Samadhi Ke Sapat Dwar #10

Now you have crossed the chasm that encircles the gate of human passions. Now you have conquered 'Kama' and his ferocious host.
You have purged your heart of impurities; it is now free of tainted desires. Yet, O glorious warrior, your work is not yet done. O disciple (Lanu), raise higher the wall that girds the Sacred Island. That very embankment will guard you against the intoxication and self-satisfaction that arise from the thought of a great attainment.
The feeling of ego will ruin the work. Build a strong dyke, else the raging flood of combative waves, rising from the great ocean of the world's Maya and assailing its shores, may swallow the traveler and his island alike. Yes, this can occur even when victory has been won.
Your island is a deer, and your thoughts are the dogs that pursue it on its journey toward life and keep back its progress. Woe to that deer which the barking dogs defeat before it reaches the refuge called the path of meditation.
O conqueror of pleasure and pain, before you settle in the path of meditation and claim it as your own, your soul must be like a ripe mango: its shining, golden pulp for the sufferings of others, and for your own pain and sorrow, its hard, stony pit.
To evade the serpent-coil of ego, temper your soul; make it worthy of the name Vajra-Atman.
For as a diamond buried deep in the throbbing heart of the earth cannot reflect the lights upon the earth, so too your mind and soul, immersed in the path of meditation, must not mirror the deceptive, hollow emptiness of the world of Maya.
At the root of all human passions stands sexual desire.
Whatever the form of desire, search deeply and you will find Kama.
Hindus have even regarded Kama as the root of creation itself; the whole creation is but the spread of sex-desire. Whether one seeks wealth or position, desire in its primal form is Kama. Wealth is desired for it, position is desired for it. These are merely differing doors leading to the same craving. He who has conquered sexual desire has conquered all desires.
What is sex-desire?
If we ask scientists, they say two forces are fundamental in human life. One: life wants to survive; it does not want to be destroyed, the urge-to-live. I want to live—without reason; there is no why. If someone asks why you want to live, you will not be able to give a reason. You want to live; it is causeless, simply so. It is as causeless as water turning to steam at a hundred degrees. If we ask why steam forms at one hundred, what obstacle was there at ninety, or what loss at one hundred and ten? If we ask a scientist why hydrogen and oxygen together form water—there is no answer. They do; there is no why. Just so, life wants to live; there is no question of why. Whatever exists does not wish to vanish. In the very fact of being, the longing to remain is hidden.
This longing takes two forms. You too wish to be, to remain, to be saved; there is a yearning for immortality. Because the person will die—whatever protections, whatever securities, the person will die; for the person was born.
But the life within the person can be saved. Your wave will die, but the oceanic life within you can endure. Sex-desire is this effort of life to continue. You will disappear, but from within you life will emerge and take on new forms. And before you are lost, the stream of life hidden within you finds a new body. You will go, but some essential portion of your being, a fraction of your life-stream, will travel in your children and your children's children.
Sex-desire is a part of life's longing to survive at any cost.
This is not only in man—this is in all life. A tree strives to send its seeds to safe soil. Study trees and you will be amazed. Great trees try to send their seeds far away, because if the seed falls beneath the tree itself, there is little chance to sprout; under its shade it will die.
Have you seen the silk-cotton tree's bloom? Perhaps you never wondered why its seed carries that tuft of cotton. The tree's attempt is that, borne by the fluff, the seed will travel on the wind, far away; if it falls below, it perishes. The cotton is the effort to carry the seed afar. The seed may not fly; with cotton it will be borne, falling somewhere distant, where it can sprout. And that is why a tree produces millions of seeds: one will be wasted, two will be wasted, but if even one among millions sprouts, life will continue to unfold.
I was reading of a species of fish. Its life is very brief, yet within that span it lays a hundred million eggs—one hundred million! And the eggs' life is perilous. From those hundred million, only two fishes are born.
Within man too so many seeds are produced. One man can father four to five billion children in potential. In a single act of intercourse, millions of sperm are released, any of which could have become life. Yet, in a lifetime, at most a handful of children will be born.
