There Is Nothing Like Lust

THE ESSENCE OF THE RELIGION OF BUDDHA IS AWARENESS. There is no prayer in it, there cannot be - because there is no God. And there cannot be any prayer in it because prayer is always motivated. Prayer is a form of desire, a form of lust.

Prayer has deep down hidden in it the very cause of misery. The cause of misery is that we are not contented as we are. The cause of misery is that we would like a different type of life, a different situation, a different world, and the world that is before us pales down before our imagination. The cause of misery is imagination, desire, hope. And in prayer all the causes are present, so there is no possibility for prayer in Buddha's religion. Only awareness is the key. So we have to understand what awareness is.

When you pray, you ask for something. When you meditate, you meditate upon something. But when you are aware, you are simply centred in your being. The other is not important at all. The other is irrelevant. You are simply aware.

Awareness has no object to it. It is pure subjectivity. It is a grounding in your being, it is a centring in your being. Standing there inside your being, you burn bright. Your flame is without any smoke. In your light the whole life becomes clear.

In that clarity is silence. In that clarity, time ceases to be. In that clarity, the world disappears. Because in that clarity there is no desire, no motivation. You simply are... not wanting anything whatever. Not wanting any future. Not wanting any better world. Not wanting heaven, MOKSHA. Not wanting God. Not wanting knowledge, liberation. You simply are.

Awareness is a pure presence, a centred consciousness. Buddha's whole effort is how to make you centred, grounded, a flame without smoke, a flame which knows no wavering. In that light, everything becomes clear and all illusions disappear and all dreams become non-existential. And when the dreaming mind stops, there is truth.

Remember it: only when the dreaming mind has stopped is there truth. Why?

Because the dreaming mind continuously projects and distorts that which is. If you look at a thing with desire, you never look at the thing as it is. Your desire starts playing games with you.

A woman passes by, a beautiful woman, or a man passes by, a handsome man - suddenly there is desire: to possess her, to possess him. Then you cannot see the reality. Then your very desire creates a dream around the object. Then you start seeing the way you would like to see. Then you start projecting - the other becomes a screen and your deepmost desires are projected. You start colouring the object; then you don't see that which is. You start seeing visions, you start moving into fantasy.

Of course, this fantasy is bound to be shattered; when the reality erupts, your dreaming mind will be shattered. It happens many times. You fall in love with a woman; one day suddenly the dream has disappeared. The woman does not look so beautiful as she used to look. You cannot believe how you were deceived into it. You start finding faults with the woman. You start finding rationalizations - as if she tricked you into it, as if she deceived; as if she pretended to be beautiful while she was not. Nobody is cheating you, nobody can cheat you - except your own desiring and dreaming mind. You created the illusion. You never saw the reality of the woman.Sooner or later reality will win over.

That's how all love affairs are always on the rocks. And lovers become afraid, by and by, to see the reality - they avoid. The wife avoids the husband, the husband avoids the wife. They don't look direct. They are afraid. They are already aware that the dream has disappeared. Now, don't rock the boat. Now, avoid each other.

I have heard:

A man was very much worried about his wife. He had heard rumours that she was moving with somebody. Naturally, he was disturbed. He asked a detective to follow the woman and to make a film: with whom she is moving, what they are doing.

Within a few weeks, the detective was back with the film ready. The film was shown to the man. He watched it; again and again he would shake his head as if he could not believe it. The wife was swimming with somebody, was going to a movie, hugging, kissing, making love to the man, and he was shaking his head in tremendous disbelief. The detective could not contain himself: "Why does he go on shaking his head?"

Finally, when the film was over, the man said, "I cannot believe it!"

The detective said, "This is too much - you have seen the film, now what more proof do you need?"

He said, "Don't misunderstand me. I cannot believe that my wife can make somebody so happy! Now try to find out what that man sees in my wife, because I have lived with her and I don't see anything at all. What does this man see in her?"

Husbands stop seeing things that they used to see in their wives. Wives stop seeing things in their husbands that they used to see. What happens? The reality remains the same, only against the reality the dream cannot win for ever. Sooner or later the dream IS shattered. And that happens in all directions.

You are after money, you are dreaming about money; you never look at the people who have money, you don't see them. You are just after money. You think when the money is there everything will be beautiful. Then you will rest and then you will enjoy, and then you will celebrate and sing and dance, and do whatsoever you always wanted to do when there was no money to do it and no opportunity to do it.

But have you ever looked at people who have money? They are not dancing, they are not celebrating. They don't look happy. It is possible that sometimes you may come across a beggar who looks happy, but it is impossible to come across a rich man who looks happy. It is almost impossible to find a rich man who is happy. Because the beggar can still dream, that's why he can be happy. The beggar can still hope, that's why he can still be happy. He can believe that tomorrow things will be better, or the day after tomorrow things are going to be better.

There is future for the beggar, but for a rich man the whole future has disappeared. He has attained whatsoever he wanted to attain, and there is nothing in it. When the money is piled up, he suddenly feels frustrated.

Whatsoever he was seeing in the money, now he can no longer find in it. That dream has disappeared.

Man continuously dreams for power, prestige, respectability. And whenever he gets it, there is frustration. The happiest people are those who never attain to their desires. The unhappiest people are those who have succeeded in attaining their desires - then there is frustration.

