Sagaresh, the vipassana meditation was invented by Gautam Buddha, and for twenty-five centuries Buddhists have been torturing themselves. Now, who told you to go to Dharmagiri to S.N. Goenka, to learn a meditation for which the whole context is missing? The meditation was perfectly right for a man like Gautam Buddha. Always remember, everything is related, interdependent with a certain context.
Utterly tired, exhausted, hungry, he could not find the way; neither could he find anyone who could show him the way. In the nights he was resting up on the trees; otherwise wild animals would destroy him. And there came the full-moon night. He had written many poems... the moon had been one of his most loved objects, and he had written beautiful songs about it. But that night, tired and hungry and afraid, he looked at the full moon and he could not believe it - what he saw in the full moon he had never seen before. And he had been a lifelong moon gazer. That night he saw a loaf of bread!
What you see depends on you. People see the faces of their loved
ones, people see their dream girls in the moon, but nobody has ever
seen a loaf of bread. But his experience was absolutely authentic -
but only in his context.
I am reminding you of this because people tend to forget that life
is a very interwoven, interdependent, cosmic whole. You cannot take
a part out of it and keep it alive, meaningful. I will not tell you
to do vipassana unless I can also give you the experience of Gautam
Buddha. Poor Goenka cannot understand this. He is just a
businessman. What does he understand about the context in which
vipassana arose?
Gautam Buddha had lived in tremendous luxury, surrounded by
beautiful girls, beautiful palaces. The whole night was a
celebration; the day was for rest, the night for dances and
drinking. Out of this experience he became tired. He had seen all
the beautiful girls; there was nothing more to be seen. He had seen
that every man and woman is just a skeleton, covered with a thin
skin. Just think for a moment: here all of you are skeletons covered
with thin skin! This body and its beauty fades very soon.
He had seen all that was possible in those days for a man of power
and riches to see, but he could not find peace, contentment,
silence. He could not find himself. Utterly frustrated, he moved out
of the palace one night - because this life is going to end in a few
days, or in a few years. It is not something to cling to. Each
moment death is coming closer; before death grabs you, you have to
figure out something which is eternal, which is immortal.
All that you see around you is made of the same stuff as dreams are.
Do you think you are for the first time on the earth? On the same
earth millions of people have come and simply disappeared into thin
air.
Scientists have calculated that the place you are occupying has been
occupied by at least ten people before you. You are sitting on ten
corpses! And don′t think much of yourself, because you cannot get
out - you will be the eleventh. And remember, it is not a laughing
matter for you. Those ten corpses will laugh at you: "Look, the poor
fellow was thinking of great things and finally is flat on the pile
of corpses."
Gautam Buddha′s search for truth, for himself, for the source of
life which is eternal, cannot be the search of a poor man who is
hungry, who is searching for a loaf of bread. But people have
completely forgotten Gautam Buddha. They have taken his meditation
out of context. He could meditate because there was nothing else in
the world to think about, to desire, to be ambitious for. The world
was, in a way, finished the day he left his house; he never looked
back.
Buddha was afraid that if
he went into the mountains of his own kingdom, his father′s armies
would find him; he would not be able to escape. He was the only son
of an old king, who was hoping that he would succeed him. And he had
made a big kingdom for him. So he immediately passed beyond the
boundaries of his kingdom to the neighboring kingdom. And the king
was very furious. He ordered the armies not to leave even a single
inch unsearched: "Look around, all over the country."
Gautam Buddha was not found, but he was not aware that the kingdom
he had entered belonged to a friend of his father. So the father
informed this king and other kings surrounding his kingdom, "You
have to find my son. In my old age at least you can do this much for
me; we have been friends."
The neighboring king found Gautam Buddha and he said, "If you are
angry, if you have fought with your father... It happens. It is not
something strange or unfamiliar; fathers and sons have always been
fighting. Don′t be worried. I have only one daughter and no son -
get married to my daughter and you will have two kingdoms together.
Your father is old; he cannot live long. And my kingdom is far
bigger than your father′s. He is my friend and I have come with a
request. You have everything to gain, nothing to lose. You get a
beautiful wife, a great kingdom, and of course your own kingdom is
there. You will be a greater king than me or your father because
your kingdom will be bigger than the kingdoms we have. You will have
two kingdoms together."