Biologists say that, because of the urge to survive, life does not want to miss any opportunity; it proliferates so abundantly that even if thousands or millions of chances are lost, life still survives. This longing to survive is what appears to you as sex-desire. It is deepest of the deep; you are born of it, and by its doorway life is eager to be born through you. You have entered life through the gate of sex. And before your body becomes useless, the life that had taken shelter in you seeks a new abode. Hence sex-desire is tempestuous. Do what you will, it seizes the mind; it seems bigger than you; your vows, rules of Brahmacharya, your declarations—all lie in tatters. When sex-desire gains momentum, you find you are possessed; a great current drags you and you are carried away. So fundamental is sex-desire.
And the whole quest of spirituality is the transmutation of this sex-desire. For this stream of life—if it keeps flowing outward, new bodies will go on being born. If this very stream turns back upon itself, your supreme life will be attained by it. This stream has two uses: in biological terms, progeny; in spiritual terms, Atman. If it goes outward, bodies can be born. If it turns inward, the ray of your Atman can shine forth. This stream, going out, becomes the birth of new bodies; going within, it becomes your new birth.
The one whose sex-desire becomes upward-flowing, inward-turning, becomes a Dwij—twice-born; a new birth happens. One birth you receive from father and mother—that is the birth of the body. The other birth you must grant yourself—that is the birth of the soul. Hence all religions are supremely concerned with sex-desire, for it is the primal energy to be used. If you remain engaged only in procreation, then by the very energy through which your rebirth could have occurred, through which the nectar could have been experienced, you will be deprived. You can wander through innumerable births. The day this stream turns inward, wandering in the body ceases. This we have called liberation from the cycle of birth and death. And as long as the stream moves outward, you must wander outward.
It is very difficult to turn this stream inward, yet not impossible. The difficulty, too, is because of unawareness. With understanding, this stream can be led within. All powers of life, with understanding, come to serve.
Before this century too, lightning flashed in the sky, yet for man it was only a cause of fear. Its crack and blaze, its heat shook the heart. Man thought God is angry, we have committed some sin, some error; hence the thunder is scaring us. It was believed to be Indra's thunderbolt, Indra's weapon. Then we came to understand what electricity is. We understood the secret of that power. Now there is no fear of the same electricity. Now that electricity is harnessed to give light to every home; now the same electricity runs thousands of machines; now the same electricity has become our ally.
Knowledge is victory; ignorance is defeat.
In ignorance, power frightens; in knowledge, the same power becomes ally and servant. As the lightning that once scared us, so the flashing power of sex-desire frightens us, because we are still ignorant in regard to it—the inner electricity. It is not that its laws have not been known; it is not that people have never harnessed that inner electricity; and it is not that, having harnessed it, they have not taken service from it in the inner world. As outer electricity, once harnessed, brings outer light, so inner electricity, once harnessed, brings inner light.
But there is a difficulty. The outer science becomes collective property. Once it is known how to generate electricity and how to use it, then each person need not discover it. The formulas are public; they can be taught. Not everyone needs to be an Edison thereafter; an ordinary engineer can do all the work. He isn’t Edison; he discovered nothing; he has no great knowledge, only know-how. Even a technician who isn’t an engineer can manage electrical work. He does not know what electricity is, but he knows how to use it.
With the science of the inner there is a difficulty: even if the laws are discovered, they cannot become public in the same way; they do not, they cannot. Their very nature is such. Buddha knows, Krishna knows, Mahavira knows how this inner current—the sex-energy—can be bound, how its flow can be reversed, how it can be channeled to your favor, how inner light can be created, how it can be used for inner purification, how it can become the path to the inner life. They know and they also say it, yet you cannot use it like an engineer or a technician.
Regarding the inner science there is a fundamental fact: you must become an Edison; you must become a Buddha, a Christ. Before that, you cannot use it, because it is an event within you. Mere information will not do; experience alone becomes the path there.
Concerning the world, information is enough; concerning spirituality, experience is necessary.
For whatever we know about the world, laboratories can be outside; for the spiritual, you yourself are the laboratory.
There is further complexity—you are the experimenter, you are the laboratory; you are the instruments of the experiment; you are the energy to be experimented upon; and you are the one finally transformed by the experiment. There is none other than you. Hence the complexity deepens.
When a sculptor makes a statue, the stone is separate upon which he will sculpt; the chisel is separate with which he will carve; the sculptor is separate; the buyer is separate. In the sculpture of spirituality, you are all of it—you are the stone whose statue is to be formed; you are the chisel with which it will be formed; you are the artist; and you are the customer, the buyer. There you are everything; therefore the complexity increases, the entanglement grows deep.
