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| | | Book Name: The Dhammapada - The Way of the Buddha, Vol 10 | Previous Next | |
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their opposite very easily.
For example, you love eating and you can go on eating too much. Then it becomes a pain. It was pleasure in the beginning, but there is a limit to that pleasure. It is said of Nero that he used to have four physicians always with him. Even when he was going into war those four physicians used to accompany him. When Nero would eat, their whole work was to help him to vomit so that he could eat again. He used to love eating so much that he would eat twenty times, twenty-five times per day. You will call him mad -- and he was mad.
Now, what is the pleasure of eating? Maybe just a little pleasure of taste.... On your tongue there are little buds which experience taste. They can be operated on very easily and then you will not feel anything at all. Then the whole pleasure of eating disappears. That's what happens when you are in fever: your buds become dull, insensitive, so you eat but you don't feel any taste. People are living for eating; there are very few people who eat to live. Millions are living only to eat.
Humanity can be divided into two types of mad people: one type is obsessed with food, another type is obsessed with sex. And there is a deep relation between the two. The person who is obsessed with sex will not bother much about food and the person who is repressive of sex will become obsessed with food.
Whenever a country is repressive of sex it becomes very obsessed with food. That's what has happened in this country: for centuries it has been repressive of sex. That's why Indians have been very inventive about food -- new sweets, thousands of sweets. The world is completely unaware of all those sweets! And their food is so spicy.... When a foreigner comes he cannot eat it; he cannot see how people can eat it. It is burning hot! Why so much spicy food? It is repression of sex! If your sex is not repressed you will not eat such spicy food.
Just the other day I received two letters, one from a Western sannyasin, Mudita. She says, "Beloved Master, listening to you I feel great joy, but then suddenly I become horny." She must have been brought up with Victorian ideas, with Victorian education --
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