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CHAPTER 4
Religion is a courting, not a conquering
4 June 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
Jivan kavya: life poetry.
And poetry is the right approach towards life: prose is not the right approach. They are worlds apart – poetry and prose – and they are the two approaches to know.
By prose I mean the logical approach, the argumentative, the rational, and by poetry I mean the feeling approach, the aesthetic approach, the intuitive approach. Prose is male, poetry is female... and life is known only through the female. It is through the feminine that life exists – the very centre of it is feminine, and sannyas has to be more and more feminine.
That is the difference between religion and science too: science is more male-oriented, religion is more female-oriented. Religion is soft, science is hard. Science is more like aggression, an effort to conquer nature; religion is more like courting with nature, not conquering, persuading nature, loving nature. Yes, love too conquers, but in a totally different waySo become more and more poetic.
[The vipassana group is present. One participant says she sees things when they come within her range of vision but feels nothing inside in response]
I can understand. This is good; this is the first step. First one has to see things clearly, only then in the next step does feeling arise. If without a clear vision feeling arises, it will be more like sentimentality than like feeling. It will not be real feeling; it will be emotional, sentimental. It will make things foggier for you; it will not help.
Good – at this moment you need a clear vision, a clarity to see things as they are. Yes, the bird is singing, the trees swaying, the wind is passing through the trees and you see thoughts passing
by. You simply see them, you don’t have any feeling for them. Good – because right now if feeling comes you will be clouded; then the clarity will be lost.
Right now, go deep into this clarity. Let things be absolutely clear, crystal clear, and don’t hanker for feeling so fast, don’t be in a hurry. Once the clarity is complete, total, you will find one day that suddenly feeling is arising. And you will be surprised because that will be a totally new thing that you have not known before. Then you will be able to understand the difference between a sentimental state of mind and a feeling state of mind.
A feeling state has no fog: it is as clear as this clarity – when a thought passes by and you see it. Exactly in the same way a feeling passes by and you see it; you remain a witness.
My feeling about you is that methods like vipassana will suit you very very deeply. In fact you are not an emotional type at all. So once you understand that that is not your type, things will be very easy. You are a born buddhist; you cannot be a sufi. Yes, you can be a zen nun but you cannot be a sufi, you cannot be a devotee. But there is no need; that is enough! You will go through it, you will reach by going through it.
So don’t become worried about it, otherwise you will be disturbing the process; simply get in tune with it. That’s how it should be. It’s perfectly right.
[Another group member says she thinks that feelings are egoistic; then she thinks, well why not be egoistic?]
Feeling is not egoistic, nor is thought. A feeling can exist without the ego; in fact it can only exist perfectly when there is no ego. A thought exists very very clearly when there is no ego. Ego has nothing to do with feeling and thought. It is something else. Ego is the notion of continuity. Try to understand.…
One thought passes by, another thought passes by, then another. Each single thought is atomic; it is not related to the other, there is no bridge. Mm? – they flick: one thought gone, another, another, they go on. The ego is the idea that they are joined together, that there is a continuity, that there is a substance behind them.
Let me tell you one famous story of a buddhist monk – his name was Nagsena.…
A king had invited him to come to his palace so he came, but he said to the messenger, ‘Tell the king that because he has invited me I will come, but in fact there is nobody there inside me. Tell him that Nagsena exists not! Of course he has invited me so I will come, but tell him this much – that there is no Nagsena to come.’
The king was very puzzled – this was stupid or absurd or mad! If there were no nagsena, then who was going to come? But he waited; then Nagsena came. He came in the chariot of the king – the king had sent his chariot, a golden chariot with many horses.
The king came to the gate, received Nagsena and said, ‘I welcome you, but I’m puzzled. Since that day the messenger came back I have been thinking and thinking. What do you mean – that there is no Nagsena? Then who has come?’
And Nagsena said, ‘Yes, coming is there, going is there, but there is no Nagsena. The dance is there but there is no dancer... the running is there but there is no runner.’
The king said, ‘I cannot understand these puzzles – I am a practical man. Please be practical, don’t talk in abstract things! How can there be running without a runner and how can there be dance without a dancer?’
So Nagsena said, ‘Look at your chariot. If we take the horses away, are the horses the chariot?’ The king said, ‘No – horses are horses; they are not the chariot.’
And Nagsena said, ‘If we take the wheels of the chariot away, are the wheels the chariot?’. And the king said, ‘No, the wheels are wheels; they are not the chariot!’
In this way Nagsena went on. He said, ‘If we take this away and that away and that away, and nothing is the chariot, the whole chariot disappears!’ Then he said, ’Now where is the chariot? – because whatsoever we have taken away you said was not the chariot: the horses are not, the wheels are not, the axles are not.So according to you, sir, the chariot must be left behind! Where
is the chariot now?’
It was just a combination: there was no self, there was no ego, there was no substance. Things were joined together, they have been taken apart. There was no soul in it!
This is the buddhist’s idea of’anatta’, no-self. It is one of the greatest insights in existence. The ego is not the thought, mm? – the thought is the wheel, the thought is the horse. Neither is it the feeling. The idea that everything is being centred on something, everything is being held by something... that something is the ego – and that is simply a notion. The ego exists not!