Yet statues have been made, Buddhas have been seen and known. What is possible in one is possible in all. Understand this sutra from this angle and remember: the understanding of sex-energy is its victory. You won’t win by fighting; you will win by knowing. The unwise fight; the wise do not fight, they seek to understand. The more they know, the more they become masters.
Bacon said: knowledge is power. He said it for science. It is true for spirituality as well. Knowledge is power. The power you do not know will harass you. Whatever you do in unawareness will only increase complications. It is hard to find a person who does not do something or other regarding sex-energy. Even the worst, the immoral, the lustful—each keeps trying to restrain, to manage. In all this, desire becomes distorted. It does not become refined or transformed; it turns ugly.
The whole world is filled with deformed sexuality. In thousands of forms sex becomes diseased in perversion. These are the acts of the unwise. It is as if one who knows nothing of electricity tries to repair an electrical device—he is likely to worsen it. Better not to touch it until you understand. Walk within only with clear understanding, otherwise the very power by which the soul could be born can also cause self-destruction. Many become self-destructive. Study the mental distortions of people and you will find, at the root, ignorant meddling with sex.
Freud’s deep study has made it plain that in ninety-nine out of a hundred cases of mental illness, sex-distortion is involved. Some error happens with that energy, and then everything is ruined. A thousand kinds of madness, mental diseases, anxieties—whatever their forms, deep within stands sex. And sex is there because you have tried to do something with a mechanism about which you know nothing. Sex is the basis of life; therefore deep indeed must be your understanding and experience of it.
Remember three things before entering this sutra.
First: do not let natural sexuality become unnatural. Accept what is natural. By rejection it becomes unnatural; through making it unnatural, perverted forms arise. Natural sexuality is easy to transform; unnatural is very difficult.
Understand it so: a man is attracted to a woman—that is natural. This sex-desire is easy to transform. But there is homosexuality throughout the world—a man becomes excited by a man, a woman by a woman. That is difficult to transform. It is deformed, unnatural; its change is arduous. Heterosexuality is easier to transform because it is natural; homosexuality is extremely difficult because it is unnatural. Thousands of such forms grip man.
A man desires to hold close the one he loves—that is natural; this desire is easy to transform. But another man loves no one, does not wish to be close to anyone; yet in a crowd, if he finds a woman, he jostles and slips away. Such a man’s sex-desire is difficult to transform. It is deformed, unnatural. To draw near the one you love is natural. To push and slip by someone you don’t love in a crowd is disease. Transforming this will be difficult and hindered. Why does someone become excited by pushing a woman in a crowd? Perhaps the longing to hold close the beloved was suppressed; the repressed spring now bursts forth anywhere.
So first: natural sexuality is fine; from there the journey is straight. Unnatural sexuality is dangerous—be alert, keep away.
Second: do not merely indulge natural sexuality; alongside indulgence, bring awareness to it. There is no sting in desire itself; only in unconscious desire is there a sting. If you feel the mind is seized by sex, enter into it—but enter consciously. Watch what is happening; watch what is being gained; watch what kind of pleasure, what kind of joy, what kind of peace is obtained. Enter indulgence with awareness so that the deeper secrets of indulgence are absorbed into your witnessing. That will be your understanding.
Third: keep inquiring whether the glimpse of pleasure or peace that occurs truly comes from sex, or whether the cause is something else.
If sexuality is natural and you are aware, you will not take long to see that pleasure does not arise because of sex at all. Those who know have called this the kakataliya nyaya—the crow-and-fruit coincidence. You sit beneath a tree; a crow caws; at that very moment a fruit drops beside you. You think the fruit fell because of the crow’s caw. This is the crow-coincidence. The fruit did not fall because of the crow; there is no necessary relation. The complexity only increases if, whenever a crow caws, a fruit happens to fall! Then the illusion grows strong.
You must have heard the story of the old woman whose rooster’s crow brought the sunrise each morning. If it happened once, it could be a coincidence; but years of experience—whenever the rooster crowed, the sun rose. Naturally she believed that the day her rooster did not crow, the sun would not rise. She quarreled with the village and said: wait, I will teach you a lesson. I will take my rooster to another village; then you will know when you grope in darkness and writhe that the sun does not rise. She went off with her rooster. When it crowed there, the sun rose. She said: now those fools will learn! The sun rose where my rooster is. This is the crow-coincidence.
