Buddha Block

Participate Totally

How does a Buddha participate totally in day-to-day life?

There is no “how” to it. When you are alert, no “how” is needed. When you are awakened you act spontaneously, not with a plan in the mind, because now no mind exists at all. A buddha responds – moment to moment. Whatever the situation demands, with no plan, no idea how to act, with no technique he simply responds.

His response is like an echo: you go to the hills, you make a noise, and the hills echo it. Have you ever asked how the hills echo? They respond. When you play on a sitar, has the sitar any “how”? You may have a technique and things in your mind: what to play, what to sing. But the sitar? – it simply responds to your fingers.

A buddha is a nothingness. You come around him; he responds. Remember the word respond: it is not a reaction; it is a response. When you react you have an idea in the mind – how? what? When you react, you react from a position. If you come to a buddha he does not react from any position; he has none. He has no prejudice, no opinion, no ideology. He responds. He responds to the situation.

One day a man went to Buddha and asked, “Does God exist?” Buddha looked at him and said, “No.”

The same day, in the afternoon, another man came. He asked, “Does God exist?” Buddha looked into him and said, “Yes.”

And the same day, in the evening, a third man came. He asked, “Does God exist?” Buddha remained silent; he didn’t answer.

If he had a position in mind, the answer would be consistent because it would not be a response to the situation. If it is born out of an idea in the mind, it will always be consistent. If he is an atheist, not believing in God, then it makes no difference who the questioner is. A man of ideology never looks at you, never looks at the situation. He has a fixed idea, an obsession, really.

If Buddha had been an atheist, he would have said “No!” to all three persons. If he had been a theist, he would have said “Yes!” to all three persons. In fact the person, the actual situation, becomes irrelevant when you have an ideology, a position, a prejudice, a pattern, a mind; then you don’t look at the situation. Otherwise, the responses will be totally different.

There will be a deep running consistency – consistency of being, not of answers. Buddha is the same when he said no. Buddha is the same when he said yes. Buddha is the same when he didn’t say anything and remained silent – but the situations were different.

Buddha’s disciple Ananda was present in all three situations. He became confused. Those three persons didn’t know anything about the two other answers that Buddha had given, but Ananda was present in all three situations.