Sanch Sanch So Sanch #10

Sahajanand, I cannot agree with this aphorism at all. It contains basic confusions. For example: “What is the highest?” Shankaracharya says, “Virtuous conduct.”

The highest is samadhi. Virtuous conduct is the natural outcome, the by-product of samadhi. If there is samadhi, character follows you as your shadow. If someone asks which is more important—you or your shadow?—whatever Adi Shankaracharya may say, I will say: you are. The shadow comes along with you. The shadow is an appendage. Without you it cannot be brought, and even if you want to, you cannot come without it. It is tied to you, but it has no soul; you are the soul. So shall I call the soul the supreme element—or the shadow? Even if it bears Adi Shankaracharya’s seal, what can I do?

Such confused statements have misled and derailed humanity a great deal. Once we declare “virtuous conduct” the highest, people drop concern for samadhi and start trying to be “moral.” But how will character come? From where?

Yes, you can spill ink on the ground and draw a shadow if you like. But that “shadow” won’t be a shadow. It won’t lengthen or shrink with the sun; day and night will make no difference to it. There will be no life in it. It will be dead, inflexible. It won’t adapt to circumstances. It doesn’t even deserve to be called a shadow—just a picture of one.

A shadow too has its own life. A fox woke up at dawn and saw its long shadow in the rising sun. It thought… well, it was a fox after all. If Adi Shankaracharya can think like this, forgive the fox! It thought: If my shadow is so big, then for breakfast today I must have an elephant—or I’ll starve! If not an elephant, at least a camel. The logic is impeccable: if the shadow is so large, the original must be enormous—simple arithmetic. Off it went hunting elephants and camels. By noon, its stomach was touching its spine with hunger. But how to eat before catching an elephant or a camel? Pain can awaken intelligence; suffering has its compassion—one cannot remain lost in suffering as in pleasure. The fox thought, Let me check my shadow again—maybe I mis-saw. By then the sun was overhead; the shadow had shrunk to a tiny patch under its feet. The fox burst out laughing: What a blunder! With such a small shadow, even an ant would fill me!

If you reason from the shadow, this mess is inevitable. Character is the periphery of your life, not its soul. If you value character—as people have for centuries—two outcomes follow. The cunning become hypocrites. They wear masks. They say one thing and do another; there is a split between their professing and their living. Naturally, they must hide that split.

So they have a front door for show and a back door for living. At the front: the smile, the drawing room decor, nice words, etiquette, civilization. At the back: you’ll find a different person—ferocious, wild.

You see it daily. People pray in mosques and worship in temples; then come out and set each other’s shrines on fire. After namaz they can plunge a dagger into another’s chest. No shame, no hesitation. Who is the real person—the one bowing in prayer, or this bloodthirsty one? The bell-ringer offering flowers at the idol’s feet, or the arsonist? It’s the same man doing both.

The clever become hypocrites: say one thing, do the opposite—and the more opposite, the more noise they must make to drown their deeds. Newer masks, painted faces, layers of clothes to conceal their nakedness.

The second outcome of declaring “virtue” supreme is for the simple, guileless people: their lives fill with guilt. They still end up doing what nature makes them do. There is not yet the lamp of samadhi to walk by. They are told, Don’t bump into walls; find the door. Exit only by the door—that is virtue. To bump into the wall is vice. But without light, without the flame of awareness, without the awakening of samadhi, without discrimination—how will one not collide? One will. It’s inevitable. The simple person, not being a deceiver, feels guilt: I am a sinner, a great sinner; I can’t even walk straight; I keep falling; I can’t even find the door. What heinous crimes must I have committed in past lives! How will I be redeemed?

Once guilt settles in, self-respect is lost—the very foundation of all religion. Without self-trust, the ground slips from under one’s feet. Having seen his own falls, he sees everyone else’s through the same lens: exaggerated, distrusting. He concludes: this revolution is beyond me; perhaps only incarnations—Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna, Zarathustra, Jesus—those few who descend from the sky—can do it. We earth-born mud dolls cannot.

