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ideals. People would come to him and ask, 'Is there god?' and he would remain silent. Not that there is no god, but once he says there is, a desire arises in you to achieve, to know, to be -- and you are on the wrong track again. Buddha remained silent. He would not say anything about god. People would ask, 'Okay, if god is not there, it is nothing to be worried about. Is there a soul inside?' Buddha would keep silent, because once he says, 'Yes, there is a soul,' then you are after it.
You have become such addicted chasers of shadows that any word, any hint will do, and you are on the track, running. Chasing has become your life. Chase something. Money, moksha -- it makes no difference, but chase. Power, prestige, meditation -- it makes no difference, but chase.
I can understand how difficult it was for this man Buddha to keep quiet when he knew well god is, when he knew well the soul is. How difficult it was to keep quiet. He resisted the temptation because he knew you. Never has anybody known humanity so deeply -- and the madness of humanity, the obsession with ideals.
People would ask, 'When we attain, when we become realized and enlightened, where will we be then? Will there be a moksha, a state of total freedom?' and Buddha remained quiet. He invented a new term. He dropped the old eastern term 'moksha', the state of total freedom; he invented a new term -- nirvana.
The term is beautiful. The word is very significant. Nirvana simply means cessation. You will not be. Nothing will be. He used the most negative term, the absolute negativity -- nirvana. of it. How can you make an ideal of a negative state? Anything positive and it becomes an ideal and you start chasing it. He used the most negative term, the absolute negativity -- nirvana. Nothing will be there. Only nothingness will be there. You will cease to be.
But look at the human mind -- the human mind has made a goal of it. Buddha tried to give you a totally negative term so that you cannot make an ideal of it, but since then people have made... millions of people are chasing nirvana. They have completely forgotten that nirvana simply means nothing. It means absolute
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