Mahaveer Vani #32

Now let us take the sutras:
‘Anger, pride, deceit and greed — these four dark, foul kashayas keep watering the roots of the world‑tree called rebirth.’
‘Knowing that even this entire earth, filled with rice, barley and other grains, with gold and with cattle, is unable to satisfy a greedy man — one should therefore live with restraint.’
Mahavira spoke of four kashayas — anger, pride, deceit, greed. These four words are very familiar to us — as words. The four themselves are utterly unfamiliar. We mistakenly take familiarity with a word to be familiarity with truth. We all “know” what anger means — and yet we have never really met anger. Though anger has happened upon us many times, has happened through us. We have been drowned in anger. But anger drowns so much that the neutrality to see, the distance needed to understand anger, does not remain. So anger has happened through us, but we have not known anger. Others may have known our anger; we have not. Hence a strange phenomenon: even an angry man does not take himself to be angry. The whole world knows he is angry, but he alone does not know, “I am angry.” What is the matter? Everyone can see his anger — why can he not see it himself?
In truth, in the happening of anger he is not present at all. The observer — the witness — sinks. There is no trace of him. The others are not in anger, therefore they can see, “This man is in anger.” You do not come to know. This point has been so deeply suppressed that many facts which could have become scientific were also lost.
Only yesterday I was looking into a book by Lionel Tiger. He has made an important discovery. He has worked upon women’s menstruation. He says that in the four-five days of menstruation, women are more prone to anger, more irritable, more troubled, more violent. Their tendencies go lower. Not only that, in those five days their intellectual level also drops — their intelligence falls. Their IQ — their measure of intellect — drops by fifteen percent.
Hence in examinations there should be a special provision for girls. No girl should be examined during menses — she will lag behind needlessly. Exactly in the middle of the cycle, fourteen days after the previous period, women are at their most cheerful, and at that time they are less angry, less irritable. And at that time their IQ rises by fifteen percent. Therefore if, in mid‑cycle, a girl sits an exam with a boy, she will be at an advantage — fifteen percent more.
If she is in menses, she will be at a disadvantage — fifteen percent less. And taken together the difference becomes thirty percent — which is a large difference.
As research proceeds, another idea has slowly begun to arise. But thousands of years passed and it did not occur to us that woman and man are two sexes of the same species. So it is not necessary that only women have menstruation; somewhere, somehow, there should be an analogous event in men too. But it has not occurred to men so far. There should be — because their bodily structure is patterned on the same design. The whole arrangement is similar. The difference is slight, and that difference is only this much: in relation to the germ the woman is the receiver and the man the giver. Otherwise all is one. So if something like menstruation happens in women, it should happen in men as well.
A hundred years ago a man made a small inquiry in this regard — a German surgeon. He suspected that men too have a kind of menses. But since no external event like bleeding occurs, people forgot. So he kept records of men’s anger and irritability, and found that every twenty‑eighth day men too are disordered for four-five days, just as women are disordered. And now another thinker has given birth to a new science — his name is Patrick Williams — biodynamics. He has, in fully scientific terms, established that men too have menses. No external event occurs, but internally the same kind of event happens as happens to women. And in those four-five days you become angry, irritable, troubled; your consciousness drops.
This is happening every month. The day a man is born — take that as the first day — on that basis you can draw up your calendar for every twenty‑eighth day of life. That first day — and then, every twenty‑eighth day, a man’s calendar can be made. And when your calendar shows your menses approaching, let others know and be careful yourself. And sooner or later, when we marry men and women, we should take care that their menses do not coincide. Looking at husbands and wives it seems that in many cases they must be coinciding. For if the cycles coincide, there will be great disturbance and quarrel.
All this could happen because till today it did not occur to us that men too have menses — because we are not acquainted with anger; otherwise it would have occurred. Hence I say: if we had watched the stream of anger, we would have discovered that every month your fixed days, your fixed time, arrive when you are more angry. And every month there are fixed days when you are less angry. But this is a very mechanical thing — you are revolving like a machine. Your mastery is nowhere to be seen.
As it is with anger, so it is with greed, so with deceit, so with attachment. In all of them you are bound. And this bondage is strange. You only have the illusion that you are the master.
Many scientists have experimented on mice. A small hormone present in male mice — inject a tiny amount of it into a female mouse, and — astonishing — the female begins to behave like the male: the same swagger, the same gait — that of the male — the same quarrelsome tendency, the aggressive mood — all arise. Not only that, after injections of male hormones the female climbs upon the male and tries to copulate, which she cannot do. Male mice were given injections of female hormones — they became utterly effeminate, submissive, ran away, became frightened, and trembled at every little thing.
