| |
that one can die for his name's sake.
What is a name? But the moment you are identified, it becomes very meaningful. And everyone is born without any name -- nameless. Or, you take form; everyone is identified with one's own form. Every day you are standing before your mirror. What are you seeing? -- Yourself? No. No mirror can mirror YOU, just the form you are identified with. But such is the stupidity of the human mind that every day the form is changing constantly, but you are never disillusioned.
When you were a child, what was your form? When you were in your mother's womb, what was your form? When you were in your parents' seed, what was your form? Can you recognize -- if a picture is produced for you -- the egg in your mother's womb? Will you be able to recognize and say, "this is `I'"? No, but you must have been identified with this egg somewhere back.... You were born -- and if the first scream can be reproduced for you, will you be able to recognize it and say, "this is MY scream"? No, but it WAS yours, and you must have been identified with that.
If an album can be produced before a dying man.... A constant changing form -- there is a continuity but still every moment a change.... The body is changing every seven years, completely, totally; nothing remains the same, not a single cell. Still, still we think, "this is my form, this is me." And consciousness is formless. The form is just something outside that goes on changing and changing and changing -- just like clothes.
This identification is ego. If you are not identified with anything -- with name or with form or anything -- then where is the ego? Then you are, and still you are not. Then you are in your absolute purity, but with no ego. That's why Buddha called the self, no-self; he called it ANATTA, ANATMA. He said, "There is no ego, so you cannot call yourself ATMA even. You cannot call yourself `I'; there is no `I.' There is pure existence." This pure existence is freedom. This term AVIDYA really cannot be translated. It is not synonymous with ignorance; it is not ignorance... because ignorance is just negative. You don't know something, you are ignorant. But this avidya
|
|
|