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| | | Book Name: The Dhammapada - The Way of the Buddha, Vol 11 | Previous Next | |
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you. And these are not easy things.
People are not concerned about truth at all. They are concerned about money, they are concerned about power, about prestige. They are not interested in being liberated, they don't want to be sane. They protect their insanity in every possible way because they have invested so much in their insanity. It is THEIR insanity and they are very proud of it.
Are you not proud of being a Christian, of being a Hindu, of being a Mohammedan? Are you not proud of being a German or British or an Indian? You are proud of all these insanities. These divisions have been destructive. These divisions have proved curses to humanity. They have been calamities, but you are very proud. Everybody seems to be proud.
I have heard:
An Englishman was talking to an Italian. And the Englishman asked the Italian, "If you had been given a choice before you were born, what nationality would you have chosen?"
He said, "Of course I would have been British!"
And the Englishman asked, "How would you have felt?"
He said, "I would have felt very proud!"
These were the days of the second world war and the Italians and the Germans were being defeated. They were losing their prestige and their power, they were condemned all over the world.
The Italian asked the Englishman, "If you had not been born British, how would you have felt?"
And the Englishman said, "I would have felt ashamed."
That's why the British seem to be the most neurotic of all -- very much obsessed with being British, as if it is something very great.
The same is the case with the Indians; they also suffer from the same chronic disease. They feel very proud of being Indian. They don't think that anybody else in the world is really human; all are a little below. But that's how everybody thinks deep down.
When the first Westerners reached China, they wrote in their diaries that they could not believe the Chinese were human. Encountering such a different race for the first time it must have been difficult for them to accept them as human. And what about the Chinese? Their records say that looking at the Western people
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