Gautam Buddha said, "You don′t understand the point. I have not
fought with my father, I have not been angry with him, and I have
not come here in search of a girl. I am not interested in a kingdom,
howsoever big it is. But I would like to ask you a few questions;
you are my father′s friend. First tell me, you say your girl is very
beautiful - is this beauty going to remain forever? Will she not one
day be old?"
The king said, "You ask strange questions. Everybody becomes old."
"And do you think," Gautam Buddha asked, "she will never die?" The
king laughed. He said, "You are hilarious. Everybody dies."
Gautam Buddha said, "I don′t want to get married with someone who is
going to die."
The king said, "She is not going to die tomorrow."
Gautam Buddha said, "You cannot give any guarantee. Are you sure you
will be alive tomorrow?"
The king said, "I have never thought about it. I hope that I will be
alive, but I cannot be certain. But you are creating anxieties in my
mind. I had come to take you to the palace and it seems you are
trying to convince me to follow you to the mountains."
Gautam Buddha said, "It is better - there is still time, it is still
light; maybe you have a few days more to live. Devote these few days
to a search for something which cannot be taken away from you. Your
youth will disappear, your beauty will disappear, your kingdom will
one day belong to somebody else. And what does it matter, when you
are dead, to whom your kingdom belongs, whether he is your son or
somebody else′s son?"
The king said, "You are a dangerous fellow. I don′t want to talk to
you."
He informed Gautam Buddha′s father, "I have met your son; he is in
the mountains in my kingdom. I tried hard, but he is very
convincing. And he has created such anxiety in me that I have not
slept since. I am continuously thinking of death - what is going to
happen after death? What have I gained by having this big kingdom? I
am a poor man inside. I have never looked into my own being; I am
not even acquainted with myself. I request to you: don′t try to
prevent him, let him go and let him search. What we have missed,
perhaps we can hope he will find it."
Gautam Buddha could sit silently, desireless, thoughtless, moving
inwards, because the outside had lost all interest. He had seen it -
that it is just a phenomenon, the way you see a film. But there are
idiots who even seeing a film will cry, will weep, will laugh,
because they will become identified and they will forget that there
is nothing on the screen, it is just a projected film. Our whole
life is not much more than that, but to know it you have to go
through it. Gautam Buddha had a great chance to experience life and
see its futility. This gave him the opportunity to sit in deep
silence, undisturbed.
Vipassana was discovered in these moments.
My own effort here is not to give you, Sagaresh, any meditation like
vipassana directly. This place is not a place of ascetics - people
are enjoying everything. I want you to enjoy and to see the futility
of it. I want to see how many times you become enlightened and how
many times you become unenlightened. I know one day you will simply
get tired and you will say, "Finished!"
Not finished like Nandan - she has started again. But she is going
to be finished one day. When she says goodbye to her last boyfriend
it will be possible for her to meditate; particularly a meditation
like vipassana. Otherwise you can sit with closed eyes and beautiful
girls will harass you.
That has been the experience, down the ages, of thousands of
meditators: it is strange, the moment you sit to meditate, suddenly,
from nowhere, such beautiful girls start coming. And you open your
eyes and there is nobody.
And not only girls. If you have not known money, thoughts of money;
if you have not known power, thoughts of power; if you have not
known what it means to be a celebrity, then a deep desire to become
famous... And the mind will go on weaving a thousand and one
thoughts and desires.
And so-called teachers like Goenka will go on teaching you, "Don′t
allow these thoughts in your mind." And the more you push them away,
the more they will come close to you. You will throw away one girl
and you will find there is a queue of girls, and at the end of the
queue is standing Sophia Loren. Now, naturally you think, "Vipassana
can be done later on."
"Last night was just the greatest
experience of my life."
The other asked, "What happened?"
He said, "I went fishing and I caught such big fish that I could not
believe it. Even to carry one fish to the shore was difficult. And
the whole night I was fishing."
The other said, "This is nothing. You are saying you had the
greatest experience - the greatest experience happened to me. Last
night when I dreamt, what I saw I could not believe. On one side was
Marilyn Monroe, utterly nude; on the other side was Sophia Loren,
utterly nude."
