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| | | Book Name: The Dhammapada - The Way of the Buddha, Vol 5 | Previous Next | |
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"I'll bet that shook you up?"
"Yeah, but not as much as the six pall-bearers."
The mind can seduce you into anything, into any stupid thing. And once anything gets into your mind, it tortures you, it haunts you. You have to do it -- it seems that is the only way to get rid of it. But before you get rid of it, mind gives you another idea. Mind is very inventive as far as imagination is concerned. Mind can go on inexhaustibly creating new ideas for you; that's what has been happening for centuries, for lives. You have lived in this world for so many lives repeating the same kinds of things again and again, maybe a little bit different but the things are the same... and still you go on hoping.
Buddha says beware of the false imaginings; the body is a shadow, you have to leave it one day. You are not it.
HOW FRAIL IT IS!
FRAIL AND PESTILENT,
IT SICKENS, FESTERS AND DIES.
LIKE EVERY LIVING THING
IN THE END IT SICKENS AND DIES.
Remember death, never forget it for a single moment! Because of this insistence, many people have thought Buddha is death-obsessed; he is not. You may be life-obsessed but he is not death-obsessed. He is simply bringing everything to a balance.
He says, as much as you are involved in life you have to remember death too, then there will be a balance, an equilibrium. He used to send his disciples, his sannyasins, to watch whenever a dead body was being burned: "Just go, sit there, meditate and watch and remember this is going to happen to your body too."
Death has to be meditated upon; otherwise life can go on giving you false hopes. If you remember death, life cannot deceive you anymore. Death will keep you alert.
Buddha is not death-obsessed, but he has come to know one thing: that it is only by becoming aware of death that one gets rid of the obsession with the body, the obsession with food, the obsession with sex, the obsession with money, the obsession with the world. You have to live in life, but let there be a consciousness, constantly, that this life is slipping out of your hands and death is coming closer every moment. That will not allow you to be a victim
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