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happen when you are gone? We are lost forever.' He started crying and weeping again.
Buddha said: 'Listen. Forty years you walked in my light and you could not attain to your own light. Do you think if I am alive forty years more, you will attain to your own light? Even four thousand or four million years? The more you walk in a borrowed light, the more you imitate, the more you will lose. It is better I should go.'
The last words on Buddha's lips were: 'Be a light unto yourself.' He died with this uttering: 'Be a light unto yourself' -- 'APPO DEEPO BHAVA.'
The story is beautiful. The next day Ananda became enlightened. He could not become enlightened for forty Years and he loved Buddha tremendously; he had almost become a shadow of him and he could not attain. The borrowed light: he relied too much on it.
And it was so beautiful, and so effortlessly available -- who bothers about anything else? And within twenty-four hours he became enlightened. What happened?
Twenty-four hours of deep crying and facing the darkness, and the reality, and one's own helplessness. Those twenty-four hours must have been so long for him. It was the darkest period -- painful, deep anguish and agony. He passed that hell. It is said that for twenty-four hours he was Lying down under a tree as if dead, the whole body shaking, tears continuously flowing. People thought that he had gone mad or that he wouldn't be able to survive without Buddha.
But after twenty-four hours he was a totally different man. He opened his eyes and people could not believe it -- those eyes had the same glimmer as Buddha's eyes. His body had the same beauty, the same fragrance. He walked like Buddha. He had attained to his own light.
THE RABBI OF RIZHYN REPLIED: 'BUT IF A MAN CARRIES HIS OWN LIGHT WITH HIM, HC NEED NOT BE AFRAID OF ANY DARKNESS.'
The whole world need not be filled with light for you to walk -- just your own heart. A little flame, and that's enough, because that will light enough of a path for you to walk. Nobody walks more than one step at a time. A small flame in the heart of awareness, mindfulness, DHYANA, meditation. A little flame and that's
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