The nature of desire is dreaming, and you can dream only when things are not there. You can dream about the neighbour's wife - how can you dream about your own wife? Have you ever dreamt about your own wife? It never happens.

You can dream about somebody else's wife. HE may be dreaming about your wife.

Whatsoever is far away looks beautiful. Come closer, and things start changing.

Reality is very shattering.

Buddha says that to be aware means not to dream, to be aware means to drop this unconscious sleep in which we live ordinarily. We are somnambulists, sleep- walkers. We go on living, but our living is very superficial. Deep down there are dreams and dreams and dreams. An undercurrent of dreaming goes on - and that undercurrent goes on corrupting our vision. That undercurrent of dreaming goes on making our eyes cloudy. That undercurrent of dreams goes on making our heads muddled.

A person who lives in a sort of sleep can never be intelligent - and awareness is the purest flame of intelligence. A man who lives in sleep becomes more and more stupid. If you live in stupor, you will become stupid, you will become dull.

This dullness has to be destroyed. And it can be destroyed only by becoming more aware. Walk with more awareness. Eat with more awareness. Talk with more awareness. Listen with more awareness. I have heard:

Once there was a mother monkey who had a philosophic turn of mind. This would make her forgetful and often inattentive to her baby whose name was Charles. Like many modern mothers, she just did not take enough care, distracted as she was by her thoughts. Nevertheless, she went through the routine as her mother had done before her, but not in the same spirit. She just hitched him on her back and absently scaled the palms. So there it was. And as she rummaged amongst the more midding nuts, revolving matters in her mind, baby just slipped off, with all his young life before him too.

On the way down, Charles, who also tended to brood, called up, "Mother, why are we here?"

"We are here," she observed, "to hang on."

We are here to hang on - all his life a sleepy person is doing only that. He goes on trying to hang on - with hope, with dream, with future. He goes on somehow hanging around, as if that is the only goal in life, as if just to be here is enough. It is not enough. Just to be alive is not enough - unless you come to understand what life is. Just to be here is not enough, unless you are so fully aware of being here that in that awareness is ecstasy, that in that awareness is contentment, that in that awareness is peace.

A man can live in two ways. One is just to go on hanging around. Or, to be more aware: why I am here, and who I am. Buddha says the whole of religion is nothing but a tremendous effort to become aware.

The first sutra:

THE BUDDHA SAID:

"THERE IS NOTHING LIKE LUST.

LUST MAY BE SAID TO BE THE MOST POWERFUL PASSION."

PEOPLE CAN BE DIVIDED IN TWO CATEGORIES very easily and very scientifically. People whose whole life is sex-oriented; whatsoever they do, whatsoever they say, is just superficial: deep down remains their obsession with sex. It starts when you are a small child not even aware of what sex is. Children start playing around, and children start learning things around. And it continues the whole life. And when people are dying in their old age, then too they remain sex-obsessed.

This is one of my observations, that when a person is dying you can see in his face, in his eyes, what type of life he has lived. If he is dying in a reluctant way, resistant, fighting against death, does not want to die, feels helpless, wants to cling to life, then his has remained a sex-obsessed life. And in that moment of great crisis, in that moment of death, all his sexuality will surface in his consciousness.

People die thinking of sex; ninety-nine per cent of people die thinking of sex. You will be surprised. Only rarely is there one person who dies not thinking of sex. A person who dies thinking of sex is immediately reborn - because his whole idea is nothing but an obsession with sex. Immediately he enters into a womb. And this has to be so because in the moment of death your whole life becomes condensed. Whatsoever you have lived for simply has to be encountered in the moment of death.

If you have lived a life of awareness, then death is very relaxed, peaceful, graceful; then there is an elegance and grace to it. Then one simply slips into it, welcoming it. There is no resistance - there is beauty. There is no conflict - there is cooperation. One simply cooperates with death.

A sexual person is afraid of death because death is against sex. This has to be understood. Sex is birth; death is against sex, because death will destroy whatsoever birth has given to you. Death is NOT against life. Let me remind you - in your mind this is the dichotomy, life and death, that is wrong - death is not directly opposed to life. Death is directly opposed to sex, because sex is synonymous with birth; birth is out of sex. Death is against birth; death is against sex. Death is not against life.

If you live a life of awareness, by and by the energy that was moving in sexuality is transformed. Not that you have to transform it - just by being aware, dreams disappear; exactly as you bring a burning torch into the room and the darkness disappears. Sex is like darkness in your being. It can exist only if you are unaware. And Buddha says:

"THERE IS NOTHING LIKE THAT, NOTHING LIKE LUST. LUST MAY BE SAID TO BE THE MOST POWERFUL PASSION."

It starts very early. If you listen to the Freudians, and they have to be listened to because they are more right than your so-called saints... your saints may be telling you convenient and comfortable truths, but truth is never convenient and never comfortable. Only lies are convenient and comfortable. Freud is telling very uncomfortable truths. Truth is uncomfortable, because you have lived a life of lies.

Whenever somebody says a truth it shocks you, it hits deep, it hits on your lies, it makes you uneasy, uncomfortable. You start protecting your lies. When Freud asserted this, that a child from the very beginning is sexual, he was opposed all over the world. All so-called religious people opposed him. Now, I cannot believe it, that a religious person can oppose such a tremendous truth.

