Old stones that you used to think were diamonds

Question 1:

Antar Komala, your question is almost as ancient as man. It is certainly a very rare phenomenon that passion between man and woman turns into compassion. It turns only into hatred, because in the first place it was not passion. In the very first place you had given a wrong name to something which was not love; hence when that experience which you have called love, passion disappears - what is left is not compassion, is not friendliness, is not gratitude, but sheer hatred.

The psychologists have started talking about marriage as an intimate hatred. You are together because you fulfill certain biological needs of each other, but otherwise, you are as far away from each other as two stars can be.

If love is authentic, if it is not just lust but a spiritual harmony, then certainly this passion is going to bring compassion in your life. And the transformation of passion into compassion is the whole evolution of man into a Gautam Buddha. But you are right; it rarely happens. It could not even happen in the case of Gautam Buddha himself.

Gautam Buddha renounced the world, his kingdom, his palace, his wife whom he thought he had loved so much. After twelve years he came back. Enlightened, he realized that he had not been human to his old father, to his loving wife, and to the one-day-old child. So as he became enlightened the first thing was to go back to his old kingdom and ask forgiveness.

There is a beautiful story...

The moment he initiated his cousin-brother, Ananda, into sannyas - Ananda was older than Gautam Buddha - Ananda said to him, "After initiation I am no more. Your word is my life, your order is my way. Before initiation I am still your elder brother, hence I want three conditions to be promised now because later on I cannot ask anything from you, you will be the master."

Gautam Buddha said, "What are those three things? I don't have anything to give - just this begging bowl."

Ananda said, "I am not asking about things. I am asking about something else. The first condition is that you shall never send me anywhere away from you to spread the word, the message. Second, I will be with you the whole day, and even in the night I will sleep in the same room where you will be sleeping. And the third thing, if I ask any question or if I bring someone who wants to ask any question to you, you will not refuse, you will have to answer."

Gautam Buddha said, "There is no problem in it. It is okay. You get initiated."

He had not realized that this was going to create many problems. But the worst problem happened when he came back after twelve years to his home. Ananda was with him just like a shadow.

Gautam Buddha said, "I know you have the right to be present with me wherever I go, but you can understand, you have that much intelligence: the woman I loved twelve years ago and left without even telling her that I was going away - obviously she must be very angry. She is from another royal family. In front of you, she will not show her anger; that would be against manners, etiquette. I would like to unburden her of all her anger, rage. But it is up to you. I am asking you if you can remain a little behind - just outside the door of the palace. Let me see my wife..."

There was a moment of silence but Ananda understood the situation and allowed Gautam Buddha.

And he was right, the wife was very angry....

She said, "My anger is not that you renounced the world. If you wanted to renounce it, I would never have prevented you. My anger is that you did not trust me. You did not say a single word and in the middle of the night you escaped. That has been hurting me. Just as you belong to a warrior race, I am also the daughter of a great warrior. We send our husbands to war with prayers, with garlands, touching their feet, not allowing even a tear to come in the eyes because that may prevent them, may be destructive to their lifestyle and their life pattern.

"If you had said to me that you wanted to renounce the world in search of truth, I would have been dignified. You disrespected me. You damaged my dignity. My anger is not that you left; my anger is that you did not tell me why."

Buddha himself had never thought about it, that the cause of anger would be of not saying to his wife...

And the wife said, "If you had loved me enough you would have trusted me. I would have sent you with prayers in my heart that you should succeed and be victorious in your search, but you did not allow me the chance."

Gautam Buddha said, "You are right. I have come to ask your forgiveness. Forgive me! What I used to think was love was not love. Now I know what love is. But I wanted to wait until you have unburdened the rage you must have accumulated in all those twelve years, day and night, in your loneliness."

The wife looked at Gautam Buddha with tears in her eyes because she could see that this was not the same man who had left her. He looked the same, but everything had changed: such silence, such presence, such eyes and so much compassion.

She said, "Before I ask to be initiated also - if I cannot be your wife at least let me be your disciple - your son has been waiting for twelve years and I have been telling him, 'Wait. Some day he will come back.' And you have come, but you have come so transformed - so luminous is your being."

And the son was standing just by her side. She pulled the son in front of Gautam Buddha and said, "Ask your father for your heritage. He has given birth to you - what else has he to fulfill... his responsibilities towards you?"

