Once Buddha was being
insulted very much by a few people. They were shouting at him, saying all kinds
of dirty words to him, and he was standing there listening to them as totally
as possible.
After a few minutes they
felt frustrated, because he was not saying anything, and one of them asked,
"Are you deaf or something? Why don't you answer?"
Buddha said, "I am
answering, but my answer is a response, not a reaction."
Naturally they asked,
"What is the difference between reaction and response?"
And Buddha said,
"Sit down and I will explain it to you."
And the enemies turned
into disciples! They were listening to Buddha, sitting silently; listening to
what he was saying. They were converted. Buddha said, "If you had come ten
years ago, when I was asleep just as you are, I would have reacted. You would
have pushed my buttons."
When you push the button
and the fan goes on it is not a response; it is a reaction, it is mechanical.
When you push the button and the lights go on or off, it is a reaction not a
response. The light, the fan, or any other mechanism, has no freedom to choose;
it simply reacts. Response means choice, response means "chosen with
consciousness."
Buddha said, "Ten
years ago if you had said these words to me I would have cut off your heads --
I used to carry a sword with me. But now I am awake. I listened to your words
and I felt deep compassion for you -- that you were torturing yourselves
unnecessarily. You cannot force me to do something -- I am not a machine, now I
am a man. You cannot force me to do anything; I act out of my own choice. Hence
it is not reaction, it is action, and action is a response. I see the whole
situation, then out of my consciousness I act. At this moment I am feeling so
compassionate for you, so sorry for you, that I cannot speak the same language
that you are speaking to me."
The man who is asleep
reacts; he knows nothing of action. And reaction is a binding: it binds you
into new prisons, new chains. Response is out of freedom, hence it brings more
freedom. Reaction is out of the past; you act according to your memories,
built-in by your experiences, conditionings. You react not to the present, not
in the present. You don't reflect the real situation as it is; you go on
interpreting it according to your past, your past experiences.
The man who is awake is
like a mirror: he reflects that which is the case. HE IS AWAKE.
THE VICTORY IS HIS.
HE HAS CONQUERED THE
WORLD.
And Buddha says: It is
only by awakening that one becomes victorious; not by conquering the world but
by conquering one's unconsciousness.
There are only two types
of people in the world: the Alexander the Great type and the Buddha type. There
are millions... in fact ninety-nine point nine percent of people belong to
the Alexander type -- small Alexanders and big Alexanders, but Alexanders all.
Everybody is trying to conquer the world in his own way, big or small, through
money, power, prestige. And everybody is carrying a deep desire, a great longing
to succeed one day in becoming the most famous man in the world, the most
powerful man in the world. This is the Alexander type, the extrovert, the
worldly; he accumulates money, possessions, but he loses his soul.
And there are very rare,
very few people in the world who belong to the Buddha type, who are no longer
interested in the world, whose whole interest is in self-actualization, in
self-realization, in becoming more aware of the reality that they are.
These are not fixed
types, they are liquid. Anyone who belongs to the Alexander category can move
to the category of being a buddha. And all the buddhas, in their past, had
belonged to the Alexander category, and all those who are Alexanders now can
become buddhas one day. It all depends on you; a conscious, deliberate choice
is needed: that you turn your energies from extroversion into introversion,
that you become more interested in the inner reality, that you become more
interested in your subjectivity rather than in objects. You start moving, diving
deeply into your interiority to find the center of your being.
And the magic is, the
moment you find the center of your being you have found the center of the whole
existence -- because there is only one center; my center and your center are
not two centers. Anybody who moves inwards comes to the same center. On the
periphery we are different people; at the center we are one.
HE IS AWAKE. THE VICTORY
IS HIS. And Buddha says: The real conqueror is not the one who has conquered
the world but the one who has conquered himself. He has conquered the world
too, not in a visible way but in a very very invisible way. He becomes the
master.
No comments:
Post a Comment