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philosophy in the minds of the dogs, because they take so much trouble -- they get tired from barking.
Because they could not stop barking, they had to accept the nonbarking dog as the enlightened one. He is almost the Gautam Buddha of the dogs, his achievement is great: "We are all proud that you are born amongst us; we will worship you. We will remember you, we will teach our children about the golden days when you were alive. But forgive us, we try hard. The more we try hard not to bark, the barking comes more forcibly."
One fullmoon night... and dogs are also against the moon; nobody knows why. In fact, in all the languages there are words for mad people. In English `lunatic' is synonymous with mad people, a mad person. But in its root meaning `lunatic' means moonstruck; `luna' means the moon.
In Hindi the same is the situation: the madman is said to be chaandmara, killed by the moon. The moon drives people mad; it drives even the ocean mad.
Poets get affected, painters get affected. Most of the people who commit suicide do it on a fullmoon night; more people go insane on a fullmoon night.
So if dogs bark the whole night, nobody can condemn them -- they have something of the poet, something of the madman, some aesthetic sense, some feeling of the ocean. But they cannot tolerate the full moon, and because we don't understand their language, we call it barking. Who knows, they may be reciting poetries praising the moon... perhaps their barking is their way of prayer....
One fullmoon night all the dogs decided that there is a limit to being condemned continuously: "That enlightened dog is too much. You bark, and suddenly he comes. He goes on hiding here and there, watching dogs. This fullmoon night make a commitment: we may die but we will not bark. And we will not open our eyes so we don't see the moon."
There was such silence as there had never been. The Gautam Buddha went around the town -- he did not even meet a dog. All the dogs had disappeared... what happened? -- and on a fullmoon night; this was the greatest time of his preaching. But the dogs had disappeared into dark corners behind houses, hiding. They
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