An aged monk, who had lived a long and active life, was assigned a chaplain’s role at an academy for girls. In discussion groups he often found that the subject of love became a central topic.
This comprised his warning to the young women: “Understand the danger of anything-too-much in your lives. Too much anger in combat can lead to recklessness and death. Too much ador in religious beliefs can lead to close mindedness and persecution. Too much passion in love creates dream images of the beloved – images that ultimately prove false and generate anger. To love too much is to lick honey from the point of a knife.”
“But as a celebate monk,” asked one young women, “how can you know of love between a man and a woman?”
“Sometime, dear children,” replied the old teacher, “I will tell you why I became a monk.”
Transform The World
Monks’ all the teaching was a clear indication that he has no experience of love between man and woman. He couldn’t find the girl. So he renounced the world. He remain celebate not out of his freedom but because he couldn’t find girl.
Don’t renounce, transform the world.
We are not the ones who renounce the world.
All the religions have been teaching, “Renounce the world.” I say, transform the world.
Renouncing it is sheer cowardice, and by renouncing it, nothing significant happens – the world goes on living, producing new generations in the old pattern. And the persons who have renounced the world – they also don’t go through a transformation, for a simple reason that they lose all opportunities where they can test whether they are growing or not. You can sit in the Himalayas for a half a century and you will feel silent, but that silence is not yours; it belongs to the Himalayas. Everything is silent, eternally silent, and there is nobody to disturb you.
Just to get out of the situations where you get disturbed does not mean that you are attaining peacefulness; it simply means you are running away from situations where you are certain that your peace will be disturbed. Renouncing the world has never been my idea; it was always to change it.
Millions of people are suffering, and suffering for stupid reasons. It is absolutely inhuman to turn your back on it and move to the mountains or to the deserts to live peacefully there. That peace is very cheap, very superficial; it has almost no meaning. Just come back to the world and it will be disturbed, it will be shattered into pieces. And that will be immensely significant to awaken you, that what you have been thinking of as peace, silence, has been just a dream which is shattered by the reality, just as a mirror is shattered when hit by a rock… and it is shattered forever. That mirror you cannot put together again, and all those years that you were enjoying the idea that you have attained peace have gone down the drain.
Don’t try to escape, don’t try to renounce, because if you renounce you are simply renouncing the opportunity.
It is not that one attains god by renouncing everything – no, that’s not the case. But, because of god-realization, often one becomes free of all possessions. Realizing God brings the supreme joy, it is the ultimate experience of bliss.
Learning from the story Celebate Monk: Transform The World
Experience Learning
You have been told to have faith in the scriptures, faith in the words of God, faith in the religious teachers. I don’t say this at all. I say: have faith in yourself. It is only by knowing yourself that you can know what there is in the scriptures, what the words of God are. One who has no faith in himself finds all his other beliefs meaningless. Can you stand on someone else’s feet if you cannot stand on your own? Buddha has said: “Be a light unto yourself. Be your own refuge. There is no right refuge except the refuge of one’s own self.” I say the same thing.
One night a certain monk was bidding farewell to another monk who had been his guest when the latter said, “The night is very dark. How can I see to go?” The host lit a lamp and gave it to his guest. But as the guest was going down the staircase the host blew out the lamp. The place was enveloped in darkness again. Then the host said, “My lamp will not be able to light your path. For that you must have a lamp of your own.” The guest understood the monk’s advice, and this understanding became the birth of a light on the path of his life that could never be extinguished nor taken away.
Spiritual discipline is not just a part, a fragment of life, it is the whole of it. Your standing, sitting, speaking, laughing has all to be encompassed by it. Only then is it meaningful and natural. Religion is not found in any particular act, like worship or prayer, it is a way of living in which your whole life becomes a worship, a prayer. It is not a ritual, it is a way of life. In this sense, no religion is religious, it is the individual who becomes religious. No behavior is religious, one’s life is religious.
Only by becoming free from the bondage of the ego, of the “I,” does consciousness rise above the individual and become one with the whole. Just as an earthen jar separates ocean water from the ocean, the mortal enclosure of the ego keeps the individual away from the truth.
What is this ego, this “I”? Have you ever searched for it in yourself? It is there only because you have never looked for it. When I tried to find it myself, I discovered that it did not exist.
In some quiet moments go within yourself and look. No “I” is found anywhere. The “I” does not exist. It is a mere illusion ushered into being because of its social utility. Just as you have a name, you have your ego too. Both are utilities, not truths. That which is within you has neither name nor ego.
There is no such thing as entering into nirvana, into moksha, into liberation, into the soul. Because how can you enter a place you have never left? So then, what happens? There is no such thing as an entry into nirvana, but what happens is that the world you were immersed in dissolves like a dream and you find yourself in yourself. This experience is not at all like entering some place, it is more like finding yourself on your bed at the abrupt termination of a journey you were taking in a dream. Since you haven’t gone anywhere, there is no question of returning; since you haven’t lost anything, all talk of attaining is meaningless. You are only dreaming a dream; all your ideas of having gone away and having lost something are only in a dream. So you neither have to return anywhere nor to find anything. You only have to wake up.
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