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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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young, and he wants to become a sannyasin. Is it right, is it right of you to give him sannyas at such a young age?"
I inquired of the old man, "I am ready not to give sannyas to your son, if you replace him. You are seventy. What about you?"
And he wrote, "Yes, some day I will also take sannyas, but the time has not come yet."
But how will you manage? Death may come before and if the time has not come even when you are seventy, when is it going to come?
There are ways of postponing; desire is a way of postponing. Today is ugly, miserable; tomorrow you hope. And because of that hope you somehow manage to drag on. It is only a question of today -- tomorrow everything will be alright. It is not going to be so! Tomorrow is going to be born out of your today.
I have heard another principle. Somebody just like Peter, his name is Murphy -- Murphy's maxim. He says: Smile, because tomorrow is going to be worse.
This moment is all. Buddha insists very much: Live in the moment. And desire does not allow you to live in the moment. And you go on repeating the same things, you move in circles. Just watch your life, look back. You have been moving in circles: the same anger, the same sex, the same greed, the same ambition, the same postponement and the same desiring mind. When are you going to wake up?
A bartender at a very posh gentlemen's club was on duty when a distinguished gentleman seated himself at the bar, but made no attempt to order a drink. The bartender inquired what the gentleman would have, but the man replied that he was not drinking because he had tried liquor once and had not liked it.
The bartender hated to see the man just sitting there, so tried offering him a cigar. "No, thank you," was his firm reply. "I tried a cigar once, but I did not like it."
The bartender persisted in trying to make the customer comfortable, so he suggested that perhaps if he stepped into the billiard room he might find a friendly game of cards to sit in on. "Ah no," he replied, "I did gamble once, and did not care for it at all. I will just sit here, if you don't mind. You see, I am waiting for my son."
"Ah," replied
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