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Main Index
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people, they are satisfied with momentary desires. And the other-worldly seem to be absolutely greedy. They are not satisfied with this world; they need another world where eternal pleasure exists, where beauty never fades, where life is always young, where one lives and lives and never becomes old.
This is greed! This is pure greed! transplanted into another world. This is more greed than the first. Avoid this so-called spiritual materialism; it is utterly materialistic. It does not change your life. It can't change it. It simply nourishes your old mind. It poisons you even more.
Buddha says the basic meditation is to see that "I was not and I will not be, so how can I be in the middle of two nothingnesses? If I was not before and I will not be again after death, then how can I be right now?" One cannot exist between two nothingnesses. Then this too must be a nothingness -- we have not rightly seen it.
MY SELF OF LONG AGO...
Before birth we were non-existent, no-self, and we shall be so after death again. Therefore we are in this condition at the present moment, without a thing in the world we can call our own -- not even our own selves. This goes to the deepest core of the problem.
Don't dispossess things -- dispossess your self, and then things are automatically dispossessed. If I am not, then how can the house belong to me? If I am not, then how can I possess a woman or a man? If I am not, then how can I possess a child? If I am not, then how is possession possible? There is nobody to possess. See the difference.
Other religions have said: Renounce possessions! Buddha says: Renounce the possessor. Certainly, it goes infinitely deeper. You can renounce the possessions, but the possessor remains, and with the possessor the blueprint to possess again -- the possessor will bring his possessiveness by the back door.
You can see it happening: a man renounces his worldly life, moves to a Himalayan cave, but then he possesses that cave. And if somebody else comes and starts living in the cave, he will throw him out. He will say, "Get out! This is my cave." And this man has renounced his house, his wife, his children.
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