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Main Index
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goes higher. Buddhism says: Even if there is an I-thou relationship, you remain divided, you remain separate. You can shout at each other, but there will be no communion. The communion happens only when the I-thou division is no more; when subject and object disappear; where there is no I and no thou, no seeker and no sought... when there is unity, unison.
Realizing this, seeing into this woman's actions, and recognizing the truth, the woman called him'Saraha'. His name was Rahul; the woman called him Saraha.'Saraha' is a beautiful word. It means'he who has shot the arrow';'sara' means'arrow','ha(n)' means'have shot'.'Saraha' means'one who has shot the arrow'. The moment he recognized the significance of the woman's actions, those symbolic gestures, the moment he could read and decode what the woman was trying to give, what the woman was trying to show, the woman was tremendously happy. She danced and called him'Saraha', and said, "Now, from today, you will be called Saraha: you have shot the arrow. Understanding the significance of my actions, you have penetrated."
Saraha said to her, "You are not an ordinary arrowsmith woman I am sorry to have even thought that you were an ordinary arrowsmith woman. Excuse me, I am tremendously sorry. You are a great Master and I am reborn through you. Till yesterday I was not a real Brahmin; from today I am. You are my Master and you are my mother and you have given me a new birth. I am no more the same. So, right you are -- you have dropped my old name and you have given me a new name."
You ask me sometimes, "Why do you give new names?" -- to drop the old identity, to forget the past, not to be any more in any attachment with the past. A clean break is needed. You have to become discontinuous with the past.
Rahul became Saraha.
THE LEGEND HAS IT that the woman was nobody but a hidden Buddha. The name of the Buddha given in the scriptures is Sukhnatha -- the Buddha who had come to help the great potential man, Saraha. Buddha, a certain Buddha of the name Sukhnatha, took the form of a woman. But why? why the form of a woman? Because Tantra believes that just as a man has to be born out
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