A child is BORN in sex, HAS to be sexual. A child is OUT of sex, HAS to be sexual. And children start preparing for their sexual life. I was reading a beautiful story:

A little four-year-old girl and a three-year-old boy walked hand in hand up to the front of their neighbour's house. "We are playing house," the little girl said when the neighbour opened the door. "This is my husband and I am his wife.

May we come in?"

The lady was enchanted with the scene. "Do come in," she said.

Once inside, she offered the children some lemonade and cookies, which they gracefully accepted. When a second glass of lemonade was offered, the little girl refused by saying, "No thanks - we have to go now - my husband just wet his pants."

It starts very early: the husband and the wife and playing house. They are preparing. And it goes to the very end.

Another story:

The octogenarian went to the psychiatrist to complain about her husband's impotence.

"And how old is your husband?" the doctor asked.

"He's ninety."

"And when did you first notice his disinterest in you physically?"

"Well," she said, "the first time was last night - and again this morning."

A ninety-year-old man, and the wife is worried about his impotence - and she has noticed it last night and this morning too. It goes on - the whole life is obsessed with sex, from beginning to end.

You gain energy by eating food, by breathing oxygen, by exercise; by living you create energy. Man is a dynamo. He continuously creates energy. And when this energy accumulates in your being, you are uneasy, you want to throw it out - because it feels like a burden. Sex is simply used as a relief. Now this is foolish.

On the one hand, you go on working hard - how to have better food, how to have more nourishment, how to have a better house, more rest - on one hand, you want to have better air, more sun, more of the beach, more of the sky, more greenery: you work hard. Then you accumulate energy, you generate energy - and then you are worried how to throw it somewhere, how to throw it down the drain. And when you have thrown it, again you are accumulating. This is a vicious circle.

From one end you go on accumulating energy, from another end you go on throwing it. This is the whole life! - gathering energy, throwing energy; gathering energy, throwing energy. If this is all, then what is the point of it all?

Why should one live? It is a repetition. It is a vicious circle. When energy is lost you are hungry for the energy; when energy is there you are ready to lose it. You find ways and means how to lose it.

Buddha says that this is the most powerful thing in man's life. And if life is lived according to this, then life is a wastage, is a sheer waste. Nothing comes out of it.

So much running, and never arriving anywhere. So much work, and no fulfilment. In the end comes death, and one finds one's hands are empty. Can this be the sole purpose of life? If this is the sole purpose of life, then life has no meaning, then life in itself is just accidental.

One of the most profound thinkers of the West was G.K. Chesterton. He used to say that either man is a fallen god, or some animal has gone completely off his head. Only two are the possibilities: either man is a fallen god, or some animal has gone completely off his head. If sex is the only story, then some animal has gone completely off his head. There must be something more to it. There must be something more to life, otherwise it is meaningless. Your parents lived to give birth to you. You will live to give birth to a few more children, and they will live to give birth to somebody else. And this goes on and on - but what is the purpose of it all?

BUDDHA SAYS: By becoming aware, you open another door to energy. Sexual energy moves downwards; sexual energy moves towards the earth; sexual energy moves according to gravitation. When you become aware, there comes a change, a change of direction. The more aware you become, the more the sexual energy starts moving upwards - it starts going against gravitation. It starts moving towards the sky. It starts moving on the lines of grace, not on the lines of gravitation.

If sexual energy moves downwards, it is a wastage. If sexual energy starts moving upwards, you start exploding new worlds, new plenitudes of being, new altitudes of consciousness.

Now, there are two possibilities to have this energy move upwards. You can FORCE it upwards. That's what hatha yoga does. That's why standing on the head became meaningful. Do you understand the meaning of standing on the head? It is a trick to use gravitation for sexual energy to cOme towards the head - - but still you live under gravitation. You stand on your head; head comes lower than the sex centre; energy can start moving towards the head. But how long can you stand on your head? Again you will have to stand on your feet. You don't go beyond the law of gravitation. You simply use the law of gravitation. In fact, you cheat the law of gravitation. That is doing something illegal in a legal way. But you don't change, you are not transformed. Your being remains the same.

Hatha yoga has developed many methods to prevent sexual energy from going downwards and how to force it upwards - but they are all violent, a sort of enforced conflict. The growth is not natural. You can see it on the hatha yogi's face. His face will be always tense. You will not find grace there. You will not find beauty, grandeur. You will not find God there - you will find a subtle egoism. He has cheated - he has cheated nature itself. But you cannot cheat; it cannot be a real thing.

Buddha developed a totally different methodology - the methodology of elegance, grace. For that Buddha became the symbol. Have you seen statues of Buddha? - so graceful, so divine, so peaceful; not a single flaw, not a single tension on his face - so innocent. What did he do with his energy? He never enforced it, he never fought against it, and he never cheated nature.

Buddha became aware of one very subtle thing - now science knows it very well - that every law has its opposite whether you know it or not. If there is positive electricity there must be negative electricity, otherwise the positive cannot exist.

If there is a law we call gravitation, the pull towards the earth, then there must be another law - whether we know it or not - that goes against gravitation. Laws are opposed to each other, and only because of their opposition do they create a balance. Because of their opposition and contrast, they create a situation where life becomes possible.

