I love Gautama the Buddha
because he represents to me the essential core of religion. He is not the
founder of Buddhism - Buddhism is a byproduct - but he is the beginner of a
totally different kind of religion in the world. He's the founder of a religionless
religion. He has propounded not religion but religiousness. And this is a great
radical change in the history of human consciousness.
Before Buddha there were
religions but never a pure religiousness. Man was not yet mature. With Buddha,
humanity enters into a mature age. All human beings have not yet entered into
that, that's true, but Buddha has heralded the path; Buddha has opened the
gateless gate. It takes time for human beings to understand such a deep
message.
Buddha's message is the deepest
ever. Nobody has done the work that Buddha has done, the way he has done.
Nobody else represents pure fragrance. Other founders of religions, other
enlightened people, have compromised with their audience. Buddha remains
uncompromised, hence his purity. He does not care what you can understand, he
cares only what the truth is. And he says it without being worried whether you
understand it or not. In a way this looks hard; in another way this is great
compassion.
Truth has to be said as it is.
The moment you compromise, the moment you bring truth to the ordinary level of
human consciousness, it loses its soul, it becomes superficial, it becomes a
dead thing. You cannot bring truth to the level of human beings; human beings
have to be led to the level of truth. That is Buddha's great work.
Twenty-five centuries ago, just
some day early in the morning - just like this day - this sutra was born.
Twelve hundred and fifty monks were present. It happened in the city of
Sravasti. It was a great city of those days. The word Sravasti means the city
of glory. It was one of the glorious cities of ancient India; it had nine
hundred thousand families in it.
Now that city has completely
disappeared. A very very small village exists - you will not find even its name
on any map; even the name has disappeared. Now it is called Sahet- Mahet. It is
impossible to believe that such a great city existed there. This is the way of
life - things go on changing. Cities turn into cemeteries, cemeteries turn into
cities... life is a flux.
Buddha must have loved this
city of Sravasti, because out of forty-five years of his ministry he stayed in
Sravasti twenty-five years. He must have loved the people. The people must have
been of a very evolved consciousness. All the great sutras of Buddha, almost
all, were born in Sravasti.
This sutra - The Diamond Sutra
- was also born in Sravasti. The Sanskrit name of this sutra is Vajrachchedika
Prajnaparamita Sutra. It means perfection of wisdom which cuts like a
thunderbolt. If you allow, Buddha can cut you like a thunderbolt. He can behead
you. He can kill you and help you to be reborn.
A buddha has to be both - a
murderer and a mother. On the one hand he has to kill, on the other hand he has
to give new being to you. The new being is possible only when the old has been
destroyed. Only on the ashes of the old the new is born. Man is a phoenix. The
mythological bird phoenix is not just a mythology, it is a metaphor. It stands
for man. That phoenix exists nowhere except in man. Man is the being who has to
die to be reborn.
That's what Jesus said to
Nicodemus. Nicodemus was a professor, a learned man, a rabbi, a member of the
board that controlled the great temple of Jerusalem. One dark night he came to
see Jesus. He could not gather courage to come to him in the day time; he was
afraid what people would say. He was so respectable, so much respected. Going
to a vagabond teacher?... going to somebody who is hated by all the rabbis and
all the learned people?... going to somebody who moves with thieves and drunkards
and prostitutes? But something in him was very desirous to see this man. maybe
he had seen Jesus walking, coming to the temple. He must have felt something
deep in his unconscious for this man.
He could not hold himself back.
One night when everybody had
left, when even the disciples had gone to sleep, he reached Jesus and he asked,
"What should I do so that I can also enter into the kingdom of God?"
And Jesus said, "Unless
you die nothing is possible. If you die, only then can you enter into the
kingdom of God. You will have to die as you are, only then can you be born as
really your inner being is."
The ego has to die for the
essential being to surface. That is the meaning of Vajrachchedika
Prajnaparamita. It cuts like a thunderbolt. In one stroke it can destroy you.
It is one of the greatest sermons of Buddha. Get in tune with it.
Before we enter into the sutra,
a few things to be understood that will help you to understand it. Gautama the
Buddha has started a spirituality that is nonrepressive and nonideological.
That is a very rare phenomenon. The ordinary kind of spirituality, the garden
variety, is very repressive. It depends on repression. It does not transform
man, it only cripples man. It does not liberate man, it enslaves man. It is
oppressive, it is ugly.
Listen to these words of Thomas
a Kempis, author of Imitation of Christ. He writes: "The more violence you
do to yourself, the greater will be your growth in grace. There is no other way
save of daily mortification. To despise oneself is the best and the most
perfect counsel." There are thousands of saints down the ages who will
agree with Thomas a Kempis. And Thomas a Kempis is pathological.
Or the French priest Bossuet
says: "Cursed be the earth! Cursed be the earth! A thousand times cursed
be the earth." Why? Why should the earth be cursed? Life has to be cursed.
