Bin Ghan Parat Phuhar #7

There is a very ancient tale.

There was a great metropolis. Its expanse was vast. Its borders stretched all the way to the horizon. And yet, they say, it was so immense it could fit into the palm of your hand. Its buildings were tall, skyscrapers touching the sky. And yet its height was no more than an onion bulb. Millions lived there. But those who could really count always counted only three. There were never more than three people there.

It was a moment of crisis. A rumor spread that the enemy was about to attack. So the whole populace gathered in the huge square at the city’s center to decide—what should be done? But those who had eyes saw that only three people had come. And those three were strange-looking. They looked like beggars. Their faces seemed unhinged, as if they hadn’t bathed in years.

The three began to deliberate.

The first was famed for his far-sightedness, his reputation like that of a great thinker. He could see the feet of ants walking on the moon and the stars, yet he could not see the Himalayas standing right in front of him. They say that this far-sighted man was utterly blind. He hid his blindness behind the name of far-sightedness. He couldn’t see what was near, so he claimed what was far. No one sees the distant, so no dispute arises. He never concerned himself with small, practical matters. He discoursed only on grand principles. He never said a single thing that could actually be of use in life. He would not descend below God, heaven, liberation. He was perfectly blind—but his renown was as a far-sighted philosopher.

The second among them could hear the music of the moon and the stars—though he had no inkling of the thunderclouds roaring above his head. He was profoundly deaf. Nothing ever reached his ears. To conceal his deafness, he discovered subtle sciences of music that no one else could hear—only he could hear them.

The third was entirely naked. Not even a loincloth could he claim as his own. Yet he always carried a naked sword in his hand, because he was afraid someone might snatch away his property. He lived in constant fear of thieves.

These three took counsel.

The first lifted his blind eyes toward the distant sky. Not a single ray of light flickered in them. Yet he said, “I can see the enemy advancing, hidden in the distant mountains; the crisis is near. Not only can I see which tribe is coming to attack, I can even tell their number. The danger is very close; we must make arrangements quickly.”

The deaf man turned his ears in the direction the blind man had turned his eyes. The blind had no eyes, the deaf had no ears. And he said, “I can hear their voices, the sound of their feet. Not only that, I can hear what they are saying. And not just that—I can hear the thoughts they have hidden in their hearts and told no one. The manifest is audible to me, the unmanifest is audible too. The danger is terrible.”

The naked man leapt to his feet. He began to whirl his sword. “I know for sure,” he said, “why the enemy is coming. Their eyes are on our property. Whether our lives remain or go—our wealth must be protected. And you be at ease—this sword of mine, what do you think it’s for!”

Such is a very ancient tale. Whenever I have read it, it has felt sweet and endearing. There are great hints hidden in it; it is full of meaning.

You will find these three inside every human being. We have called a human being ‘purush.’ Purush means: a great city. It comes from ‘pur’—city. Man is a city. His desires are vast, his longings great; his web of craving stretches beyond the horizon. And yet his extent is such that it would fit into a single palm. Within him rise towering dreams—touch the sky!—and yet his stature rises no higher than an onion bulb. And in this city are lives by the millions—within one person there are some seventy million living cells. But if you set out to count, you will discover only three. Their names are familiar to you: one is kama, one is lobha, one is moha—desire, greed, attachment. And if you look still more deeply into these three, just as a trinity dissolves and only the One remains, so too if you peer into kama, lobha, and moha, you will find them all to be three faces of the same thing: fear. Within each, fear is hiding.

Fear becomes greed. Fear becomes desire. Fear becomes attachment. Because a frightened person is afraid to be alone, he fashions relationships of attachment. Wife, husband, brother, friend, kin, son, mother, caste, class, society, nation—he keeps building these. These are expansions of attachment. In aloneness he becomes afraid. In aloneness the inner fear reveals itself. With others, in company, he forgets; he gets immersed and drowns it out.

From this very inner fear, lusting and craving are born. Kama means: fear is trying to acquire something so it doesn’t have to face fear—trying to acquire wealth, position, prestige, love—so that the inner emptiness that terrifies might get filled. Filling from the outside is attachment; filling from the inside is craving. And greed is born out of fear: let not what is mine be lost, and let me gain what is not yet mine. Let me clutch what I have so not a grain is lost; and let me get all that I don’t have so that not even a grain is missed.

