Hassidism, The True Sage Chapter 6: The perfect swimmer, Question 2

Question 2

DOES A BUDDHA ALSO NEED SOMETHING AS A COMPLEMENTARY? WHO IS COMPLEMENTARY TO A BUDDHA?

Buddha or Buddhahood is not any polarity. It is not opposite to anything. It is beyond the duality. Night is against day. Life is against death. Love is against hate. Buddhahood is not against anything. It is to transcend the duality.

When you are neither day nor night, you are a Buddha. When you are neither life nor death, you are a Buddha. When you are neither this nor that, NETI NETI, you are a Buddha.

Buddhahood simply means transcendence of duality. So Buddhahood is all and nothing. There is nothing as polar opposite to, and there is no complementary to it. Remember this: you would like to become a Buddha because you would like to be happy. But then you misunderstand.

Buddhahood is beyond happiness and unhappiness. That was the insistence in yesterday's talk: it is beyond agony, and beyond ecstasy also. So the man who has really attained to ecstasy, you will not see any ecstasy in him. Agony has disappeared, ecstasy also. The world has disappeared, and the nirvana also. The body has disappeared, and the soul also -- because those are all opposites. They are meaningful only when the other is present.

Have you observed? If you ask the scientists: 'What is matter?' they say: 'Not mind.' 'And what is mind?' -- they say: 'Not matter.' Now look at the foolishness. When you want to define matter, you have to bring mind in. Mind itself is undefined yet. To define one thing, you bring another undefined thing. How can you define something by another undefined thing? 'What is matter?' -- you say: 'Not mind.' And when it is asked: 'What is mind?' you bring matter in -- that it is not matter.

Dualities depend on each other. You cannot define love without bringing hate in. What type of love is this which needs hate to be defined? You cannot define life without bringing death in. This life cannot be much of a life. What type of life is this which needs death to define it?

There is a life beyond life and death, and there is a love beyond love and hate. That love, that life, is Buddhahood -- transcending all the opposites.

So don't choose. If you choose, you will be in the quagmire. Don't choose! A choiceless awareness is the goal. Just remain aloof; don't choose. The moment you choose, you have fallen into the trap of the world, or into the trap of the mind.

It is reported that Rinzai, a great Zen Master, was asked by a disciple: 'I have left the whole world, renounced all. Now why am I still to wait for nirvana? Why isn't the enlightenment happening?'

Rinzai said: 'You have left the world, now leave enlightenment also. Otherwise, it will not happen. Because whatsoever you call enlightenment is nothing but the opposite polarity of your world. In your idea of enlightenment, your world still exists. Maybe it exists as negated, but one still exists. Drop enlightenment also.'

It is said the disciple understood. He laughed. And the Master said: 'Finished. You attained.'

In a single moment it is possible. But if you cling to the duality, then for lives together you can go on and on and on.

Try to see the point. It is only a question of vision and clarity. Try to see the point that you cannot choose one without choosing the opposite. If you choose love, you have already chosen hate. Love is a love-hate relationship. If you choose love, you have already chosen hate. It will lurk just behind your love, and many times it will come up. And you will have to relax, because nobody can love for twenty-four hours.

Where will you relax? You will relax in hate; it is lurking just by the side. You will fight. After a fight, again you are ready to love. Now you are fed-up with hate. Again you fall in love. This way you go on moving: happy, unhappy; sad, ecstatic; in anguish, in bliss. But these opposites are two aspects of the same coin. When the head is up, the tail is hidden. When the tail is up, the head is hidden. Just close by, like a shadow, the opposite follows.

To understand this is to become a Buddha. Then you don't desire, because every desire will be a choice. Then you don't say: 'I would like love, and I don't want hate.' If you want love you have already wanted hate, you have already fallen into the trap. Once you understand the duality and the trap of it, you simply laugh, you don't choose. You say: 'Enough. I understand now. I don't choose.' In that choicelessness a pillar of awareness arises in you, a flame. You are transformed.

Choicelessness is the alchemy of transformation, of inner mutation. A new being is born who has nothing to do with the past, who is absolutely discontinuous with the past. He has no desire. And when there is no desire, for the first time you live.

Desire doesn't allow you to live. It goes on forcing you towards the future. It doesn't allow you to be here-now. It doesn't allow you to let go. It doesn't allow you to flow. It doesn't allow you to move with the tide. The desire creates fight. The desire says: 'Fight for the goal. You have to reach somewhere.' Life is not reaching anywhere. It is sheer delight I It is just here-now! The desiring mind is always somewhere else.

What Gurdjieff said about that man is true about many -- you are never at home. You have made your abode in desires. Life is always here, and you are always somewhere else. Except here, you may be anywhere. But you are never here. A choiceless consciousness is here-now. It lives. Only IT lives. Only IT can live. You only hope. You never live. You think to live; you plan -- but you never live. Your whole life goes in planningthinking of the morrow, thinking how to enjoy tomorrow, and missing today. And there is no tomorrow.

Hassidism

THE TRUE SAGE

Chapter-6

The perfect swimmer