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Main Index
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| | | Book Name: The Dhammapada - The Way of the Buddha, Vol 3 | Previous Next | |
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thinking that I will be thrown into hell, I have never done anything good. Why are you taking me in?"
The doorkeeper said, "You made the Ambassador, and because of the Ambassador many more people have remembered God than through anything else. Whosoever travels in an Ambassador remembers God continuously: 'My God!' You have made people so religious. Even atheists when they travel in your car start remembering God -- they have to! Hence this special concession for you: a special place has been reserved for you in heaven."
If now the scriptures are written, then there will be solid gold Rolls Royces and everything that is missing here will be there.
Buddha says: My search is not for bliss... because the moment you talk about bliss, people start thinking of pleasures. It is better not to talk about bliss, it is dangerous. People will simply misunderstand.
Then what is his bliss for? He has chosen a word never chosen before -- he says: My search is for freedom. That word is immensely important: freedom from the ego, freedom from the mind, freedom from desires, freedom from all limitations. In a way, he is very scientific in his inward journey. He is saying if you can create a space in your being where your consciousness is totally free, then all is achieved: God is achieved, truth is achieved, beauty is achieved, bliss is achieved. But only in freedom anything becomes possible.
Hence these sutras:
AT THE END OF THE WAY,
THE MASTER FINDS FREEDOM
FROM DESIRE AND SORROW --
FREEDOM WITHOUT BOUNDS.
Not God, not truth, not bliss, but freedom. Freedom is Buddha's word which contains all: God, bliss, truth, beauty. And freedom avoids all other pitfalls. Freedom needs courage; you cannot attain to freedom if you are afraid. Freedom needs that you drop all identification with the mind and the body; otherwise you will remain confined, you can't be free.
Freedom means that you get out of this constant desiring mind. It is the desiring mind that creates paradise. If you drop desire, how can you talk about paradise? If you drop desire, sorrow disappears automatically, because sorrow is a shadow of desire.
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