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| | | Book Name: The Dhammapada - The Way of the Buddha, Vol 3 | Previous Next | |
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not true or false, they are useful.
An Englishman, a Frenchman and a German were arguing about the respective merits of their languages. The Frenchman said, "French is the language of love, the language of romance, the most beautiful and pure language in the world."
The German announced, "German is the most vigorous language, the language of philosophers, the language of Goethe, the language most adaptable to the modern world of science and technology."
When the Englishman's turn came he said, "I don't understand what you fellows are talking about. Take this" -- and he held up a table knife. "You in France call it UN COUTEAU, you Germans call it EIN MESSER. We in England simply call it a knife, which, all said and done, is precisely what it is."
This is how religions have been arguing. Exactly like this has been the argument between religions: who is right? Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans, Buddhists, Jainas -- these are only different languages to express the same phenomenon. If once this is understood then there is no problem; I would like many MORE religions to evolve.
In fact in a better world every person will have his own religion, because religion is your way of expressing the inexpressible. It is like aesthetics: if you love roses and I don't love roses, there is no problem. We don't fight it out; we don't take swords and we don't go on a crusade: "Who is right? -- because this man says lotuses are beautiful, and I say roses are beautiful. Now it has to be decided on a battlefield."
How will you decide? You can kill me, but that won't make any difference. Even dying, I will go on saying lotuses are the most beautiful flowers; my death will not make any change in my vision. You can kill a Hindu, you can kill a Mohammedan: that does not change anything at all.
But this is what, down the ages, people have been doing to each other -- fighting ridiculously. Somebody calls God "Allah" -- he is wrong. Why? Somebody calls God "Ram" -- he is wrong. Why? -- because you call him "God." God, Ram, Allah, are all names, invented names for something which has no name of its own, which is a nameless experience.
There
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