VBT – Meditation 20.2
Resistance Is Suffering
If you become part of the whole, there is no suffering. Suddenly you start floating with the stream. You are no longer moving upstream. You are no longer even swimming because then there is effort. You are just floating with the stream and wherever it leads, there is the goal. You have dropped private goals, you have accepted the destiny of the whole. You live easily, you die easily. There is no resistance.
Resistance is suffering. And you cannot win against the whole. So every moment you resist, you fail, you suffer. It is the frustration of failure. You become helpless and hopeless and you feel it everywhere. There is a saying, “Man proposes and God disposes.” You cannot find a more stupid saying anywhere else.
God never disposes, but the moment you propose, you have created trouble for yourself because all propositions are private. That means that the Ganges does not want to fall in the Bay of Bengal, but in the Arabian Sea. It will have to fall into the Bay of Bengal because that is how the whole has proposed it already. Now the Ganges proposes, “I would like to fall into the Arabian Sea.” And when it is not succeeding to move toward the west and it goes on feeling that all efforts are futile and she is moving toward the east, the idea arises in the mind that man proposes and God disposes. Why should God bother to dispose? God has never disposed anything, but the moment you propose, you have created the possibility to be disposed.
Try to live without a goal and then see. Suffering disappears. Try to live without your ego and there is no more suffering. Suffering is an attitude, it is not an actuality. You fall ill. You immediately start fighting with the illness and suffering arises. If you accept it, suffering disappears. Then you know that God wills this, there must be some point in it. It must be needed for your growth.
That’s what happened with Jesus on the cross. Just a moment before he was killed, the whole human mind arose in his being. He looked at the sky and said, “What is this? What are you trying to do? Why have you left me alone?” The human mind.
Jesus is beautiful. He is man, he is God, both. With all the frailties of humanity and with all the perfection of God. A meeting point, where the bridge disappears and the goal appears. The last point where the bridge drops. He was angry. He complained. He was saying, “You have betrayed me.” At this last moment everyone was waiting for a miracle – deep down, even Jesus must have been waiting for a miracle – that the cross will disappear, angels will descend, and the whole world will know that he is the only begotten son of God. The ego: “Why have you betrayed me? Why are you forcing me to see this? Your son is being crucified. Where are you?”
In that moment, disbelief must have entered his mind. And I say this is beautiful. This shows that Jesus is both the son of man and the son of God. That’s the beauty of Jesus and the appeal. Why has so great a part of humanity become Christian? If you look at Buddha, he looks to be simply a god, without any frailty of human beings. If you look at Mahavira, he looks superb, absolutely perfect. If you look at Krishna, you cannot find a single thing that creates any disbelief in you. But Christ? – frail, weak, trembling, with all the doubts, uncertainties, hesitations, with all the darkness that the human mind is prone to. And then a sudden burst and he is no longer an ordinary human being.
At the last moment he was still Jesus the son of Joseph and Mary. Naturally, all doubts arose. It is natural, absolutely natural, it should be so. He understood the point. “What am I doing? It is not God who has denied me, it is I who am denying him. My expectations are not fulfilled.” In a flash of light he suddenly understood, “I am clinging to my ego. I am asking for miracles. I am asking to be saved! Who am I and why should the whole bother about me” A smile must have come on his face, the clouds disappeared, he relaxed and said, “Thy will be done. Please, don’t bother about me. Don’t listen to my foolish mind. Who am I to suggest what should be done? Who am I to expect? And when you are there, why should I bother about it?”
In that relaxation of resistance, Jesus became Christ. He is no longer the son of Mary and Joseph, he has become the son of God.
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