|
Main Index
|
| |
| | | Book Name: The Dhammapada - The Way of the Buddha, Vol 3 | Previous Next | |
|
|
|
| |
religions worship, pray -- but both are partial. And the truth is not just the sum total of all its parts: it is more than the sum total of its parts.
Hence Buddha says an existential approach is needed -- not intellectual only, not emotional only. Neither the philosopher is going to discover it, nor the devotee.
Thirdly, Buddha says, "My search is not for bliss either..." because you cannot conceive what bliss is. Whatsoever you will conceive is bound to be somehow colored by your idea of happiness. And your idea of happiness is not very blissful, is not very close to bliss. Your idea of happiness is much closer to unhappiness. Your idea of happiness is nothing but the opposite of unhappiness -- and they are both together, two aspects of the same energy. Like day and night they are joined together; the day follows the night, then the night follows the day, and it goes on and on. Happy one moment, unhappy another, happy again, unhappy another... and this way your whole life is wasted.
When you hear the word 'bliss', what notion arises in your mind? -- something of happiness, something of eternal happiness, something when you will never know unhappiness again. But if unhappiness disappears, happiness cannot remain. If darkness disappears completely there will be no light. They depend on each other; they appear contradictory but they are really complementaries. So whatsoever you conceive of as bliss is going to be wrong from the very beginning. You will be searching for a new kind of hedonism -- maybe spiritual, metaphysical. Maybe you are not searching happiness here, but you are searching for happiness on the other shore.
And that's what all the religions talk about in the name of heaven, paradise: what they are missing here they project in paradise. If you look into the ideas about paradise of different people you will be able immediately to know one thing: what is missing in their life. You will not know anything about paradise, but you will certainly know what is missing in the lives of the people whose conception this paradise is.
For example, the Mohammedan paradise has provision for homosexuality. Strange! But that's what
|
|
|
|
| |