Words of wisdom
Anthony de Mello, a Jesuit priest,
influenced the world through his powerful understanding of the human condition.
Through the use of parables and teaching stories, de Mello pointed the way to
reclaiming our true power. Born in 1931 and died in 1987, he was known
throughout the world for his writings and spiritual conferences. The
following are his excerpts and stories from Awareness: The Perils and
Opportunities of Reality., One Minute Wisdom, and Awakening:
Conversations With the Master.
Spirituality means waking up. Most people,
even though they don't know it, are asleep. They're born asleep, they
live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed children in their sleep, they
die in their sleep without ever waking up. They never understand the
loveliness and the beauty of this thing that we call human existence.
Awareness
"Is salvation
obtained
through action or
through
meditation?"
"Through
neither. Salvation
comes from seeing."
"Seeing
what?"
"That the gold
necklace
you wish to acquire is
hanging round your neck.
That the snake you are so
frightened of is only a
rope on the ground."
-From One Minute
Wisdom
Am I my thoughts, the thoughts that I am thinking? No. Thoughts come and go; I am not my thoughts. Am I my body?
They tell us that millions of cells in our body are changed or are
renewed every minute, so that by the end of seven years we don't have a single
living cell in our body that was there seven years before. Cells come and go. Cells arise and die. But "I" seems to persist. So am I my body? Evidently not.
Is it possible for the rose to say, "I will give my
fragrance to the good people who smell me, but I will withhold it from the
bad?" Or is it possible for the lamp to say, "I will give my light to
the good people in this room, but I will withhold it from the evil
people"? Or can a tree say,
"I'll give my shade to the good people who rest under me, but I will
withhold it from the bad"? These
are images of what love is about.
As soon as you look at the world through an ideology you are
finished. No reality fits an
ideology. Life is beyond that. That is why people are always searching for a
meaning to life. But life has no
meaning; it cannot have meaning because meaning is a formula; meaning is
something that makes sense to the mind. Every time you make sense out of
reality, you bump into something that destroys the sense you made. Meaning is
only found when you go beyond meaning.
Life only makes sense when you perceive it as mystery and it makes no
sense to the conceptualizing mind.
The great mystics and masters in the East will say,
"Who are you?" Many think the
most important question in the world is: "Who is Jesus Christ?"
Wrong!
Many think it is:
"Does God exist?" Wrong! Many
think it is "Is there a life after death?" Wrong! Nobody seems to be grappling with the problem
of: Is there a life before death? Yet
my experience is that it's precisely the ones who don't know what to do with
this life who are all hot and bothered about what they are going to do with
another life. One sign that you're
awakened is that you don't give a damn about what's going to happen in the next
life. You're not bothered about it; you don't care. You are not interested, period.
Do you know what
eternal life is? You think it's
everlasting life. But your own
theologians will tell you that that is crazy, because everlasting is still
within time. It is time perduring
forever. Eternal means timeless-- no
time. The human mind cannot understand
that. The human mind can understand time
and can deny time. What is timeless is
beyond our comprehension. Yet the
mystics tell us that eternity is right now.
How's that for good news? It is
right now. People are so distressed when
I tell them to forget their past.
They're crazy! Just drop it! When you hear "Repent for your
past," realize it's a great religious distraction from waking up. Wake up! That's what repent means. Not "weep for your sins.": Wake up!
understand, stop all the crying.
Understand! Wake up!
Spirituality means waking up. Most people, even though they don't know it,
are asleep. They're born asleep, they
live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed children in their sleep,
they die in their sleep without ever waking up.
They never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing that
we call human existence.
Negative feelings are in you, not in reality. So stop trying to change reality. That's crazy!
Stop trying to change the other person.
