|
Pravin Kumar
Age: 60 Zodiac: 
|
|
 Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2007 7:24 am |
|
 |
 |
|
|
This I call compassion, that Buddha felt sympathy for the man because his language was so powerless. The man was trying to say something, he was trying to express something and he was very angry. He couldn't find the words so he expressed it by spitting. When someone comes to me with love and holds my hands, I feel so much compassion: he is trying to say something but language is inadequate. That person is trying to say something by holding my hands. When a person is hugging someone language is inadequate. Man is so helpless and he is trying to say something, so he brings his heart close to the other's because he cannot find another way.
Yesterday as I was leaving here some people started touching my feet, and I felt so much compassion. How helpless man is. He is trying to say something and he is not able to, so he touches the other's feet. One of my close friends was walking behind me; he is very rational and he said, "No, no. Don't do that" He was also right. It is so said what has happened to this world. The ones who are touching another's feet are authentic, but now there are people who want you to touch their feet. So in fact what he said was right: "No, no. Don't do that."
I found what he said to be both right and wrong. He was right when he said that it is wrong for anyone in this world to allow someone else to touch their feet, but it would also be a wrong world if there were no people left whose feet one might feel like touching. And it would also be a wrong world if there were no longer any heart that could bow down at someone's feet. A world where we are not overwhelmed with feelings that can be expressed only by touching someone's feet would be a sad world.
Do you understand what I am saying ? -- it would also be a sad world if we were never overwhelmed with feelings that could only be expressed by touching someone's feet. Man would become very dry, without meaning. And I have been amazed that when I see someone bowing down and touching my feet, I can see he is not touching the feet of godliness.I am reminding you of this. And up to now, whenever anyone has bowed down at someone else's feet -- if he has been forced that is a different matter -- but whenever he has bowed down he is really bowing to the feet of the divine. After all, what does anyone have in their feet that is worthy of bowing down to? But there are feelings inside which can be expressed in no other way.
Yesterday someone who loves me was in my room with me. In the evening, when I started to go for my shower. I switched on the light and he said, "Now that it is light, let me touch your feet."
I was really amazed. And he touched my feet and I saw tears in his eyes. There is nothing more beautiful on earth than those tears. On this earth no poetry, no song is more beautiful than those tears, tears that come in a moment of love. And if you understand, if you remember, if you can see, how can you not be filled with compassion?
But what do you see? -- you see things in people that don't give rise to compassion in you but to criticism. You are seeing in people what triggers your cruelty instead of your compassion. You are looking at the inauthentic in people, at what is not their heart but their helplessness.
A man swears at me -- is this his heart? No, it must be his helplessness. There is a heart inside the worst of men, and if you are able to see it you will be filled with compassion, you will be filled with great compassion.
Buddha said on that morning, "I feel compassion, so much compassion. Language is so inadequate, Ananda. Man's heart is trying to say so much and it cannot manage it." He simply asked the man, "Would you like to say something more?"
What more could the man have said? Now it was difficult to say anything. The man left. In the night he repented so much that the next day he went to Budha to apologize. He fell at Buddha's feet and started crying, Buddha said, "Ananda, do you see how inadequate language is? Now again he wants to say something and he is not able to. Yesterday he was trying to say something and he wasn't able to and he behaved in a certain way, and now again he is behaving in a certain way Ananda, language is very inadequate and man deserved great compassion."
Life is short, just a few days. I am saying this as though it is just a few days long, but in reality not even the next few moments are a certainty. And if in these few moments of life we don't learn compassion for each other, we have not been human: we have not kown life, we have not recognised it.
So spread compassion all around you. Look around you -- people are so unhappy, don't add to their unhappiness. Your compassion will lessen their unhappiness, just one word of compassion will lessen their unhappiness. Don't add to their unhappiness. You are all adding to each other's unhappiness: you are all helping each other to be more unhappy. Every single man has many people behind him making him unhappy. If an understanding of compassion is there, then you will change all the ways that you cause unhappiness in others. And if you can bring happiness to someone's life, you will find a way to do it.
