will lose the battle against the cough, but the necklace will cure it!

We see only what we want to see. Wanting is the door of our seeing. Truth seen through desire is the world. The world seen without desire is truth. Therefore, as long as desire has not fallen, you will not see ‘that which is.’ Until then you will keep on seeing only what you want.

Therefore there is not one world here; there are as many worlds as there are desires. And each person lives in the world of his own desire. You are pressed and surrounded by it; as if a blanket were wrapped around you on all sides—so your desires encircle you; that is your world.

This story of Qalandar is very meaningful. It says a donkey has his own world, a dog has his own world. And whenever two worlds meet, there will be conflict. Not because one has found the truth, but because their wants differ, their ways of seeing differ.
The worldwide conflicts are not due to the discovery of truth; they are due to differences in desire.

Second: understand that for one who has realized truth, conflict has ended.
Someone goes to Mahavira and asks, “Is there God?” Mahavira says, “Syat.” Someone says there is no God, and Mahavira also says, “Syat.” He neither says yes nor no, because Mahavira sees that truth is so vast that everyone’s longings can be accommodated within it.

The man who says “God is” is also voicing a longing. Let us understand this. The man who says “there is no God” is also voicing a longing. There are some desires that cannot be fulfilled if God exists. There are some desires that can be fulfilled only if God exists. Your God too is a tool of your desires; he is a slave to your passions.

When you pray in temples and mosques, what are you saying? You are telling God to engage in your service. “This is what I want; this is what I must get.” Your prayers are your demands. Your prayers are your desires. And how can desire be prayer? How will desire become prayer? That is why you never really go to temples; you go to shops. You have simply put the name ‘temple’ on certain shops; that is another matter. What you cannot get in the market you go to buy in the temple. What you have lost and exhausted yourself seeking in the world, you begin to search for in the temple.

Many people come to me; they have many longings. Their desires leave me astonished. A man came and said, “I have made a prayer: if within three weeks it is fulfilled, I will accept that God exists; if not, then it is all nonsense.” He wanted his son to get a job within three weeks. He had decided he would offer a coconut at the temple, distribute prasad. Even God would be proven by the fulfillment of your desire! Some people take the help of God to fulfill desire; others think if God exists, fulfilling their desire will become very difficult—so they deny God.

How can a man like Hitler accept that God exists? Because the longing Hitler wants to fulfill could not be fulfilled if God exists. Therefore Hitler has to accept that there is no God, no soul. Once it is made clear that neither God nor soul is, then Hitler can kill millions easily. If God and soul are, then even killing an ant becomes difficult. For the ant’s pain would also carry meaning, and that will be counted in the final account.

Hitler cut people down at his pleasure. He killed millions of Jews. Not a line of worry arose. His sleep at night was not disturbed. Never before had any one man produced such screams and wails in the world. Nor had anyone organized such a systematic machinery of murder. Great electric furnaces were built in which ten thousand people at a time could be reduced to ash—in a second! Such a thing had never happened. Even Genghis Khan, when he killed, took time to kill one person at a time. Hitler built furnaces: people entered directly, a button was pressed, and they became ash. Those furnaces worked twenty-four hours. Day and night thousands entered and vanished. Hitler could do this because, for him, there was no soul, no God.

Before Hitler, Nietzsche had declared that “God is dead.” Hitler made this his maxim. Nietzsche became his guru. On this basis, there is no harm in destroying the whole world, because only clay is falling. If there were a consciousness within, it would feel pain. No pain, then no sense of sin or crime arises.

When the man came to Mahavira and said, “Is there God?” Mahavira must have peered into him to see why he wanted there to be a God. You won’t accept God for free; there will be some reason. The day you accept God without any reason, on that day a flame without wick and oil will become available. But this man is speaking from some utility: he wants to use God. Some desire of his cannot be fulfilled without God. Therefore the weak often accept God; the powerful often deny him. The weak need a support; the powerful do not want any higher control. The weak need a prop; the powerful want no one above to obstruct them. So the powerful often deny God.

Now here is a curious thing: Nietzsche spoke of two moralities—one for masters and one for slaves. Slaves always accept God, and masters always deny him. If they do accept, it is only for the sake of the slaves. Inwardly they know there is no God. If they go to the temple, it is for the slaves, so the people continue to believe there is a God. If people keep believing in God they will not rebel. If they keep believing in God they will not shatter the system. If they keep believing in God they will consider the emperor a representative. If they cease to believe, the emperor too will not last long.

