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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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Hindu priest goes on reciting the Gita again and again. Every day, every morning he recites the same scripture. It becomes mechanical. It becomes like a gramophone record. He goes on repeating. It becomes part of his memory with no meaning, no significance. He is just like a parrot. But it gives consolation. Repeating again and again certain truths hypnotizes you.
Krishna says: When the body dies, the soul does not die. You can burn the body, but the fire cannot consume the soul. NA HANYATE HANYAMANE SHAREERE -- you can kill the body, but you cannot kill the spirit, you cannot kill the soul, because no arrow can reach to it, no sword can cut it. NAINAM CHHINDANTI SHASTRANI, NAINAM DAHATI PAVAKAH -- neither any weapon can cut me nor fire burn me. Go on repeating it again and again and again, year in, year out; you become autohypnotized. You start believing it, although you have not created any soul in you yet.
Krishna is right: the soul is eternal -- but in the first place you have to have it. It is not there. Soul means consciousness, soul means integratedness. Soul means that you know through your own experience that you are not the body and not the mind. It arises only through witnessing the bodymind mechanism; it is not created by repetition. Repetition is hypnosis. It is experienced just the other way: you have to become dehypnotized, you have to become unconditioned. You have to forget all the scriptures and all the priests and you have to look into yourself. Howsoever fearful it is, you have to encounter your interiority.
The priests help you to remain on the circumference. They seem to be great friends, but in the final reckoning they are the greatest enemies. It is not Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong who are the real enemies of religion. The real enemies are the priests, the popes, the shankaracharyas, and so on, so forth. They don't know what they are doing. How can they help you? They simply go on repeating tradition, handing over to you conventions -- ancient conventions, but dead.
You ask me, Veeresh, "Cannot the priests help humanity in some way or other?"
Yes, they can help... if they disappear! We no
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