We spend all our time and energy trying to change external
circumstances, trying to change our spouses, our bosses, our friends, our
enemies, and everybody else. We don't
have to change anything. Negative feelings are in you. No person on earth has the power to make you
unhappy. There is no event, condition,
situation, or person. Nobody told you
this; they told you the opposite. That's
why you're in the mess that you're in right now. That is why you're asleep. They never told you this. But it's self-evident.
Labels
The important thing is not to know who "I" is or
what "I" is. You'll never
succeed. There are no words for it. The important thing is to drop the labels. As the Japanese Zen masters say, "Don't
seek the truth; just drop your opinions."
Drop your theories; don't seek the truth. Truth isn't something you search for. If you stop being opinionated, you would
know. Something similar happens
here. If you drop your labels, you would
know. What do I mean by labels? Every label you can conceive of except
perhaps that of human being. I am a human being. Fair enough; doesn't say very much. But when you say, "I am
successful," that's crazy. Success
is not part of the "I".
Success is something that comes and goes; it could be here today and
gone tomorrow. That's not
"I". When you said, "I
was a success," you were in error; you were plunged into darkness. You identified yourself with success. The same thing when you said, "I am a
failure, a lawyer, a businessman." You know what's going to happen to you
if you identify yourself with these things.
You're going to cling to them, you're going to be worried that they may
fall apart, and that's where your suffering comes in. That is what I meant earlier when I said to
you, "If you're suffering, you're asleep." Do you want a sign that
you're asleep? Here it is: You're suffering.
Suffering is a sign that you're out of touch with the truth. Suffering is given to you that you might open
your eyes to the truth, that you might understand that there's falsehood
somewhere, just as physical pain is given to you so you will understand that
there is disease or illness somewhere.
Suffering points out that there is falsehood somewhere. Suffering occurs when you clash with
reality. When your illusions clash with
reality when your falsehoods clash with the truth, then you have suffering. Otherwise there is no suffering.
Back to Words of Wisdom
"What you are aware of you are in control of; what you
are not aware of is in control of you."
When a new disciple came to the Master, this is the
catechism he was usually subjected to:
"Do you know the one person who will never abandon you
in the whole of your lifetime?"
"Who is it?"
"You."
"And do you know the answer to every question you may
have?"
"What is it?"
"You."
"And can you guess the solution to every one of your
problems?"
"I give up."
"You."
-One Minute Wisdom
"Is there anything I can do to make myself
Enlightened?"
"As little as you can do to make the sun rise in the
morning."
"Then of what use are the spiritual exercises you
prescribe?"
"To make sure you are not asleep when the sun begins to
rise."
-One Minute Wisdom
"How shall I help the world?"
"By understanding it," said the Master.
"And how shall I understand it?"
"By turning away from it."
"How then shall I serve humanity?"
"By understanding yourself."
-One Minute Wisdom
Awareness
"Is salvation obtained
through action or through
meditation?"
"Through neither.
Salvation comes from seeing."
"Seeing what?"
"That the gold necklace
you wish to acquire is
hanging round your neck.
That the snake you are so
frightened of is only a
rope on the ground."
-From One Minute Wisdom
Discovery
"Help us to find God."
"No one can help you there."
"Why not?"
"For the same reason that
no one can help the fish
to find the ocean."
-From One Minute Wisdom
2
Something about Anthony
De Mello...
The most fun and amusing of the following meditations are drawn from the
writings of a Jesuit Priest named Anthony de Mello, SJ. from his book One
Minute Wisdom. Each spiritual anecdote is a conversation between the Master and
his disciples.
De Mello explains that: "The Master in these tales is not a single person.
He is a Hindu Guru, a Zen Roshi, a Taoist Sage, a Jewish Rabbi, a Christian
Monk, a Sufi Mystic. He is Lao-tzu and Socrates. Buddha and Jesus, Zarathustra
and Mohammed. His teaching is found in the seventh century B.C. and the
twentieth century A.D. His wisdom belongs to East and West alike. Do his
historical antecedents really matter? History, after all, is the record of
appearances, not Reality; of doctrines, not of Silence.
