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Main Index
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| | | Book Name: The Dhammapada - The Way of the Buddha, Vol 12 | Previous Next | |
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expression is significant. Whenever you say, "I did it in spite of myself," you are recognizing, without knowing it, your slavery: that things happen in you which are happening without you -- you are just a victim.
Nobody is born as a master, but everybody is born with a tremendous potential to be a master. Everybody can be a master, but very rarely do people attain to their potential. Very rarely do people attain to their maximum peak, to the crescendo of their being.
The psychologists say that the ordinary person only uses seven to ten percent of his potential in his whole life; ninety percent or more remains unused. And this is about the ordinary person. The psychologists say even the talented people, very talented people, don't use more than twelve to thirteen percent. And the people we call geniuses, they don't use more than fifteen percent of their potential.
Just think, if the whole of humanity were using one hundred percent of its potential -- which it is capable of -- there would be no need to IMAGINE a paradise, we could make it here. We will be in paradise if one hundred percent potential is being used by everyone. But if you don't use it, it remains like a weight. Rather than being a help in your life it becomes such a weight, like a rock hanging around your neck. That which could have become a boat becomes the cause of your drowning.
Religion is concerned basically with helping you to bring your potential into action, to make your potential actual, so it is not just there as a seed but becomes a flower and a great fragrance is released.
That's what happened to Gautama the Buddha, that's what happened to Jesus the Christ. These few people were just like you, made of the same stuff. There is nothing special about them, they are not special beings. Forget that idea. The priests have been preaching it down the ages -- that they were special, that Jesus was the only begotten Son of God. It is all sheer nonsense. You are as much a son of God as Jesus was, no more or less -- no difference between you and Jesus. As far as the potential is concerned you are absolutely alike. But Jesus actualized it and you have not even touched
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