Does this mean that tiny hormones are so powerful and your consciousness so poor that a single injection can make you male or female? That a single injection can make you brave or cowardly? Then that man whom you call timid, coward, or that one whom you call brave, courageous, daring — the difference between them is a small matter of hormones.
Generally this is so. Remove certain glands and you will not be able to be angry. Remove certain glands and your sex‑drive will vanish. Then is this body so dominant over you that your Atman has no freedom at all?
Therefore Mahavira calls these the four enemies. Because until one rises above these four, there is no experience of the Atman. While the hormones of anger are present in you — and yet you do not get angry; while the hormones of sexuality are present in you — and yet you attain to brahmacharya; while the whole chemical process of greed is within — and yet you attain to non‑greed — only then will the experience of the Atman happen.
Atman means: the experience of a presence beyond the body.
But we never go beyond the body — it is the body that runs us. Sometimes it even seems that you have gone beyond. In the morning you get up, the wife says something, the children are creating a nuisance, the servant is making trouble — and you go on smiling. Then you think, “I have conquered anger.” The same event happens in the evening and you go berserk. In the morning the hormones are fresh, the body is not tired; you are more assured. By evening you are tired, hormones have broken down, energy has declined. By evening you are vulnerable, more open; the smallest thing will hurt and wound. What you could bear in the morning, you cannot bear in the evening. But even in the morning you had not attained to the Atman — even then the body was the cause. In the evening too, the body is the cause.
To attain the Atman means: the body ceases to be the cause. Experiences begin in your life in which the chemical processes of the body have no hand — that are beyond them. Hence these four are called enemies. And Mahavira says: it is with these four that we keep watering the roots of the world‑tree of rebirth. With these four we keep preparing the next birth. He who is caught in these four has made his next birth already.
People come to me and ask, “How to be free of the coming and going?” They ask for freedom — and at the same time they keep watering the roots. “How to be free of this tree?” they say in the evening — and in the morning they are found watering it. They do not know that watering the roots and the coming of leaves are parts of one and the same act. It is one thing. Never ask how to be free of coming and going; do not ask that. Ask only this: how to be free of anger, deceit, attachment and greed. To ask for freedom from rebirth is itself a wrong question. Ask: how to stop myself from watering the tree. Do not ask: how may there be no tree. Because if you keep your attention on the leaves while your hands go on watering the tree — with a tree we do not do such a thing, for we know watering and the coming of leaves and flowers are parts of the same process.
You have no sense of your own life‑tree — what you are doing with it. On the one hand you keep saying, “May I not have sorrow,” and on the other hand you water sorrow in every way. You devise all means for sorrow to happen — and all the while you cry, “May sorrow not be.” Perhaps because the tree of life is yourself, you cannot connect your roots with your leaves. You cannot understand what the matter is. When sorrow arises, then catch hold of the leaf of sorrow and climb back down to the root — where did sorrow arise from? — and be concerned with cutting the root.
Therefore Mahavira says: these four are the roots — anger, pride, deceit, greed. The four are not so different; they are four faces of one and the same thing, the same event. Buddha named that event jiveshana — the lust for life.
Now this is a difficult matter. People say, “How will our coming and going stop?” Ask them, “Why? For what?” What trouble is rebirth causing you? Go happily — be born again and again — what is the harm?
No, they are not troubled even by birth. They are not troubled by life — but life brings sorrow, that is the trouble. “Let there be life without sorrow; let sorrow be cut off and life remain.” We want a world where there are no nights, only days. We want a world where there is only youth and no old age. Only health and no illness. Only friends and no enemies. Only love and no hate.
We want to cut one half of the world and retain the other. And the fun is — the other half remains precisely because we want to retain this one half. We want only friends in the world — therefore there are only enemies. We want only pleasures — therefore there are only sorrows. We want to save pleasure and remove pain — but pleasure is the root and pain the leaf. That which we want to save — in the very saving of it we also save that from which we want to be free.
When a man says, “May I be liberated from coming and going,” he does not mean, “May I end.” He says, “May I remain in moksha, may I remain in heaven. There should be no sorrow there — let there be freedom from sorrow.” So Buddha said: jiveshana — the longing to be, “I should be” — this is the root of all your suffering.
Mahavira says: these four enemies are also born of jiveshana.
Why does anger arise? When someone becomes an obstacle in your life. When someone wants to erase you — or you feel someone wants to erase you. When someone wants to save you, you do not get angry.
If I come to you with a knife, you will be afraid. You are not afraid of the knife — for a surgeon comes to you with an even bigger knife. Then you lie relaxed upon the table, even smiling. What is the matter? Both come with knives — but you fear that you might be killed, so you are afraid. The surgeon comes to save you — if you are dying, he saves. There is no fear of the knife. There is no fear even if someone cuts off a limb. There is only one deep fear — lest I cease to be.