Man exists because woman exists. Man cannot exist alone and woman cannot exist alone. The downward exists because the upward exists, and the outward exists because the inward exists. Life exists because death exists. If sex exists then there must be a law which can go beyond sex. And if sex moves downwards, there must be a law which has to be sought and discovered that moves upwards, that helps energy to move upwards.

Buddha found that the more aware you become, energy automatically starts moving upwards.

In the human body there are many centres, and each centre changes the quality of the energy. Have you not seen every day that electricity can be changed into so many forms? Somewhere it becomes light, somewhere it runs the fan, somewhere it runs the motor. Just different mechanisms are needed for it and it can be used in millions of forms. In the human personality there exist many centres. The sex centre is the lowest. When energy moves into that centre, it becomes a generative force; you can give birth to a child. It is the LOWEST use of the sexual energy. If it starts moving a little higher, then different qualities start coming to it. When it comes to the heart centre, it becomes love. And love gives you a totally different world.

A man whose energy is moving at the sex centre can never know many things. If a woman passes by, he will only see the physical form. If your energy is moving at the heart centre, when a woman passes by you will be able to see her subtle body - which is far superior, which is far more beautiful. If a woman passes by your side and your energy is moving at the heart centre, you will be able to feel HER heart, not only her body. And sometimes it happens that a beautiful heart can exist in a very homely body. And the contrary is also true: a very ugly heart can exist in a very beautiful body.

If you can only see the physical body you will be in trouble sooner or later - because a man does not live with a woman's body; a man lives with the woman's heart. Life is of the heart. You can choose a woman who looks beautiful and is ugly, if her heart is not beautiful, if her subtle form is not beautiful - then you will be in trouble. You can choose a man who looks very handsome, very powerful, but may be just a beast, may not have any inner beauties, may not have any inner qualities, may be just a body and nothing else - then you are bound for trouble. Then sooner or later you will have to encounter the beast and you will have to live with the beast. And you will be wondering always that "What happened to such a beautiful man? What happened to such a beautiful woman?"

If your energy moves still higher, then the highest peak is SAHASRAR - where it becomes prayer, where suddenly your innermost eyes open and you can not only see the body, you can see the heart, you can see the soul. A man whose SAHASRAR has opened looks into the world, but the world is totally different because he never sees just the body. Even if he looks at a tree, he looks at the soul of the tree. The form is not the only thing - it is there, but now it is luminous from an inner light.

A man who lives at his SAHASRAR, lives in a totally different world. You may think that Buddha is walking with you on the road - he is walking on a different road, he is walking in a different world. He may be just walking with you, but that doesn't mean anything - because his vision is different. His energy is at a different altitude. He looks at the world from a different clarity.

BUDDHA SAYS THAT LUST IS THE MOST POWERFUL THING in man's life, because it is the reservoir of all his energies. But there is no need to feel despondent:

"THERE IS NOTHING LIKE LUST. LUST MAY BE SAID TO BE THE MOST POWERFUL PASSION. FORTUNATELY, WE HAVE BUT ONE THING WHICH IS MORE POWERFUL. IF THE THIRST FOR TRUTH WERE WEAKER THAN PASSION, HOW MANY OF US IN THE WORLD WOULD BE ABLE TO FOLLOW THE WAY OF RIGHTEOUSNESS?"

He says there is one thing which is higher than lust, that is the thirst for truth.

There is one thing which is higher than life and that is the search for truth.

People can sacrifice their life for it. They can sacrifice their passion for it. The highest passion is for truth; Buddha calls it the passion for truth - you can call it the passion for God - it means the same thing.

That's why the person who has lived only a sexual life cannot understand the story of a Meera, the story of a Chaitanya, the story of Christ, Buddha, Krishna - he cannot understand. What type of people are these? When Jesus was there, many were wondering: "What type of man is this Jesus? What manner of man?"

because they know only one life, that is of lust and sex. And this man seems to be in a totally different world. It seems as if his whole sexual energy is arrowed somewhere high in the skies. His target seems to be somewhere else - it is not in this world. It is not visible: it is invisible. You cannot touch it. You cannot measure it You cannot see it. But his life is of great passion, his life is of great adventure.

Buddha is not in favour of renunciation, remember. He is in favour of transformation. The energy that is moving into sex has to be moved towards truth.

Ordinarily, people just want to explore each other: a woman wants to explore a man; a man wants to explore a woman. It seems their whole life is just an exploration into each other's being. The thirst for truth means that one wants to explore into the being of this whole existence. It is a great passion - the greatest passion. And it has to be more powerful than sex, otherwise, Buddha says, how will anybody ever move towards it?

People have moved, but how do they come to know this thirst for truth? Let me explain it to you. And much depends on how you come to feel the thirst for truth. You can come by listening to me, you can come by reading a book, you can come by seeing a man of insight - but that will not be of much help, because that will be borrowed and thirst can never be borrowed. Either it is there, or it is not there - you cannot pretend that you are thirsty. By your pretensions thirst will not be created, and that creates much misery in the world.

Many people come to me and they say they would like to search and thirst will not be created, and that creates much misery in the world.

