VBT – Meditation 111.5
Questioner Is Relevant
Then Buddha said another thing, and that is even more significant. He said, “Anand, why are you disturbed? You were; not a party. You should not listen, because not a single answer was given to you. You should remain indifferent, otherwise you will go mad. Don’t move with me because I will be involved with many, many types of people. And if you listen to everything that is not said to you, you will get confused and crazy. You just leave me. Otherwise remember to listen only when I speak to you; at other times don’t listen. Whatsoever I say is not your business. It was not said to you and it was not your question at all. So why should you be worried? You were not related. Someone asked, someone else replied. Why are you unnecessarily worried about it? If you have the same question, ask, and then I will answer. But remember, my answers are not to the questions, but to the questioners. I responded. I look at the man, I see through the man, the man becomes transparent – and this is my response. The question is irrelevant; the questioner is relevant.”
You cannot ask for consistency from an enlightened person. Only unenlightened, ignorant persons can be consistent, because they don’t have to look. They just follow some ideas. They carry dead ideas, consistently. For their whole life they will carry something and they will remain consistent to it. They are stupid, that’s why they can remain consistent. They are not alive. They are dead.
Aliveness cannot be consistent. That doesn’t mean that it is wrong – aliveness is consistent, but very deeply, not on the surface. Buddha is consistent in all the three answers, but his consistency is not in the answers – his consistency is in his effort to help. He wanted to help the first man. He wanted to help the second man. He wanted to help the third man. For all three, compassion was there, love was there. He wanted to help them – that is his consistency. But it is a deep current. His words are different, his answers are different, but his compassion is the same.
So when an enlightened person speaks, answers, that answer is a total response of his emptiness, of his being. He echoes you, he reflects you, he is a mirror. He has no face of his own. Your face is mirrored in his heart. So if an idiot comes to meet a Buddha, he will meet an idiot – Buddha is just a mirror. And that man will go and spread the rumor that Buddha is an idiot. He has seen himself in Buddha. If someone sensitive, understanding, mature, grown up comes, he will see something else in Buddha: he will see his own face. There is no other way – you go on seeing mirrors in persons who are totally empty. Then whatsoever you carry is your interpretation.
It is said in old scriptures that when you reach an enlightened person, remain totally silent. Don’t think, otherwise you will miss the opportunity of meeting him. Just remain silent. Don’t think. Absorb him, but don’t try to understand him through your head. Absorb him, drink him, allow your total being to be open to him, let him move within you, but don’t think about him – because if you think, then your mind will be echoed. Let your total being be bathed in his presence. Only then will you have a glimpse of what type of being, of what type of phenomenon you have come in contact with. Many came to Buddha. They came and went. They carried their own opinions, and they went out and they spread them. Very few, really very few, understood – and that is how it should be, because you can understand only according to you. If you are ready to melt and change and be transformed, only then can you understand what an enlightened person is, what an enlightened being is.
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