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| | | Book Name: The Dhammapada - The Way of the Buddha, Vol 10 | Previous Next | |
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what you want, you will be frustrated. It seems frustration is the destiny, the absolute destiny, of the unconscious man.
A psychiatrist was going around a mental hospital. He saw one man beating himself, pulling his hair, looking very suicidal. He was kept in a cell -- he was dangerous. He asked the superintendent, "What happened to this man?"
The superintendent said, "He loved a woman, he loved her very much, but he could not get her. She married somebody else. Since then he has been in this state. He wants to commit suicide, he does not want to live. He says there is no meaning in life: 'My meaning was in that woman. If I could not get that woman, that means my life is finished!'"
Feeling sorry for the man -- he was young and beautiful -- they moved ahead. They saw another cell and another man was inside it, and he was even more ferocious, very murderous.
The psychiatrist asked, "What has happened to this man?"
The superintendent said, "This is the man who married that same woman! Since he has married her he wants to kill her, and if he cannot kill her then he wants to kill anybody instead, but he wants to kill and destroy. He wants to kill the whole world! That woman drove him mad."
One is mad because he could not get her, the other is mad because he COULD get her. This is the whole history of every human being, more or less. It may not be so extreme, so you don't see it, but the differences are only in degrees. The man in the grip of desire is bound to become insane.
And Buddha says: PLEASURE.... Pleasure means that you think the body is the only source of happiness. That is sheer stupidity. The body's pleasures are very momentary; they are not real pleasures. But everybody is caught in the net of the body. We are born as bodies, but we need not die as bodies. If we die as bodies, our whole life was a sheer wastage. You have to grow up.
And remember: growing old is not growing up. Everybody grows old, but very few people, very rare people grow up. One who really grows up becomes a buddha. Growing up means you start becoming alert about bodily pleasures -- that they are momentary and they can change into
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