There is a chain of principles in life. As long as there is God, the emperor can remain. If God goes, the emperor won’t last, because when God himself steps down from the throne, what status has the emperor? He too will be deposed. Once it becomes known that the power to enthrone and dethrone lies in the hands of the people, then no one can remain on the throne; eventually there will be anarchy. Democracy is a stopover. Dictatorship…? If God sits on the throne, emperors are his representatives. If God is removed, the representatives are useless. Democracy becomes a midway station. And democracy is in trouble everywhere because it is a midway; one has to go to the end. Anarchy will be the final stop.

Nietzsche says: keep explaining to the slaves that God exists. Never fall into the mistake of telling them there is no God, because for them God is a security, a reassurance, a hope of the future. Today there is nothing in their lives. If tomorrow’s hope is taken away, they will revolt.

Marx said, “Workers of the world, unite!” because you have nothing to lose but your chains. Even if you lose everything, only your chains will be lost. Therefore Marx also said that God is the opium of the poor. For as long as there is God, the poor will not revolt. He trusts that though today there is suffering, tomorrow there will be joy. Today God is testing, giving sorrow, tomorrow he will give happiness. If I pass the exam obediently, the days of joy are not far. This is the weak man’s morality, which believes in God.

The powerful man’s morality is that if God exists, he becomes a hindrance, because it means there is someone above who decides. What I do will be judged. There is a higher court where I will have to stand. I am accountable to someone. Therefore the powerful do not want to acknowledge God. And if they do, it is a deception.

What can Mahavira do? One asks, “Is there God?” Mahavira says, “Syat—perhaps, in a certain sense.” Another asks, “Is there no God?” Mahavira says, “Syat—perhaps, in a certain sense.” Because Mahavira has no desire left, no lens left. Mahavira now sees what is. And these people are seeing through their desires. What can you say to them?

Mahavira gave birth to the doctrine of saptabhangi. He began to answer a single question in seven ways. You want a yes or no when you ask, “Is there God?” Mahavira gives seven answers because he says every viewpoint is partial, and there can be seven ways of looking. Man can see in seven modes. So Mahavira combined all seven in his answers so that when the seven viewpoints are joined, the whole might be glimpsed. Any single view is only a fraction.

The quarrel between dog and donkey is a quarrel of viewpoints. All quarrels are quarrels of viewpoints.

You cannot quarrel with Mahavira, because he accepts all viewpoints. Whatever you say to him, he says, yes, that too is true. Mahavira says: never say “this alone is the truth,” for there the mistake begins. Say only, “this too is true,” so that room remains for the opposite to be true.

Your desires are dualistic. For every desire, the opposite desire is within you. Today you see from one desire, a woman looks beautiful. Tomorrow you see the same woman from another desire, and she becomes ugly. Today you look with greed, and wealth seems precious; tomorrow you look with renunciation, and wealth becomes worthless.

In China there was a very wealthy man. He amassed great riches, and then the futility became visible. When too much is gathered, futility appears. He had everything, and it felt like he had found nothing. He had piled up mounds of wealth, yet the inner poverty did not end. The begging bowl kept filling but kept growing larger. It seemed to have no limit. He grew tired, weary. Life neared death. Greed fell; renunciation was born. He had all his precious diamonds, jewels and gold coins loaded onto large boats and went to the middle of the sea and sank them. Buddhist monks came and said, “What have you done? Even the Buddha did not do such a thing. If wealth had become futile for you, what was the need to drown it? Many people remain for whom it is not yet futile; you could have distributed it.”

The man laughed and said, “I will not make arrangements for others to repeat the same mistake I made. One day wealth seemed meaningful to me and I set guards everywhere; I made iron safes. Now wealth seems meaningless, and I have no option but to pour it into the ocean. I will not distribute it, because what became wrong for me—why should I give that to someone else? And what has become futile for me—why should I load it on another’s head as a burden?”

