|
Main Index
|
| |
| | | Book Name: The Dhammapada - The Way of the Buddha, Vol 8 | Previous Next | |
|
|
|
| |
help. In the first place it is wrong -- nobody else is the cause of your misery; the cause is within you. You are living with a fallacy. But even if you are living with a fallacy, the mind enjoys the idea that somebody else is responsible -- "I am not responsible"; you feel a relief.
"Doctor, you've got to do something about my husband."
"What seems to be the problem?"
"He's convinced that he is a refrigerator."
"That's terrible!"
"You're telling me!" snapped the wife. "He sleeps with his mouth open, and the light keeps me awake all night."
A woman called a psychiatrist on the phone and cried, "Doctor, you've got to help me. My husband is driving me crazy. He keeps insisting that he is Moses."
"That sounds serious," replied the psychiatrist. "I think you should bring him to my office tomorrow."
"Ah, I will," she replied, "but in the meantime how do I keep him from parting the water every time I try to take a bath?"
Even if you are mad, the mind would like to believe that somebody else is responsible -- somebody else is mad. People are ready to believe that the whole world is mad, but not themselves. In fact, a madman never accepts that he is mad. You can go to a madhouse and you can ask all the mad people, and you will be surprised: not a single mad person will agree that he is mad. The whole world is mad, he is perfectly sane.
In fact, those who understand mad people, they say that once a madman accepts that he is mad he is no longer mad; sanity has started coming into his being.
That's what all the buddhas have been saying: the moment you understand that "I am ignorant," the first glimpse of knowing has happened. The moment you say that "I am not," for the first time, real existence has penetrated you. The first time you say that "I don't possess anything," the whole world is yours. The first time you say that "I am not separate," that "I am one with the whole," you become the whole. The dewdrop does not really disappear; it becomes the ocean. By knowing one's emptiness, one's egolessness, one loses nothing, one gains all.
And the third sutra:
"EXISTENCE IS ILLUSION."
UNDERSTAND,
|
|
|
|
| |