As De Mello says of his work: "This, alas, is not an easy book! It was
written not to instruct but to Awaken. Concealed within its pages (not in the
printed words, not even in the tales, but in its spirit, its mood, its
atmosphere) is a Wisdom which cannot be conveyed in human speech. As you read the
printed page and struggle with the Master's cryptic language, it is possible
that you will unwittingly chance upon the Silent Teaching that lurks within . .
. and be Awakened and transformed. This is what Wisdom means: To be changed
without the slightest effort on your part, to be transformed, believe it or
not, merely by waking to the reality that is not words, that lies beyond the
reach of words.
It will only take a few minutes to read each one of the articles. You will
probably find the Master's language baffling, exasperating, even downright
meaningless. If you are fortunate enough to be Awakened thus, you will know why
the finest language is the one that is not spoken, the finest action is the one
that is not done and the finest change is the one that is not consciously
willed
ADDICTIVE LOVE
41
The
heart in love remains soft and sensitive. But when you're hell-bent on getting
this or the other thing, you become ruthless, hard, and insensitive. How can
you love people when you need people? You can only use them. If I need you to
make me happy, I've got to use you, I've got to manipulate you, I've got to
find ways and means of winning you. I cannot let you be free. I can only love
people when I have emptied my life of people. When I die to the need for
people, then I'm right in the desert.
In the beginning it feels awful, it feels lonely, but if you can take it for a
while, you'll suddenly discover that it isn't lonely at all. It is solitude, it
is aloneness, and the desert begins to flower. Then at last you'll know what
love is, what God is, what reality is. But in the beginning giving up the drug
can be tough, unless you have a very keen understanding or unless you have
suffered enough. It's a great thing to have suffered. Only then can you get
sick of it. You can make use of suffering to end suffering.
Most people simply go on suffering. That explains the conflict I sometimes have
between the role of spiritual director and that of therapist. A therapist says,
"Let's ease the suffering". The spiritual director says, "Let
her suffer, she'll get sick of this way of relating to people and she'll
finally decide to break out of this prison of emotional dependence on
others". Shall I offer a palliative or remove a cancer? It's not easy to
decide.
A person slams a book on the table in disgust. Let him keep slamming it on the
table. Don't pick up the book for him and tell him it's all right. Spirituality
is awareness, awareness, awareness, awareness, awareness, awareness. When your
mother got angry with you, she didn't say there was something wrong with her,
she said there was something wrong with you; otherwise she wouldn't have been
angry.
Well, I made the great discovery that if you are angry, Mother, there's
something wrong with you. So you'd better cope with your anger. Stay with it
and cope with it. It's not mine. Whether there's something wrong with me or
not, I'll examine that independently of your anger. I'm not going to be
influenced by your anger. The funny thing is that when I can do this without
feeling any negativity toward another, I can be quite objective about myself,
too. Only a very aware person can refuse to pick up the guilt and anger, can
say, "You're having a tantrum. Too bad. I don't feel the slightest desire
to rescue you anymore, and I refuse to feel guilty". I'm not going to hate
myself for anything I've done. That's what guilt is.
I'm not going to give myself a bad feeling and whip myself for anything I have
done, either right or wrong. I'm ready to analyze it, to watch it, and say,
"Well, if I did wrong, it was in unawareness". Nobody does wrong in
awareness. That's why theologians tell us very beautifully that Jesus could do
no wrong. That makes very good sense to me, because the enlightened person can do
no wrong. The enlightened person is free. Jesus was free and because he was
free, he couldn't do any wrong. But since you can do wrong, you're not free.
