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Main Index
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| | | Book Name: The Dhammapada - The Way of the Buddha, Vol 1 | Previous Next | |
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the disciple disappearing into the master. And then there prevails a profound silence.
It is not a dialogue! That's where Eastern religions, particularly Buddhism, have reached higher pinnacles than Christianity, Judaism, Islam -- because Islam, Judaism, Christianity, remain clinging somehow to the idea of a dialogue. But a dialogue presupposes duality, twoness. Islam, Christianity, Judaism, are religions of prayer. Prayer presupposes that there is a God separate from you, that you can address him.
Hence Martin Buber's book became very famous -- I AND THOU. That is the essence of prayer. But 'I' and 'thou'...a duality is needed for a dialogue. And howsoever beautiful the dialogue may be, it is still a division, a split; it is not yet union. The river has not entered into the ocean. Maybe it has come very close, just on the verge, but it is holding back.
Buddhism is not the religion of prayer, it is the religion of meditation. And that's the difference between prayer and meditation: prayer is a dialogue, meditation is a silence. Prayer has to be addressed to somebody -- real, unreal, but it has to be addressed to somebody. Meditation is not an address at all; one has simply to fall into silence, one has simply to disappear into nothingness. When one is not, meditation is.
And Buddha is meditation -- that is his flavor. These ten days we remained silent, we remained in meditation. The real thing has been said. Those who have not heard the real thing, now for them I will be speaking.
The meditation that prevailed for ten days was with a difference -- and that is the difference between Buddha's and my approach -- a little difference, but of tremendous import. And that has to be understood by you, because I am not a mere commentator on Buddha. I am not only echoing him, I am not simply a mirror to reflect him; I am a response, not a reflection. I am not a scholar, I am not going to make a scholarly analysis of his statements -- I am a poet!
I have seen the same nothingness that he has seen, and, certainly, I have seen it in my own way. Buddha has his own way, I have my own way -- of seeing, of being. Both ways reach the same
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