So where it seems that someone has come to erase me, there anger stands up. Where it seems that someone has come to save me, there attachment stands up. Where it seems that “I will not be able to save myself,” then all our efforts to save ourselves — that is our greed. When it seems “I am now well saved, no one can erase me,” the ego that arises — that is our pride.
But all four are parts of jiveshana. The four‑formed deity within them is jiveshana. All four faces are its faces. In different circumstances different faces appear — but the feeling is one: that I must be saved. So long as a man wants to save himself, he cannot attain the Atman. Let us understand this a little more.
The man who wants to save himself will want to erase others. For to save oneself, there is no way without erasing the other. Mahavira lays so much emphasis on ahimsa for this very reason. He says: drop altogether the idea of erasing the other — and remember, only he can drop the idea of erasing others who drops the idea of saving himself.
When you do not want to erase anyone at all, then one thing has become certain: you no longer have any craving to save yourself. If there is no impulse left to save yourself, then there is no anger, no attachment, no deceit, no pride. This does not mean that the one who drops the urge to save himself does not get saved. The matter is just the reverse: he who does not save himself — he alone is saved. And he who saves himself — he dies again and again.
Jesus has said: he who will save himself will perish; and he who is ready to lose himself, no one can destroy him. But do not think, “If by readiness to lose we become saved forever, then we are ready to lose in order to be saved.” Then you will not be saved. Your inner intent is still to be saved. That very craving is the cause of births.
No one gives you birth — you give birth to yourself. You are your own father, your own mother — you go on giving birth to yourself. You are the cause of this trouble called birth. Hence there is so much terror of death, so much restlessness. And even at the time of dying a man says, “May I be freed from birth and death.” But his real meaning is only this: “May I be freed from death.” He says “birth” by mistake of language — if he thinks again he will not say it.
Think: do you want freedom from birth? Do you want freedom from life? The day you want freedom from birth, on that day you will be free from death. We all want freedom from death — therefore the seed of a new birth is sown. We want to escape the tip, not the root. Death is the last leaf; birth is the root. So the root must be cut.
Sannyas means: cutting the root. The world means: cutting the leaves. Both cut. The sannyasin is intelligent — he cuts where it should be cut. The worldly man is foolish — he cuts where cutting has no meaning; in fact, it is dangerous — for the leaves think they are being pruned. Cut one leaf — four sprout.
Mahavira says: by constantly watering these roots there will be birth again and again, death again and again. You will move in a wheel — up and down, up and down — in pleasure and pain, in defeat and victory — and this wheel is endless. And do not think sorrow is because you presently lack. If all were to be given to you, sorrow would not remain.
Mahavira says: even if all the gold of the earth were given to you, even if all wealth and grain were yours, even if the whole earth became your slave, even then it would be unable to satisfy you.
Fulfilment is not related to what you have; it is related to what you are. He who is unfulfilled will remain unfulfilled no matter what he has. And he who is fulfilled will remain fulfilled whether he has anything or nothing.
Fulfilment and unfulfilment are inner states. They have no relation with outer things. Therefore Mahavira says: even if everything were yours, you would still not be fulfilled. For we have not seen Alexander fulfilled, nor Napoleon fulfilled; Rockefeller is not fulfilled, Morgan is not fulfilled, Carnegie is not fulfilled. They have everything that can be had — perhaps more than Napoleon had — but fulfilment? There is no sign of fulfilment.
And Mahavira speaks from experience. He too had everything. So this is not the talk of a beggar standing on the road. In a beggar’s talk there can be an element of deception, of consolation — often there is. The beggar says, “What will it avail me if the whole earth becomes mine?” He does not mean he does not want the whole earth — he is saying, “We do not consider ourselves worthy to have it.” Not because he does not deem it worth having, but because he knows that deem it worth having and you will still get nothing. You will beat your chest and weep. It will not happen. Grapes are sour — because they are out of reach.
A beggar too says it — to console his own mind. Therefore a strange thing happens in the history of spirituality: emperors say it, and beggars say it. The words may be the same — the meaning is not the same. When an emperor says, “There is no essence in the whole earth,” it is a statement of experience. When a beggar says it, then — often, not always — it is not experience but an effort at consolation. He is explaining to himself, “It’s useless. Nothing will happen. Even if the whole earth is obtained, fulfilment will not come.” It is an attempt to soothe himself.
What Mahavira says is not an attempt at consolation — it is the outcome of a deep experience of discontent. So Mahavira says: even if all were to be given to you, nothing would happen. Because even if everything is found, you will not find yourself. Even if the whole earth is yours — there will be no meeting with yourself.