Behind this trinity—desire, attachment, greed—you will find fear hiding. And the great wonder is this: when you are born you bring nothing with you; when you die you will take nothing—naked you come, naked you go—and in between you whirl your sword for no reason at all. You possess nothing, yet you are terrified of thieves. Someone might snatch it away.

Why are you afraid of losing what you don’t even have? A very deep mechanism hides behind this. By creating that fear you persuade yourself that you must indeed have something; otherwise why would people be eager to snatch it? Try to understand this tangled logic.

First you think the other is coming to snatch, without first asking whether you even have anything that could be snatched. You are empty-handed. What do you have? What does anyone have? And what you truly are—can that ever be snatched away? You are that. There is no way to take it from you. Only what is not can be snatched, because it is an illusion. But when another approaches, you panic—perhaps he is coming to seize something; and from that fear, an illusion arises in you that surely there must be something with you—why else would he come to snatch? You begin to protect. And the moment you start guarding, the other thinks exactly what you think—that you must be making arrangements to snatch from him.

There is an old story of Mulla Nasruddin. He was passing by a village when he saw a wedding procession approaching—brass band blaring, naked swords flashing, people singing and dancing—he got scared. He assumed the enemy had arrived. Swords, bands! And then, when fear takes hold, your eyes do not see what is—everything looks like the gear of war.

And indeed, when a groom goes out, the paraphernalia is all warlike. They hang a dagger at the groom’s side, because in olden times bringing the bride was a kind of abduction. It was no love affair; it was coercion. They would ride on a horse, dagger and sword dangling, to fetch the poor mad bride. Is that any mark of understanding? And the band and drums—the proof of battle. And the wedding party consisted of all the village ruffians. Even today, a certain ruffian-ness clings to the wedding party; even a decent man, when he joins a wedding party, becomes a bit of a lout. Because from ancient times it was the ruffians who went. Why would a gentleman go to a raid? And if he goes, his inner lout emerges. Take the finest people—ministers, doctors, engineers—put them in a wedding procession, and suddenly you will see the procession changes them; something goes off in the wedding reveler. He was included precisely because he was ready to fight on the groom’s side. The girl was to be snatched. That’s why the girl’s father bows. It’s an old account—he bows to say: there’s no need to snatch, we are ready to yield. We have lost. Thus the girl’s side is lower, the boy’s side higher. They are the victors; the girl’s side, defeated.

The wedding procession was coming. Nasruddin was alone. Quiet, solitary moment. He was near the cremation ground; he panicked. A cremation ground in any case unnerves—and on top of that, here comes the enemy! He jumped, leapt over the cremation wall, and lay down in a freshly dug grave. Who would kill the dead? They would pass by, none the wiser. Where so many corpses sleep, one more is lying—who cares? And there was a wall.

But they saw this man too—how he suddenly started, leapt, crossed the wall. They grew suspicious: looks like an enemy, hiding there; might throw a bomb—who knows! They stopped the band. When they stopped the band, Nasruddin became utterly certain that his fear had been right—they had seen him. He lay holding his breath. The wedding party came, climbed the wall, and began to peer over: where had the man gone? Nasruddin’s life became even more endangered—now they were definitely after him. Go on your way! Why climb the wall? And when they saw a living man lying in a freshly dug grave—belly rising, breath moving—they said, “A mischief-maker! Who knows what his intention is!” They surrounded the grave, bent over from all sides. How long could Nasruddin hold his breath? At last he opened his eyes. They asked, “What are you doing here?” Nasruddin said, “That’s exactly what I want to ask you. What are you doing here?”

They asked, “Answer properly—how did you come here?”

Nasruddin said, “That’s exactly what I want to ask you. You were going along your road. How did you come here?”

By then it had become clear to Nasruddin too that neither were they out to kill, nor was he out to kill; we had simply become frightened of each other.

Nasruddin said, “Now I’ll tell you. I’ll answer from my side and from yours: you are here because of me, I am here because of you.”

Life goes on like this. You are afraid of the other; the other is afraid of you. And so fear piles upon fear.

America is afraid of Russia; Russia is afraid of America. India is afraid of Pakistan; Pakistan is afraid of India. Every day the leaders issue statements: you bought weapons, you did this, you did that, how did you get aid from there? As if their very breath is trembling. As if, besides fear, life has no other meaning.