Greed is a tendency; it is one viewpoint. Then there is the tendency of renunciation; that too is a viewpoint. This man seems unique. He did not move from greed into renunciation; he dropped both viewpoints. Otherwise he could have enjoyed the pleasure of distributing wealth, of being praised as a renunciate. People would have welcomed him with ceremonies and said, “Blessed! Such a great renouncer!” But if renunciation comes from distributing money—when nothing came from wealth, how will blessedness and glory come from wealth? This man was unique; he went and sank it in the sea. What was futile was fit to be drowned.

There are astonishing tales in this man’s life. After sinking everything, he went to his master. The master said, “Now take sannyas.” He said, “When I have already left the world, how can I now take sannyas?” He said something remarkable: “When I was worldly, thoughts of sannyas arose—sannyas is the opposite of the world. Now that the world has dropped, how can I take sannyas? The opposite feeling has also gone. Still, if you ask, I am ready to do whatever you say, but there is no longer any give-and-take for me.”

The master said, “No, you need do nothing further. We still call ourselves sannyasins; that shows that somewhere in us the world is still hiding. Your world is entirely gone. Your vision has become empty. A worldly man has one viewpoint; a sannyasin has another.”

Then this man’s death approached. His wife, son, daughter—his whole family had drowned with him in this new world. As death came near he asked his daughter, “Just get up and see, has the moon risen or not? I have always thought that I will drop the body when the moon rises.” The girl went to the doorway and said, “Yes, Father, the moon has risen, and it is very beautiful. Before you leave the body, come to the door once and glance at the moon.” The father went to the door; the girl sat down on the chair where the father had been sitting—and she left her body. The father returned and said, “I knew you were one step ahead of me.”

His wife had gone to see a neighbor; news reached her. Their son was with her. She said, “The old man was a fool; and this girl too turned out to be foolish.” The boy, standing where he was, left his body standing. Hearing this, the mother struck him lightly on the head and said, “Fool! You too have gone?” And she burst out laughing.

People asked her, “Why did you not follow them?” The husband went, the daughter went, the son went. She said, “What going and coming? That which is, is forever. That is why I said to the boy, ‘Don’t be foolish. Stop these games!’”

The soul never comes or goes. There is no birth, no death. No grasping the body, no releasing it. Then vision-emptiness arises. And when you have no viewpoint, no eye, no style of seeing, when the seer has no longing—then you see what is.

And what is—that is God.

Donkeys cannot see God. And those who cannot see him are donkeys of one sort or another. ‘Donkey-ness’ means having only one fixed viewpoint; chewing only on grass-talk.

What do you talk about? If one searches into your conversation, it is either about sex or about food. Nothing beyond these two. Both are nourishment: food preserves you; sex preserves the species, the society. Without food you will die; without sex society will die. Both are for survival; both are strategies of preservation. You eat food so you survive, and you indulge sex so society survives.

So if the donkey talks about grass…all donkeys are talking about grass! Donkeys of many kinds. But if you listen to people’s talk—what are they discussing? Either food or sex. These two only. Through such talk, how will the consciousness that is seeing ever see truth?

And the dogs will argue with them, because their desire is different. A dog has no taste for grass. Occasionally a dog takes grass when he needs to vomit. Grass is not his food; it is a medicine for vomiting. When a dog’s stomach is upset, when he has eaten something wrong, he goes and eats grass. Eating grass makes him vomit.
That is why Qalandar made the dog and donkey speak—because their foods are opposite. Grass is heaven to the donkey; to the dog it is an emetic. So if the dog gets upset: “Stop this nonsense!”—the talk of grass makes him nauseous. Grass, grass, grass! The donkey goes on about it. “Such beautiful grass! So tall! So green! Today was amazing!”
Hearing this, the dog gets angry, irritated, feels like vomiting. So he says, “Stop this rubbish! If you must talk, speak of bones, of meat—something with juice, something that brings taste to the tongue, that awakens a dream, that stirs a little delight within.”

Wherever there is conflict, there is a conflict of desires.

Looking deeply into many people, I have come to the conclusion that wherever there is conflict, your desires and the other’s desires differ. Between husband and wife there is perpetual conflict because their desires differ. The wife seeks security, the husband seeks novelty. Man is aggressive; woman is receptive. Woman is ‘weak’—weak not in the sense of lesser worth, but in that she has less capacity for aggression and violence. Her capacity to endure sorrow is greater than a man’s, but her capacity to inflict sorrow is much less. She is not aggressive. Her whole being is receptive because her whole being is to become a womb. And one who must be a womb needs deep receptivity. Man is aggressive because he does not have to carry a womb; he is to impregnate.