Many people come to me and they say they would like to search and seek what truth is. I ask them only one thing: Has your life, as you have lived it up to now, proved an illusion? If it has not proved an illusion, then the real thirst for truth cannot arise. When you have seen the illusoriness of your life, only then does a real thirst arise - to know WHAT TRUTH IS. If you are still in the illusion of life, if you are still enchanted by it, if you are still hallucinated by it, if you are still in that hypnosis of desiring and dreaming, then talking about truth will again be only another illusion, another desire. It will not help.

Truth cannot be one of your desires. Truth can only be there when all the desires have proved to be futile, and your whole energy is available and you don't know where to go, because the whole life seems to be meaningless. You are stuck. You are tremendously frustrated. You have FAILED and all your dreams have disappeared. You are shattered to the very roots. You are standing there throbbing with energy not knowing where to go. Then that energy becomes a pool and creates a new thirst in you: the thirst to know the truth. When the world has been known as an illusion, only then....

So experience the world as deeply as you can. Don't escape from anywhere - not even from sex. Never escape from anywhere. Just do one thing: wherever you are and wherever your dreams are moving, go with alertness, awareness. Even if you go into sex, make it a meditation, be watchful about what is happening. And by and by you will be able to see the illusoriness of it, the futility, the meaningless repetition, the boredom, the dullness, the death that goes on coming closer through it. The more you waste your energy, the closer you are to death.

I have heard:

A friend of mine tells the story about a travelling salesman who was passing through a small hick town in the West when he saw a little old man sitting in a rocking-chair on the stoop of his house. The little man looked so contented the salesman couldn't resist going over and talking to him.

"You don't look as if you have a care in the world," the salesman told him. "What is your formula for a long and happy life?"

"Well," replied the little old man, "I smoke six packs of cigarettes a day, I drink a quart of bourbon every four hours, and six cases of beer a week. I never wash and I go out every night."

"My goodness," exclaimed the salesman, "that's just great!

How old are you?"

"Twenty-five," was the reply.

You can go on wasting energy.....

Each step taken in illusion is taken towards death. Each move which you take into lust you have taken towards death. So take it carefully and be aware. Be aware of what you really want through it. Is it just a habit? Is it just a natural hypnosis? Is it just that you go on doing it because you don't know what else to do? Is it just an occupation? Is it just a forgetfulness from the worries of life? Or WHAT is it?

And don't go with any prejudice. Don't listen to what the saints have said. They may say it is bad, but don't listen to it - and they may be right, but you have to find it out by your own experience. Only then, and ONLY then, do you start moving towards truth. Only your experience can bring you to truth; nobody else's experience.

Once you have seen the truth of it, that there is nothing in it, energy is relieved from the burden, energy is relieved from the old patterns, and energy goes on gathering inside you.

Scientists have discovered a law that quantitative change becomes qualitative at a certain stage. For example, if you heat water it evaporates only when the heat is one hundred degrees, never before it. At ninety degrees it may be hot, but not evaporating. At ninety-nine degrees it is very hot, but not evaporating. And just one degree more, at one hundred degrees, and a sudden jump, a leap, and the water starts moving.

And have you seen the change? Water naturally flows downwards, but when it evaporates it starts flowing upwards - it has taken a different route. And you have not done anything but simply heated it to a certain degree. A certain quantity of heat and a qualitative change happens. Water is visible; vapour becomes invisible. Water goes downwards; vapour goes upwards.

Exactly the same happens in the sexual energy: a certain amount, a certain quantity, has to be accumulated before the change happens. You have to become a reservoir of energy, and out of sheer quantity at a certain moment there is a jump; energy no more moves downwards - energy starts moving upwards, and exactly like vapour.

When energy moves downwards, sex is very visible. That's why scientists cannot discover what happens when the energy moves upwards - it becomes invisible.

It becomes immaterial. It certainly moves, but there is no passage for it. If you dissect the body of a Buddha, you will not find a certain passage for sexual energy to move upwards - there is no passage. A passage is not needed. If water moves downwards, a channel is needed; but when water becomes vapour, no channel is needed - it simply moves and becomes invisible. Exactly the same happens with sexual energy.

Awareness is heat. In India, we have called it precisely that: TAP - TAP means heat. TAP does not mean that you stand under the hot sun; it simply means you bring more fire of awareness inside you. That fire of awareness heats your sexual energy: this is the inner alchemy - and energy starts going upwards.

First your sex will become love, and then it will become meditation or prayer. If you follow the terminology of devotion, you can call it prayer; if you follow a more scientific terminology, then you can call it meditation. And once your energy is moving upwards, then you see things in a totally different light.

I have heard:

A little old man was sitting on a bus humming, "Dee dee dum dum, dee dee dum."

The bus driver turned around and noticed a suitcase blocking the aisle. He turned to the old man and said, "Would you mind moving the suitcase?" to which the old man replied, "Dee dee dum dum, dee dee dum."

In complete frustration, the bus driver jumped up and took the suitcase and threw it out the bus window and glared at the old man and shouted, "Now what do you have to say?"

The old man looked at him and smiled and said, "Dee dee dum dum, dee dee dum - it's not my suitcase."

Once you have started moving, even death is not your death, even the body is not your body, even the mind is not your mind. You can go on singing: Dee dee dum dum.... Even when death approaches you, you can go on humming - because the suitcase is not yours.

A man of awareness can die so easily, so peacefully. He lives peacefully, he dies peacefully. A man of sexuality lives restlessly, dies restlessly. It is your choice.