The son asked him and Gautam Buddha said, "I have your heritage." And he gave him his begging bowl and initiated him into sannyas. He said, "There is nothing which is more valuable. I was waiting for this moment, when I would be really capable of loving you. But my love is now so far away from the love that people talk about that I cannot even use the word. I use the word 'compassion'. I take you both into my compassion. I have nothing else to give, but I am giving you my very heart and my very experience."

What we call love is not love. And the test comes only when love starts disappearing; then you suddenly see it was not love. You were simply full of lust - a physical, biological attraction. You were not a master of your love, you were only a slave, driven by blind forces of biology. Certainly such kinds of passion cannot become compassion.

If you want your love to grow into compassion then first let it be love! You cannot hope.

You sow the seeds of marigolds and hope for roses. Your flowers will show what was hidden in the seeds.

You are saying to me that for two months you have been very interested in relating to Niskriya: "Have you got a little joke for us?"

You are a joke unto yourself - why torture poor Niskriya? I have heard that the whole day many women have tortured him. He is a man of a very different quality; he is doing vipassana. And he had to appoint a secretary to write down the name of all those women and tell them, "When I have time I will see. Right now I am doing vipassana."

And the teacher of vipassana, Pradeepa, has informed me that his vipassana is strange. He goes on looking into the camera, but his attention is very clear...!

You can torture anybody else - he will be tortured because he has asked for it. And I have told him that there are many witches, but he does not want even to waste time or ice cream. I have given him a simple technique: just take a photograph... or there is even no need to waste the film; just make an effort as if you are taking the photograph and tell the witch, "You are very photogenic" - and that will do! And you don't have to go very far! Just by your side a witch is sitting.

(AND THERE, A LITTLE TO NISKRIYA'S RIGHT, IS THE MOST IRRESISTIBLE CREATURE.

DRESSED IN FLOWING BLACK, WITH A MASS OF BLACK CURLS FALLING OVER HER RADIANT FACE, SHE TURNS TO NISKRIYA GAZING INTENTLY FROM UNDER HER LONG LASHES AND BEGINS TO CARESS HIM.) And this is the joke for you....

Hymie Goldberg has a row with his wife, Becky, and goes out drinking. Late that night he stumbles into the local all-night deli and hunches over a bowl of noodle soup. Hymie notices a Chinaman sitting at the next table, and still being in a bad mood, he picks up his bowl of noodles and dumps it over the Chinaman's head.

"This is for Pearl Harbor," says Hymie.

"But I am Chinese, not Japanese," says the man.

"Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese - what's in a name?" says Hymie.

As Hymie goes to pay his bill, the Chinaman suddenly hits him over the head with a salami sausage.

"That," says the Chinaman bowing, "is for sinking the Titanic."

"But," shouts Hymie, "the Titanic was sunk by an iceberg."

"So," says the Chinaman. "Iceberg, Goldberg, Greenberg - what's in a name?"

Komala, you can torture anybody - what is in a name? For two months continuously you have been harassing a silent man, who has no time at all. From one morning till another morning he is concerned only with photography.

When my other photographers have a session they ask me to "somehow avoid Niskriya."

I say, "Why?"

They say, "If Niskriya comes he does not bother about anybody else. He jumps from this corner to that corner. He does not care that other photographers are also present. He stands in front of somebody who is photographing, he crawls on the floor...!"

When he started crawling one day, I also wondered what he was doing - he was finding the right angle. He does not bother anything about what people will say. He is such a devoted photographer, you could say he is a born photographer.

For his whole life he has been doing that. He came here tired of photography, and finally, he saw such a great opportunity. He forgot all about... brought all his equipment, his whole studio! He had come here to meditate - but where is the time?

Now these kinds of people - scientists, mathematicians, artists, painters - these people are not interested in anything else. Their whole interest is in their art. It is possible that once in a while, casually - they may have run out of film or the camera is broken... and then they may think of a woman - but more than that you can't expect.

There is no need to wait two months. Here things happen so fast that people don't even ask each other, "What is your name?" because what is the point? Tomorrow you will have to ask somebody else, "What is your name?" Just do the thing and be on your way. Niskriya has to be saved, but it will be very difficult now.

One witch has even written, "It will be good to open a witches' coven, so anybody who cannot find a woman can come to the witches' coven." I like the idea! It will be an interesting place. In India it has never existed; only England has known witches' covens. They still exist there... again they are arising, spreading....

So I am already looking for a place, and perhaps people like Niskriya can go - just to take photographs! But don't torture him.

And just now I have told you that a witch is sitting by his side. She will follow him; she is not going to leave him - camera or no camera. You can have a good look!

