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| | | Book Name: The Dhammapada - The Way of the Buddha, Vol 8 | Previous Next | |
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were enjoying an evening at the opera when suddenly Mr. Ginsberg said, "Look, Miriam, there is Mr. Pincus and his mistress sitting across from us in a box."
Mrs. Ginsberg studied the pair for a long time with her opera glasses and then said, "Ours is better!"
Anything and everything will be claimed by the ego. And "ours is always better," whatsoever it is. The ego exists only through such claims. The "I" exists only as an island in the ocean of "my" and "mine." If you stop claiming things as "my" and "mine," the ego will disappear on its own accord.
Neither the wife is yours nor the husband nor the children. All belongs to the whole. Your claim is foolish. We come empty-handed into the world and we go empty-handed from the world. But nobody wants to know the truth -- it hurts. Empty-handed we come and empty-handed we go. One starts feeling shaky, one starts feeling scared. One wants to be full, not empty. It is better to be full of anything -- any garbage -- than to be empty. Emptiness looks like death, and we don't want the truth. Our whole effort is to live in convenience, even if that convenience is based on illusions.
"I demand an explanation and I want the truth!" shouted the irate husband upon discovering his wife in bed with his best friend.
"Make up your mind, George," she calmly replied. "You can't have both."
Either you can have the explanation or the truth. And people are more interested in the explanation than in the truth, hence so many philosophies. They are all explanations -- explanations to explain away things, not to give you the truth; explanations to create great smoke so you need not see the truth. And Buddha's insistence is: SEE it! -- because without seeing it you can't go above sorrow.
James, to his wife: "I am in the mood and you are so beautiful!"
Katherine: "What makes you think I am beautiful?"
James: "When I am in the mood, everybody is beautiful!"
The whole question is of your mood. If you are in the mood of an ego trip, then you will not listen to buddhas, or you will listen in such a way that you can manage, distort, interpret those truths according to yourself,
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