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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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pursuing shadows which you will never find. And who is pushing you from the back? Who is making you run? The real power is in the hands of your desire, imagination, in your unconsciousness.
O SEEKER!
GIVE UP DESIRE.
SHAKE OFF YOUR CHAINS.
One day Miss Tilly saw her big tomcat corner a cockroach in the kitchen. He was about to kill the bug when it addressed Miss Tilly: "Have your cat spare my life and I will grant you three wishes."
"A million dollars?" asked the spinster.
"Granted!" said the roach, producing the money.
"I want to be young and beautiful!"
"You got it!" And she was.
"Now," said Tilly, "turn my tomcat into a tall, handsome prince lying next to me in bed!" It was done.
"I am so happy!" she exclaimed.
"I am glad," said the prince beside her. "But aren't you sorry now you had me fixed?"
Even if your desires are fulfilled, something or other will be missing.
O SEEKER! GIVE UP DESIRE. SHAKE OFF YOUR CHAINS. The more you desire, the more you become imprisoned. People are imprisoned in things, people are imprisoned by wives and husbands, people are imprisoned by their power. People are creating so many prisons -- prisons within prisons, boxes within boxes -- and still they want to be happy, they want to be joyous. How can you be joyous? Your life is suffocating! And nobody else is responsible except you.
The kindly rebbetzyn asked, "Tell me, my good man, why do you drink all that whisky?"
"Madam," replied the good man, "what else should I do with it?"
You don't know what else you can do with your life. You know only how to create prisons. You know only how to create more misery. You have become really skillful! For centuries, for lives together, you have done only one thing: creating chains, creating misery, creating pain for yourself and for others. You are sadomasochistic; that is your whole art. Either you will torture others or you will torture yourself, but you will torture. You don't know that life can be a dance, a celebration. You can't know it till you drop your desiring.
Desire exists like a cloud of smoke around you; you can't
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