The other man could not contain himself. He said, "Stop. Why did you
not call me? At such a moment! And what were you going to do with
two such women? One is enough for you; one you should think of for
your friend. You call me your best friend? - this is great
friendship."
The man said, "You haven′t heard the whole thing. I had gone to your
home to find you, but your wife said you had gone fishing!"
If life has not been a rich experience - if it has been a
repressive, religion-dominated, conditioned phenomenon - you cannot
do vipassana.
In twenty-five centuries, millions of people have been doing
vipassana. How many have become Gautam Buddhas? My own analysis is
very simple, but very significant: you should not repress anything
in your life. Live a non-repressive, joyous life. Soon you will find
all those joys and all those pleasures are empty.
Unless you have found through your own experience that pleasures are
not pleasures, but simply toys to keep you ignorant, to keep you
engaged... Once you have found that through your own experience -
remember that is most fundamental; it has to be your own experience
- then vipassana is the simplest meditation. You don′t have to go to
any businessman to learn it.
Buddha had never gone to S.N. Goenka. These kind of people existed
at that time too - businessmen who were ready to teach you at a
certain price.
I have never met or seen Goenka, but I saw one of his interviews. He
says that he met me in Madras. In my whole life I have been only
once in Madras, and I remember perfectly, I have not met any Goenka.
He is simply lying. And his Dharmagiri is not very far away from
here. If he wants to meet me he can come any day - perhaps a
five-hour drive. But he does not have the guts, because I am very
merciless. When I see a fox pretending to be a lion, then I do what
needs to be done: expose the fox, take away the hypocrisy. He has
not lived a life of love, he has not lived a life of pleasures; he
has not lived at all that which can create the context in which
vipassana is possible.
He is simply a refugee from Burma. And because Burma is a Buddhist
country, everybody knows what vipassana is; just as every Christian
knows the Christian prayer, every Buddhist knows vipassana. Coming
from Burma he knew the structure, intellectually, of what vipassana
is. And here he found many people searching for meditation.
And he does not create a situation in which to be associated with
him becomes dangerous for you. He is a non-controversial
businessman. You will not offend anybody if you go to Dharmagiri.
But if you come here, you don′t see many Indians here. The reason is
clear: to be associated with me in any way is to be condemned by the
outside society. People start saying that you have also been
hypnotized, you have also become corrupt.
Dharmagiri is safe, because he does not say to you, "You have to
drop tradition, you have to drop your conditioning, you have to get
out of all the knowledge that has been forced upon you. Unless you
are so clean, unconditioned, unorthodox - neither Hindu nor
Mohammedan nor Christian - you will not be able to enter the world
of meditation." He does not say anything like that. You just enter
vipassana as you are. Nothing is demanded from you, that you are
first to go through a fire to be purified, that you have to get rid
of the society which is utterly polluted.
I was surprised when I was in America: almost every week somebody
would phone from San Francisco, somebody from New York, saying, "We
are coming from Bombay," or, "We are coming from Poona and we want
to meet Shree Rajneesh." I told my secretary to tell those people,
"Shree Rajneesh has been there in Poona for seven years - couldn′t
you manage to see him? He will come back again to Poona, you can see
him then."
Strangely enough, not a single one has turned up. I have been here
for two years. Those people who phoned - from Bombay, from Poona -
they have not dared to enter the door. In America they were happy
that nobody would know that they had been to see a dangerous man.
Here the wife will start crying, the children will say, "Papa, where
are you going?" The neighbors will crowd around saying, "Don′t do
this. Just look at your old parents." It will become a scene.
And you yourself deep down are such a coward that you believe in all
the lies that have been spread. You never come here to check - who
is being hypnotized? But the trouble is, people say, "Once you are
there you will become hypnotized, you will start saying the same
things." It is a very strange world.
One German sannyasin is here. He is an old, experienced journalist.
He had come from STERN magazine to write of what was happening here.
But he was a man of integrity; he reported exactly what was
happening. They refused his report. They said, "You have been
hypnotized." If you lie you are not hypnotized, if you say the truth
you are hypnotized. They did not publish his article. He insisted
and finally they published it, but he had to change much in it. But
he became so disgusted that he resigned and came back. And since
then he has been here, he has been in America; he is again here.
