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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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phenomenon in existence. Man and his society must look like chaos compared to the society of the bees. Everything is so organized -- even Adolf Hitler would have felt a little inferior. And so willingly, so voluntarily -- the bees are not forced, they are not living in a concentration camp. Willingly, joyously, they are part of an organization, so deeply involved with the organization that they have lost their individuality totally; they live as an organic part, they are not separate. Or if you watch the society of the ants, it is fixed, systematic; it has a tremendous order.
Now, how are you going to decide who is higher? This chaotic society of man? In three thousand years man has fought five thousand wars -- constantly killing each other, murdering, butchering, in the name of politics, in the name of religion... and this man you think is the highest evolved being on the earth? There are people like Arthur Koestler who think that something in the very beginning has gone wrong in the human mind, some nuts and bolts are missing -- man is born crazy.
If you watch man, it appears so. His whole life seems to be that of violence, struggle, destruction. No other animal is so destructive. No other animal kills its own species; the tigers don't kill other tigers and the dogs don't kill other dogs. Even if they fight, their fights are mock fights; they fight only to decide who is powerful. Once it is decided, the fight stops -- because to attack somebody who is weaker than you is not only wrong, it is utterly destructive and stupid too.
Two dogs will fight: they will show their teeth, they will bark, they will jump at each other, but they are simply watching who is more powerful. Once they have taken note who is more powerful, one dog will stop barking, will put his tail between his legs, and it is finished! He has given the sign that "I am weaker and you are stronger." And there is no shame, he is not ashamed -- what can he do if he is weaker and the other is stronger? How is he responsible for that? One tree is taller, another tree is not taller. Do you think the rosebushes are feeling ashamed because the mango trees and the neem trees and other trees
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