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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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have not even touched it, it is simply lying there. It is a treasure which has not been used, and anything which is not used for a long time goes dead, becomes stale. It goes rotten, it becomes a dead weight on you, it makes you heavy and ill.
Buddha has nothing special in him. Of course, the Buddhist priests say that he is special. Why do these priests go on saying that Buddha is special, Mahavira is special, Jesus is special, Krishna is special? Why? -- for a simple reason: that helps to protect our egos. They are special, what can we do? If they became enlightened they were bound to become enlightened, they came with a special capability. We are normal human beings, they were AVATARAS. They were direct descendants of God, we are very very faraway, distant relatives, and the distance is so much that it is impossible to bridge it. They were coming directly from the above; they were messengers of God, messiahs, prophets, TIRTHANKARAS -- and we are ordinary people. This is a way of defending our egos -- a very logical way, a very rational way.
Do you think you are paying respect by saying that Jesus is the only begotten Son of God? You are not paying respect, you are being very cunning; you are trying to protect yourself. You are saying, "You are special and we are ordinary, so we have to behave in an ordinary way. You can behave like an enlightened person. What can we do about it? We are made in this way. The responsibility is God's, not ours. It is not our fate to be a Buddha or to be a Krishna or to be a Lao Tzu. It is not our destiny to be a Zarathustra. They were destined and we are not destined. So if something happened to them it was bound to happen, and if nothing is happening to us, nothing is happening to us because nothing is destined for us."
This is a trick, a strategy. Buddha wants you to be reminded that you are made of the same stuff, the same blood, the same bones, the same marrow, the same consciousness. The only difference is that you are not working on yourself, you are not using the opportunity, you are not transforming yourself. And you go on finding excuses: "How can we do it? We have so many children and the wife and the
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