These people have been thinking as if God is against life, as if life is
against God. Life IS God, there is no antagonism, there is no separation even.
They are not different things, they are two names for one reality.
Remember this: Buddha is
nonrepressive. And if you find Buddhist monks to be repressive, remember, they
have not understood Buddha at all. They have brought their own pathology into
his teachings. And Buddha is non-ideological. He gives no ideology, because all
ideologies are of the mind. And if ideologies are of the mind, they cannot take
you beyond the mind. No ideology can become a bridge to reach beyond the mind.
All ideologies have to be dropped, only then the mind will be dropped.
Buddha believes in no ideals
either - because all ideals create tension and conflict in man. They divide,
they create anguish. You are one thing and they want you to be something else.
Between these two you are stretched, torn apart. Ideals create misery. Ideals
create schizophrenia. The more ideals there are, the more people will be
schizophrenic, they will be split. Only a nonideological consciousness can
avoid being split. And if you are split how can you be happy? how can you be
silent? how can you know anything of peace, of stillness?
The ideological person is
continuously fighting with himself. Each moment there is conflict. He lives in
conflict, he lives in confusion, because he cannot decide who really he is -
the ideal or the reality. He cannot trust himself, he becomes afraid of
himself, he loses confidence. And once a man loses confidence he loses all
glory. Then he is ready to become a slave to anybody - to any priest, to any
politician. Then he is just ready, waiting to fall in some trap.
Why do people become followers?
Why are people trapped? Why do people fall for a Joseph Stalin or an Adolf
Hitler or a Mao Zedong? Why in the first place? They have become so shaky, the
ideological confusion has shaken them from their very roots. Now they cannot
stand on their own, they want somebody to lean on. They cannot move on their
own, they don't know who they are. They need somebody to tell them that they
are this or that. They need an identity to be given to them. They have
forgotten their self and their nature.
Adolf Hitlers and Joseph
Stalins and Mao Zedongs will be coming again and again until and unless man
drops all ideologies. And remember, when I say all ideologies, I mean ALL
ideologies. I don't make any distinction between noble ideologies and not so
noble.
All ideologies are dangerous.
In fact the noble ideologies are more dangerous, because they have a more
seductive power, they are more persuasive. But ideology as such is a disease,
exactly a dis-ease, because you become two: the ideal and vou. And the you that
you are is condemned,,, and the you that you are not is praised. Now you are
getting into trouble. Now sooner or later you will be neurotic, psychotic or
something.
Buddha has given a
nonrepressive way of life, and nonideological too. That's why he does not talk
about God, he does not talk about heaven, he does not talk about any future. He
does not give you anything to hold onto, he takes everything away from you. He
takes even your self. He goes on taking things away, and finally he takes even
the idea of self, I, ego. He leaves only pure emptiness behind. And this is
very difficult.
This is very difficult because
we have completely forgotten how to give. We only know how to take. We go on
taking everything. I TAKE the exam and I TAKE the wife and even I TAKE the
afternoon nap - a thing which cannot be taken, you have to surrender to it.
Sleep comes only when you surrender. Even a wife, a husband, you go on taking.
You are not respectful. The wife is not a property. You can take a house - how
can you take a wife or a husband? But our language shows our mind. We don't
know how to give - how to give in, how to let go, how to let things happen.
Buddha takes all ideals away,
the whole future away, and finally he takes the last thing that is very very
difficult for us to give - he takes your very self, leaves a pure, innocent,
virgin emptiness behind. That virgin emptiness he calls nirvana. Nirvana is not
a goal, it is just your emptiness. When you have dropped all that you have
accumulated, when you don't hoard anymore, when you are no longer a miser and a
clinger, then suddenly that emptiness erupts. It has always been there.
Hakuin is right: "From the
very beginning, all beings are buddhas." That emptiness is there. You have
accumulated junk so that emptiness is not visible. It is just like in your
house you can go on accumulating things; then you stop seeing any space, then
there is no more space. A day comes when even to move in the house becomes
difficult; to live becomes difficult because there is no space. But space has
not gone anywhere. Think of it, meditate over it. The space has not gone
anywhere; you have accumulated too much furniture and the TV and the radio and
the radiogram and the piano and everything - but the space has not gone
anywhere. Remove the furniture and the space is there; it has always been
there. It was hidden by the furniture but it was not destroyed. It has not left
the room, not for a single moment. So is your inner emptiness, your nirvana,
your nothingness.
Buddha does not give you
nirvana as an ideal. Buddha liberates instead of coercing. Buddha teaches you
how to live - not for any goal, not to achieve anything, but to be blissful
herenow - how to live in awareness. Not that awareness is going to give you something
- awareness is not a means to anything; it is the end in itself, the means and
the end both. Its value is intrinsic.