“Adam” means red earth; the Hebrew “Adam” comes from the red soil near Jerusalem. God fashioned the first man from that clay—hence Adam; and from this “adam,” “man.” We are clay—red, brown, black, what does it matter? Four days of play; this revolution is beyond us.

With guilt comes self-contempt; and if life must be lived anyway—and wrongly—then why not live it to the full? Why waste time crying? Thus guilt destroys self-esteem. One who doesn’t love himself cannot love anyone. Seeing oneself as a cheat, one sees everyone as a cheat; we have no other yardstick.

That’s why when someone slanders another, you never doubt—you believe at once. But when someone praises another, you raise a thousand objections: How can that be? We’ve seen enough; every drum is hollow. The moment someone says “saint,” suspicion arises. But if someone says, “He’s a thief, a crook,” you say, We already knew! We know everyone’s roots. In truth, you know only your own roots—and are so fed up with yourself that you trust no vows, no assurances, no disciplines. When self-respect goes, respect for others goes. And if life must be lived in disrespect, why hold back? If gambling, then gamble fully; if drinking, why hide? If stealing, then so be it—this is our destiny.

Your religions have produced two kinds of people: hypocrites and the guilty. Humanity is divided almost entirely between them. The hypocrites become your saints and holy men; the simple folk become your “sinners,” meant to sit in congregations listening to high-sounding sermons they don’t believe—knowing it’s all talk, a facade, that inside there must be another story. They listen because the crowd does; not listening harms, listening helps: social prestige, respect. And the hypocrites know well that however much they preach, you won’t understand; they couldn’t reform themselves—how will they reform you?

Thus a vast fraud has arisen—backed by statements like those of Adi Shankaracharya.

He says, “What is highest? Virtuous conduct.”

No. I want to be clear: the highest is samadhi. Where there is samadhi, virtuous conduct is spontaneous. Without samadhi, “virtue” is a paper flower—no fragrance, no life; false colors, painted on; no link with sun and moon, no sap flowing. A paper flower may look like a flower.

But one who has found the roots of samadhi—who has known the inner void and, in that void, recognized his fullness; who has become so silent, so drowned, that when he returns he is new, twice-born, reborn—

Samadhi means: going beyond mind. Then return to the mind—you will still remain beyond. Return to the world—no difference. You will be in the world yet not of it.

Tere qarib tere aastaan se door rahe
Wahin khayal raha, hum jahan se door rahe
Qareeb aaye to khud jane-aitibar the
Wohi jo muddatoñ wahm-o-guman se door rahe
Kise ye fikr ke anjaam-e-ishq kya hoga
Kise ye hosh ke raah-e-ziyan se door rahe
Woh harf-e-shauq jo tamhid-e-aarzoo thehre
Khuda kare ke meri dastan se door rahe
Ye maikada hai yahan mehr-o-mah palte hain
Kaho ke khema-e-zulmat yahan se door rahe
Woh humsafar bhi nihayat aziz hai ‘Taban’
Chale jo saath magar karwaan se door rahe

This is sannyas:
Woh humsafar bhi nihayat aziz hai ‘Taban’
Chale jo saath magar karwaan se door rahe

In the crowd, and yet outside it; walking along—yet apart from the caravan.

Tere qarib tere aastaan se door rahe
Wahin khayal raha, hum jahan se door rahe

Once you taste samadhi, the same silence, the same stillness, the same void is in the marketplace as in the Himalayan cave. The cave may have a little noise; but in the cave of your heart, no ripple—void in its fullness. A mere taste, and life is utterly new. The new style of that life is “virtue.”

My definition: conduct flowing from samadhi is virtue; conduct flowing from non-samadhi is vice. So even if you impose character from above, without the inner taste of samadhi, the slightest scratch will rip it off—a shove, an insult, two demeaning words, and you’ll forget all “virtue.” Not only in great crises; in trifles swords are drawn—over chess or cards, people kill. All were “good people.”