There are many writers who have had a strange experience: if they
write just a positive account, factual, neither for nor against,
nobody is ready to publish their books. They say, "These books won′t
sell because they don′t have any sensation. Make them sensational."
But how to make them sensational? Lie, create fictions which do not
exist, and publishers are ready and magazines are ready to publish
them. And these books and these publishers and these magazines
spread unfounded things all around the world. So people are so much
afraid. But even to mention my name is dangerous.
One of my sannyasins who is a Nobel Prize winner asked the president
of the Nobel Prize committee, the King of Norway, "A man has written
five hundred books and you have not taken any note of it."
The King suggested to him, "Remember never to mention his name. This
time you did because you were not aware, but next time it will be
dangerous for your job" - he has a big post - "it will be dangerous
for your reputation. You simply forget about this man."
And he told me, "I could not believe that he was not even ready to
listen about you. He did not even enquire, just for manners′ sake."
On the contrary, from that day the King kept a certain distance from
him. Whenever there was a meeting of the Nobel Prize committee he
did not allow him to come close to him; he showed absolutely that a
certain China wall had arisen between himself and the poor Nobel
Prize winner. And the only crime he had committed was that he had
mentioned my name.
Indira Gandhi, who was a very powerful woman, had at least six times
made appointments to come here to see me, and every time, just one
day before, a phone call would come, "An emergency has arisen and
the meeting has to be postponed."
In fact, now the meeting is postponed forever! My secretary asked
Indira Gandhi, "Why do you do this? If you don′t want to come, we
are not asking you to come. You ask us, that you want to come."
She met me once in Delhi and she said, "Since then that man′s eyes
have been haunting me and I want to see him again. And whatever he
has said has changed the whole of history. I want his advice on
other problems."
My secretary said, "Then why do you go on canceling? - because this
is absolute nonsense, that every time on the very day some emergency
arises."
She said, "To be honest to you, there has been no emergency, just my
colleagues, my cabinet stands in the way. Everybody says, ′Don′t go
there, you can even lose your prime ministership. There will be so
much turmoil - just avoid.′"
... Just by going for a meeting with a man who has no power, who is
not interested in politics! But I can understand, those politicians
were right. If she had come here Mohammedans would have said, "We
are not going to vote for you"; Hindus would have said, "That man
has spoken against our VEDAS, we are not going to vote for you. That
man has spoken against our shankaracharya."
A powerful woman like Indira Gandhi is so cowardly that she cannot
come when she wants to come, because of the fear that the voters may
start objecting, "You have been to a man for some advice. And any
advice that man gives is going to be dangerous. In the first place
you will be hypnotized." And she asked my secretary, an intelligent
woman, well educated, "Is it true that whoever goes to meet Shree
Rajneesh becomes hypnotized?"
People like Goenka are non-controversial, kindergarten school
teachers. They don′t understand the complexity of meditation.
Vipassana comes in the end; you cannot begin with vipassana. To
begin with vipassana you will have to go through what you are saying
- the dark night of the soul. And you will not find the dawn
anywhere. The dark night will go on becoming longer and darker. It
is a simple psychology: you are not prepared, you have not done your
homework, and you have started a work which needs a tremendous
background of experience.
They are all against me because I want you to live first as hotly as
possible.
One of my sannyasins, Jayantibhai,
would take me from the airport or from the railway station, and
suddenly on a bridge he would accelerate the speed of the car. And I
would say, "What is the matter?"
He said, "The matter is that board."
Because I had been telling him again and again, "That board is very
religious. You should once in a while go near the board and look at
it."
It was an advertisement, but very beautiful. It said, "Live a little
hot. Sip a Gold Spot."
I said, "I am not concerned about Gold Spot, but live a little hot!"
People live lukewarm. They live just at the minimum, because from
that minimum they are protected from many dangers. If you don′t want
to fall, crawl - you are safe! And that′s what you are doing in your
life. I say live hotly while the season lasts. And this season will
not last forever. Don′t hesitate, because in that hesitation you are
losing time.
