Life is Three-dimensional
Beloved Master,
Was Buddha not a poet? Did he not have a logical mind? How are we as
new men and women to go beyond what you have called his
one-dimensionality, when it seems that your basic teaching, as well
as that of Buddha, is simply awareness?
Gautama the Buddha was not a poet if you understand him directly,
but if you understand him via me, he IS a poet. When I am speaking
on Buddha it is very natural that my color is reflected in him.
I love poetry and I go on finding poetry even where it is not.
Buddha is like a desertland - but I love oases and I go on
discovering them. If you had seen Buddha you would have seen
immediately that he couldn′t have anything to do with poetry. Poetry
was fiction for him, as much fiction as it was for Plato. In his
Republic, Plato says, poets will not be allowed, for the simple
reason that they are liars, they live in lies. What is poetry?
Beautiful lying! Buddha was also of the same mind; he would have
agreed with Plato. He was very insistent on truth.
My approach is different. I don′t see religion as a dry, dead thing.
To me religion is a song, a dance. If I am going to create a
republic, a utopia, then poets will be the only citizens there; they
will be the only ones allowed - because beauty is far more valuable
than truth itself. And the poet discovers beauty - not only
discovers, he creates. The poet is creative.
It is because of me that in Buddha you will find poetry. Excuse me,
I cannot do otherwise. That′s why Buddhists are not happy with me;
particularly Buddhist scholars are not happy at all. They say I go
on finding in Buddha things which are not there. I am not much
concerned whether they are there or not. I use Buddha only as an
excuse, just as I use Jesus and I use Mahavira and I use Patanjali.
I am not a commentator - I have my own vision. I use them as pegs to
hang myself on.
When you are hearing Buddha through me, it is a totally different
phenomenon. You are looking through MY eyes; hence Buddha will look
like a poet - but he was not. He was a very logical man; hence I say
he was one-dimensional. He was utterly logical, as logical as Ludwig
Wittgenstein.
Wittgenstein says you should not speak about something which cannot
be spoken of. That′s exactly Buddha′s standpoint; Buddha would have
immediately agreed with Wittgenstein. That′s exactly what he said
twenty-five centuries before Wittgenstein. He never spoke about God
because nothing can be spoken about God; hence don′t say anything.
Even to say that nothing can be spoken about God is to say something
about God; better not to say even that.
The Upanishads say: Nothing can be said about God; he is
indefinable. Buddha will not say even that because that is
self-contradictory. To say that nothing can be said about God is
self-contradictory because you have said something already. Even to
say that nothing can be said is saying something. Buddha was utterly
logical, absolutely logical. He kept absolutely silent.
Whenever he would enter a town, a city, a village, his disciples
would go ahead of him to declare, "Don′t ask these eleven questions
to the Buddha, because he is not going to answer, so don′t waste
your time and his time." Those eleven questions consisted of
everything that philosophy, theology, metaphysics is made of. If you
don′t ask those eleven questions, nothing is left to ask - nothing
metaphysical. Then you can ask only actual problems. You can ask
about your anger, your greed, your sex. You can ask about your
misery, suffering, how to get rid of it, but you cannot ask whether
God is. You cannot ask what will happen after death. You cannot ask
what is truth, what is beauty, what is good; he forbade it. He was a
very logical man and one-dimensional.
Life is three-dimensional. And up to now there have been people,
great people, but they were all one-dimensional. For example, Buddha
is logical, so is Socrates. There have been great poets - Kalidas,
Rabindranath, Shelley, Shakespeare. They are one-dimensional: beauty
is their god. And there have been moral people, absolutely moral
people, virtuous people whose whole life was devoted to being just
as virtuous as possible: Mahavira, Lao Tzu. But all are
one-dimensional.
Humanity has come now to a crossroads. We have lived the
one-dimensional man, we have exhausted it. We need now a more
enriched human being, three-dimensional. I call them three C′s, just
like three R′s.