So male sexuality is aggression. Female sexuality is passivity, receptivity, surrender. These are opposite, and thus they attract. But there the conflict begins, because the woman wants to stay with what is familiar, known, tried—there is safety in it. The man wants to get free of the familiar and known, for there is no juice of aggression in it. When you attack the new, when you set out to conquer a new woman, then the relish comes. That is why husbands become sad—becoming a husband, they become sad.

I have heard: someone asked Mulla Nasruddin—he was traveling on a train. A neighbor was asking, “Where do you live? What do you do?” Finally the man asked, “Are you married?”
Nasruddin looked at him and said, “I am miserable anyway. Don’t think I must be married. I am miserable as it is.”

The husband becomes miserable. You can tell from a distance whether a man is walking with his own wife or someone else’s. With his own wife he walks gloomily because she is inspecting him constantly to see if he is launching a new attack. With his own wife he walks timidly, fearfully. The wife walks cheerfully with her husband because security is at her side; there is no fear. The husband walks frightened because his wife’s twenty-four-hour vigilance allows no scope for aggression, for new adventures. He cannot even look at another woman, for that would cause a scene.

Their longings differ; hence conflict. Their ways of seeing differ; hence conflict. The wife wants stability; the husband wants change. And here is the great paradox: because they are opposite, they attract. There is no attraction in sameness. A negative charge attracts a positive charge. Positive does not attract positive. That is why two women can have acquaintance, but not friendship; two men can have acquaintance, but not love. The opposite is needed. The opposite attracts. But there is a danger hidden: because the other is opposite, all her longings are opposite; her way of seeing is opposite. And then conflict.

Wherever there is conflict, understand that the ways of looking at life differ.

The donkey and the dog are quarreling. Qalandar is right: the dog is exasperated hearing the donkey’s nonsense. And every day he goes on with the same talk.

A woman’s husband died. As he was dying, she took a promise from him: both were spiritualists, believers in psychic phenomena. “Give me your word—if you die first you will do all you can to contact me; or if I die first I will try to contact you—so we can be certain whether the soul survives the body or not.”

The husband died. After his death, the wife tried hard. She tried with many mediums to call him. At last, after two years, she succeeded. The husband spoke through the medium.
The wife asked, “Are you happy there?”
He said, “I am very happy—happier than I have ever been.” She asked, “Even happier than you were with me?” Now the husband had nothing to fear. When he was alive he could never have said this. He said, “Even happier than I was with you.”
Naturally, the wife said, “Then tell me more about heaven.”
The husband said, “Who said I am in heaven? I am in hell.”
Even in hell a husband can be happier than when he was with his wife!

A man is not eager for marriage; he gets trapped in it. A woman is not directly eager for love; her eagerness is for marriage. Because love leads to marriage, she enters love. A woman’s eagerness is for stability; a man’s is for novelty. These are difficult matters. They are hard to resolve.

There are only two options: either accept the woman’s stance and suppress the man, as has been done for centuries. We institutionalized marriage, accepted the woman’s view, suppressed the man. “Love is eternal—and then there are children to consider, and the order of society.” The woman seemed more cooperative in that, because she brought stability. But the man became sad on all sides. He created thousands of prostitutes; all kinds of immorality arose just because this arrangement was not in tune with the man’s nature.

That first solution has failed. The West is now trying the second: accept the man’s stance—forget about permanence, let marriage go. Or at most marriage is an incidental arrangement: as long as it works, fine; the day it doesn’t, end it. Marriage is not a lifelong decision, just a momentary arrangement. As long as it gives pleasure, fine; the day it doesn’t, finish! In this, the woman will be unhappy; she is exploited because she is not fulfilled. Psychologists all over the world are troubled: what is to be done? Because men will be happy when they do not have to be husbands, and women will be happy when they can be wives. How to resolve this opposition? And if one is unhappy, eventually the other too becomes unhappy. Only if both are happy can there be happiness. Hence no society has been happy so far.

Yes, a man can be happy if he drops the man’s desires. A woman can be happy if she drops the woman’s desires. But such people usually do not marry—because there is no need anymore. If people like Buddha marry, marriage would be supreme bliss. But people like Buddha do not marry. And those who do marry—marriage becomes the foundation of hell for them.