To look into it is a great liberation, mm? – then you simply relax: whatsoever is happening is happening. You are not; you are just a combination. The combination will fall one day and nothing will be left behind.there is nothing behind!
This insight is what buddha means by ‘shunya’ – to look into zero. The ego is a false notion, and it creates worry because you think ‘How am I going to be tomorrow?’ And then you worry: ‘Yesterday was not as good as it should have been. I suffered so much. Tomorrow I am not going to suffer, I am going to enjoy’.and this and that, and a thousand things arise around this idea of the ego. And
it is not! It is simply emptiness!
As you proceed deeper into meditation you will come more and more to see it – that there is just a pure nothingness inside, just pure sky. In that pure sky is freedom, liberation. Not that you become liberated; you disappear, hence liberation!
Christianity says you become liberated! Buddhism says where are you? – hence liberation. The difference is tremendous! The christian standpoint is a very childish standpoint: you still remain but you become liberated. Buddha says you are the prison: when you disappear there is liberation. Not that you are liberated; your disappearance is liberation. One is freed of oneself. Not that one is free; one is freed from oneself.
Just go on looking at thoughts, looking at feelings as things arise, with no idea of I.
It is almost like this: when there is lightning we say ‘It is lightning’. What do you mean? Is there something else also, the ‘it’? There is only lightning; there is nothing behind it. It is not that ‘it’ is lightning. When we say ‘It rains’, what do we mean? Is there something that is raining? There is nothing; it is all rain! There is nothing behind it.
Buddha says: There are only processes, and there is no substance behind anything. And modern physics agrees absolutely with Buddha: matter is not! It is only energy running, running fast! There is no substance in the world; It is exactly like modern physics: modern physics says there is no matter and buddha says there is no self. It is all energy formation, processes of course, verbs of course, but no noun and no pronoun.
It is such a great insight that intellectually it is not possible to understand it. One has to meditate more and more, then one day suddenly it dawns on you. Suddenly one sees – yes, where am I? All the layers have been looked into and just emptiness in the hands... but that emptiness is all!
[A sannyasin asks about her relationship: I just feel like I want my own space... and I’m perfectly happy living separate.]
I can understand, but one thing you have to understand which will be helpful later on, is that people want their own space but when they have it they start feeling sad; what to do with that space? They start inviting somebody into that space.
You start inviting somebody into that space and you feel very good. The person comes into your space and, of course, he starts overlapping your space. You feel very good in the beginning; then by and by he becomes a permanent resident there in that space and you are no more alone. Then you feel interfered with, trespassed on: you start feeling that you are no more as free as you used to be. You start hankering for that space again, and a very imaginary nostalgia arises. Now you want your space back. Then there is fight.
You invited the man, now you start pushing him away. Once you push him away, for a few days you will feel good again, mm? – you have freedom – but once he is really away, then what to do with that freedom? You are left alone with your freedom... to do nothing!
This is the human dilemma: freedom wants love, love wants freedom. When you are in freedom you want to grow into love; when you grow into love the freedom is lost. Then you start asking for freedom, you start destroying the love.
This has to be understood. Once you understand it there arises a subtle understanding, and that understanding helps you to make a certain synthesis between freedom and love. That synthesis has completely broken in the western mind.
The western mind, particularly the modern generation, has completely lost track of that synthesis: how to be with someone and yet be free, and how to be free and yet be with someone. That is-one of the greatest arts. It comes slowly. It is very delicate; it is like a knack. And that has to be learned, otherwise again and again you will be in a turmoil.
Once you are alone it will be good for a few days because you will compare it with that situation where the other was there and you were hampered. You wanted to do this thing and you could not do, you wanted to rest one morning and you could not rest, you wanted not to go anywhere, to sleep the whole day, and you could not sleep.
Now you can sleep, now you can do whatsoever you want. Now your bathroom is free, mm? – the other’s things are not there. Your room is completely free and he has not thrown his clothes anywhere; now things are clean. But only for a few days and then you start missing the other.
Where is his toothbrush? Where is his towel? you start feeling lonely, alone; you start feeling that somebody should be there. Yes, it is alone but now it is no more warm! Those small things were making it warm. Somebody was there to look after you, somebody was there to be looked after. Now nobody disturbs your sleep; now there is nobody in the morning to give you tea. There is nobody to look after, nobody is ever ill, nothing – but then what to do? Suddenly you are there left alone with nothing to do.
For a few days, in comparison with the past, these days will look good, then by and by when the past is forgotten these days look very very ordinary, lonely. Then you hanker for the other. You invite somebody to bring some coziness and warmth into your room. Again comes the man and naturally warmth, and you feel very good; you are again full and flowing. But again things are there and he is there with his ugly habits: he smokes and things like that. And the whole game starts again!.So
just look into it.
One has to come to an understanding... and it is time now, mm? – you should come to an understanding. These two polarities cannot be lived separately; they have to come to a compromise. And I don’t see that there is any trouble: one can be free with somebody and one can be with somebody and yet be free. Love and freedom can grow togetherof course it needs great art.
A childish person can either be in love or can be freebut you are no more a child – you should by
now start becoming a grown-up, mm? So think over it. Good.
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