And fulfilment is the name of meeting with oneself. In meeting the other, nothing arises but unfulfilment — whether that “other” be wealth, a person, anything. Meeting the other is the progenitor of unfulfilment. And unfulfilment will be there — and there will be the desire to obtain more — and the illusion, “If I get more, perhaps all will be well.”
Only in meeting oneself is there fulfilment — for then there remains nothing to seek. But one meets oneself only he who drops jiveshana. One meets oneself only he who drops the madness of desire, anger, greed, attachment. For these madnesses keep you entangled in the other. They do not allow you to come home.
Anger means: you have rushed, like fire, towards the other. Non‑anger means: you have returned from the fire to yourself. Attachment means: you have got hooked to the other like a madman. Non‑attachment means: you have returned, like a wise man, to yourself. Pride means: the effort to be seen in the eyes of others — sheer madness, for all others too are engaged in the same effort. To drop pride, ego, means: the effort to see oneself in one’s own eyes — self‑vision. Pride means: the effort to appear in the eyes of the other. Egolessness means: one’s own seeing. “Let me see myself, let me attain myself, let me be with myself, let me live in myself” — this is supreme fulfilment. If I keep running into the other, running and running — there is running, certainly, but no arriving. Much travelling happens — nothing comes of it.
Therefore Mahavira says: recognise these four exactly. And when these four seize you, remember one thing — keep in remembrance — that even if you obtain the entire earth, nothing will come of it.
‘Knowing this, practice restraint.’
What is the meaning of restraint? Restraint means: to be saved from these four madnesses that drive us outside. Restraint means balance. In anger the balance is lost — you do what you never wanted to do. You even do what you could not have done — yet you do it. In greed the balance slips away. In attachment such words come out — the balance is gone.
Mulla Nasruddin was in love with a woman, and he said, “If you do not marry me, bear it in mind, I will surely commit suicide.” The woman asked, “Truly? Will you really commit suicide?” Nasruddin said, “This has been my usual procedure. Whenever I fall in love with a woman, I always do this — suicide!”
When you too are in what you call love — and you spoil the word “love” — you say such things as you neither do nor can do. It is madness — a hormonal disease. Chemicals are racing within you — you are no longer in your senses. What you are saying has little meaning.
Mulla Nasruddin says to his beloved, “Tomorrow I will come. Neither mountains can stop me nor a rain of fire. Even God, if he comes in between, cannot stop me.” And as he leaves he adds, “If it doesn’t rain, I will surely come.”
He is taking leave of a beloved. While departing he says, “Without you I cannot live. There is no woman more beautiful on this earth than you. The body is going — the soul I leave here.” Then, going down the steps he says, “But don’t make much of it — I have said the same to many women before, and I will say it again.”
When you are in attachment — which you call love — what you say is unconsciousness. When you are in anger, what you say is also unconsciousness.
Restraint means: consciousness. Let these unconsciousnesses not seize you. Let a man become balanced, restrained, settled in himself. Let him not speak such words, not behave in such a way, not use his life‑energy and time in such ways, of which he himself, on coming to his senses, will say, “It was madness.”
Hence all the old are angry with the young. There is no other reason — only the pain of their own youth. All the old are seen instructing the young. In truth, if they had the chance to instruct their own youth — which no one gets — they are taking it out on others. But they are making a mistake. Their parents also instructed them thus — no one ever listens. The young feel very annoyed: “What rubbish are you spouting?” But the poor old ones speak from experience. They have suffered these pains, they have done these insanities.
Mulla Nasruddin was sitting on a garden bench with his wife. Evening had fallen. In the shadows of the trees a new pair, a young man and woman, were speaking love. The wife became restless. At last she said to Nasruddin, “It seems that this boy and girl are preparing to marry. Go and try to stop them a little. Clear your throat — cough a bit.”
Nasruddin said, “Who stopped me? Everyone learns only from his own experience — there is no need to interfere.”
When desire seizes you, anger seizes you, attachment seizes you, pride seizes you — then remember: how much are you going to learn by experience! Has there not been enough experience? How much experience have you already had? You are merely repeating. Yes, one experience is necessary — but repetition is foolishness. One mistake is necessary — but to repeat the same mistake is foolishness.
The foolish are not those who make mistakes; and the wise are not those who make none. The wise are those who do not repeat the same mistake. The foolish are those who practice the same mistake again and again.
So when these four seize you, exercise a little intelligence and keep a little awareness: this has happened many times — what is the outcome? What is the result? And if no result is visible, keep restraint. Hold yourself — stand still. Do not run like a madman. He who can stop himself from these insanities slowly comes to know That which is beyond insanities. Its very name is the Atman.
Enough for today.
Stay for five minutes, sing a kirtan, and then go…!