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MORE WORDS
42
Mark
Twain put it very nicely when he said, "It was so cold that if the
thermometer had been an inch longer, we would have frozen to death". We do
freeze to death on words. It's not the cold outside that matters, but the
thermometer. It's not reality that matters, but what you're saying to yourself
about it. I was told a lovely story about a farmer in Finland. When they were
drawing up the Russian-Finnish border, the farmer had to decide whether he
wanted to be in Russia or Finland. After a long time he said he wanted to be in
Finland, but he didn't want to offend the Russian officials.. These came to him
and wanted to know why he wanted to be in Finland. The farmer replied, "It
has always been my desire to live in Mother Russia, but at my age I wouldn't be
able to survive another Russian winter".
Russia and Finland are only words, concepts, but not for human beings, not for
crazy human beings. We're almost never looking at reality. A guru was once
attempting to explain to a crowd how human beings react to words, feed on
words, live on words, rather than on reality.
One of the men stood up and protested;
he said, "I don't agree that words have all that much effect on us".
The guru said, "Sit down, you son of a bitch".
The man went livid
with rage and said, "You call yourself an enlightened person, a guru, a
master, but you ought to be ashamed of yourself".
The guru then said,
"Pardon me, sir, I was carried away. I really beg your pardon; that was a
lapse; I'm sorry". The man finally calmed down.
Then the guru said,
"It took just a few words to get a whole tempest going within you; and it
took just a few words to calm you down, didn't it"?
Words, words, words,
words, how imprisoning they are if they're not used properly.
HIDDEN AGENDAS
43
There
is a difference between knowledge and awareness, between information and
awareness. I just said to you that one cannot do evil in awareness. But one can
do evil in knowledge or information, when you know something is bad.
"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do". I would
translate that as "They're not aware of what they are doing". Paul
says he is the greatest of sinners because he persecuted the Church of Christ.
But, he adds, I did it in unawareness.
Or if they had been aware that they were crucifying the Lord of Glory, they
would never have done so. Or "The time will come when they will persecute
you and they think they are doing a service to God". They aren't aware.
They're caught up in information and knowledge. Thomas Aquinas puts it nicely
when he says, "Every time someone sins, they're sinning under the guise of
good". They're blinding themselves; they're seeing something as good even
though they know it is bad; they're rationalizing because they're seeking
something under the pretext of good.
Someone gave me two situations in which she found it difficult to be aware. She
was in a service industry where many people were lined up, many phones were
ringing, and she was alone and there were distractions coming from a lot of
uptight, angry people. She found it extremely difficult to maintain serenity
and calm. The other situation was when she was driving in traffic, with horns
blowing and people shouting four-letter words. She asked me whether eventually
that nervousness would dissipate and she could remain at peace.
Did you pick up the attachment there? Peace. Her attachment to peace and calm.
She was saying, "Unless I'm peaceful, I won't be happy". Did it ever
occur to you that you could be happy in tensions? Before enlightenment, I used
to be depressed, after enlightenment, I continue to be depressed. You don't
make a goal out of relaxation and sensitivity. Have you ever heard of people
who get tense trying to relax? If one is tense, one simply observes one's
tension. You will never understand yourself if you seek to change yourself.
The harder you try to change yourself, the worse it gets. You are called upon
to be aware. Get the feel of that jangling telephone; get the feel of jarred
nerves; get the sensation of the steering wheel in the car. In other words,
come to reality, and let tension or the calmness take care of itself. As a matter
of fact, you will have to let them take care of themselves because you'll be
too preoccupied with getting in touch with reality. Step by step, let whatever
happens happen. Real change will come when it is brought about, not by your
ego, but by reality. Awareness releases reality to change you.
In awareness you change, but you've got to experience it. At this point you're
just taking my word for it. Perhaps also you've got a plan to become aware.
Your ego, in its own cunning way, is trying to push you into awareness. Watch
it! You'll meet with resistance; there will be trouble. When someone is anxious
about being aware all the time, you can spot the mild anxiety. They want to be
awake, to find out if they're really awake or not.
