Small Light
Live according to your own small light. Enough light has been given to you. You have brought it with yourself. You need not live according to Buddha, according to Mahavira, according to Krishna. They never lived according to anybody else, remember.
I have heard about a Zen Master, Bokoju – he was celebrating his Master’s birthday – somebody asked Bokoju, “But you DON’T follow him – why are you celebrating his birthday? You are just the opposite of the Master, why are you paying your respects?”
And Bokoju said, “My Master never followed his Master and I am doing the same. And my Master has told me not to follow him – that is his message to me. And it is by NOT following him that great light has happened in me. Hence the respect and gratitude.”
But people live very foolishly. They are imitators. After Pythagoras died, a great superstition spread amongst his followers: that beans are not to be eaten. Beans? Poor beans! And down the ages people have wondered why Pythagoreans don’t eat beans. Pythagoras was a vegetarian, but beans are not non-vegetarian. Pythagoras was perfectly right in not eating meat and fish, but why beans?
In fact, they never suited him – that was the only reason. Whenever he would eat beans, he would have a troubled stomach. Now, Pythagoras suffered by eating beans; he stopped eating beans – that’s perfectly right! He listened to his voice. He didn’t bother. He had been to India; vegetarianism he learnt from here. Buddha used to eat beans, and Mahavira too – the great vegetarians. He didn’t care about the vegetarians. He dropped beans because they never suited him.
But look at the foolish disciples: down the ages they have not eaten beans, and they cannot answer why either. They think, “There must be some secret in it which we have forgotten.”
Pythagoras used to walk barefoot. It is a beautiful exercise for contacting the earth. That’s how Mahavira used to walk – barefoot. If you are walking on soft earth, the best way is to walk barefoot, no shoes. You have tremendous contact with the earth. We belong to the earth! Half of us is part of the earth and half is part of the sky. And when you are walking in the early morning sun on the wet earth, you are enjoying both the sky and the earth. It was perfectly right! But now, on coal-tar roads, Jaina monks go on walking barefoot. Now that is very dangerous, harmful, harmful to the nervous system. To walk on cement or on coal-tar without any shoes is very bad for the whole nervous system, particularly for the brain cells; it affects them. To walk on wet earth is beautiful for the nervous system; it soothes.
Mahavira walked barefoot; it was perfectly okay. Zarathustra walked barefoot – perfectly okay.
Pythagoras walked barefoot – perfectly okay. But Jaina monks are still walking – in Bombay, in Delhi – barefoot. Now this is stupidity.
Always remember that each one has to live according to his own light. The Master has not to be imitated literally; he has to be understood.
You must have been following dead rules and dogmas. And because they never suited you, a great contradiction has arisen in your being. And to create contradiction is to create hell.
Drop your so-called morality and honesty and your religious life. Please drop it – it is not yet too late. Start from ABC. Things can happen. Then that consciousness brings its own character. But that character is a liquid phenomenon; it has no rigidity.
Tags: Authentic Rebel Authenticity Be Authentic Don’t Wear Masks Small Light True To Oneself
