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03. Enlightenment



Enlightenment
Why the Buddha waits at the gates of heaven

Whatsoever you do, do it with deep alertness; then even small things become sacred. Then cooking or cleaning become sacred; they become worship. It is not a question of what you are doing, the question is how you are doing it. You can clean the floor like a robot, a mechanical thing; you have to clean it, so you clean it--then you miss something beautiful. Cleaning the floor could have been a great experience--you missed it; the floor is cleaned but something that could have happened within you has not happened. If you were aware, alert, not only the floor but you yourself would have felt a deep cleansing.

Clean the floor full of awareness, luminous with awareness. Work or sit or walk, but one thing has to be a continuous thread: make more and more moments of your life luminous with awareness. Let the candle of awareness burn in each moment, in each act. The cumulative effect is what enlightenment is. The cumulative effect, all the moments together, all small candles together, become a great source of light.

The story is that when Gautam Buddha died he reached the doors of paradise. Those doors rarely open, only once in a while, in centuries--visitors don't come every day, and whenever someone comes to those doors the whole of paradise celebrates it. One more conscious-ness has attained to flowering, and existence is far richer than it has ever been before.

The doors were opened, and the other enlightened people who had entered into paradise before... because in Buddhism there is no God, but these enlightened people are godly--so there are as many gods as enlightened people. They had all gathered at the door with music, with song and with dance. They wanted to welcome Gautam Buddha but to their amazement he was standing with his back to the gate. His face was still looking toward the far shore that he had left behind.

They said, "This is strange. For whom are you waiting?"
He's reported to have said, "My heart is not so small. I'm waiting for all those I have left behind who are struggling on the way. They are my fellow travelers. You can keep the doors closed--you will have to wait a little for the celebration of my entering into paradise, because I have decided to enter this door as the last man. When everybody else has become enlightened and entered the door, when there is nobody left outside, then my time will have come to enter."

This story is a story--it cannot be an actual fact. It is not within your hands; once you have become enlightened you will have to enter into the universal source of life. It is not a question of your choice or decision. But the story is that he is still trying, even after his death. This story arose out of what he had said he was going to do on the last day before his death--that he would wait for you all.

He cannot wait here any longer, he has already waited over his time. He should have been gone by now but, seeing your misery and your suffering, he somehow kept himself together. But it has become more and more impossible. He will have to leave you--reluctantly--but he will wait for you on the other shore; he will not enter paradise, it is a promise: "So don't forget that for you, I will be standing there for centuries. But hurry, don't let me down, and don't let me wait too long."

53. Play



Play
Krishna's challenge to Arjuna

Your mind goes on playing infinitely-- the whole thing is just like a dream in an empty room. While meditating, one has to look at the mind just frolicking, just like children playing and jumping out of overflowing energy, that's all. Thoughts jumping, frolicking, just a play--don't be serious about them. Even if a bad thought is there, don't feel guilty. Or, if there is a very great thought, a very good thought--that you want to serve humanity and transform the whole world, and you want to bring heaven onto earth--don't get too much ego through it, don't feel that you have become great. This is just a frolicking mind. Sometimes it goes down, sometimes it comes up--it is just overflowing energy, taking many shapes and forms.

The dimension of play has to be applied to your whole life. Whatsoever you are doing, be there in that activity so totally that the end is irrelevant. The end will come, it has to come, but it is not on your mind. You are playing, you are enjoying.

That's what Krishna means--during the Mahabharata, the great war that is chronicled in the Gita--when he tells his disciple Arjuna to leave the future in the hands of the Divine: "The result of your activity is in the hands of the Divine, you simply do." This "simply doing" becomes a play.

That's what Arjuna finds difficult to understand, because he says that if it is just play then why kill, why fight? But Krishna's whole life is just a play; you cannot find such a nonserious man anywhere. His whole life is just a play, a game, a drama. He is enjoying everything but he is not serious about it. He is enjoying it intensely but he is not worried about the result. What happens is irrelevant.

It is difficult for Arjuna to understand Krishna because Arjuna calculates, he thinks in terms of the end result. He says in the beginning of the Gita, "This whole thing seems to be absurd. On both sides my friends and my relatives are standing to fight. Whosoever wins, it will be a loss because my family, my relatives, my friends will be destroyed. Even if I win, it will not be worth anything because to whom am I going to show my victory? Victories are meaningful because friends, relatives, family will enjoy them. But there will be no one, the victory will be just over dead bodies. Who will appreciate it? Who will say, 'Arjuna, you have done a great deed'? So whether I am victorious or I am defeated, it seems absurd. The whole thing is nonsense." He wants to renounce. He is deadly serious, and anyone who calculates will be that deadly serious.

The setting of the Gita is unique. War is the most serious affair. You cannot be playful about it, because lives are involved, millions of lives are involved--you cannot be playful. And Krishna insists that even there you have to be playful. You don't think about what will happen in the end, you just be here and now. You just be a warrior, playing. Don't get worried about the result because the result is in the hands of the Divine.

And it is not even the point whether the result is in the hands of the Divine or not--the point is that it should not be in your hands, you should not carry it. If you carry it then your life cannot become meditative.

01. No-Mind



No-Mind
The ultimate and the inexpressible

The state of no-mind is the state of the divine. God is not a thought but the experience of thoughtlessness. It is not a content in the mind; it is the explosion when the mind is content-less. It is not an object that you can see; it is the very capacity to see. It is not the seen but the seer. It is not like the clouds that gather in the sky, but the sky when there are no clouds. It is that empty sky.

