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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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to the moment. And without that there is no meditation, and without meditation there is no God.
The immediate is the ultimate -- I teach you the immediate, living moment to moment, without carrying the past. Buddha says, not hoarding the past, not accumulating the past; I would like to add, not projecting in the future either. If the past and the future disappear, what is left? A great silence, a profound presence of something utterly unknown. A mystery overwhelms you. And that mystery is immediate. I will not say "ultimate," because 'ultimate' means you can postpone for tomorrow. 'Immediate' shocks you, shakes you into awareness right now.
A goal is possible if we divide life into means and ends. That's how it has been down the ages. But life is one, it cannot be divided. It is indivisible, whole; it is an organic unity. Nothing is a means, nothing is an end. The whole life is one. You cannot categorize means and ends.
But the moment you think about evolution, goal, you have to divide life, then something becomes a means and something else becomes the end. Adolf Hitler believed in evolution, hence he could convince the intelligentsia of Germany, which is one of the most sophisticated intelligentsia of the world. In the name of evolution he could preach his Nazi philosophy that superman is the goal, that man has to be sacrificed for the superman. It appealed, it looked logical.
Who is the superman? And who is going to become the superman? Of course, the Nordics, the Germans. It enhanced the German ego tremendously. "Even if the whole humanity has to be destroyed, it is worth destroying because the great goal of superhumanity is looming large on the horizon. Everything can be sacrificed for it." That's how he could convince his country to drag the whole world into a world war.
Sri Aurobindo also talks in the same language -- the language of evolution. Not the superman but the supermind is the goal. And you have to sacrifice your present for that supermind; again the same idea of sacrifice. Man has remained dominated by the idea of sacrifice. Sacrifice! Sacrifice! Sacrifice! Be a martyr! That's the only way to create a golden future.
My
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