That's part of asceticism, not awareness. It sounds strange in a culture where
we've been trained to achieve goals, to get somewhere, but in fact there's
nowhere to go because you're there already. The Japanese have a nice way of
putting it "The day you cease to travel, you will have arrived". Your
attitude should be "I want to be aware, I want to be in touch with
whatever is and let whatever happens happen; if I'm awake, fine, and if I'm
asleep, fine". The moment you make a goal out of it and attempt to get it,
you're seeking ego glorification, ego promotion.
You want the good feeling that you've made it. When you do "make it",
you won't know. Your left hand won't know what your right hand is doing.
"Lord, when did we do this? We had no awareness". Charity is never so
lovely as when one has lost consciousness that one is practicing charity.
"You mean I helped you? I was enjoying myself I was just doing my dance.
It helped you, that's wonderful. Congratulations to you. No credit to me".
When you attain, when you are aware, increasingly you will not be bothered
about labels like "awake" or "asleep". One of my
difficulties here is to arouse your curiosity but not your spiritual greed.
Let's come awake, it's going to be wonderful. After a while, it doesn't matter;
one is aware, because one lives. The unaware life is not worth living. And you
will leave pain to take care of itself.
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GIVING IN
44
The
harder you try to change, the worse it can get.
Does this mean that a certain
degree of passivity is all right? Yes, the more you resist something, the
greater power you give to it. That's the meaning, I think, of Jesus' words:
"When someone strikes you on the right cheek, offer him your left as
well". You always empower the demons you fight. That's very Oriental. But
if you flow with the enemy, you overcome the enemy.
How does one cope with evil? Not by fighting it but by understanding it. In
understanding, it disappears. How does one cope with darkness? Not with one's
fist. You don't chase darkness out of the room with a broom, you turn on a
light. The more you fight darkness, the more real it becomes to you, and the
more you exhaust yourself. But when you turn on the light of awareness, it
melts.
Say this scrap of paper is a billion-dollar check. Ah, I must renounce it, the
gospel says, I must give it up if I want eternal life. Are you going to
substitute one greed - a spiritual greed - for the other greed?
Before, you had
a worldly ego and now you've got a spiritual ego, but you've got an ego all the
same, a refined one and one more difficult to cope with.
When you renounce
something, you're tied to it. But if instead of renouncing it, I look at it and
say, "Hey, this isn't a billion-dollar check, this is a scrap of
paper", there is nothing to fight, nothing to renounce.
ASSORTED LANDMINES
45
In
my country, lots of men grow up with the belief that women are cattle.
"I
married her," they say. "She's my possession". Are these men to
blame? Get ready for a shock: They aren't. Just as many Americans are not to
blame for the way they view Russians. Their glasses or perceptions simply have
been dyed a certain color, and there they are; that's the color through which
they look at the world. What does it take to make them real, to make them aware
that they're looking at the world through colored glasses? There is no
salvation till they have seen their basic prejudice.
As soon as you look at the world through an ideology you are finished. No
reality fits an ideology. Life is beyond that. That is why people are always
searching for a meaning to life. But life has no meaning; it cannot have
meaning because meaning is a formula; meaning is something that makes sense to
the mind. Every time you make sense out of reality, you bump into something
that destroys the sense you made. Meaning is only found when you go beyond
meaning. Life only makes sense when you perceive it as mystery and it makes no
sense to the conceptualizing mind.
I don't say that adoration isn't important, but I do say that doubt is
infinitely more important than adoration. Everywhere people are searching for
objects to adore, but I don't find people awake enough in their attitudes and
convictions. How happy we would be if terrorists would adore their ideology
less and question more. However, we don't like to apply that to ourselves; we
think we're all right and the terrorists are wrong. But a terrorist to you is a
martyr to the other side.
Loneliness is when you're missing people,
aloneness is when you're enjoying
yourself.
Remember that quip of George Bernard Shaw. He was at one of those
awful cocktail parties, where nothing gets said. Someone asked him if he was
enjoying himself. He answered, "It's the only thing I am enjoying
here". You never enjoy others when you are enslaved to them. Community is
not formed by a set of slaves, by people demanding that other people make them
happy. Community is formed by emperors and princesses.
