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Can he simply be so selfish that he can forget all about them? Friends and enemies, lovers and those who hated him, people who nourished him all his life and the people who wanted to destroy him. But when compassion arises, the difference between the friend and the enemy disappears. Now it is just a whole caravan of humanity -- fellow travelers.
Should he look back or just go ahead and disappear into the universal bliss? He has come to the point from where there is no barrier for him. He can move and fly like an eagle into the open sky of truth, beauty, goodness -- satyam, shivam, sunderam.
But what about those who are left behind? They may have hated him -- they have hated him; efforts were made on his life many times. But the moment compassion arises, one feels compassion even for those whose whole effort was to destroy the man, to destroy his message, to destroy him so entirely that his name disappears, forgotten. But still... they are human beings, facing same anxieties, the same problems, the same jealousies; suffering in the same hell.
The story is that Buddha stopped at the gate of paradise, for which he had been working his whole life. The door opened. There was music, celebration, because only once in a while the door opens. Only once in a while there is a man who rises to such heights that paradise has to rejoice. The gatekeepers asked, requested: "You have arrived! Come in." But they were surprised. He was looking sad, because he was not thinking this moment about paradise and its benedictions. He was thinking of millions of souls wandering, not knowing where to go, not knowing what to do, suffering, in deep torture.
Should he go back and forget all about the paradise and its pleasures, its eternal life, its every moment rejoicings? He has achieved it with great arduousness. Now that he has found it, and now that paradise is celebrating to receive him -- should he enter the gate? But that will be utter selfishness, ugly -- not worthy of a man like Gautam Buddha.
He told the doorkeepers, "Please, shut the doors again. I cannot come in. I will wait until the last human being has passed into paradise. I am going to be the
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