When you hear someone committed suicide, you can’t believe it: he was fine yesterday, humming a film song, wearing perfume—why would he kill himself? You never knew what was accumulating inside; others only saw the surface, not the inner refuse. Likewise murder: How? A gentle man who hesitated to speak harshly suddenly kills! And even he can’t believe it: How did I do it? People say, “I did it in spite of myself.” If you didn’t want to, who did? There’s someone in you besides “you”! Indeed, that someone is ninety-nine percent; you are a thin surface—taught since childhood: sit like this, eat that. You call this “virtue.”

A Marwari elder in my village told me: When we arrange marriages, we first ask how many bankruptcies the groom has declared. If not two or four, what kind of Marwari is he? No standing at all! Each group has its own metrics; what they call “character.”

In Africa people eat insects—ants, termites, cockroaches. I read of an American scientist couple researching such diets. Scientists must go all the way; they began eating the same—cockroach sandwiches—to assess nutrition. At first they were horrified: fry them as you like, they’re still cockroaches! Friends stopped visiting; even their parents stayed away until the research ended. They found cockroaches are protein-rich—can fill deficits. Cockroaches are ancient companions of man; where one is, the other is. Old, eternal bond.

Tribes that eat insects don’t think twice. They collect crickets in the rains, dry and store them—just as you dry vegetables. Among Jains, during Paryushan, green vegetables are forbidden; so they dry them. See the cleverness! Once dried, they’re no longer “green,” then they eat them. The truly clever—

I was a guest in a Shvetambar Jain home during Paryushan and saw someone eating a banana. I said, What are you doing? He said, It’s not green—clearly ripe and yellow. See how “green” is taken to mean color. Poor Mahavira never imagined whose hands his words would fall into! By “green” he meant “sap-filled.”

In China, people have eaten snakes for centuries—cut off the head where the venom sac is, and the rest is relished. Recently in Africa, Bokassa and Idi Amin were caught eating human flesh! When they fled their capitals, refrigerators in their homes contained children’s meat. Idi Amin said nothing is more delicious. Children kept disappearing from Kampala; the kidnapper “gang” turned out to be his own kitchen. He had no compunction—his tribe was cannibal; they had always eaten humans.

A Christian priest was captured by a cannibal tribe in Africa. He tried his old trick: First understand who I am! You’re fortunate—a man of God. I’ll teach you the Bible, give you a taste of religion. They said, We’ve tasted it many times—today we’ll taste it again. What do you mean? We’ll eat you. Religious people are tastier. Come outside: the band is playing, the cauldron’s on. What other taste of religion is there? Digest the religious man—taste religion!

So what will you call character? Muslims fast by day and eat at night in Ramadan. Jains eat by day and won’t drink water after sunset. Who is virtuous? Ramakrishna ate fish and rice. Ask a Jain: can a fish-eater be virtuous? Impossible. Buddha forbade killing, but not eating what has died naturally.

When Dr. Ambedkar argued that India’s Chamars were originally Buddhists forcibly suppressed into a caste, one of his arguments was: only Chamars eat the flesh of dead animals; they carry away carcasses, take the hides for leather, and eat the meat. He argued this follows the Buddha: do not kill—killing is violence; but what has died on its own—where’s the violence in eating it? Mahavira says: even the idea of eating meat is violence; not only the flesh of the dead—merely thinking or dreaming of it is sin, and you’ll rot in hell for it.

What is “character,” then? Muhammad married nine times and permitted Muslims up to four wives—is that virtue? For those who hold monogamy as virtue, how to accept Muhammad as husband of nine? Conversely, the five Pandavas shared one wife. Yet Draupadi is counted among the five great maidens remembered at dawn. How did they divide the week—by days or hours? Perhaps Saturday-Sunday were holidays!

And Krishna had sixteen thousand women—some not even his, some abducted. How to manage such a Kumbh Mela? Even remembering their names would be hard: perhaps numbered—A-1, A-2—or tattooed on their skulls! Yet no Hindu calls Krishna unvirtuous.

What, then, is character? As many peoples, as many codes. That is why I do not insist on character.

