Main Index
 
 
Book Name: A Bird on the WingPrevious     Next
 

reach to the ultimate point of existence, there will be no God to receive you and welcome you. Only you will be there in your godliness. So this can be said, and I go on insisting: There exists no God -- existence is divine. There exists no one like a person, a super-person, no one. God is nonexistential, godliness is existential. The moment I say godliness... it becomes something inward; the moment you say God, you have projected it.

This story is beautiful. The Zen master Hakuin is one of the rare flowerings. A warrior came to him, a samurai, a great soldier, and he asked "Is there any hell, is there any heaven? If there is hell and heaven, where are the gates? Where do I enter from? How can I avoid hell and choose heaven?" He was a simple warrior. Warriors are always simple.

It is difficult to find a businessman who is simple. A businessman is always cunning, clever; otherwise he cannot be a businessman. A warrior is always simple; otherwise he cannot be a warrior. A warrior knows only two things, life and death -- nothing much. His life is always at stake, he is always gambling; He is a simple man. That's why businessmen could not create a single Mahavir, a single Buddha. Even Brahmins could not create a Ram, a Buddha, a Mahavir. Brahmins are also cunning, cunning in a different way. They are also businessmen -- of a different world, of the other. They deal in business not of this world, but of the other world. Their priesthood is a business; their religion is mathematics, arithmetic. They are also clever, more clever than businessmen. The businessman is limited to his world, their cunningness goes beyond. They always think of the other world, of the rewards they are going to get there. Their rituals, their whole mind is concerned with how to achieve more pleasures in the other world. They are concerned with pleasure: they are businessmen. Even Brahmins could not create a Buddha. This is strange. All the twenty-four Jaina tirthankaras were kshatriyas, warriors. Buddha was a warrior; Rama and Krishna were warriors. They were simple people, with no cunning in their minds, with no arithmetic. They knew only two things -- life and death.

This

Previous Page (44/244) Next Page
 
Go to page: