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| | | Book Name: The Dhammapada - The Way of the Buddha, Vol 6 | Previous Next | |
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that beauty, that silence, that light, that love -- he had never seen it anywhere else. He bowed again.
Buddha said, "Now it is right, now it is of your heart! Otherwise you were following the advice of your prime minister. Now you are really bowing down because you have seen me."
It is rare to find a buddha and more rare to recognize him, because you go on seeing with your old eyes, with your old, stupid mind. Your stupid mind is unable to see buddhahood. It can see only things; it cannot see the immaterial, the mysterious. It can only see the gross, not the subtle.
One Friday night Bob came home earlier than usual and surprised his attractive wife in bed with another man. Becoming enraged, he seized a pistol he kept hidden in his dresser and shot the lovers to death.
A next-door neighbor, Jim, was discussing the tragedy with some friends a few days later. Jim said, "Well, after all, it is not the worst thing that could have happened."
The others jumped on him. "What do you mean? Two people dead, and Bob may be about to be executed!"
Jim replied, "Well, I still say it could have been worse. If Bob had come home early on Thursday night, I would be dead!"
Man lives in such unconsciousness. He goes on doing things motivated by the unconscious. He is not master of his own soul. He does not know where these desires arise from; they simply possess him. And when he is possessed by a desire, he is utterly helpless.
The buddha is awake, awake to all that is happening in his being; so alert that nothing can take possession of him, so full of light that no darkness can enter into his own being. He lives in that light, he lives with that awareness. His every movement, his every act, comes out of this consciousness. Hence there is never any repentance in a buddha. He never looks back; there is no point. Each thing that he has done, he has done totally and perfectly.
You always have to look back, for the simple reason that you are always partial, fragmentary. Only a part of your being gets involved, and you do everything in such a way that you are not totally in it, never wholly in it. Later on you start thinking,
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