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| | | Book Name: The Dhammapada - The Way of the Buddha, Vol 3 | Previous Next | |
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is infinite between them.
To be lonely means a negative state: you are hankering for the other, you are longing for company, you are missing the crowd. You cannot tolerate yourself; you feel yourself intolerable. You are bored with yourself -- that's what being lonely means -- utterly bored.
To be alone is totally different: it is utterly ecstatic. To be alone means a positive state. You are not missing the other, you are enjoying yourself. You are not bored by yourself, you are intrigued. A great challenge comes from your innermost core. You start a journey of interiority. When there are others you are occupied with them, your consciousness remains focused on them. When you are alone, your consciousness moves inwards. When you are with others you have to be an extrovert -- your consciousness turning upon itself, showering upon itself. When you are with others your light shows their faces; when you are alone your light shows your own original face.
Maya, you have not understood me. I had not told you that to be a sannyasin means "to be ready to live a very lonely life." From where did you get this idea of living a very lonely life? Certainly one has to be able to live alone, but to live alone does not mean that you cannot relate; on the contrary, a man who can live alone becomes so full of joy, becomes so brimful, that he HAS to relate. He becomes a raincloud -- he has to shower. He becomes a flower so full of fragrance that he has to open its petals and allow its fragrance to be released to the winds.
A person who knows how to be alone becomes so full of song that he has to sing it. And where can you sing a song? You can sing a song only in love, in relating, in sharing with people. But you can share only if you have in the first place.
The problem is that people don't have any joy in their being and they are bent upon sharing it. Now, two miserable people bent upon sharing their joys with each other -- what is going to happen? The misery will not be doubled, it will be multiplied.
That's what people are doing to each other: husbands to wives and wives to husbands, and parents to children and children to parents, and friends
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