BUDDHA IS NOT FOR REPRESSION - he cannot be, notwithstanding what Buddhist interpreters have said down the ages. I don't agree with them. The interpretation must be wrong - because I know it from my own experience that repression cannot help a person, repression can never become a transfiguration.

Repression drags you down.

It is not repression: it is awareness. Of course, from the outside it may look like repression. You are rushing towards money; suddenly on the road you come across a treasure, and somebody else is passing by. He also looks at it but is not interested. What will you think about that man? You were afraid that he might claim the treasure, he might start asking that it has to be divided in two parts - but he simply goes on, he does not bother about it. You will think either he is mad, or he is a renunciate, he has renounced the world and repressed the desire for money.

You cannot understand that there can be a man who cannot see anything in money. You will think it is impossible because you see so much in it. Your whole life seems to be meaningless if there is no money. Money seems to be your whole life. How can you believe that there can be a man for whom money is simply meaningless? Only two are the possibilities: either the man is so stupid that he does not know the difference between money and no money; or he has repressed his desire - he has repressed his desire, his greed, his ambition.

When a man like Buddha happens in the world, people interpret it according to their own minds. He looks so far away, only two are the possibilities: those who are against him, they will say he is crazy; those who are for him, they will say he has disciplined his life, skilfully he has dropped his greed, lust. But both are wrong. Both have to be wrong because both are unable to understand a Buddha.

You can understand a Buddha only when you are a Buddha; there is no other way to understand. If you want to understand somebody who is standing on the peak of a Himalayan hill, you have to go to that peak - only then will his vision become your vision.

I would like to say that all the interpretations about Buddha are wrong - wrong in the sense that they all imply that it is as if he is teaching repression. He is not teaching repression. He is simply teaching awareness. In awareness, things change. Through repression, you may manage somehow but things remain the same.

I was reading about a church and about a priest:

A topless girl tried to enter the church. The vicar stopped her at the door. "But, Vicar, you can't stop me from going to church," she protested. "I have a divine right."

"They're both divine," he said, "but that is not the question - you'll have to go home and put on something that is more respectable."

Now she says, "I have a divine right," and the priest says, "They both are divine."

The priest's repressed mind - he must be looking at her breasts. He says, "They both are divine, but still you will have to go home and put on something that is more respectable."

You can repress a desire, but you cannot uproot it. It will come in subtle ways. It will surface in many forms. It may take such disguises that you may not even be able to detect it. A repressed person is not a transformed person. He remains the same - he simply manages to be somebody else who he is not.

Buddha is not for repression. Buddha is for transformation. Repression is very easy. You can repress your sex - that's what so.many saints are doing. You can drop out of the society, you can run away from women. You can go to the Himalayan caves and sit there, and you can think that you have attained to celibacy - but this is not celibacy. Sitting there in your Himalayan cave, you will still dream about women - even more so, because you will be so far away from women. Your fantasy will become more psychedelic and colourful. Of course, you will fight with it, but by fighting you can force the desire deep into your unconscious - you cannot uproot it. By fighting nobody is ever changed. Only by awareness is a person changed.

Awareness is not a fight. What is awareness? Awareness is neither accepting nor rejecting.

There is a famous saying of Tilopa: "Truly, because of our accepting and rejecting, we have not the suchness of things" - we miss the suchness of things.

We cannot become aware of what reality is because we accept or we reject. When we accept, we indulge. When we reject, we repress. Buddha says: Don't accept, don't reject - just be alert, just see. Look, with no prejudice for or against.

If you can be in such an indifferent UDASEEN - in such non-valuing, non- judging awareness - things start changing of their own accord.

Tilopa says:

"IT NEVER LEAVES THIS PLACE AND IS ALWAYS PERFECT. WHEN YOU LOOK FOR IT, YOU FIND YOU CAN'T SEE IT. YOU CAN'T GET IT, YOU CAN'T BE RID OF IT. WHEN YOU DO NEITHER - THERE IT IS! WHEN YOU ARE SILENT, IT SPEAKS. WHEN YOU SPEAK, IT IS SILENT."

"YOU CANNOT GET IT, YOU CANNOT GET RID OF IT - it is always there.

WHEN YOU DO NEITHER, THERE IT IS."

Awareness is not something that you have to do. Awareness is not something that you have to force upon yourself, impose upon yourself. When you do nothing, it is there. Your doing is your undoing.

"FORTUNATELY, WE HAVE BUT ONE THING WHICH IS MORE POWERFUL.

IF THE THIRST FOR TRUTH WERE WEAKER THAN PASSION, HOW MANY OF US IN THE WORLD WOULD BE ABLE TO FOLLOW THE WAY OF RIGHTEOUSNESS ?"

THE BUDDHA SAID: "MEN WHO ARE ADDICTED TO THE PASSIONS ARE LIKE THE TORCH-CARRIER RUNNING AGAINST THE WIND; HIS HANDS ARE SURE TO BE BURNT."

YOU CAN LOOK: EVERYBODY'S HANDS ARE BURNT. But you never look at your own hands. You always look at others' hands and you say, "Yes, their hands seem to be burnt - but I will be more clever, I am more clever: I will carry the torch and run against the wind, and I will show you that I am an exception."

