Pythagoras, The golden verses of Pythagoras, Vol. 2 Philosophia Perennis Chapter 4: The Perfume of Absolute Contentment, Question 2

The second question

Question 2

BEFORE TAKING SANNYAS, I WOULD HAVE FOUND IT VERY EASY TO RELATE TO PYTHAGORAS. NOW I WOULD STILL LIKE TO, BUT SOME THINGS SEEM SO MORALISTIC AND REPRESSIVE, LIKE HIS ADVICE NOT TO BE ANGRY. WHERE AM I MISSING?

Sarlo,

REMEMBER ONE THING ALWAYS: that time changes everything -- language, the ways of language... time changes everything! If Pythagoras comes back, you will not be able to relate to him. He will be speaking a language that is no more in use, and you will be speaking a language that he will not be able to understand either -- there will be a gap of twenty-five centuries. Twenty-five centuries is a long time. In fact, between two generations the gap arises; between your father and you there is a gap, and such a gap that people feel it is unbridgeable.

Children feel it almost impossible to relate to their own parents. The gap is not much, maybe twenty years. Twenty years' gap or twenty-five years' gap and children feel it is impossible to communicate. And the parents feel it is impossible to communicate. In twenty-five years the world has changed so much -- what to say about twenty-five centuries?

That's why you will need somebody who belongs to you to convey to you what the meaning of Pythagoras is. Why am I talking on Pythagoras? So that the gap of twenty-five centuries can be bridged, so that Pythagoras can again become a living force amongst you. If you try to understand Pythagoras directly you will not be able to understand him at all. He speaks a totally different language that has disappeared from the world. It is the language of Patanjali, it is the language of Mahavira. But Patanjali and Mahavira were pre-Freudians. They used words in a totally different way; they had never heard about Freud. Pythagoras is using language in the same way. You will have to be a little patient.

When he says not to be angry, he does not mean repression in the sense you understand the word repression. When he says don't be angry, he is not telling you to repress anger: he is telling you to transcend anger. And they are tremendously different -- not only different but diametrically opposite.

If you try not to be angry, you will repress anger. If you try to transcend anger, you will not repress anger: on the contrary, you will have to understand anger, you will have to watch anger. In watching is transcendence.

If you repress anger, the anger goes into your unconscious; you become more and more poisoned. It is not good, it is not healthy; it is going to drive you neurotic sooner or later. And one day or other the accumulated anger will explode, and that will be far more dangerous because then it will be absolutely uncontrollable by you. Then it is better to be finished with it every day in small doses. Those doses are homeopathic: once in a while you feel angry, be angry. That is far healthier than accumulating anger for a few years then one day exploding. Then it will be too much; you will not be able even to be conscious of what you are doing. It will be absolutely mad. You may do something tremendously harmful to yourself or to somebody else; you may murder or you may commit suicide.

Pythagoras is not saying to repress it -- no enlightened person can ever say to repress it. He is saying to transcend it, go beyond it. Transcendence is a totally different process. In transcendence you don't repress anger and you don't express it either. You know only two ways to deal with anger: expression, repression. And the real way to deal with it is neither. It is not expression, because if you express anger you create anger in the other; then it becomes a chain... then the other expresses it, then again you are provoked. .. then where is it going to end? And the more you express, the more it becomes a habit, a mechanical habit. And the more you express it, the more you are practising it! It will be difficult for you to get out of it.

Out of this fear, repression arose: don't express, because it brings great misery to you, to others -- and to no point. It makes you ugly, it creates ugly situations in life, and then you have to pay for all that. And, slowly slowly, it becomes such a habit that it becomes your second nature.

Out of the fear of expression, repression arose. But if you repress, you are accumulating the poison. It is bound to explode.

The third approach, the approach of all the enlightened people of the world, is neither to express nor repress, but WATCH. When anger arises, sit silently, let the anger surround you in your inner world, let the cloud surround you, be a silent watcher. SEE... this IS anger.

Buddha has said to his disciples: When anger arises, listen to it, listen to its message. And remember again and again, going on telling yourself: Anger, anger.... Keep alert, don't fall asleep. Keep alert that anger is surrounding you. You are not it! You are the watcher of it. And that is where the key is.

Slowly slowly, watching, you become so separate from it that it cannot affect you. And you become so detached from it and so aloof and so cool and so far away, and the distance is such that it doesn't seem to matter at all. In fact, you will start laughing at all the ridiculous things that you have been doing in the past -- because of this anger. It is not you. It is there, outside you. It is surrounding you. But the moment you are disidentified from it, you will not pour your energy into it.

Remember, we pour our energy into anger, then only does it become vital. It has no energy of its own; it depends on our cooperation. In watching, the cooperation is broken; you are no more supporting it. It will be there, for a few moments, a few minutes, and then it will be gone. Finding no roots in you, finding you unavailable, seeing that you are far away, a watcher on the hills, it will dissipate, it will disappear. And that disappearance is beautiful. That disappearance is a great experience.

Seeing the anger disappear, great serenity arises: the silence that follows the storm. You will be surprised that each time anger arises and if you can watch, you will fall into such tranquillity as you have not known before. You will fall into such deep meditation... when the anger disappears you will see yourself so fresh, so young, so innocent, as you have never known yourself. Then you will be thankful even to anger; you will not be angry at it -- because it has given you a new beautiful space to live in, a new utterly fresh experience to go through. You have used it, you have made a stepping-stone out of it.

