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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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of the game is ego.
The spiritual man is one who has stopped playing the game. He is the master. A MASTER IS NEVER PROUD.
HE DOES NOT TALK DOWN TO OTHERS.
He has no holier-than-thou look. But look at your so-called saints -- they are all looking at you with deep condemnation. They know you are sinners and they are saints. They are higher beings, superior beings; you are mundane, worldly, ordinary. What have you done? What virtue can you claim? They can claim that they have been fasting for years, that they are celibates, that they eat only once a day, that they sleep only three hours per night. And they have invented many kinds of torture for themselves. And of course torture has been thought for centuries to be the way towards spirituality. It is masochism, pure masochism: it has nothing to do with spirituality. But when a person tortures himself, of course he can feel his ego fulfilled. You cannot do it and he is doing it. And you certainly start feeling inferior because it is difficult for you to do it.
If you see a man lying down on a bed of thorns you cannot do it. Certainly he is higher, has superior powers. And if he looks at you as the condemned, as the people who are going to hell, you have to accept it because he is earning rewards. What have you done? You have not done anything like that. You cannot sleep on such a bed; you are a very ordinary human being. His will is like steel -- look at his willpower!
And it is nothing. He is simply more stupid than you are, he is more dull than you are, his body is less sensitive than yours. And there are methods to make your body less and less sensitive. If you sit naked in the hot sun your body starts getting burnt; slowly slowly, all the sensitive parts which are very fragile become hard -- they have to become hard. You become thick-skinned and the thicker the skin, the more easily you can lie down on a bed of thorns.
Have you not watched? Women can use sleeveless clothes more easily than men for the simple reason that their arms are less sensitive -- more beautiful but less sensitive. Even in cold countries they can move very easily with sleeveless clothes; man finds it
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