Shankaracharya says, “The one element is the nondual Shiva-tattva.”

You can’t name the One. The moment you name it, trouble starts. You say “Shiva,” someone else says “Brahma,” another “Vishnu”—and the quarrel begins. Every word carries its opposite: light/darkness, life/death, auspicious/inauspicious. Words are woven of duality; without duality, words lose meaning. The One must remain nameless. If you call it “light,” you admit darkness; call it “life,” you imply death; call it “Shiva” (auspicious), you imply inauspicious. So it cannot be named.

tatvaṁ kim ekaṁ śivam advitīyaṁ—
No. I would say: nameless. To indicate the nameless, Lao Tzu used “Tao”—a word with no fixed meaning. He says: It has no name; but to communicate, I’ll use “Tao” as a makeshift pointer.

In India we found “Om”—the only “word” not formed from the alphabet, outside the syllabary, a pure symbol, like Tao in China. That’s why Hindus, Jains, Buddhists, Sikhs—all agree on Om. These four religions disagree on everything else. Why agreement on one sound? Because Om belongs to no language, no sect; it is pure sound, a symbol of music itself.

What is the One element? Nameless music—the unstruck sound, anahat nad. I won’t call it Shiva-tattva; “Shiva” belongs to a trinity alongside Brahma and Vishnu. “Shiva” means “auspicious”; where will the inauspicious go? It too is included.

Shankaracharya says, “Which pleasure should be renounced? In every way, the pleasure of woman.”

First, this assumes there is pleasure in woman—which is sheer naivete. What pleasure is there? He assumes it is there and that forsaking it is the greatest renunciation. But if it were truly pleasure, how would you renounce it? One can renounce only suffering. Pleasure is our natural longing; suffering alone can be dropped. Whatever we truly see as suffering starts to fall away; whatever we take as pleasure, we cling to.

To say “renounce the pleasure of woman” concedes that pleasure lies there, and sets up a conflict. In fact, neither woman nor man contains what you imagine—only delusion. Delusions aren’t “renounced”; they are seen. The moment they are seen, they vanish—like taking a rope for a snake. Shankaracharya himself is fond of this example.

In my village there was a Kabirpanthi monk, Swami Sahabdas. His talks delighted me—so wildly mismatched: a patch from here, a brick from there—Bhānumati’s grab bag! I would ask him questions that would force him into stitching up a jumble. “Show me socialism in the Vedas, Swamiji.” Off he’d go proving that socialism, airplanes, railways—everything was born in the Vedas, stolen by the Germans. “But we have the Vedas—cite them.” “Are these the real Vedas? The real ones the Germans stole; these are fakes!”

He constantly used the rope-snake illustration—every learned man has for centuries, since Shankaracharya. “The world is like mistaking a rope for a snake.” One night I decided to test him. He passed daily through the dark lane by my house after his talks; there was no electricity then. I tied a paper snake’s head to a rope, attached a thin black thread, propped up a cot to hide behind, and waited. As he came by, I tugged the thread; the rope slid, the snake’s head moved. How he ran! He slipped and fell. I too ran in panic; the cot fell, I was caught red-handed. He was hurt badly—needed a plaster six weeks.

He dragged me to my father: “Enough! This boy torments me. In my assemblies he asks absurd questions; if I answer, I’m mocked; if I don’t, I’m mocked. Today he went too far—nearly killed me. In the dark, who wouldn’t run from a snake?” I said, “Swamiji, you yourself keep teaching rope-snake delusion; I thought you were so wise—this was just an examination.” He said, “Quiet! Are such exams meant to kill a man?” I said, “At least once you might have thought: rope-snake delusion. Not once—you simply ran! And even if it had been a real snake, it would still be maya by your doctrine. Real or fake, it’s unreal.” From that day he stopped using the rope-snake example—and stopped using that lane!

