God is making all the creatures of the earth and is giving out sex lives to each animal.
First he turns to the human. “I am giving you ten years of a good sex life,” says God.
The man’s face falls. “Is that all?” he asks.
“I only have so much to go around, fella,” says God. He then turns to the monkey and says, “I’m giving you twenty years of a good sex life.”
The monkey says, “Oh, I don’t really need that much. Ten years would be more than enough for me.”
The man, standing nearby, overhears this and says excitedly, “I will take it! I will take those extra ten years.”
“All right,” says God. “You got it.” He then turns to the lion. “I’m going to give you twenty years of good sex life.”
The lion replies, “You know, God, I really think I would be happier with just ten.”
The man starts hopping up and down. “I will take them! I will take the other ten years!”
“You can have them,” says God to the man.
He turns to the donkey and says, “Now, I am going to give you twenty years of a good sex life. Is that alright with you?”
“To tell you the truth,” says the donkey, “I would also be satisfied with just ten.” God gives the man the other ten years too.
This story explains why a man has ten years of a good sex life, ten years of monkeying around, ten years of lioning about it, and then ten years of making an ass out of himself.
We are not satisfied with anything, and we go on asking for more, and we go on making our life more of a confusion.
Enjoy What You Get
Ask yourself why I want more? If I get anything more than required will I be happy and able to achieve something more out of more.
Man is greedy for everything. He is the only creatures who wants more than his requirements. He wants to possess everything.
There is nothing worse than this that you can do, that you are capable of: reducing a being to a thing. And that’s what possession is.
Only things can be possessed; beings cannot be possessed. You can have a communion with a being. You can share your love, your poetry, your beauty, your body, your mind. You can share but you cannot do business. You cannot bargain. You cannot possess a man or a woman. But everybody is trying to do that all over the earth.
What does it means – it only means that at the cost of being we want to have more. To have more we have reduced ourselves to monkeys, lions, ass, etc. Are we happy with such life? If not than what we need to learn from this story.
We learn from the story Lifespan Of A Man: Enjoy what you get or receive.
Experience Learning
Where does greed come from?
Just to understand the nature of greed is enough. You need not do anything else to get rid of it; the very understanding will clarify the whole mess.
Man is full if he is in tune with the universe; if he is not in tune with the universe then he is empty, utterly empty. And out of that emptiness comes greed. Greed is to fill it: by money, by houses, by furniture, by friends, by lovers – by anything, because one cannot live as emptiness. It is horrifying, it is a ghost life. If you are empty and there is nothing inside you, it is impossible to live.
To have the feeling that you have much inside you, there are only two ways: either you get in tune with the universe…. Then you are filled with the whole, with all the flowers and with all the stars. They are within you just as they are without you. That is real fulfillment. But if you don’t do that, and millions of people are not doing that, then the easiest way is to fill it with any junk.
Greed simply means you are feeling a deep emptiness and you want to fill it with anything possible; it doesn’t matter what it is. And once you understand it, then you have nothing to do with greed. You have something to do with your coming into communion with the whole, so the inner emptiness disappears. And with it, all greed disappears. That does not mean that you start living naked; that simply means you do not live just to collect things. Whenever you need something you can have it.
Greed is not a desire at all. So you need not do anything about greed. You have to understand the emptiness that you are trying to fill, and ask the question, “Why am I empty? The whole existence is so full, why am I empty? Perhaps I have lost track; I am no longer moving in the same direction, I am no longer existential. That is the cause of my emptiness.”
So be existential.
Let go, and move closer to existence in silence and peace, in meditation.
And one day you will see you are so full – overfull, overflowing – of joy, of blissfulness, of benediction. You have so much of it that you can give it to the whole world and yet it will not be exhausted.
That day, for the first time you will not feel any greed – for money, for food, for things, for anything. You will live naturally, and whatever is needed you will find it. And you will live, not with a constant greed that cannot be fulfilled, a wound that cannot be healed.
