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Main Index
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| | | Book Name: The Dhammapada - The Way of the Buddha, Vol 9 | Previous Next | |
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or the fragrance. You will never know what fragrance was hidden in the seed. Analysis cannot yield it to you.
Studying rats and then applying that knowledge to man is simply saying that man is nothing but a kind of animal, a little more complex maybe, but nothing more than that. Reductionism means always bringing things to "nothing buts."
The real understanding of man is only possible not by studying the rats but by studying the buddhas, the christs, the krishnas -- the highest. By studying the peaks you will know exactly who you are, not by the lowest denominator but by the highest manifestation. When you study a buddha, a great longing arises in you to reach to those heights. When you study rats, then there is no longing. In fact, you feel very satisfied whatsoever you are. In fact, you feel greatly contented that you are a little better than the rats, a little more complex, a little more clever. You feel gratified. Religion disappears.
Religion lives in your longing to reach to the peaks, to attain to the ultimate heights, to bring your total potential into manifestation, into actuality. Religion is the science of self-actualization.
If a psychotherapist can be called a "shrink," then a real religious person should be called a "stretch." He stretches you to the ultimate possibilities.
Now the sutras:
FOR IF IN YOUR RENUNCIATION
YOU ARE RECKLESS AND BREAK YOUR WORD,
IF YOUR PURPOSE WAVERS,
YOU WILL NOT FIND THE LIGHT.
Buddha will talk again and again about light and darkness; hence those two words have to be understood. They are metaphors. Buddha has to use metaphors. All the buddhas, all the awakened ones, have to use metaphors. The ordinary language is not enough, is very inadequate. When you start expressing something inner you feel the difficulty. The language has no words for it, or even if the words are there they are too small and the experience is too big. The experience cannot be contained in those words, hence the use of the metaphor.
A metaphor simply means, don't cling to the literal meaning of the word. Understand it as a finger pointing to the moon. Don't cling to the literal
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