(BY THIS TIME THE GLAMOROUS CREATURE'S LONG DELICATE HANDS ARE WEAVING AND DANCING ALL AROUND NISKRIYA IN TANTALIZING DELIGHT.)

Question 2:

My god! Sarjano... Has everybody gone mad? You are also in the same trouble...!

But your passion is different. It has nothing to do with ordinary, blind natural forces. Your passion is what has brought you to me, which even makes you feel that perhaps you have always been here, or even in other lives too.

You are asking, "Isn't it that this thirst of ours has created your smile to show us how existence smiles?

"Beloved Master, I don't know what the question is..."

There is no need to know what the question is. Just know the answer....

This silence is the answer.

This love is the answer.

This feeling of a thirst being quenched is the answer. Who cares about the question?

The whole of humanity can be divided into two categories: the majority has questions, and the minority has answers. It is very rare to find a person who has both - I have never come across any person, living or dead. By the time a person reaches to the answer, questions disappear. Questions are just like darkness: when you reach to the light, they disappear - not that they are solved, they simply dissolve.

In this quenching of the thirst, day after day, certainly a love and a gratitude arises which says to you, "Jump now." But the old, the past, is heavy. To drop it, even though it is meaningless, needs a lion's heart, because you have identified yourself for long, too long, with things which you are not.

And now suddenly, you have to drop all those identities of many lives.

It is not only difficult for you, it is difficult for everybody. But howsoever difficult it may be, it is not impossible. If it has not been impossible for me, why should it be impossible for you? If hundreds of mystics around the world have been able to drop the whole past and have never looked back, you are also capable of the same courage - you have just not tried it.

But you go on looking back. You say, "And yet I look back once more..." How many times have you looked back, and how many more times are you going to look, again and again, "just once more"?

The past that has been is no longer there, and that which is, is herenow. You need to jump without hesitation. A slight hesitation, a split second's hesitation and you have missed it.

But you say, "And yet I look back once more to my passion and to its old songs and dreams.

"Oh Beloved Master, can you really promise me that passion is always transformed into compassion?"

I have described clearly: if your love is hiding lust, it cannot be transformed into compassion; there is no way. But if you have really loved, without even your becoming aware, one day you will find your love has become more and more lovingness, your passion has become more and more compassion.

Just the right seed is needed and the roses are going to blossom. But learn to forget and forgive the past.

The present has greater dreams and greater mysteries to open their doors for you; you will not be a loser. The past is gone already; you cannot do anything about it. And if you have dreamed in the past, and if you have sung and danced in the past, what prevents you from singing and dancing in the present? If those songs of the past, and the dances and the love affairs of the past are preventing it, then they are not your friends. They are your enemies; they are unnecessary luggage. Drop them without thinking even for a single moment to drop or not to drop. Just drop them - the present is the only reality.

If you can make the present your only reality too, you will have greater dreams and greater dances and greater passions - and greater love. And then, certainly, a man who lives in the present is capable of moving from love to compassion, from passion to compassion, without difficulty and without effort.

In fact, it is not right to say that he is capable, the right thing will be to say that it happens on its own accord. You just be in the present. It is such a fire that it burns all that is rubbish in you. And it is such an opening that you cannot exhaust the songs and the dances. And once you know real diamonds, you will forget automatically those old stones that you used to think were diamonds.

To cling to the past is dangerous because it does not allow you to be in the present, and all that existence has is in the present. The past is only memory and the future is only imagination.

The present is the only reality.

All that I mean by meditation is to be in the present - no past, no future. Just let this moment be all, and you have come in contact with the heart of the universe. Great will be the blessings, and unknown treasures will be open to you. And things which are unsayable will be heard by you, will be lived by you.

Now, something religious...

One day while on holiday in Italy, Hymie Goldberg finds himself traveling in a train compartment with Pope the Polack, Mother Teresa and a beautiful young orphan girl. Suddenly the train enters a tunnel and the compartment is plunged into darkness. Then everyone hears the sound of a kiss, followed by a slap across the face. When the train leaves the tunnel, everyone looks at each other in stony silence.

Mother Teresa thinks to herself, "One of these filthy guys kissed my orphan, but she, being a good girl, slapped him."

The girl thinks to herself, "One of these guys tried to kiss me, but in the dark kissed Mother Teresa instead, and she of course slapped him."

Pope the Polack thinks, "That Jewish jerk kissed the girl and she slapped me instead - the bitch!"

And Hymie thinks to himself, "I hope there is another tunnel soon so I can kiss my hand and slap that Polack idiot again!"

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master!