IRC-Galleria

" People come to me and they ask, "What is right and what is wrong?" I say, "Awareness is right; unawareness is wrong." I don't label actions as wrong and right. I don't say violence is wrong. Sometimes violence can be right. I don't say love is right. Sometimes love can be wrong. Love can be for a wrong person, love can be for a wrong purpose. Somebody loves his country. Now, this is wrong because nationalism is a curse. Somebody loves his religion. He can kill, he can murder, he can burn others' temples. Neither is love always right nor is anger always wrong.


Then what is right and what is wrong? To me, awareness is right. If you are angry with full awareness, even anger is right. And if you are loving with unawareness, even love is not right. So let the quality of awareness be there in every act that you do, in every thought that you think, in every dream that you dream. Let the quality of awareness enter into your being more and more. Become suffused with the quality of awareness. Then whatsoever you do is virtue. Then whatsoever you do is good. Then whatsoever you do is a blessing to you and to the world in which you live.


Let me remind you of a situation that happened in Jesus' life. He took a whip and entered into the great temple of Jerusalem.

A whip in the hand of Jesus...? This is what Buddha means when he says, "an unwounded hand can handle poison." Yes, Jesus can handle a whip, no problem; the whip cannot overpower him. He remains alert, his consciousness is such.

The great temple of Jerusalem had become a place of robbers. There were money-changers inside the temple and they were exploiting the whole country. Jesus alone entered the temple and upturned their boards--the boards of the money-changers--threw their money around and created such turmoil that the money-changers escaped outside the temple. They were many and Jesus was alone, but he was in such a fury, in such a fire! Now, this has been a problem for the Christians: how to explain it?--because their whole effort is to prove that Jesus is a dove, a symbol of peace. How can he take a whip in his hands? How can he be so angry, so enraged, that he upturned the boards of the money-changers and threw them outside the temple? And he must have been afire; otherwise, he was alone--he could have been caught hold of. His energy must have been in a storm; they could not face him. The priests and the business people all escaped outside shouting, "This man has gone mad!"

Christians avoid this story. There is no need to avoid it if you understand: Jesus is so innocent! He is not angry; it is his compassion. He is not violent, he is not destructive; it is his love. The whip in his hand is the whip in the hands of love, compassion.

A man of awareness acts out of his awareness, hence there is no repentance; his action is total. And one of the beauties of the total action is that it does not create karma; it does not create anything; it doesn't leave any trace on you. It is like writing on water: you have not even finished... it is gone. It is not even writing in sand, because that may remain for a few hours if the wind does not come--it is writing on water.

If you can be totally alert, then there is no problem. You can handle poison; then the poison will function as a medicine. In the hands of the wise, poison becomes medicine; in the hands of the fools, even medicine, even nectar, is bound to become poison. If you function out of innocence--not out of knowledgeability but out of childlike innocence--then you can never come to any harm, because it leaves no trace. You remain free of your actions. You live totally and yet no action burdens you."