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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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old religions.
The old religions were not dancing, singing, celebrating; they were anti-life, anti-earth, anti-body. They were purely negative; they had nothing to affirm. Their God was based on negativity. Go on negating: the more you negate life, the more religious you were thought to be.
I am bringing a totally new vision of religion to the earth: I am introducing you to a religion that can laugh, a religion that can love, a religion that can live the ordinary life with extraordinary awareness.
Religion is not a question of changing life patterns, of changing things and situations. Religion changes you, not your situation. It does not change things: it changes the way you look at things. It changes your eyes, your vision; it gives you an insight. Then God is not something against life: then God is the intrinsic core of life. Then spirit is not anti-matter but the highest form of matter, the purest fragrance of matter.
Mariel Strauss, if you avoid sannyas that will be being serious. You have not understood that this is not the same kind of initiation. You have been into many schools, and you have gathered much knowledge about initiation and the mysteries -- but this is not that kind of initiation. It is just the opposite: it is getting initiated into life, into the ordinary life. Once your ordinary life becomes suffused with your meditativeness you are a sannyasin. It is not a question of changing your clothes only -- that is only symbolic -- the real sannyasin is bringing meditation to the ordinary affairs of life, bringing meditation to the marketplace. Eating, walking, sleeping, one can remain continuously in a state of meditation. It is nothing special that you are doing, but doing the same things with a new way, with a new method, with new art.
Sannyas changes your outlook.
You listened to my advice and for nine months, you say, you stopped almost everything and got good results from following the advice. But somewhere deep down you are still serious; otherwise you would have taken a jump into sannyas -- nonseriously. Even to ask about it is to show your seriousness. You could not accept it playfully, with a laughter.
Sannyas
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