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-- you will not find even its name on any map; even the name has disappeared. Now it is called Sahet-Mahet. It is impossible to believe that such a great city existed there. This is the way of life -- things go on changing. Cities turn into cemeteries, cemeteries turn into cities... life is a flux.
Buddha must have loved this city of Sravasti, because out of forty-five years of his ministry he stayed in Sravasti twenty-five years. He must have loved the people. The people must have been of a very evolved consciousness. All the great sutras of Buddha, almost all, were born in Sravasti.
This sutra -- The Diamond Sutra -- was also born in Sravasti. The Sanskrit name of this sutra is Vajrachchedika Prajnaparamita Sutra. It means perfection of wisdom which cuts like a thunderbolt. If you allow, Buddha can cut you like a thunderbolt. He can behead you. He can kill you and help you to be reborn.
A buddha has to be both -- a murderer and a mother. On the one hand he has to kill, on the other hand he has to give new being to you. The new being is possible only when the old has been destroyed. Only on the ashes of the old the new is born. Man is a phoenix. The mythological bird phoenix is not just a mythology, it is a metaphor. It stands for man. That phoenix exists nowhere except in man. Man is the being who has to die to be reborn.
That's what Jesus said to Nicodemus. Nicodemus was a professor, a learned man, a rabbi, a member of the board that controlled the great temple of Jerusalem. One dark night he came to see Jesus. He could not gather courage to come to him in the day time; he was afraid what people would say. He was so respectable, so much respected. Going to a vagabond teacher?... going to somebody who is hated by all the rabbis and all the learned people?... going to somebody who moves with thieves and drunkards and prostitutes? But something in him was very desirous to see this man. maybe he had seen Jesus walking, coming to the temple. He must have felt something deep in his unconscious for this man. He could not hold himself back.
One night when everybody had left, when even the disciples had gone to sleep, he reached Jesus
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