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| | | Book Name: The Dhammapada - The Way of the Buddha, Vol 3 | Previous Next | |
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feel hungry, you immediately say, "I am hungry." That creates an identification and gives you a feeling as if YOU are hungry. You are not. Language should be such that it does not give you this wrong notion that "I am hungry." What is really the case is: you are watching that the body is hungry; you are a watcher that the stomach is empty, that it desires food -- but this is not you. You are the watcher. You are always the watcher! You are never the doer. You always go on standing as a watcher far away.
Get more and more rooted into watching -- that's what Buddha calls VIPASSANA, insight. Just see with inner eyes whatsoever happens, and remain untouched, unattached.
A tough, old-time Indian fighter came straggling back into camp with seven Shoshone arrows piercing his chest and legs.
A doctor examined him and remarked, "Amazing stamina. Don't they hurt?"
The oldtimer grunted, "Only when I laugh."
In fact, they should not hurt even then -- and they don't hurt to a buddha. Not that if you pierce the buddha with an arrow there is no hurt; the hurt is there. He may feel it even more than you, because a buddha's sensitivity is at the optimum -- you are insensitive, dull, half dead. The scientists say that you only allow two percent of information to reach you; ninety-eight percent is prevented outside. Your senses don't allow it in. Only two percent of the world reaches to you; ninety-eight percent is excluded.
To the buddha, a hundred percent of the world is available, so when an arrow pierces a buddha it hurts a hundred percent; to you it hurts only two percent. But there is a great difference: a buddha is a watcher. It hurts, but it does not hurt HIM. He watches as if it is happening to somebody else. He feels compassion for the body -- he feels compassion, his compassion for his body -- but he knows that he is not the body.
So, in a way, it hurts him more than it hurts to you, in another way it hurts not at all. He remains aloof, unconcerned. It is a very paradoxical state. He CARES for the body, but yet remains unconcerned -- unconcerned about the consequences. He takes every possible care because he respects the
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