Excerpt
Chapter One Compassion, Energy, and Desire Buddha lived for forty years after he became enlightened. After all his desires were finished, the ego disappeared, he lived for forty years more. Many times it was asked, “Why are you still in the body?” When the business is finished you should disappear. It looks illogical: Why should Buddha exist in the body even for a moment longer? When there is no desire, how can the body continue? There is something very deep to be understood. When desire disappears, the energy that was moving in desire remains; it cannot disappear. Desire is just a form of energy; thats why you can turn one desire into another. Anger can become sex, sex can become anger. Sex can become greed, so whenever you find a very greedy person he will be less sexual. If he is really perfectly greedy he will not be sexual at all, he will be a celibatebecause the whole energy is moving into greed. And if you find a very sexual person you will always find that he is not greedy, because nothing is left over for greed. If you see a person who has suppressed his sexuality he will be angry; anger will be always ready to come to the surface. You can see in his eyes, in his face, that he is just angry; all the sex energy has become anger. Thats why your so-called monks and sadhus are always angry. The way they walk they show their anger; the way they look at you they show their anger. Their silence is just skin deeptouch them and they will become angry. Sex becomes anger. These are the forms; life is the energy. What happens when all desires disappear? Energy cannot disappear, energy is indestructible. Ask the physicists; even they say that energy cannot be destroyed. A certain energy was existing in Gautam Buddha when he became enlightened. That energy had been moving in sex, anger, greed, in millions of ways. Then all those forms disappearedso what became of that energy? Energy cannot go out of existence, and when desires are not there, it becomes formless but it still exists. Now what is the function of it? That energy becomes compassion. You cannot be in compassion because you have no energy. All your energy is divided and spread into different formssometimes sex, sometimes anger, sometimes greed. Compassion is not a form. Only when all your desires disappear does your energy become compassion. You cannot cultivate compassion. When you are desireless, compassion happens; your whole energy moves into compassion. And this movement is very different. Desire has a motivation in it, a goal; compassion is non-motivated; there is no goal to it. It is simply overflowing energy. Compassion Is Love Come of Age Gautam Buddhas emphasis on compassion was a new phenomenon as far as the mystics of old were concerned. Gautam Buddha creates an historical dividing line from the past. Before him, meditation was enough; nobody had emphasized compassion together with meditation. And the reason was that meditation brings enlightenment, your blossoming, your ultimate expression of beingwhat more do you need? As far as the individual is concerned, meditation is enough. Buddhas greatness consists in introducing compassion even before you start meditating. You should be more loving, more kind, more compassionate. There is a hidden science behind it. Before you become enlightened, if you have a heart full of compassion there is a possibility that after meditation you will help others to achieve the same beauty, the same height, the same celebration as you have achieved. Gautam Buddha makes it possible for enlightenment to be infectious. But if the person feels that he has come back home, why bother about anybody else? Buddha makes enlightenment for the first time unselfish; he makes it a social responsibility. It is a great change in perspective. But compassion should be learned before enlightenment happens. If it is not learned before, then after enlightenment there is nothing to learn. When one becomes so ecstatic in oneself, then even compassion seems to be preventing ones own joy, a kind of disturbance in ones ecstasy. Thats why there have been hundreds of enlightened people, but very few masters. To be enlightened does not mean necessarily that you will become a master. Becoming a master means you have tremendous compassion, and you feel ashamed to go alone into those beautiful spaces that enlightenment makes available. You want to help the people who are blind, in darkness, groping their way. It becomes a joy to help them, it is not a disturbance. In fact, it becomes a richer ecstasy when you see so many people flowering around you; you are not a solitary tree who has blossomed in a forest where no other tree is blossoming. When the whole forest blossoms with you, the joy grows a thousandfold; you have used your enlightenment to bring a revolution in the world. Gautam Buddha is not only enlightened, but an enlightened revolutionary. His concern with the world, with people, is immense. He was teaching his disciples that when you meditate and you feel silence, serenity, a deep joy bubbling inside your being, dont hold onto it; give it to the whole world. And dont be worried, because the more you give it, the more you will become capable of getting it. The gesture of giving is of tremendous importance once you know that giving does not take anything from you; on the contrary, it multiplies your experiences. But one who has never been compassionate does not know the secret of giving, does not know the secret of sharing. It happened that one of Buddhas disciples, a laymanhe was not a sannyasin but he was very devoted to Gautam Buddhasaid, “I will do it . . . but I want just to make one exception. I will give all my joy and all my meditation and all my inner treasures to the whole worldexcept my neighbor, because that fellow is really nasty.” Neighbors are always enemies. Gautam Buddha said to him, “Then forget about the world, you simply give to your neighbor.” The man was at a loss: “What are you saying?” Buddha said, “If you can give to your neighbor, only then will you be freed from this antagonistic attitude towards the human being.” Compassion basically means accepting peoples frailties, their weaknesses, not expecting them to behave like gods. That expectation is cruelty, because they will not be able to behave like gods and then they will fall in your estimation and will also fall in their own self-respect. You have dangerously crippled them, you have damaged their dignity. One of the fundamentals of compassion is to dignify everybody, to make everybody aware that what has happened to you can happen to them; that nobody is a hopeless case, nobody is unworthy, that enlightenment is not something to be deserved, it is your very self-nature. But these words should come from the enlightened person, only then can they create trust. If they come from unenlightened scholars, the words cannot create trust. The word, spoken by the enlightened man, starts breathing, starts having a heartbeat of its own. It becomes alive, it goes directly into your heartit is not intellectual gymnastics. But with the scholar it is a different thing. He himself is not certain of what he is talking about, what he is writing about. He is in the same uncert