A roseflower does not hesitate to open in the early morning sun,
knowing perfectly well that by the evening the petals will fall and
not even a mark will remain behind. Whether that roseflower ever
existed or not, it will be the same. But while the sun is rising and
the morning breeze is welcoming to dance, the rose dances.
All the religions have destroyed your dance. They have made you
crippled, they have destroyed your sensitivities. They have dulled
your intelligence and then they say, "Do vipassana."
A man who has lived hotly is bound to do vipassana - but in the
evening. He has seen the day. It was beautiful, but it was
ephemeral; it is gone. Now begins the search for that which comes
and never goes.
One of the great Hindu scriptures is Badarayana′s sutras. The first
sutra is: Athato brahma jigyasa - now the enquiry into the ultimate.
That "now" has been for almost two thousand years or more a problem
- how to interpret it? Because this is the beginning. Books don′t
begin from now. It seems as if something has preceded it.
And now there are many commentaries on Badarayana′s athato, but no
one has got the point. The man was saying, "You have lived hotly,
you have loved deeply. You have done everything that you wanted to
do, unrepressed, uninhibited. Now it is time for the enquiry into
the ultimate. But only now. If you have not lived at the maximum,
that which has been left unlived will go on lingering in your mind.
That which has been repressed will go on asking for your attention.
Your heart and your mind will be pulled by the unlived, the
repressed, the denied, the condemned, and you cannot sit silently."
Otherwise vipassana is not an effort, it is a very simple
experience. After the whole hot day of life, when you see the
futility of it all... you have to see. You cannot see from other
people′s eyes; you have to see the futility with your own eyes. Then
what is the problem? You sit silently, you settle silently within
yourself, into your very interiority.
The word ′vipassana′ simply means perceptivity, clarity, seeing
directly into truth. But if something you always wanted - it may be
a small thing - is there in your unconscious, it won′t allow your
perception to be pure. It will try again and again, "I am still
unfulfilled." First have the experience that you have denied
yourself.
And all these religions have been teaching you to deny this, to deny
that. They have driven the whole of humanity bananas; otherwise
human beings are beautiful as they are. If they live naturally, one
day they are going to ripen, one day they are going to mature. One
day they are going to graduate from this so-called world of desires,
ambitions, jealousies. After that graduation, vipassana is not a
doing. It is a non-doing. You simply sit silently and it starts
showering over you as if the whole sky is rejoicing in your silence.
One of the stories about Manjushri, a disciple of Gautam Buddha who
became enlightened, depicts it correctly. He is sitting under his
tree, silently, and flowers start showering on him. Those flowers
are not visible, but they are fragrant, and they have tremendous
power to transform your whole being.
Sagaresh, it was in a way good that you went into isolation at
Dharmagiri practicing vipassana meditation as taught by S.N. Goenka.
It has been a good experience. You say, "I have never experienced
such pain." You deserved it. Why did you go there?
You say, "I have never experienced such suffering and doubt ever
before. Presently I feel exhausted, tired." Very good. At least you
are alive! Just a few days rest, a few days nourishment in my
commune and all pain, all suffering, all doubt and all tiredness
will disappear. If you have understood me correctly it has already
disappeared. You will be dancing and singing and rejoicing.
We have so many meditations here, but I have put vipassana at the
very end. First go through all other kinds of experiences,
purifying, so that you can become capable of entering vipassana.
People want to jump into paradise directly, and they don′t see the
place where they are standing, that if they jump from there they
will have multiple fractures. One has to reach to the steps and one
has to move step by step, consciously, cautiously. It is a
pilgrimage.
But this experience has been really good. You needed it. It will be
easier now for you to see my arrangement of meditations. You are
saying, "My interest in the meditation practice is passing away."
Your interest in Dharmagiri should pass away, not in meditations.
Just it is too fresh... the wound is open. Just wait, and in a few
days you will be doing vipassana here. But here vipassana is a juicy
experience; it is not dry.
I have a few criticisms against the vipassana that is being
practiced in Buddhist lands. They have all made it very dry,
desert-like; nothing blossoms, no greenery; everything is simply
businesslike. I want you to learn meditation as a play, as
playfulness. Your meditation and your love should be synonymous. And
that′s what you are asking. You are asking, "I am yearning deeply to
connect with my heart."