When the consciousness is not going out to any object, when there is nothing to see, nothing to think, just emptiness all around, then one falls upon oneself. There is nowhere to go--one relaxes into one's source, and that source is God.

Your inner being is nothing but the inner sky. The sky is empty, but it is the empty sky that holds all, the whole existence, the sun, the moon, the stars, the earth, the planets. It is the empty sky that gives space to all that is. It is the empty sky that is the background of all that exists. Things come and go and the sky remains the same.

In exactly the same way, you have an inner sky; it is also empty. Clouds come and go, planets are born and disappear, stars arise and die, and the inner sky remains the same, untouched, untarnished, unscarred. We call that inner sky sakshin, the witness--and that is the whole goal of meditation.

Go in, enjoy the inner sky. Remember, whatsoever you can see, you are not it. You can see thoughts, then you are not thoughts; you can see your feelings, then you are not your feelings; you can see your dreams, desires, memories, imaginations, projections, then you are not them. Go on eliminating all that you can see. Then one day the tremendous moment arrives, the most significant moment of one's life, when there is nothing left to be rejected. All the seen has disappeared and only the seer is there. That seer is the empty sky.

To know it is to be fearless, and to know it is to be full of love. To know it is to be God, is to be immortal.

In the midst of life's wild and quickly flowering currents, I remain centered, allowing the rainbow bridge of opportunity to connect me with my destiny.

Tässä vaiheessa ajattelin kertoa muutamia perusasioita kohteestamme. Kun olen ennenkin ollut.
Matka-aika kannattaa käyttää hyvin, koska matkalla oleminen on enemmän kuin perille pääseminen.
Silmät kannattaa avata. Silmien kautta valo pääsee aivoihin ja se tuntuu hyvältä.Katso oikealle ja vasemmalle ja sinnekin minne ei saisi katsoa. Näytä silmillesi jotain mitä ne eivät ole ennen nähneet, ja näkö tarkentuu.

Eksyminen on suositeltavaa.
Käänny tämän tästä väärästä risteyksestä. Oli Kolumbuskin matkalla Intiaan ja sinne hän myös luuli päässeensä.

Varo liikaa varovaisuutta. Turistiripuli menee pillereillä ohi, mutta käyttämättömästä elämästä ei saa rahojaan takaisin.

Opettele silloin tällöin yksi uusi juomalaulu, yksi uusi vitsi ja yksi uusi tanssi ja niin tehtyäsi tulet huomaamaan, että niille syntyy käyttöä.

Opettele sanomaan “minä rakastan sinua” ja pian huomaat, että tarvitset sitä taitoa usein.
Opettele sanomaan “ei” silloin kun pelkäät – ja “kyllä” silloin kun pelkäät turhaan.
Sano usein “kyllä”. Se tekee sinut onnekkaaksi.
Sano ”kyllä kiitos”. Se tekee muutkin onnelliseksi.

Huomaa se aita, jonka mukavuudenhalu rakentaa sinun ja kaiken uuden välille. Ei sitä siinä ennen ollut, muuten et olisi jutellut puolisosi kanssa ensimmäistä kertaa.

Lupaa itsellesi taas uusia asioita. Naudan- ja ranskankieli ovat kokeilemisen arvoisia.

Syö joskus oikein epäterveellisesti ja useammin terveellisesti. Juo muutakin kuin kahvia, mutta juovu myös sadevedestä. Syö enemmän lumihiutaleita kuin kaviaaria. Kokeile millaista on olla nälissään.

Katso enemmän unia kuin televisiota.

Katso televisiota vain silloin, kun se ei pidä sinua tyhmänä. Tyhmyys tekee tyhmäksi ja uusia aivoja on vaikea saada. Vaihda kanavaa. Sulje televisio.

Mene ulos.

Älä naura sauvakävelijöille, sillä sauvakävely vaatii pokkaa.
Älä naura rullalautailijoille, sillä heillä on uskonto. Kokeile molempia.
Naura. Jos olet oikein vahva, naura itsellesi. Ja ellet ole vahva, muista että itselle nauraminen tekee vahvaksi.

Itke kerran kuukaudessa. Se poistaa elimistöstä kuona-aineita ja tekee hiuksistasi jopa 35% tuuheampia.

Ei kannata uskoa kaikkea, mitä televisiossa sanotaan.

Suhtaudu häkkeihin epäillen. Jos pitää marsua yksin tyhjässä häkissä, se sairastuu ja kuolee. Päästä marsusi häkistä, edes silloin tällöin. Päästä rakkaasi marsu häkistä mahdollisimman usein.

Liskoista en sano mitään.

Hyvät matkakumppanit. Minulle on kerrottu, että elämällä on viimeinen käyttöpäivä.
Ja että nyt ennen kuin on myöhäistä, pitäisi repäistä, karata ja ajaa avoautolla auringonlaskuun.
Mutta se mitä olen täällä nähnyt, kertoo minulle ettei tarvitse.
Ei tarvitse tehdä suurtekoja, ei tulla uskoon, ei edes vaihtaa aviopuolisoa tai autoa, vaikka monet niin yrittävätkin.
Pidä silmät auki ja korvat höröllä. Hanki otsaan ryppyjä ja poskeen kuoppia.

Eläminen tapahtuu tekemällä pieniä liikkeitä.

" 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."