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| | | Book Name: The Discipline of Transcendence, Vol 3 | Previous Next | |
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do we have to call a bunch of strangers together to witness such a sad scene -- if you two boys are there and I'm there, who needs anyone else?"
The youngest son looked at them both and said, "I couldn't agree with you more. In fact, why do we need the expense of taking Papa to an undertaker? He is dying in the house, let's bury him from the house."
All of a sudden the old man's eyes flew wide open. He looked at his three children and shouted, "Give me my pants!"
They answered in a chorus, "Papa, you are a very sick man. Where do you want to go?"
He replied, "Give me my pants. I'll walk to the cemetery -- I am a businessman."
The whole life people simply go on saving, saving -- for what? The life is slipping by; each moment a precious moment is gone and it cannot be reclaimed. Buddha says: Don't waste it in foolish things.
Fame is foolish, it is pointless, meaningless. Even if the whole world knows you, how does it make you richer? How does it make your life more blissful? How does it help you to be more understanding? to be more aware? to be more alert? to be more alive?
If you are not practising the Way:
"... YOUR LABOURS ARE WRONGFULLY APPLIED AND YOUR ENERGY IS WASTED. IT IS LIKE UNTO BURNING AN INCENSE STICK. HOWEVER MUCH ITS PLEASING ODOUR BE ADMIRED, THE FIRE THAT CONSUMES IS STEADILY BURNING UP THE STICK."
That's how life is: each moment burning. You are always on the funeral pyre because each moment death is coming closer, each moment you are less alive, more dead. So before this whole opportunity is lost, Buddha says, attain to a state of no-self -- then there will be no death. And then there will be no misery. And then there will be no constant hankering for fame, power, prestige.
In fact, the more empty you are within, the more you seek fame; it is a sort of substitute. The more poor you are within, the more you seek riches; it is a substitute to somehow stuff yourself with something.
I observe every day: people come to me, and whenever they have a problem with their love, they immediately start eating too much. Whenever they feel that their love is in a crisis, they are not
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