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that your whole life is just a prolonged dream. Don't take it seriously. Be playful, enjoy it while it lasts. There is no need to renounce it, because those who renounce it take it seriously.
I have always wondered about so-called great philosophers, for example Adi Shankara, who has been thought by the Indians to be the greatest mind in the whole history of man. But that "greatest mind," Adi Shankara, looks so stupid on just a small scrutiny.
He talked about the world being illusory: it is just purely a dream, there is nothing outside, you are projecting it. Still, he could not touch an untouchable.
One morning he was getting ready for his prayer, taking a bath in the Ganges in Varanasi. It was still dark and he was coming back up the steps, and a man touched him and told him, "I am a sudra, an untouchable." Shankara was furious, he forgot all about peace, and "love your enemies."
I have always thought, Why unnecessarily...? First love yourself, then love your friends -- because these friends will turn someday into your enemies. Continue loving. Nobody becomes an enemy before becoming a friend, so just go on loving friends and ex-friends, wives and ex-wives. But it is all a dream, your projection.
Shankara, freaking out, denies his own philosophy. The sudra was a strange fellow. He said, "Before you become enraged..."
Shankara said, "I will have to take another bath! It is a cold winter morning, and knowing perfectly well that you are a sudra, why did you touch me? There is no crowd" -- and Varanasi has vast ghats with steps. "Only two men... there was no need to touch me."
The old man said, "There was: to make you aware that next time you say the world is illusory, remember me. It is not. You are freaking out at your own projections. You are going to take a bath in a dream river. Just think about your philosophy."
But Shankara is thought to be the greatest philosopher, at least in the Indian heritage. But his philosophy seems to be just mind-oriented. It has no actual experience of awakening. Otherwise, nobody is touchable and nobody is untouchable; just as you are made of bones and flesh, everybody is made
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