And hiding behind this whole business of fear are those three. What is not—you have assumed to be. What is—mere nothingness, nakedness—you clutch tightly lest someone snatch it away. First, it isn’t even there; and even if it were, it is worth two cowries. And yet you clutch so hard lest someone steal it! Your very clutching makes the other think: must be the Kohinoor diamond in that hand. Who closes his fist so tightly over a few cowries? Cowries a man would drop without a thought.

The other comes to snatch, and your confidence grows: he is after the Kohinoor; otherwise, why risk his life? You yourself forget that in your hand there is nothing but cowries.

Then there is greed, which hears things never spoken. It forms assumptions for which there is no support in fact.

People come to me. Though they come for meditation, they come from the marketplace, after all. So greed is already within. In truth, they are interested in meditation because of greed. It didn’t work with money—perhaps it will with meditation. Building a house didn’t do it—perhaps building a temple will. Counting rupees didn’t do it—perhaps counting prayer beads will. But the counting is the same. Sometimes it happens that I tell someone, “You will find it, but this very longing to get it is the obstacle.” The greatest obstacle to finding the Divine is the desire to possess it. Excessive impatience—let it happen, and let it happen now. You make a racket without the capacity. When the capacity ripens, that day it will happen. To such greedy ones I tell a story.

I say, a fakir attained the Divine. When he attained, people asked, “How did you find him?” He said, “I will tell you my story.

“I had much wealth, much property. And I longed to find the Divine. One night I saw an angel descend in my dream. He asked, ‘What are you busy with?’ I said, ‘I am seeking the Divine, moving toward him.’

“The angel said, ‘You won’t reach bearing such a load. It’s too heavy. You won’t be able to fly into the sky with this. Drop it all; only then can your journey happen. To climb to heights, you don’t carry burdens. And there is no height higher than the Divine. Drop the load.’

“In the morning, when I awoke, I told my disciples: ‘I woke and left everything—only a loincloth I kept.’ That night the dream returned, the same angel. He asked, ‘Now what are your plans?’ I said, ‘I have done what you said. I have left everything.’ The angel asked, ‘But how did you manage to keep this loincloth? Didn’t “everything” include the loincloth?

“‘I tell you, everything of yours will take refuge in that loincloth. The grip you had on your wealth, your house—that entire grip will now shift to the loincloth. Your fist will remain the same. You have dropped diamonds, and grabbed a loincloth. This will not do. What need have you of a loincloth to go to the Divine? Naked he sent you; naked he will accept you. He does not obey the laws of the land: “How dare you come here naked?” Otherwise he would never let Mahavira enter, and he would throw Diogenes out.

“‘He created you—what is there to hide from him? What is the loincloth for? Either you want to hide something, or you cannot let go of your attachment—fine, then you will hang it on the loincloth. Even so small a peg is enough. Drop this too. Whoever would journey to him must go as absolute emptiness.’”

The next morning the fakir dropped even the loincloth. He slept that night; again the angel appeared in a dream. He asked, “Now what are your plans?” The fakir said, “What plans now! I’m going there—to find the Divine.” The angel said, “Now there is no need to go. Now stay where you are; the Divine himself will come. Until now you needed to go because you were laden with baggage. That is why I said: if you want to go, drop the burden. And now you have dropped everything. Now there is no question of going. Now, when it is time for him to come, he will come.”

The day your receptivity is complete, he comes. Not a moment’s delay is possible. There is no way to delay it.

People come to me for meditation and say, “We are in a hurry. How many days will it take?” You cultivated your stupor over lifetimes, and you ask how long meditation will take? I tell them, “Don’t panic—have a little patience. Don’t rush.” After two or four days they ask again, “Still hasn’t happened.” I say, “This very hurry is the obstacle. You want to attain the Divine in four days—at least think a little. Keep some account. Let your demand have some limit.” They understand—meaning, their greed understands—and then they say, “So, if we completely drop the idea of attaining, will it happen?” I say, “Certainly it will.” They say, “All right—we’ve dropped it.”

But they are dropping it only in order to attain. Then after two, four, eight days they say, “We dropped it, and still it hasn’t happened. You said drop it; we did—and still nothing.”

If you have truly dropped it, where does the question of attaining even arise now! You haven’t dropped it at all. That ‘dropping’ too was just another limb of greed: “If this is the condition, we’ll fulfill it—but we will get it.”