This is what is happening with sex. The pleasure that seems to come from sex is related to it only as the sun’s rising is to the rooster’s crow. Pleasure does not come from sex—no more than sunrise comes from the rooster. There is some other, deeper cause. If you come to know that, the illusion breaks that sunrise depends upon the rooster; and then the sun can rise for you without the rooster.
The happiness felt in sexual satisfaction does not have sex as its fundamental cause; its root cause is meditation, is Samadhi. At the peak of sexual climax, for a single instant the mind becomes void. From that voidness comes the glimpse of bliss. Void? You become so absorbed in sex; in the act and the play you become more absorbed than in anything else. Because of that absorption, the mind is at rest; because of that rest, a glimpse of bliss arises. If you can be as absorbed in anything else, sex loses its hold on you. Hence creators are less possessed by sex. And this is why women are often unhappy with creative men.
There is Socrates—his wife is not happy with him. She cannot be, because Socrates becomes so absorbed in philosophical inquiry that his sexuality has waned. From the same absorption he gains the bliss that sex used to give.
If a painter is immersed in his painting, sex does not seize his mind. If a sculptor is absorbed in carving, his sex wanes—not because he is practicing Brahmacharya, but because his sun rises without the old rooster’s crow. That silent moment that used to come through sex now comes in the act of creation itself.
If you drown in your song, your dance, your meditation, you will discover that the sunrise has no relation to the rooster’s crow; the sun can rise otherwise too.
Keep these three things in view: let sex be natural; let it be entered with awareness; and keep searching whether the deep peace you sense is due to sex or to some cause yet unknown. The day the cause is clear, you can use that cause directly. Dhyana, Samadhi, Yoga are all grounded upon that cause. Yoga has discovered it directly.
Hence people say: until you attain Brahmacharya, you cannot be a yogi. And I say: until you attain Yoga, Brahmacharya cannot happen. Therefore I do not make Brahmacharya a prerequisite of Yoga; I call Brahmacharya the consequence of Yoga. So I do not tell you: if you wish to meditate, first practice celibacy. Those who say so do not know what they are saying. I tell you: meditate; do not worry about Brahmacharya.
The day meditation grants you a bliss deeper than sex can ever give, then no power in the world can drag you back into sex. For a greater joy, smaller joys can be dropped; for a greater ecstasy, lesser ecstasies can be left—but one must have tasted the greater. You hold pebbles in your hand and I say, drop them. Something is in the hand—even pebbles—so the hand feels good filled; an empty hand feels uneasy. You will not be willing to drop them; and the pebbles are colorful, glittering like diamonds. But if I place a diamond before you, you will not even notice when the pebbles slipped away and when you closed your fist on the diamond. And will you go around declaring: I am a great renunciate, I have dropped pebbles? You will not even know you have dropped them; they will have dropped themselves. Meditation gives you that diamond in its purity, of which sex occasionally offers only a fleeting, impure glimmer. When that purest diamond is in your hand, the search for the impure ceases.
'Now you have crossed the chasm that encircles the gate of human passions. Now you have conquered Kama and his ferocious army.'
'You have cast out the impurities of your heart; it is free of foul desires. But, O glorious warrior, your work is not yet done. O disciple, raise higher the wall that girds the Sacred Island. That will be the dyke that protects you from the intoxication and the satisfaction that arise from the thought of a great attainment.'
To conquer sex is extremely difficult; therefore those who conquer it become filled with great intoxication. There is a pride of Brahmacharya. We know the pride of sexuality—the lust-intoxicated falls unconscious. But have you heard that when Brahmacharya is attained, a pride even greater than sexual intoxication can seize the brain? Naturally, so arduous is this victory that when it comes one begins to dance and sway. A very subtle ego arises: I have attained Brahmacharya, I have conquered sex; now I am the victor. And this is the greatest of battles.
Mahavira has said: it is easy to conquer the whole earth, but to conquer this inner sexual craving is difficult. If Alexander became arrogant after conquering the world—which is not so difficult—will the Brahmachari not become arrogant, who has done what is harder than Alexander’s feat? To conquer the world is to conquer forms; to conquer sex is to master the very source from which the forms of the world arise, the energy by which the world is woven. Surely a deep intoxication takes hold.
