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Main Index
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| | | Book Name: The Dhammapada - The Way of the Buddha, Vol 7 | Previous Next | |
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died, he asked for one thing only.
He said, "When you take me towards the cemetery, let my hands hang outside the casket."
"Why?" asked his generals. "It has never been done, it is not conventional. Why this eccentric idea?"
Alexander said, "For a simple reason. I would like people to know that I am going empty-handed. I am dying like a dog. Let people know. I lived with the idea that I am great, that I am the world conqueror. But all that I have managed to do is waste my life. My whole kingdom is not capable of purchasing even a few minutes for me."
Death is so powerful, but one thing it cannot take away from you, that is meditation. If you can become rooted in your being, alert, conscious, watchful, you will see that you are not the body, and you are not the mind, and you are not the heart. You are simply the witnessing soul, and that witnessing will go with you. Then you can witness even death. That witnessing is the source of all religion. Those who have attained to that source are the enlightened ones, are the buddhas.
In life, whatever you are doing, whatsoever it is, is wrong if it is not leading you towards meditation.
You must have heard about the famous Peter principle. The principle is: If anything can go wrong, it will.
The second principle of Peter is: No matter which way you ride, it is uphill and against the wind.
And the third principle of Peter is: You can't win, you can't break even, you can't even quit the game.
But Peter... I don't know who this Peter is. Nobody knows, so many Peters are petering around the world. But it seems he has not heard about Buddha. Yes, it is true you can't win. It is true, you can't break even. It is true, you can't even quit the game. And all three have been tried, and nothing has succeeded. Capitalism tries to win the game, that is the capitalist approach, the approach of Alexander the Great. Socialism tries to go against the second, that you can't break even. Capitalism has failed, because all Alexanders have failed, and socialism has failed, all Stalins and Maos have failed. And the pseudoreligious person has failed: he tries to quit the game, and that
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