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Main Index
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| | | Book Name: The Discipline of Transcendence, Vol 3 | Previous Next | |
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are fleeting. This life is temporary. Even if you attain, everything is taken away when you die, so what is the point? This life is not going to be for ever. We are searching for something which will remain for ever -- we are after immortality, we are after ABSOLUTE gratification. People who are running here, in this life, after desires are fools because death will take everything away. You accumulate wealth, and here comes death and all is left behind. We are searching for some treasure which we can take with ourselves, which will never be lost, which cannot be stolen, no government can tax it -- nobody can take it away, not even death."
You call these people religious people? They seem to be even more worldly than the so-called worldly; they are more materialistic than the materialists. Of course, their materialism is garbed in a disguise; their materialism has a flavour of spiritualism -- but it is a deception. It is as if on a dung-heap you have thrown some beautiful perfume. The dung-heap remains the dung-heap; the perfume can only deceive fools.
Buddha was not fooled, he could see through and through. And he could always see that the desire is there. If desire is there you are a materialist and you are worldly.
So he is not preaching any paradise to you, he does not believe in any paradise. Not that he does not believe in blissfulness, no. He believes in blissfulness, but that is not a belief: when all paradises are lost, when all desires drop, suddenly it is your innermost nature to be blissful. For it, nothing is needed -- no virtue is needed, no asceticism is needed, no sacrifice is needed. Just understanding is enough.
The Way of the Buddha is the way of understanding.
AND THE THIRD THING BEFORE WE ENTER IN THE SUTRAS: He does not believe in the soul -- no God, no paradise, no soul. Now, this seems to be very difficult.
We can accept there is no God -- maybe it is just a projection; who has seen it? We can accept there is no paradise -- maybe it is just our unfulfilled desire dreaming about it. But no soul? Then you take the whole ground from underneath. No soul? -- then what is the point of it all? If there is
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