You're an emperor, not a beggar; you're a princess, not a beggar.
There's no
begging bowl in a true community. There's no clinging, no anxiety, no fear, no
hangover, no possessiveness, no demands. Free people form community, not
slaves. This is such a simple truth, but it has been drowned out by a whole
culture, including religious culture. Religious culture can be very
manipulative if you don't watch out.
Some people see awareness as a high point, a plateau, beyond experiencing every
moment as it is. That's making a goal out of awareness. But with true awareness
there's nowhere to go, nothing to achieve. How do we get to this awareness?
Through awareness. When people say they really want to experience every moment,
they're really talking awareness, except for that "wanting". You
don't want to experience awareness; you do or you don't.
A friend of mine has just gone to Ireland. He told me that though he's an
American citizen he's entitled to an Irish passport and was getting one because
he is scared to travel abroad on an American passport. If terrorists walk in
and say, "Let me see your passport," he wants to be able to say, "I'm
Irish". But when people sit next to him on the plane, they don't want to
see labels; they want to taste and experience this person, as he really is.
How
many people spend their lives not eating food but eating the menu?
A menu is
only an indication of something that's available. You want to eat the steak,
not the words.
THE DEATH OF ME
46
Can one be fully human without
experiencing tragedy?
The only tragedy there is in the world is ignorance;
all
evil comes from that. The only tragedy there is in the world is unwakefulness
and unawareness.
From them comes fear, and from fear comes everything else, but
death is not a tragedy at all. Dying is wonderful; it's only horrible to people
who have never understood life. It's only when you're afraid of life that you
fear death.
It's only dead people who fear death. But people who are alive have no fear of
death. One of your American authors put it so well. He said awakening is the
death of your belief in injustice and tragedy. The end of the world for a
caterpillar is a butterfly for the master. Death is resurrection. We're talking
not about some resurrection that will happen but about one that is happening
right now.
If you would die to the past, if you would die to every minute, you
would be the person who is fully alive, because a fully alive person is one who
is full of death.
We're always dying to things. We're always shedding everything in order to be
fully alive and to be resurrected at every moment. The mystics, saints, and
others make great efforts to wake people up. If they don't wake up, they're
always going to have these other minor ills like hunger, wars, and violence.
The greatest evil is sleeping people, ignorant people.
A Jesuit once wrote a note to Father Arrupe, his superior general, asking him
about the relative value of communism, socialism, and capitalism. Father Arrupe
gave him a lovely reply. He said, "A system is about as good or as bad as
the people who use it". People with golden hearts would make capitalism or
communism or socialism work beautifully.
Don't ask the world to change - you change first. Then you'll get a good enough
look at the world so that you'll be able to change whatever you think ought to
be changed. Take the obstruction out of your own eye. If you don't, you have
lost the right to change anyone or anything.
Till you are aware of yourself, you have no right to interfere with anyone else
or with the world. Now, the danger of attempting to change others or change
things when you yourself are not aware is that you may be changing things for
your own convenience, your pride, your dogmatic convictions and beliefs, or
just to relieve your negative feelings. I have negative feelings, so you better
change in such a way that I'll feel good.
First, cope with your negative feelings so that when you move out to change
others, you're not coming from hate or negativity but from love. It may seem
strange, too, that people can be very hard on others and still be very loving.
The surgeon can be hard on a patient and yet loving. Love can be very hard
indeed.
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Come Home to Yourself
Anthony de Mello, SJ
Come home to yourself. Observe yourself. That's why I said
earlier that self-observation is such a delightful and extraordinary thing.
After a while you don't have to make any effort, because, as illusions begin to
crumble, you begin to know things that cannot be described. It's called
happiness. Everything changes and you become addicted to awareness.