Until human consciousness is transformed and the boundaries of its wants fall, life will remain a quarrel and a struggle. In the name of love too, only strife is born. And if even in the name of love there is strife, then under what name in life can we hope there will not be strife?

Understand this well. If you have a conflict with anyone, it simply means your longings differ and the other’s longings differ. Either you suppress the other or he suppresses you. But whenever you suppress someone, you too become unhappy—suppression is not joyful. And if someone sits near you unhappy twenty-four hours a day, how will you be happy?

Therefore people like Freud, seeing this situation, say it is impossible for man to be blissful. Freud speaks from thought and from experience. For forty or fifty years he explored the human mind in countless ways. His final conclusion was: the human structure is such that man cannot be happy.

But our conclusions differ. Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna—our conclusion differs. I say to you: you can be happy. But only when the doors of desire fall. Drop the windows and walls of want, and come into the open sky.

The open sky is the sky of non-wanting.

Thus the statement seems paradoxical. Buddha and Mahavira say: one who drops desire attains bliss. Freud says: man will never attain bliss, because he cannot even conceive that man can drop desire. How can desire drop? Freud says desire is rooted in man. As long as desire remains, he is right. For ninety-nine out of a hundred, Freud will seem right because desire does not end. Once in a while an incomparable person is born in whom desire does end. And the moment desire drops, bliss happens.

Where there is no dispute, no strife, no struggle—there the flowers of bliss bloom. Everywhere the donkey and dog are at odds. Not only man and woman, but follower and leader, master and disciple, student and teacher—everywhere quarrels, because everyone’s longings are opposite. And where longings are opposite, strife begins instantly. Today there is anarchy all over the world. It is hard to find a place where there is undisputed peace. Everywhere opposites stand facing each other. Donkeys and dogs are debating.

In all this the greatest difficulty is neither for the donkey nor the dog; Qalandar says the greatest difficulty is for that man who understands their language. This is the third aspect of the story. There is a man who understands both languages. The greatest difficulty is his. The donkey is fixed in his donkey-ness; the dog in his dog-ness. Neither recognizes the other. Their doors are shut. They live their way, certain that their way is right. “Grass-talk is nonsense; bone-talk is right.” And the donkey is equally certain from his side.

It is worth pondering that only donkeys are very certain. The intelligent man hesitates. He thinks, he weighs. When he says something he says, “syat…perhaps!” But when a donkey speaks he declares, “It is absolutely so; not a grain of doubt.”

That is why I do not call people like Hitler intelligent: they make categorical proclamations. Yet the common man is swayed by categorical proclamations because deep within him too donkey-ness is strong. Whenever someone bangs the table and declares, “This is how it is”—the louder he says it, the truer it seems. If someone speaks softly you think, “There must be some mistake—he’s speaking so softly.” If someone whispers in your ear you are certain he’s lying—why else whisper? Say it openly!

Therefore those who are clever, who want to pass off falsehood as truth, always speak loudly; they pound the table; they shake you. Their voice rattles the corners of your heart. Then lies begin to feel like truth. Otherwise even truth will sound like falsehood to you.

Mahavira could not get many followers because he spoke as if whispering into the ear. He spoke with such care, with such thoughtfulness, that in everything he added ‘syat’—for the opposite may also be true. You ask, “Is it night?” He says, “Syat.” Will you follow such a man who does not even know for sure whether it is day or night? But Mahavira said ‘syat’ because from every night the day is born. So night cannot be absolute night; day is hidden in it. It will appear shortly, but it is already present. You ask, “Is it day?” Mahavira says, “Syat.” For as you ask, day is turning into night; therefore it cannot be said definitively that day is day and night is night. Night turns into day, and day into night. In the darkest night the dawn is concealed. In blazing noon the darkness is hidden.

Mahavira sees the whole; therefore his speech becomes ‘syat’—as if someone were whispering. You will not follow such a man. That is why Jainism did not spread much. Words spoken in a whisper cannot influence many. Hitler will find more followers than Mahavira, because Hitler shouts.

Understand well: the more sure a person appears to you, the quicker you should run from him—because he knows nothing. He is certain only of his own desire. That is his whole world. He has no knowledge of the whole; he is fixated on a fragment. He has become rigid.