And the sutra says: you have conquered sex-desire, but beware—your work is not yet finished. Now you stand again at a gate of danger where this victory can turn into pride. You have built, in the ocean of the world’s sexuality, a small island—an island of Brahmacharya. But the ocean around can drown your island at any moment. If you become intoxicated, the sea can swallow it again. Raise the wall that surrounds this Sacred Island. The work remains.
'It will be the dyke that guards you against the intoxication and the satisfaction born of the thought of great achievement.'
Pride and satisfaction—two perils. One is the pride of having attained what is very hard to attain; that which was sought for lifetimes is gained; what could not be reached despite thousands of efforts has been found. This is one: ego, asmita. The other, even more dangerous, is a deep satisfaction—a contentment that says: arrived; the goal is reached; nothing remains to be done. This contentment is a danger because then growth stops. Where there is contentment, growth ends. Therefore be content only where no further growth is possible; before that, do not be content.
Before becoming Brahman, all contentment is dangerous, for it means you will stop where you are. Be content only as Brahman—for then there is no harm in resting; there remains nowhere to move. But before that, the journey still remains. Wherever contentment arises, there is danger. Keep discontentment alive. When Brahmacharya is attained, a deep satisfaction is felt—as if every pore is fulfilled; it begins to seem that nothing is left to gain. This is a delusion. Much remains to be gained. What has been attained is only power—the means—to be used for what truly has to be attained.
It is like a man who has earned wealth and then sits content beside his safe. Money has no value if it is not used. Its value is that you can buy what was to be bought—that power is in hand. Yet many become guardians of their safes. This is stupidity: we forget the why. The means has become the end. Whether the bricks in your safe are gold or clay, it makes no difference if you only stand guard. If by night all your gold bricks were replaced by clay, and you were not told, you would still guard your safe and feel the same happiness—because the difference between gold and clay is only when you use it.
When the state of Brahmacharya is attained, miserliness like that of the rich can arise if you become content.
Brahmacharya is power—a means, not an end.
The end is Brahman.
Now the power gained through Brahmacharya can be used. Now you have the strength, the momentum, the vehicle, the boat by which you can cross to the other shore. Do not begin worshiping the boat while sitting on this bank. Do not decorate the boat and celebrate festivals. Do not become content that the boat is obtained. The boat by itself does nothing; journeying in it does. Brahmacharya is the boat. Hence this sutra says: now you must guard against pride and satisfaction.
'The feeling of ego will ruin the work; therefore build a strong dyke, lest the terrible flood of battling waves from the great ocean of the world's Maya, mounting and striking at its shores, engulf the traveler and his island. Yes, this may occur even when victory has been achieved.'
Even then it can happen. A moment’s negligence and victory turns into defeat. A small slip, a slight error, and at the very last moment there can be a return. Until the goal itself is attained, the return remains possible. As long as only the means are in your hand, the end can be lost. Often, merely from the notion that all is attained, what had been gained is lost.
So the seeker must keep one remembrance alive: do not be content anywhere. Let a wave of holy discontent burn within—more, further, the path still remains. One day surely comes when all paths end; on that day there is no cause for discontent.
But mark well: how will you recognize that place? It is a little subtle. How will you know the point has come where discontent has no cause?
The day no cause for contentment remains either, that day know that no cause for discontent remains. Hence the subtlety: when in the mind neither contentment nor discontent remains, know the goal has arrived. If contentment is felt, know the goal has not yet come.
Someone comes and says to me: great peace is arising in meditation. I tell him: then unrest still remains; otherwise how could you experience peace? Peace is experienced only against a background of unrest. If you draw a black line, draw it on a white cloth; if you draw a white line, on a black board. Will a white line be visible on a white wall? No. A white line is seen on a black wall.
If you feel great peace is coming, then the wall of unrest still stands within; otherwise peace could not be seen; you would not know it. The knowing of peace also belongs to the still-unquiet. This is a bit intricate. We feel that the unquiet knows unrest; yes—but only because he has tasted a little of peace; otherwise he could not know unrest either. If you feel you are very unquiet, it is because at some moments you have known peace—how else would you weigh?
You feel you are ill because you have some experience of health, even a little. And if someone begins to feel, 'I am perfectly healthy,' know that illness still remains; otherwise how would this be known? Perfect health happens the day when illness is not known—and health too is not known; for even the knowledge of health carries a sting.