On the one hand they shout: the world is maya. Yet in this maya, the pleasure of woman is not! There, they say, lies pleasure—and that is to be renounced. I say: what needs to be renounced is the mind—nothing else. Woman, wealth, position, prestige—they are mind’s games. Woman is a game; for woman, man is a game. Getting free of woman or man is not difficult; husbands and wives get free of each other easily. Only other people’s ropes still look like snakes. One recognizes one’s own rope—and stops fantasizing. That is the mind’s issue: drop attachment here, it lands elsewhere. Those mad after wealth easily drop women—their whole passion shifts to money; fresh notes send them into rapture. Power-hungry politicians have no time for spouses. For them, Delhi or the wife? Elections or the wife? This entanglement is for the simple; the shrewd move on to subtler fetishes.

So I won’t say: renouncing the pleasure of woman is the greatest renunciation. If renunciation is the topic, cut at the root: renounce the mind. Renounce mind, and samadhi happens—two sides of one coin.

Shankaracharya asks, “What is the supreme gift? Fearlessness.”

Not very meaningful. To give fearlessness, you must first make someone afraid. Until you frighten, how will you grant “fearlessness”? First threaten, put a knife to his chest, bring him to the brink—then grant fearlessness.

People call Mahavira “full of compassion.” I say: no—he was without anger; compassion requires anger first. People call Buddha “great forgiver.” Wrong—one must first be angry to forgive. Can you forgive without anger?

Mother Teresa wrote me a letter: “I forgive you.” To “forgive,” she must have first boiled within. Someone asks me, “Forgive Mother Teresa.” I cannot—how? I never got angry. Forgiveness is step two; anger is step one. Neither Mahavira nor Buddha “forgave” anyone; we mistook their absence of anger for forgiveness.

Shankaracharya says “fearlessness is the supreme gift.” No. What, then, is the highest giving?

I derive all sutras from samadhi. Renounce mind—samadhi. From samadhi flows love—that is the real benediction. What “abhaya”? Drop the mind—samadhi comes. In samadhi a thousand-petaled lotus opens, and fragrance arises. To call it “charity” is not right either. If someone wants, let him receive; if not, no matter—the fragrance still spreads. A lotus blooms on the lake: whether or not there are spectators, the perfume goes to the winds, climbs the rays of the sun. The cuckoo sings whether or not anyone listens; she doesn’t first check if there’s a poet around.

So when samadhi dawns, like a lamp it sheds light; from samadhi flows love. Freedom from mind gives samadhi; samadhi gives the fragrance of love. Even “giving” is a coarse word for it.

Har ek ranj mein rahat hai aadmi ke liye
Payam-e-maut bhi mo‘jiza hai zindagi ke liye
Chaman mein phool bhi har ek ko nahin milte
Bahar aati hai, lekin kisi-kisi ke liye
Hamari khaak ko daman se jhaadne waale
Sab is maqam se guzarenge zindagi ke liye
Unhiñ ke sheesha-e-dil choor-choor ho ke rahe
Taras rahe the wo duniya mein dosti ke liye
Ye sochta hoon zamane ko kya hua ya Rab
Kisi ke dil mein muhabbat nahin kisi ke liye
Hamare baad andhera rahega mehfil mein
Bahut chiraag jalaoge roshni ke liye
Payam-e-maut bhi mo‘jiza hai zindagi ke liye

Understand—and even the message of death becomes a miracle for life.

Ye sochta hoon zamane ko kya hua ya Rab
Kisi ke dil mein muhabbat nahin kisi ke liye

Nothing new has happened; love has never been common. Only a few—those whose flower of samadhi has bloomed—have known love.

Bahar aati hai, lekin kisi-kisi ke liye
Har ek ranj mein rahat hai aadmi ke liye
Chaman mein phool bhi har ek ko nahin milte

They could be found, but usually aren’t—that’s another matter. The responsibility is ours. With wrong ways of thinking, no flowers will bloom, no fragrance will fly.

If you ask me to sum up Shankaracharya’s whole sutra: the greatest freedom is freedom from the mind. The greatest attainment is samadhi. What is known in samadhi—the nameless, Om, Tao—is the supreme experience. And what spontaneously radiates from samadhi—love—is the supreme “gift.”

Enough for today.