That guy, S.N. Goenka, has disconnected you from your heart, because
in the Buddhist tradition there is no place for the heart. It is a
very dry approach to reality.
Buddha never even mentions the word ′love′. He was so afraid that
for twenty years continuously he did not allow women to be initiated
into his commune - because women are impossible. They will bring
some juice, whatever you do; something will start growing in the
desert, some flowers. It is impossible for a woman not to be the
heart. It is very easy for the man not to be the heart. The woman is
the heart and the man is the head. And once you deny women, then
there are only dry heads - coconuts!
My approach is, I never make any distinction, whether somebody is
woman or man. Anybody who is a seeker of the path is welcome. Hence
this is a totally different commune; such a commune has never
existed before. Here you can sing and dance, here you can fall in
love and fall out of love, there is no harm.
Life is accepted in its totality. And in this total acceptance
arises the awareness that will enable you to meditate. And this
meditation will be far richer than any vipassana of Gautam Buddha.
This meditation may create songs in you, may create dances in you,
may give a new impetus to creativity in all dimensions of life.
Your silence should not be the silence of a graveyard, your silence
should be the silence of a garden. Once in a while a bird starts
singing, but it does not disturb the silence, it deepens it. Once in
a while the breeze comes with its song, passes through the pine
trees, but it does not disturb the silence, it deepens it.
I do not teach you the desert. I teach you the garden, the garden of
the heart. That is where, with great respect, I differ from Gautam
Buddha. I love the man, but that does not mean I have to agree with
everything done by the man. His meditation is heartless, and a
meditation that is heartless is not of any worth. I want a
meditation that can laugh, that can dance.
Sagaresh, you suffered well. This is what in the East people call
the law of karma. You must have committed some grave sin in your
past life; otherwise, why should you go to Dharmagiri? - Dharmagiri
of all places! But in a way it is good. That evil act and its
punishment is finished. Now you can start afresh.
I teach you a meditation which is totally different from anything
that has ever been taught in the name of meditation.
Now a few things just to relieve your pain and your suffering and
your tiredness, and to help you to forget that you have been to
Dharmagiri - you simply dreamt about it, there is no such place as
Dharmagiri. This guy S.N. Goenka does not exist; it was just a
nightmare.
A man parked his car on a street in New York. But when he
returned he found that someone had smashed into the rear end of his
car.
On the windshield he found a note that read:
Dear Sir, I just smashed into your car. The people who saw the
accident are watching me. They think I am writing down my name and
address, so you can contact me regarding the damage. They are a
bunch of idiots!
Hymie Goldberg is stopped in the street by a neatly dressed
salesman who says, "Sir, would you like to buy a toothbrush for ten
dollars?"
"Ten dollars?" cries Hymie. "That′s robbery!"
The salesman seems hurt. "Well then," he says, "how about a nice
piece of homemade chocolate cake for ten cents?"
This seems fair, so Hymie hands ten cents to the man and unwrapping
the cake takes a bite. Suddenly he screams and spits out the
mouthful. "My God!" he shouts. "This cake tastes like shit."
"It is," replies the salesman. "Wanna buy a toothbrush?"
Tired of being a Yuppie, Bogart decides to leave the
city life and buy a small farm. He goes to a sale of
farm animals and asks to buy a rooster.
"Out here," says the salesman, "we call them cocks."
"Okay," says Bogart, "give me a cock. And can you sell
me a hen?" he asks.
"Out here," says the salesman, "we call them pullets."
"Okay, give me a pullet," says Bogart. "And what else do
you have for sale?"
The salesman explains that he has a jackass for sale, so
Bogart buys that too. As he is leaving, the salesman
warns Bogart that sometimes the jackass stands still and
won′t move until he is scratched between the ears.
Sure enough, on his way home the jackass stops and does
not move, and Bogart has forgotten what the salesman had
said.
Grandma Faginbaum happens to be walking nearby and stops
to ask if she can help. Just then Bogart remembers about
scratching the jackass between the ears.
"Ah, yes, you can help me," says Bogart. "Would you hold
my cock and pullet while I scratch my ass"