The first C is consciousness, the second C is compassion, the third
C is creativity.
Consciousness is being, compassion is feeling, creativity is action.
My sannyasin has to be all the three simultaneously. I am giving you
the greatest challenge ever given, the hardest task to be fulfilled.
You have to be as meditative as a Buddha, as loving as a Krishna, as
creative as Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci. You have to be all
together simultaneously. Only then your totality will be fulfilled;
otherwise something will remain missing in you. And that which is
missing in you will keep you lopsided, unfulfilled. You can attain
to a very high peak if you are one-dimensional, but you will be only
a peak. I would like you to become the whole range of the Himalayas,
not just a peak but peaks upon peaks!
The one-dimensional man has failed. It has not been able to create a
beautiful earth, it has not been able to create paradise on the
earth. It has failed, utterly failed! It created a few beautiful
people, but it could not transform the whole humanity, it could not
raise the consciousness of the whole humanity. Only a few
individuals here and there became enlightened. That is not going to
help anymore. We need more enlightened people, and enlightened in a
three-dimensional way.
That is my definition of the new man.
You ask me, Was Buddha not a poet?
He was not! But the people who will become awakened here with me are
going to be poets. When I say "poets" I don′t mean that you have to
write poetry - you have to be poetic. Your life has to be poetic,
your approach has to be poetic. Logic is dry, poetry is alive. Logic
cannot dance; it is impossible for logic to dance. To see logic
dancing will be like Mahatma Gandhi dancing! It will look very
ridiculous. Poetry can dance; poetry is a dance of your heart. Logic
cannot love; it can talk about love, but it cannot love. Love seems
to be illogical. Only poetry can love; only poetry can take the jump
into the paradox of love. Logic is cold, very cold; it is good as
far as mathematics is concerned, but it is not good as far as
humanity is concerned. If humanity becomes too logical then humanity
disappears; then there are only numbers, not human beings -
replaceable numbers.
Poetry, love, feeling give you a depth, a warmth. You become more
melted, you lose your ice-coldness. You become more human.
Buddha is superhuman, about that there is no doubt, but he loses the
human dimension. He is unearthly. He has a beauty of being
unearthly, but he does not have the beauty that Zorba the Greek has.
Zorba is so earthly.
I would like you to be both together: Zorba the Buddha! One has to
be meditative, but not against feeling. One has to be meditative but
full of feeling, overflowing with love. And one has to be creative.
If your love is only a feeling and it is not translated into action,
it won′t affect the larger humanity. You have to make it a reality,
you have to materialize it.
These are your three dimensions: being, feeling, action. Action
contains all creativity, all kinds of creativity: music, poetry,
painting, sculpture, architecture, science, technology. Feeling
contains all that is aesthetic: love, beauty. And being contains
meditation, awareness, consciousness.
You ask me, It seems awareness is your basic teaching, as well as
that of Buddha....
I have no basic teaching, I cannot have a basic teaching. I am not a
teacher at all. I don′t teach you, I am simply a presence. You can
learn, but I don′t teach. You can imbibe my spirit, and my spirit
and its implication will depend on you.
There are people to whom awareness will help as a basic teaching;
they will learn awareness from me. And there are people to whom love
will help; then they will learn love as a basic teaching from me. It
will depend on you. I am multidimensional, hence I can absorb all
kinds of people.
Buddha would not have accepted you all, remember, neither would
Jesus or Mahavira; they would have chosen. A few people would have
been chosen by Buddha and a few would have been chosen by Jesus and
a few would have been chosen by somebody else. But I don′t choose at
all, I am absolutely choiceless. Whosoever comes to me is accepted,
absolutely accepted, totally accepted, because I don′t have a basic
pattern. I have only hints - and hints for all, for all kinds of
people.
It is not a teaching; teaching becomes rigid, becomes defined. It is
only a presence. I am only a window; through me you can look into
God. And once you have looked into God, then you can look into God
on your own - I am not needed anymore.