Perfect peace happens on the day when even peace is not known.
If you ask Buddha, he will not say, 'I am peaceful.' He will say: nothing at all is known—what peace, what unrest? Nor is it known that 'I am' or 'I am not.' What is the being and non-being of me? Nothing is known.
The day nothing is known—this, that; joy, sorrow; peace, unrest—where the polarity is not experienced, there liberation happens; there Brahman is present.
So long as you even feel 'contentment,' know that discontent remains. Do not sit down yet; keep the journey on. The day even contentment is not felt, that day discontent drops—dropped it has. Then there is nowhere left to go. You have arrived where your destiny was to arrive. It has happened. The seed hidden in you has bloomed. You have opened, spread, become vast—become Brahman.
'Your island is like a deer and your thoughts are the dogs which, following its journey toward the river of life, obstruct its progress. Woe to the deer which the barking dogs defeat before it reaches the sanctuary called the path of meditation.'
As hunters or their hounds pursue a deer, they block its path, surround it from all sides and prepare to destroy it. The sutra offers this image: your meditation is your deer; your thoughts are the hunting dogs that obstruct it from every side. If meditation is to be attained, there must be freedom from these hounds. But we seek meditation and simultaneously claim the thoughts as ours. Hence the trouble. Whoever seeks meditation must break his identification with thoughts. He must gradually stop saying that these thoughts are 'mine.'
Nothing except meditation is yours. Not one thought is your own. All thoughts are borrowed, given—from education, conditioning, society, scripture—collected from somewhere. Like dust, they have gathered on you and been made to gather. No child is born with thoughts, but he is born with meditation.
Thoughts we give him—necessary and useful; we give him thoughts. The capacity for meditation is inherent. The crust of thought gathers all around; grown up, he forgets there is a center of meditation within. He identifies with the perimeter of thought. He says: I am a Hindu, a Muslim, a Jain, a Christian, a socialist, a communist. He binds himself with some layer of thoughts and says: this I am. The obstruction arises.
Let the seeker remember: the layer of thought has come from outside; not a single thought is yours. Your consciousness is yours, your chaitanya is yours, your meditation is yours; thoughts are alien, borrowed. Do not bind yourself to them. If you bind to them, you cannot bind to meditation. One who proceeds toward meditation must sever his ties with thought, and hold only one remembrance: at birth what was within me was solely chaitanya. If consciousness were not, others could not give you thoughts at all.
Try giving thoughts to a stone or to an animal. An animal will take a few thoughts—the measure of consciousness it has. A stone will not take any, for it lacks even that much awareness. Man takes thoughts because he has consciousness. He is born with a mirror; dust collects upon the mirror. So thoughts collect. But your meditation is not destroyed; it is hidden. The day you separate yourself from that crust and realize that thoughts are not mine—
Many of you think: this body is not mine; I am the soul. It will not help so much. Greater help will come from the realization that no thought is mine. Even the thought 'this body is not mine' is not yours; that too you have learned and heard. Sever all relation with thought as such, and begin to rest in the chaitanya that is before thought and after thought. Then you become the deer escaping from the hounds.
Keep this recognition alive within: no thought is mine; thoughts are alien and have come from without. Whatever arises from within is mine. What I was before birth and will remain after death—only that is mine. Establish your identity with that deep center. Then around you the dyke will be raised by which this tender inner island can be protected; otherwise the sea can drown it any time. And all around lies the ocean of thought.
Hence I call him the true Master who robs you of your thoughts, who empties you, makes you hollow. I do not call him Master who gives you new thoughts—for that only increases your burden. You were already troubled; those new thoughts will further entangle you.
A young man came to Buddha and said: I have questions. Buddha said: if I answer, I will only add to your burden. If you have come to increase your burden, that is one thing. If you wish to lighten it, neither ask nor seek answers. Remain quietly with me. Stay a year in silence; for a year meditate. For a year, no questions, no answers; for a year, do not use speech; for a year, sever relation with words. Then, after a year, ask me; I will answer.
When Buddha said this to the youth—his name was Maulungputta—Sariputta, a monk sitting beneath a tree nearby, burst into laughter, and said to Maulungputta: beware. Maulungputta said: I don’t understand; what is the matter? Why do you laugh? Sariputta said: don’t get trapped. If you want to ask, ask now. We were trapped in the same way. We came to ask; we obeyed this man, sat in silence; a year passed, the questions vanished—they too belonged to unrest. Then this man says: ask! There is nothing left to ask. If you want to ask, do it now; the promise of a year is a trick. Buddha said: I promise; I will remain firm on my promise. If you do not ask, that is another matter.