Remember one thing: the one who brings unhappiness to others in the end becomes unhappy himself, and the one who brings happiness to others in the end reaches to the heights of happiness. That's why I am saying that someone who tries to give happiness develops the center of happiness inside himself, and someone who tries to bring unhappiness to others develops the center of unhappiness inside himself. The fruit does not come from the outside, the fruit is created within you. Whatever you do, you develop a receptivity for it inside yourself. Someone who wants love should give his love. Someone who wants bliss should start sharing his bliss. Someone who wants flowers to shower in his home should shower flowers in other people's homes. There is no other way. So compassion is an emotion that each person has to develop in order to enter into meditation.
The third key is joy, happiness, delight, a sense of bliss and a lack of anguish. You are all so full of anguish. You are sad and tired people; you are beaten people just bragging yourselves on the road of defeat to a bitter end. You walk as if you have already died. There is no energy, no life in your walk; there is no life in your day-to day life. You are lethargic, sad, broken, defeated. This is wrong because however short life may be, however certain death may be, someone who has even a little understanding will not be sad.
Socrates was dying. He had been given the poison -- and he was laughing. One of his disciples, Creto, asked him, "You are laughing and our eyes are filled with tears. Death is very near -- this is time for sadness."
Socrates said, "Where is this sadness? If I die and I die completely, where is this sadness? There will be no one left to experience sadness. And if I die and I still remain, where is the need for sadness? What will be lost is not me; I am that which remains."
So he said, "I am happy Death can do only two things: it can either completely destroy me, and if it completely destroys me I will be happy because I will not be there to experience sadness, and if part of me remains I will be happy because the part that is not me will have been destroyed. I will still remain. Death can only do two things, that's why I am laughing. "And, Socrates said, "I am happy because what can death take away from me? It will either completely annihilate me ... but then what has it taken away from me? -- because then the one it has taken from will also not be here. And if I remain, everything remains. If I remain then everything remains because that which was taken away was not me. This is why I say I am happy."
He is happy even as he faces death, and here you are, unhappy even to be alive. You are alive and still you are unhappy; yet there have been people who were happy even in the face of death.
Mansoor was tortured to death. His legs were cut off, his arms were cut off, they poked his eyes out. No one in history hasbeen tortured more brutally. Christ was put to death quickly, Gandhi was killed quickly, with a bullet, Socrates was poisoned --but Mansoor is the one person who was put to the most painful death in history. First they cut off his legs, and when the blood started pouring out of his legs he took the blood and put it on his hands.
A large crowd had gathered around him: they were throwing stones at him. Someone asked him, "What are you doing?"
He said, "I am performing the vaju, washing my hands before prayer." Mohammedans wash their hands before they pray. He washed his hands with his blood and he said, " I am performing the vaju." Then he said -- remember these words of Mansoor -- "The vaju of love, the real vaju of love, is done with blood, not with water. And only someone who performs the vaju with his own blood can enter into prayer."
People were at a loss. They thought he was mad. First his legs were cut off, then his arms were cut off, then they gouged out his eyes. Thousands of people had gathered: they were throwing stones at him and one by one his body parts were being cut off. And when they pierced his eyes he cried, "Oh God, remember that Mansoor has won."
And people asked, "What do you mean? What have you won?"
He answered, "I am asking God to remember that Mansoor has won. I was afraid that in the midst of so much animosity and hatred, maybe love would not survive. God, remember that Mansoor has won -- my love is unending. Whatever these people are doing to me, they haven't succeeded in destroying my love. They haven't been able to do what they are trying to do. This love is eternal." And he said, "That is my prayer, this is my worship."
Even then he was laughing. Even then he was drunk with the divine.
|
Welcome to Mystic Board - Free Astrology, Tarot to Psychic Discussion Board. New visitors: Register Now its FAST! Members, please Sign-In.