The trouble is for the man who understands both languages. The trouble is mine; I understand the donkey’s language and the dog’s language. The dog seems right from his side, the donkey seems right from his side—and both are wrong. Qalandar has given a beautiful ending to the tale.

The man said, “Wait! Don’t argue in vain.” He must have been about to say, “The donkey is right from his side. That too is a perspective, a ‘bhangi,’ a view. And the dog is right from his side; that too is a view. Both are right; stop arguing.” He stepped between them to settle the matter somehow.

But neither the dog heard his voice nor the donkey. Instead, both became angry: why is this man interfering? The quarrel was proceeding so smoothly—why this nuisance? The man understood their language; the dog and donkey did not understand his. The dog barked and lunged; the donkey let fly his hind legs. The man fell to the ground, unconscious.
This is what has always happened to the Buddhas. Dogs bark, donkeys kick. Qalandar’s insight is deep. This is what happened to Jesus, to Mansoor. It happened to Qalandar himself.

This story is told from experience, and told in the symbols of donkey and dog so you won’t get offended. If told straight, perhaps you would not even agree to hear it. If said straight, you might kick right now—so it is given with a little turn. The donkey is a symbol of donkey-ness. The dog is a symbol of dog-ness.

There is a relish in dog-ness: barking. Scientists still haven’t found out why dogs bark. Surely there is some arrangement in their throats such that barking brings them relief. They cannot refrain from barking.

Kahlil Gibran has a famous story: a dog became a guru and began to explain to the other dogs, “How long will you keep barking? Because of barking our race has declined. All power goes into barking. Otherwise by now we would be ruling the world. Stop it. Control it. Practice restraint.” The dogs listened; it made sense to the intellect. But when the itch rose in the throat, the moment the tickle ran through, principles did not work; they barked. The guru explained daily. They considered the guru a great being because he was never seen barking—his practice matched his preaching.

And people say: when you go seeking, find one whose theory and conduct are the same—know that this is the guru. The matter is not so cheap. Not so easy. For people can make theory and conduct match. And that is what had happened. The dog who became a guru also wanted to bark—but he had no strength left to do it. His barking went out in the explaining. From morning to night he went around the village; wherever dogs barked, he would interrupt, “Stop!” His throat grew tired.

At last the dogs too grew tired of the guru. “The poor fellow is exhausted; he is old. We never obey him. His words make sense to the intellect, but when the tickle rises in the throat, when the relish of barking comes, we cannot help it. It is our nature. And he speaks of high things—of God. He says rightly: stop barking and you will become meditators!”

One day they said, “He is old now and near death. Let us obey him for one day, at least once in his life.” So all the dogs of the village decided: tonight, whatever happens, no matter how much trouble we have, how much we have to toss and turn—we will not bark. We will control our mouths. We will practice restraint.

Great difficulty! The dogs were in trouble. Each crawled into a corner of some alley. Great restlessness arose within. The hour for barking arrived. Sometimes a policeman passed and the heart wanted to bark; sometimes the postman came and the heart wanted to bark. Everywhere there were stimuli to arouse desire. But that day the dogs had decided. Each said, “Till someone else barks, I will remain restrained.”

No one barked. The dogs stayed silent. But at midnight one dog began to bark—then restraint could not be maintained. They said, “Now that it has broken, why should we torment ourselves?” The entire village erupted in a ferocious barking—because all the dogs had been silent for hours. Such barking had never happened. The whole village woke.

This is how it goes. When a religious society becomes corrupt, this is what happens. Long-suppressed restraint, when it breaks, erupts like this. This is India’s state—two or three thousand years of enforced restraint, of celibacy; people sitting in their corners—no barking. Then when the barking begins, the whole…

Christianity faced the same. In the West, for two thousand years they kept people from barking. Now they have started barking all at once; all rules are broken. Even simple rules of decency have fallen, and life stands in a wild, bestial state.

As soon as the dogs barked, they were astonished. For until midnight there had been no sign of their leader. Where was the guru? Suddenly, as they barked, the guru appeared and said, “See—this is why our downfall has occurred. How much I explained, yet you never change. When will you stop this ignorance? When will you come to wisdom?”
Gibran says: here is the secret—the guru had gone around since evening, but the village was silent. He had no chance to speak; who could he tell to stop when all were silent? By midnight he grew anxious. Without speaking, an itch began to run in his throat. He could not restrain himself. And he was not part of their decision—he was outside it. He did not even know what was going on. In a dark alley he barked loudly—he was the first dog! Then when his barking had happened, the whole village started barking. And when the whole village barked, the guru came again to explain, “See, this is the cause of our downfall. When will you stop?”