A year passed. Maulungputta was silent, he meditated, severed ties with thought, forged ties with consciousness. He came to know: I am only pure being; the rest—all notions, words, concepts, beliefs—have crusted around me. They are no more than clothing; as beneath clothes lies the naked body, so beneath thoughts lies naked consciousness. The year ended; he had forgotten that the day to ask had come.
But Buddha had not forgotten. Exactly at that time, Buddha said: Maulungputta, the year is over; rise and ask whatever you wish. Maulungputta smiled and said: now I know why Sariputta laughed. There is nothing to ask; and answers are no longer needed, for all answers are from outside—and dust will gather again.
Connection with chaitanya and disconnection from thought—that will become the dyke around you.
'O conqueror of pleasure and pain, before you settle in the path of meditation and call it your own, your soul must be like a ripe mango—its shining, golden pulp for the suffering of others, and for your own pain and sorrow, like its stony pit.'
A general, natural law of life is that we feel pain at our own suffering and pain at others' happiness. This is natural. However much you may claim joy in others' joy, deep down there is hurt. If it is true that another’s happiness gives you pain—your neighbor builds a grand house; you may say: I am so happy for him. But search within; a thorn pricks, a sadness takes hold. There is pain in another’s joy. Better to understand this rightly than to deny it. And if this is true, then in another’s pain, some pleasure must arise in you.
Observe: someone’s house is on fire. You will say: this is not tasteful—perhaps there is jealousy in another’s joy, but how can there be pleasure in another’s pain? We feel hurt. But when the house burns and you go to offer condolence, study yourself a little—how enjoyable condolence can be. People take great delight in sympathy. There is pleasure of many kinds. One is: I am offering sympathy, and you are in the state where sympathy is offered; you are beneath, I am above. Have you noticed that when someone overflows with sympathy toward you, you feel some hurt? You feel: it’s all right; someday God will give me this chance—wait a little; soon will come the time when I will offer sympathy; don’t be so pleased.
If you are offering sympathy and the other says: why talk nonsense?—you feel much hurt. He has snatched your opportunity. Search this deeply; it is unconscious. When you offer sympathy, it tastes sweet. Consciously you may not know it. If another’s joy causes you pain, then another’s pain cannot cause you pain as well. How could it? One’s own pain gives pain; one’s own joy gives joy. This is the ordinary human state.
The sutra says: invert this man, only then can you move forward. If, at a certain point, a man does not change this tendency, he does not go beyond the world. This is the world’s law; in changing it you begin to be outside the world. It means: learn to bear your own pain—at first, to endure it; as capacity grows, to take a certain joy even in your pain. That is difficult. But it can happen. Stop taking pain at another’s joy. As capacity grows, begin to rejoice in another’s joy; become afflicted by another’s pain. Become very tender toward another’s suffering—sensitive; and toward your own pain, become very firm, strong.
The sutra says: for the pains of others, become like the ripe mango—its juice, its pulp; and for your own pain and grief, become like its pit—strong. Bear your pain; gradually accept it; even taste it as something sweet.
It is difficult, and the mind does not understand. It will not, for the mind belongs to the rule where one’s own pain is pain and the other’s pain is not, where one’s own joy is joy and the other’s joy is not. Yet if the seeker makes a little effort, experiences begin to happen—unique experiences.
If you begin to rejoice in another’s happiness, your own sorrow will—first of all—fall a thousandfold. Most of our sorrow is not our own; it comes from the happiness of others. Your hut seems small not because of the hut, but because of the mansions around. Your wife seems not beautiful because she is not, but because others’ wives seem beautiful. Comparison! Others’ joy surrounds you and everyone seems happy except you. Others feel the same: everyone but me is happy. 'O God, why are you angry with me? What have I done? All seem happy.' All say the same.
Another’s joy is seen; one’s own sorrow is seen.
