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| | | Book Name: The Dhammapada - The Way of the Buddha, Vol 6 | Previous Next | |
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if I don't change my life drastically."
Now, that "drastically" changing your life is again an expression of anger. A drastic change is an angry change. But the Jaina monk was as asleep as this person -- he was very happy, he was getting one disciple! He immediately initiated him.
Jaina monks live naked. He immediately threw off all his clothes. The teacher was very impressed. He said, "It took me five years, slowly slowly to drop my clothes. You are a rare man -- within a moment you have thrown off all your clothes!"
There is a procedure in the Jaina system that first you reduce your clothes to three, then to two, then to one, and then finally you drop that one too. Go slowly, practice, so that you don't feel ashamed of being naked. But a practiced thing is not a real thing; all that is cultivated is false.
The teacher was very much impressed -- but in fact it was also part of the anger of this man... who could burn his house, who could kill his wife, who could throw his innocent child into a well and kill him. This man was capable of doing anything! He could throw off his clothes and be naked. It looks like great renunciation -- it is nothing. If you look deep down, it is anger standing on its head; it is anger against anger.
Soon the man became very famous. Such people can become very famous, because whatsoever they do, they do with passion, with a certain intensity, with fire. He fasted long....
The teacher gave him the name Shantinath -- SHANTINATH means "lord of peace" -- just to remind him that he had renounced anger, now peace had to be his style of life.
And for ten years he was not angry -- not even for a single moment. In fact there was no need, no opportunity arose. Anger does not come from out of the blue; it needs a certain context. His wife was not there, his child was not there, the house, the family, the business, the people, nobody was there. And he was so highly respected; the whole country came to know about this great man, this mahatma.
He was in New Delhi. One of his old friends came to the capital, for some business purpose, but when he came to know that his friend was staying in Delhi
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