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Main Index
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| | | Book Name: The Dhammapada - The Way of the Buddha, Vol 10 | Previous Next | |
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in you, be alert. Don't let it grow, don't let it become a big tree. It will be far more difficult then for you to get rid of it because you may become attached to it; you may have invested many things in it; you may have started liking its company; you may feel unsheltered without it. It is better to cut it from the very roots in the very beginning. The moment you see it arising in you, take care, beware -- beware means be aware -- PULL IT OUT BY THE ROOTS.
People go on changing. They don't pull out things by their roots; they substitute one fiction with another fiction. That may give you a relief for the moment, but it does not transform your life. Somebody is running after money, then he stops running after money; he starts running after power. Then he stops running after power and starts running after God or meditation or enlightenment. But he goes on running after something or other. He goes on substituting a new fiction for the old; the old functions no more. He has seen it is fictitious, but he has not yet got the point that one has to uproot ALL imagination in one's being.
Lovebirds are supposed to be so devoted to one another that if one dies the other dies of a broken heart. A woman who owned a very cute pair had a fire in the house and one of the lovebirds was suffocated. Right away the other bird began to pine. The woman wondered if there was not some way to keep it alive so she put a mirror in the cage.
The lovebird let out a joyous coo and cuddled up against the mirror, and lived for two years. It then died -- of a broken mirror.
One can postpone -- but don't go on postponing. Your life is very precious. If one lovebird dies it is better to come to your senses rather than replace it by a mirror or by something else.
PLEASURES FLOW EVERYWHERE.
YOU FLOAT UPON THEM
AND ARE CARRIED FROM LIFE TO LIFE.
Watch out. It is a risky phenomenon to remain too much attached to your pleasures, to your imagination, because this is how you have been going from one life to another. The seed cause of birth and death is desire, imagination, hankering for more. And remember, you are feeling so discontented in life
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