One’s own joy is not seen; another’s sorrow is not seen. In the rule of mind in which we live, this will be so. We accept our own joy as nothing—what joy is there in it? If you have ten thousand rupees, what joy is there? What are ten thousand? The man with ten rupees sees you enjoying. You with ten thousand feel sorrow—because you never measure with those who have ten; you measure with those who have ten lakhs. We measure ourselves against where we wish to go. None of us aims for the world of the ten-rupee man; we aim at ten lakhs—hence misery! The one with ten rupees is miserable because of the one with ten thousand; the one with ten thousand is miserable because of ten lakhs; the one with ten lakhs is miserable because of ten crores. All are unhappy—not because of their own sorrow, but because of others’ happiness.
And as long as this tendency remains, how can you be happy? With ten lakhs, you will be unhappy; with ten crores, still unhappy. Wherever you are, the mind you carry will produce sorrow.
The way to be happy is different. If another’s sorrow becomes visible to you, you begin to be happy. Then you will see an ocean of happiness around you.
I have heard of a fakir, Junoon. Whoever came to meet him, he would laugh, burst into dance. People asked: why? He said: I have learned a trick for happiness. From everyone I extract some cause by which I can become happy. A man came with one eye; Junoon began dancing. They asked: what is this? He said: you have made me very happy; I have two eyes—Lord, I thank you! He saw a lame man and danced right on the street: astounding—without deserving it, I have two legs! A corpse was being carried to the cremation ground; Junoon danced. People said: what are you doing—the man is dead. Junoon said: we are alive—and with no deserving. Had we been dead in his place, there would be no way to complain. Great is His grace.
Junoon was never unhappy, for he saw the sufferings of others; against that background, his own joys shone. And when one sees others’ joys, against that background one’s own sorrow appears.
I have heard of a Hasidic Jewish fakir, Baal Shem. A Christian priest was impressed by his wisdom. Between Jews and Christians there is enmity, yet Baal Shem was a man of substance. The priest would meet him in secret. One day the priest asked: what is your Jewish logic? How do you think? For no logic seems to match yours. Whatever you undertake, you succeed; where you raise your hand, success follows; you touch mud and it becomes gold. What is your logic? What is the method of your thinking?
Baal Shem said: I will tell you a story. Two men entered a house through a chimney, both wearing white clothes. The chimney was black with soot. One came out perfectly clean—no stain. The other came out covered in soot—no clean spot left. Tell me, which of the two will take a bath? The priest said: is this a question? Am I so dull? The one blackened will bathe. Baal Shem said: here is the difference in Jewish logic. The man in white will bathe. The priest said: this is too much—explain. Baal Shem said: the man in white will see his friend’s condition; the man in black will see his friend’s condition, for in this world everyone sees the other. Therefore I say: the one in white will bathe—seeing the other’s filth, he will think: how dirty one becomes from the chimney. The one black will go home happy, seeing the other spotless and thinking: what a chimney—so much soot and not a single stain on me! For everyone looks to the other.
Baal Shem is right: everyone sees the other and decides accordingly. You look at the happiness of others and become miserable. Look at others’ suffering and you will begin to be happy, because then your own sorrow will not be seen. And not only see others’ sorrow—celebrate others’ joy.
This is to go a step further. One who can celebrate in another’s joy will never lack occasions for happiness. Every moment will offer a chance to be glad. And it can be celebrated, for the happiness of billions then becomes your wealth—the joy of all becomes your joy. In such a state of mind, there will be no hindrance in accepting your own sorrow. In truth, it will dissolve; and even if sometimes it comes, it will work as a change of taste—there will be a certain savor even in it. If one eats only sweets, there is trouble; a little savory is good. Likewise, amidst happiness, a touch of sorrow brings a new freshness, and the tongue becomes ready again to taste joy.
Hard toward your own pain, supremely sensitive toward others’ joy—one who attains this begins to go outside this world. Then the world cannot hold him.
'Guard yourself against the noose of ego; harden your soul, make it worthy of the name Vajra-Atman.'
'For as a diamond buried in the deep, throbbing heart of the earth cannot reflect the lights upon the earth, so too with your mind and soul: immersed in the path of meditation, they must not reflect the illusion-filled hollowness of the world of Maya.'
All the laws of this world are illusory. As a diamond buried in the ground reflects no sun, so bury yourself in meditation, so that no reflections of this world form within you; so that no shadow of the world may seize you; so that the world’s laws may not agitate you. Live by the laws of your meditation; drown in them. And the laws of meditation are utterly opposite to the laws of the world.