Nobody is an exception. Existence does not allow any exceptions. Your hands will also be burnt if you are running, rushing against the wind and carrying a torch, a burning torch. Lust is rushing against the wind. Nobody has come out of it unburnt.

But people go on looking at each other. Nobody looks at himself. The moment you start looking at yourself you have become a sannyasin.

I was reading:

Mrs. Cantor suspected her husband of playing around with the maid. Having to spend a few days with her sick mother, she told her small son, Harvey, to keep an eye on poppa and the maid.

As soon as she returned she asked: "Harvey, did anything happen?"

"Well," said the boy, "poppa and the maid went into the bedroom and took off their clothes and..."

"Stop! Stop!" shouted Mrs. Cantor. "We will wait until poppa comes home."

Poppa was met at the door by his irate wife, cringing maid and confused son.

"Harvey, tell me what happened with poppa and the maid," stormed Mrs.

Cantor.

"As I told you, ma," said Harvey. "Poppa and the maid went into the bedroom and took off their clothes."

"Yes! Yes! Go on, Harvey!" said Mrs. Cantor impatiently. "What did they do then?"

Replied Harvey: "Why, mother, they did the same thing you and uncle Bernie did when poppa was in Chicago."

Everybody goes on looking, everybody goes on seeing others' faults, flaws, foolishnesses. Nobody looks at himself. The day you start looking at yourself you are a sannyasin. The day you start looking at yourself a great change is on the way. You have taken the first step - against lust, towards love; against desire, towards desirelessness - because when you see your own hands, they have been burnt so many times, you are carrying so many wounds.

Looking at others is just a way of avoiding looking at oneself. Whenever you criticize somebody else, watch: it is a trick of the mind so that you can forgive yourself. People go on criticizing others; when they criticize the whole world they feel very good. In comparison they can think they are not worse than other people; in fact, they are better. That's why when you criticize somebody, you exaggerate, you go to the very extreme; you make a mountain out of a molehill; you go on making the mountain bigger and bigger and bigger, then your own mountain looks very small. You feel happy.

Stop this! This is not going to help you. This is very suicidal. Here you are not to think about others. Your life is yours. Thinking about others is not going to be of any benefit. Think about yourself. Meditate about your own self. Become more aware of what you are doing here - just hanging around? or are you really doing something? And the only thing that can be relied upon is awareness. Only awareness can you carry through death, through the door of death - nothing else.

A beautiful parable comes:

THE LORD OF HEAVEN OFFERED A BEAUTIFUL FAIRY TO THE BUDDHA, DESIRING TO TEMPT HIM TO THE EVIL PATH. BUT THE BUDDHA SAID:

"BE GONE! WHAT USE HAVE I FOR THE LEATHER BAG FILLED WITH FILTH WHICH YOU HAVE BROUGHT TO ME?"

THEN, THE GOD REVERENTLY BOWED AND ASKED THE BUDDHA ABOUT THE ESSENCE OF THE WAY IN WHICH, HAVING BEEN INSTRUCTED BY THE BUDDHA, IT IS SAID, HE ATTAINED THE SROTAAPANNA FRUIT.

A BEAUTIFUL PARABLE: Brahma came to Buddha.... Hindus have never forgiven Buddhists for inventing such beautiful tales, because Hindus think that Brahma is the Creator of the world. And Buddhists say Brahma came to Buddha to be instructed on the Path. Of course, as a test he brought a beautiful fairy.

It is significant because there are only two types of man: the man of sex and the man of truth. So if Buddha is really the man of truth then he cannot be deluded, then you cannot create any hallucination for him. The most beautiful fairy will not mean anything to him. And that is going to be the touchstone as to whether he has attained to truth. When a person is absolutely beyond sex, only then; otherwise his energy is still moving, still moving into the direction of lust, still going downwards.

THE LORD OF HEAVEN - BRAHMA - OFFERED A BEAUTIFUL FAIRY TO THE BUDDHA, DESIRING TO TEMPT HIM TO THE EVIL PATH.

That temptation is a test, and temptation comes only at the very end. In all the world religions you must have come across stories like this. When Jesus is just close, arriving home, the Devil tempts him. When Buddha has reached just very close, Brahma comes and tempts him. Such stories are there in the life of Mahavir, in the life of everyone who has attained to truth. There must be a meaning to these parables.

I don't mean to say that it happened exactly as it is told in the parable. These are symbolic parables; they are not historical facts - but they are very meaningful.

I was reading about Baal Shem, a Hassid mystic, the founder of Hassidism. A disciple came to him one day and said, "Master, how can I avoid temptation?

How can I avoid the Devil tempting me?"

Baal Shem looked at him and said, "Wait! There is no need for you to avoid any temptation, because right now temptation cannot be given to you - you are not worthy of it."

He said, "What do you mean?"

He said, "Temptation comes only at the last moment. Right now the Devil is not worried about you. In fact, the Devil is not chasing you at all - you are chasing the Devil - so you don't be worried about temptation. It is not going to happen to you so soon. And when it happens, I will take care of it. I will tell you what to do."

The temptation comes only at the last moment. Why? Because when the sexual energy is coming to a point, the hundred-degree point, then the WHOLE past, millions of lives lived in sexuality, pull you back. The Devil is not a person somewhere - it is just your past. Many lives of mechanical sex pull you back.