This is the creative use of the negative emotions. That's what Pythagoras means.

Remember, language goes on changing.

Little Red Riding Hood was walking through the woods on her way to visit her grandmother, when suddenly a wolf jumped out from behind a tree.

"Ah-ha!" the wolf said. "Now I have got you, and I am going to eat you!"

"Eat! Eat! Eat!" Little Red Riding Hood said angrily. "Damn it! Doesn't anybody make love any more?"

Language goes on changing... metaphors change, symbols change. The same words that used to mean one thing mean something totally different.

A man and a single woman were attending a large convention. They found themselves, through an accidental oversight of the hotel, assigned to the same room. Since both were mature individuals and knew how difficult it would be to get the matter straightened out in such crowded conditions, it seemed the wiser course to accept the situation.

Each chose a bed and a dresser and proceeded to ignore the other with a kind of tactful politeness.

But on the second night it turned out that the woman didn't know how cold it was going to get. She was freezing. Hesitantly she called out, "Would you be so good as to get me one of the blankets from the chest?"

The man, who had been nearly asleep, thought that over and said, "Listen, if you are going to be this friendly and as long as we are in the same room, how about acting as though we were man and wife?"

The girl thought that over, giggled and said, "Well, I think -- perhaps I might be willing."

The man said, "Good! In that case, as my wife, get your own darned blanket and leave me alone."

After twenty-five centuries, you will not be able to understand directly what Pythagoras has said. You will need somebody who is contemporary to you in time, and who is also contemporary to Pythagoras in eternity -- only then will those metaphors take new colour, will those metaphors have new meanings.

That has been the basic reason why, in the East particularly, down the ages, enlightened people have been commenting on other enlightened people who have preceded them.

Shankara commented on Krishna, on the Upanishads, on the Brahma Sutras. Ramanuja commented on the ancient enlightened people, Vallabha did the same. It has always been so in the East, because much dust gathers as time passes. Now, the Upanishads were written in a totally different world. That man has disappeared, that mind has disappeared, that world no more exists.

If some Upanishadic seer comes to see you, he will be utterly puzzled; if you visit some ancient monastery -- Nalanda, Takshashila, or some ancient mystery school like Pythagoras' -- you will not be able to understand what is happening, because we understand through language. Unless you can understand through silence... silence is eternal, it never changes, because it is not part of the human world. If you become deeply silent, then you will be able to understand Pythagoras. In that silence, he will commune with you, you can commune with him. Otherwise, you will feel difficulties.

I can understand your problem, Sarlo. You say:

BEFORE TAKING SANNYAS, I WOULD HAVE FOUND IT VERY EASY TO RELATE TO PYTHAGORAS.

Because you have been brought up by a repressive society -- Christian, Hindu, Jaina, it doesn't matter. You have been brought up by a repressive society; that's why you are saying before taking sannyas, before meeting me, you would have understood Pythagoras. But I tell you that would have been misunderstanding, not understanding.

You would have thought that he was teaching repression the way your parents have been teaching you. You would have thought that he was the same kind of person as the priest in the church -- Rome or Canterbury or Mecca. They are ALL repressive.

Priests have always been repressive. It is only the enlightened person who can give you freedom, because he does not need slaves. Priests need slaves; they cannot give you freedom. They have to make you greater and greater prisoners. And this is a psychological device: repress natural instincts and you will remain a prisoner, and you will be so ill always that you will need somebody to lean upon. And you will remain so ignorant that you will need guidance, that you will need leaders.

You say: BEFORE TAKING SANNYAS, I WOULD HAVE FOUND IT VERY EASY TO RELATE TO PYTHAGORAS.

That would not have been real communion; that would have been false. NOW you can relate! because now you are again with another Pythagoras. But now you feel difficulties. You say:

NOW I WOULD STILL LIKE TO, BUT SOME THINGS SEEM SO MORALISTIC AND REPRESSIVE, LIKE HIS ADVICE NOT TO BE ANGRY. WHERE AM I MISSING?

You are missing because you have completely forgotten that twenty-five centuries' gap is a big gap. You need for Pythagoras to be reborn. That's what I am doing by commenting on him. This is giving him a new meaning, a new body of words -- words that you can understand, words that make sense to you, words that can relate to you.

A backwoods inn boasted a modest sign on the porch: "Rooms to let. Food. Country atmosphere." The inn was hardly a sophisticated hotel, but one night a shiny black Cadillac pulled up in front of it. The owners of the car had gotten lost and wanted to spend the night there.

The man and his wife were big-city people in fancy clothes, and they emerged from the Cadillac as if they owned the world. Contemptuous of country life, but desperate for a night's lodging, the couple did not even pretend to like the idea of staying at the inn. They were above it all.

After registering at the desk, the couple entered the dining room of the inn. Ignoring the simple menu, the man plunked down a dollar and said, "For this, I want food, drink, and entertainment."

In a few minutes, the innkeeper returned with two slices of watermelon. "You asked for food, drink, and entertainment?" he said. "Here it is. Eat the pulp, drink the juice, and play with the seeds."

Pythagoras

VOL. 2, PHILOSOPHIA PERENNIS

Chapter-4

The Perfume of Absolute Contentment