When you speak, is that speaking a disease, or does it arise out of your emptiness, your silence? Is it your sickness, a purging? Are you throwing your inner garbage out, lightening yourself? Or do you have something precious to give? Speak only when your words carry jewels you want to share. Why dump your rubbish on another’s head? Why speak futile words?

The man heard that the dog and the donkey were quarreling. He understood both, understood both viewpoints; therefore he got into trouble. He went between them to explain, but neither the dog nor the donkey understood him.

The words of the Buddhas have never been understood. All your words are understood by the Buddhas. Every voice of your desire is understood, because where you are, they too once passed. They too once barked. They too once talked grass. Where you are, they were; therefore your language is clear to them. But their language is not clear to you because where they are, you still have to arrive.

And when the Buddha explains, you get angry. Anger arises because he says you are both right. Your ego says, “I am right, the other is wrong.” And when the Buddha says, “You are both right,” both of you become angry.

Earlier you were fighting each other; now you both unite to fight the Buddha. The donkey kicks, the dog lunges barking: how did this man come to create a disturbance? We had enough strife as it was, and here is one more nuisance! And then you do not even understand his language. Jesus was crucified. The Jews could not understand his language. Al-Hallaj Mansoor was cut to pieces because people could not understand his words.

One is the language of desire—we understand that; and one is the language of compassion—we have no acquaintance with it. And this poor man had come to quiet them both. He wanted their quarrel to end. He wanted them to understand one another’s viewpoint.

Whether it is a small domestic quarrel or a great war, all disputes arise from not understanding the other’s viewpoint.

Until I stand in the other’s shoes and look from where he looks, strife and war will not cease. From where I stand I seem right; the other seems wrong ‘to me.’ To himself he seems right.

If Russia and America are in dispute, if China and India are in dispute, or India and Pakistan—everywhere the same: we have no skill to stand where the other stands. We are not fluid enough to flow into the other’s place. And only that person can be peaceful who becomes so fluid that he can understand all viewpoints. But his difficulty is great. The wise one’s trouble is great: he must live amidst the ignorant.

A friend of mine went mad. He was sent to an asylum. He told me, “I stayed three years—only the last six months were trouble. The other two and a half years passed pleasantly, because I too was mad. Then one day, in my madness, I drank a bottle of phenyl kept there. From it I got hundreds of bouts of diarrhea, and with those purgings—who knows how—my madness left. The heat left the body. I became very weak, but my intellect returned. It was a shock treatment.
“When the mind returned, the court had sentenced me to three years, and I recovered six months early. I went to the authorities saying, ‘I am completely fine.’ They laughed: ‘Everyone says that!’ I pleaded, ‘At least listen!’ They said, ‘Whom should we listen to? All the mad say they are fine. Go do your work.’ I tried many times; I could not make them understand I was alright—because all madmen say they are fine. Those last six months I suffered terribly—surrounded by madness, and I alone sane! Someone would pull my leg, someone would massage my head. For two and a half years I didn’t notice because I was doing the same.”
You can understand the Buddha’s trouble: he becomes sane six months before you! That man was bitten by the dog and kicked by the donkey. He fell unconscious.

All Buddhas have received this behavior from you. It is natural. It is not entirely your fault. But if you become aware, if you bring a little thoughtfulness, if this story gives you even a little inspiration to reflect, perhaps you can avoid kicking the Buddha. If you can refrain even a little from kicking, the Buddha may get a chance to reach you. If you can quieten your barking a bit, perhaps you will hear his voice. In your silence, in your pause, in your not-doing, perhaps a bridge will be built.

Qalandar is right. Take this story as your own story. Think it over again and again. Your mind will often feel like kicking, often feel like barking. In those moments, restrain yourself and try to understand the words of the Buddhas. Make a little effort and something will be understood. You take one step, and the next step becomes clear. Even a journey of a thousand miles is completed one step at a time. No one takes a thousand steps at once. One step—and the next step becomes visible, and you become capable of taking it.

Anything more?