You hesitate for a moment whether to take the jump or not.

Just as when a river comes to the ocean she must be hesitating for a moment before she loses herself into the ocean, she must be looking backwards with nostalgia: the beautiful mountains, the snow-peaked mountains, the forests, the valleys, the song of the birds, the banks, the people, the journey - the past, thousands of miles. And suddenly now here comes a moment: you jump and you are lost for ever. The river must be thinking: "To be, or not to be?" - a hesitation, a trembling, a shaking to the very foundations.

That's what temptation is. When Buddha has come to the point where the energy is ready to take the ultimate jump and become non-sexual, when desire is ready to dissolve into desirelessness, when the mind is ready to die and the no-mind is ready to be born - it is such a great jump that it is natural one should hesitate.

That is the meaning of the parable.

THE BUDDHA SAID: "BE GONE! WHAT USE HAVE I FOR THE LEATHER BAG FILLED WITH FILTH WHICH YOU HAVE BROUGHT TO ME?"

When a man has come to that point, then body is meaningless; then body is nothing but a bag, a skin bag, filled with filth. In fact, that's how the body is. If you don't believe it, go to the surgeon some time and see a body being opened - and then you will believe Buddha. Or go to the hospital to see a post mortem, when the whole body is dissected, and then you will see what he is saying.

In my town once it happened: a man was shot dead and there was a post mortem. Somehow I managed - I was just a small child - somehow I managed, I persuaded the doctor. His son was my friend so I succeeded in persuading him:

"Just allow me to see, I would like to see." He insisted, "But why do you want to see?" I said, "I have come across the saying of Buddha that the body is nothing but a bag full of filth. Just let me have one glimpse!"

He allowed me, and he said, "Okay, you can stay." But I said, "Now there is no need to stay and I cannot stay anyhow." It was stinking so much, and the stomach was open - and just filth and nothing else.

Each child should be brought to the post mortem. Buddha used to send his disciples to the burning place, where bodies are burnt - just to watch and meditate there. He said, "Unless you are completely aware of what the body is you will not drop your illusion about the beauty of the body and dreams about the body." He's right.

HE SAID: "BE GONE! WHAT USE HAVE I FOR THE LEATHER BAG FILLED WITH FILTH WHICH YOU HAVE BROUGHT TO ME?" THEN, THE GOD REVERENTLY BOWED AND ASKED THE BUDDHA ABOUT THE ESSENCE OF THE WAY...

The touchstone proved that Buddha was real gold.

THEN, THE GOD REVERENTLY BOWED DOWN...

In Buddhist mythology even gods are as lustful as man - even more so. Their whole life is nothing but one of lust.

THE BRAHMA, THE LORD OF HEAVEN, BOWED DOWN AND ASKED ABOUT THE ESSENCE OF THE WAY, IN WHICH HAVING BEEN INSTRUCTED BY THE BUDDHA, IT IS SAID, HE ATTAINED THE SROTAAPANNA FRUIT.

SROTAAPANNA means one who has entered the stream - SROTAAPANNA:

one who has entered into the stream - of consciousness, awareness, alertness.

That is the essential message of Buddha: no prayer, no ritual; no priest, no temple - you are the priest, you are the ritual, you are the temple. Only one thing is needed. Buddha has reduced the requirement to the minimum; he is absolutely mathematical. He said only awareness is enough; if you can be aware, everything will take care of itself.

Two drunks were weaving along the railroad tracks. One said, "I never saw so many steps in my life."

The other said, "It's not the steps that bother me, it's the low railing."

The only thing that is needed somehow is to bring them out of their drunkenness.

Two other drunks were riding a roller coaster, when one turned to the other and said, "We may be making good time, but I've got a feeling we're on the wrong bus."

Everybody is on the wrong bus - unconsciousness is the wrong bus. Then wherever you are makes no difference. And whatsoever you do makes no difference. In your unconsciousness, whatsoever you do is going to be wrong.

Wrong is that which is done in unconsciousness, and right is that which is done consciously.

EDWIN ARNOLD HAS WRITTEN one of the most beautiful books about Buddha, The Light of Asia. A few lines to sum up:

THIS IS PEACE - TO CONQUER LOVE OF SELF AND LUST OF LIFE, TO TEAR DEEP-ROOTED PASSION FROM THE BREAST, TO STILL THE INWARD STRIFE; FOR LOVE, TO CLASP ETERNAL BEAUTY CLOSE; FOR GLORY, TO BE LORD OF SELF; FOR PLEASURE, TO LIVE BEYOND THE GODS; FOR COUNTLESS WEALTH, TO LAY UP LASTING TREASURE OF PERFECT SERVICE RENDERED, DUTIES DONE IN CHARITY, SOFT SPEECH, AND STAINLESS DAYS:

THESE RICHES SHALL NOT FADE AWAY IN LIFE, NOR ANY DEATH DISPRAISE.

THIS IS PEACE - TO CONQUER LOVE OF SELF AND LUST OF LIFE...

This is the whole essence of Buddha's message. Peace is not to be practised: it is a by-product of awareness. Love is not to be practised: it is a by-product of awareness. Righteousness is not to be practised: it is a by-product of awareness.

Awareness is the remedy for all ills, because awareness makes you healthy, whole, and of course holy.