There's
the story of the disciple who went to the master and said, "Could you give
me a word of wisdom? Could you tell me something that would guide me through my
days?" It was the master's day of silence, so he picked up a pad. It said,
"Awareness." When the disciple saw it, he said, "This is too
brief. Can you expand on it a bit?" So the master took back the pad and
wrote, "Awareness, awareness, awareness." The disciple said,
"Yes, but what does it mean?" The master took back the pad and wrote,
"Awareness, awareness, awareness means -- awareness."
That's
what it is to watch yourself. No one can show you how to do it, because he
would be giving you a technique, he would be programming you. But watch
yourself. When you talk to someone, are you aware of it or are you simply
identifying with it? When you got angry with somebody, were you aware that you
were angry or were you simply identifying with your anger? Later, when you had
the time, did you study your experience and attempt to understand it? Where did
it come from? What brought it on? I don't know of any other way to awareness.
You only change what you understand. What you do not understand and are not
aware of, you repress. You don't change. But when you understand it, it
changes.
I
am sometimes asked, "Is this growing in awareness a gradual thing, or is
it a 'whammo' kind of thing?" There are some lucky people who see this in
a flash. They just become aware. There are others who keep growing into it,
slowly, gradually, increasingly. They begin to see things. Illusions drop away,
fantasies are peeled away, and they start to get in touch with facts. There's no
general rule. There's a famous story about the lion who came upon a flock of
sheep and to his amazement found a lion among the sheep. It was a lion who had
been brought up by the sheep ever since he was a cub. It would bleat like a
sheep and run around like a sheep. The lion went straight for him, and when the
sheep lion stood in front of the real one, he trembled in every limb. And the
lion said to him, "What are you doing among the sheep?" And the
sheep-lion said, "I am a sheep." And the lion said, "Oh no
you're not. You're coming with me." So he took the sheep-lion to a pool
and said, "Look!" And when the sheep-lion looked at his reflection in
the water, he let out a mighty roar, and in that moment he was transformed. He
was never the same again.
If
you're lucky and the gods are gracious or if you are gifted with divine grace
(use any theological expression you want), you might suddenly understand who
"I" is, and you will never be the same again, never. Nothing will
ever be able to touch you again and no one will ever be able to hurt you again.
You
will fear no one and you will fear nothing. Isn't that extraordinary? You'll
live like a king, like a queen. This is what it means to live like royalty. Not
rubbish like getting your picture in the newspapers or having a lot of money.
That's a lot of rot. You fear no one because you're perfectly content to be
nobody. You don't give a damn about success or failure. They mean nothing.
Honor, disgrace, they mean nothing! If you make a fool of yourself, that means
nothing either. Isn't that a wonderful state to be in! Some people arrive at
this goal painstakingly, step by step, through months and weeks of
self-awareness. But I'll promise you this: I have not known a single person who
gave time to being aware who didn't see a difference in a matter of weeks. The
quality of their life changes, so they don't have to take it on faith anymore.
They see it; they're different. They react differently. In fact, they react
less and act more. You see things you've never seen before.
You're
much more energetic, much more alive. People think that if they had no
cravings, they'd be like deadwood. But in fact they'd lose their tension. Get
rid of your fear of failure, your tensions about succeeding, you will be
yourself. Relaxed. You wouldn't be driving with your brakes on. That's what
would happen.
There's
a lovely saying of Tranxu, a great Chinese sage, that I took the trouble to
learn by heart. It goes: "When the archer shoots for no particular prize,
he has all his skills; when he shoots to win a brass buckle, he is already
nervous; when he shoots for a gold prize, he goes blind, sees two targets, and
is out of his mind. His skill has not changed, but the prize divides him. He
cares! He thinks more of winning than of shooting, and the need to win drains
him of power." Isn't that an image of what most people are? When you're
living for nothing, you've got all your skills, you've got all your energy,
you're relaxed, you don't care, it doesn't matter whether you win or lose.