Buddha does not teach you
otherworldliness. This has to be understood. People are worldly; the priests go
on teaching the other world. The other world is also not very otherworldly, it
cannot be, because it is just an improved model of the same world. From where
can you create the other world? You know only this world. You can improve, you
can decorate the other world better, you can remove a few things that are ugly
here and you can replace a few things which you think will be beautiful, but it
is going to be a creation out of the experience of this world. So your other
world is not very different, cannot be. It is a continuity. It comes out of
your mind; it is a game of imagination. You will have beautiful women there -
of course more beautiful than you have here. You will have the same kinds of
pleasures there - maybe more permanent, stable, but they will be the same kinds
of pleasures. You will have better food, more tasty - but you will have food.
You will have houses, maybe made of gold - but they will be houses. You will
repeat the whole thing again.
Just go into the scriptures and
see how they depict the heaven and you will find the same world improved upon.
A few touches here and a few touches there, but it is not in any way
otherworldly. That's why I say the otherworldliness of other religions is not
very otherworldly; it is this world projected into the future. It is born out of
the experience of this world. There will not be misery and poverty and illness
and paralysis and blindness and deafness. Things that you don't like here will
not be there, and things that you like will be there and in abundance, but it
is not going to be anything new.
Mind cannot conceive of
anything new. Mind is incapable of conceiving the new. Mind lives in the old,
mind IS the old. The new never happens through the mind. The new happens only
when mind is not functioning, when mind is not controlling you, when mind has
been put aside. The new happens only when the mind is not interfering.
But all your scriptures talk
about the heaven - and the heaven or the paradise or FIRDAUS or SWARGA, is
nothing but the same story. It may be printed on a better art paper, with
better ink, in a more improved press, with more colorful illustrations, but the
story is the same; it cannot be otherwise.
Buddha does not talk of
otherworldliness or the other world. He simply teaches you how to be here in
this world; how to be here alert, conscious, mindful, so that nothing impinges
upon your emptiness; so that your inner emptiness is not contaminated,
poisoned; so that you can live here and yet remain uncontaminated, unpolluted;
so that you can be in the world and the world will not be in you.
The otherworldly spirituality
is bound to be oppressive, destructive, sado-masochistic - in short,
pathological. Buddha's spirituality has a different flavor to it - the flavor
of no ideal, the flavor of no future, the flavor of no other world. It is a
flower here and now. It asks for nothing. All is already given. It simply
becomes more alert so you can see more, you can hear more, you can be more.
Remember, you are only in the
same proportion as you are conscious. If you want to be more, be more
conscious. Consciousness imparts being. Unconsciousness takes being away. When
you are drunk you lose being. When you are fast asleep you lose being.
Have you not watched it? When
you are alert you have a different quality - you are centered, rooted. When you
are alert you feel the solidity of your being, it is almost tangible. When you
are unconscious, just dragging by, sleepy, your sense of being is less.
It is always in the same
proportion as the consciousness is. So Buddha's whole message is to be
conscious. And for no other reason, just for the sake of being conscious -
because consciousness imparts being, consciousness creates you. And a you so
different from you that you are, that you cannot imagine. A you where 'I' has
disappeared, where no idea of self exists, nothing defines you... a pure
emptiness, an infinity, unbounded emptiness.
This Buddha calls the state of
meditation - SAMMASAMADHI, right state of meditation, when you are all alone.
But remember, aloneness is not loneliness. Have you ever thought about this
beautiful word, alone? It means all one. It is made of two words - all and one.
In aloneness you become one with the all. Aloneness has nothing of loneliness
in it. You are not lonely when you are alone. You are alone but not lonely -
because you are one with the all; how can you be lonely? You don't miss others,
true. Not that you have forgotten them, not that you don't need them, not that
you don't care about them, no. You don't remember others because you are one
with them. All the distinction between one and all is lost. One has become the
all and all has become one. This English word alone is immensely beautiful.
Buddha says sammasamadhi is
aloneness. The right meditation is to be so utterly alone that you are one with
all. Let me explain it to you. If you are empty your boundaries disappear
because emptiness can have no boundaries. Emptiness can only be infinite.
Emptiness cannot have any weight, emptiness cannot have any color, emptiness
cannot have any name, emptiness cannot have any form. When you are empty, how
will you divide yourself from others? - because you don't have any color, you
don't have any name, you don't have any form, you don't have any boundaries.
How are you going to make any distinctions? When you are empty you are one with
all. You have melted into existence, existence has merged with you. You are no
more an island, you have become the vast continent of being.
Buddha's whole message is
condensed in this one word - sammasamadhi, right meditation. What is right meditation
and what is wrong meditation? If the meditator exists then it is wrong
meditation. If the meditator is lost in meditation then it is right meditation.
Right meditation brings you to emptiness and aloneness.
This sutra... this whole sutra
is concerned with how to become utterly empty. This is his basic gift to the
world.