Now
there's HUMAN living for you. That's what life is all about. That can only come
from awareness. And in awareness you will understand that honor doesn't mean a
thing. It's a social convention, that's all. That's why the mystics and the
prophets didn't bother one bit about it. Honor or disgrace meant nothing to
them. They were living in another world, in the world of the awakened. Success
or failure meant nothing to them. They had the attitude: "I'm an ass,
you're an ass, so where's the problem?"
Someone
once said, "The three most difficult things for a human being are not
physical feats or intellectual achievements. They are, first, returning love
for hate; second, including the excluded; third, admitting that you are
wrong." But these are the easiest things in the world if you haven't
identified with the "me." You can say things like "I'm wrong! If
you knew me better, you'd see how often I'm wrong. What would you expect from
an ass?" But if I haven't identified with these aspects of "me,"
you can't hurt me. Initially, the old conditioning will kick in and you'll be
depressed and anxious. You'll grieve, cry, and so on. "Before
enlightenment, I used to be depressed: after enlightenment, 1 continue to be
depressed." But there's a difference: I don't identify with it anymore. Do
you know what a big difference that is?
You
step outside of yourself and look at that depression, and don't identify with
it. You don't do a thing to make it go away; you are perfectly willing to go on
with your life while it passes through you and disappears. If you don't know
what that means, you really have something to look forward to. And anxiety?
There it comes and you're not troubled. How strange! You're anxious but you're
not troubled.
Isn't
that a paradox? And you're willing to let this cloud come in, because the more
you fight it, the more power you give it. You're willing to observe it as it
passes by. You can be happy in your anxiety. Isn't that crazy? You can be happy
in your depression. But you can't have the wrong notion of happiness. Did you
think happiness was excitement or thrills? That's what causes the depression.
Didn't anyone tell you that? You're thrilled, all right, but you're just
preparing the way for your next depression. You're thrilled but you pick up the
anxiety behind that: How can I make it last? That's not happiness, that's
addiction.
I
wonder how many non-addicts there are reading this book? If you're anything
like the average group, there are few, very few. Don't look down your nose at
the alcoholics and the drug addicts: maybe you're just as addicted as they are.
The first time I got a glimpse of this new world, it was terrifying. I
understood what it meant to be alone, with nowhere to rest your head, to leave
everyone free and be free yourself, to be special to no one and love everyone-
because love does that. It shines on good and bad alike; it makes rain fall on
saints and sinners alike.
Is
it possible for the rose to say, "I will give my fragrance to the good
people who smell me, but I will withhold it from the bad"? Or is it
possible for the lamp to say, "I will give my light to the good people in
this room, but I will withhold it from the evil people"? Or can a tree
say, "I'll give my shade to the good people who rest under me, but I will
withhold it from the bad"? These are images of what love is about.
It's
been there all along, staring us in the face in the scriptures, though we never
cared to see it because we were so drowned in what our culture calls love with
its love songs and poems -- that isn't love at all, that's the opposite of
love. That's desire and control and possessiveness. That's manipulation, and
fear, and anxiety -- that's not love. We were told that happiness is a smooth
complexion, a holiday resort. It isn't these things, but we have subtle ways of
making our happiness depend on other things, both within us and outside us. We
say, "I refuse to be happy until my neurosis goes." I have good news
for you: You can be happy right now, WITH the neurosis, You want even better
news? There's only one reason why you're not experiencing what in India we call
ANAND -- bliss, bliss. There's only one reason why you're not experiencing
bliss at this present moment, and it's because you're thinking or focusing on
what you don't have. Otherwise you would be experiencing bliss. You're focusing
on what you don't have. But, right now you have everything you need to be in
bliss.
Jesus
was talking horse sense to lay people, to starving people, to poor people. He
was telling them good news: It's yours for the taking. But who listens? No
one's interested, they'd rather be asleep.
1 comment:
I find these thoughts of Tony de Mello extremely inspiring.
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