the-diamond-sutra-07/

The Lord then said: Yes, Subhuti…. For the Tathagata has taught that the dharmas special to the buddhas are just not a buddha’s special dharmas. That is why they are called the dharmas special to the buddhas.

The Lord asked: What do you think, Subhuti, does it occur to the streamwinner, “By me has the fruit of a streamwinner been attained”?
Subhuti replied: No indeed, O Lord. And why? Because, O Lord, he has not won any dharma. Therefore is he called a streamwinner. No sight-object has been won, no sounds, smells, tastes, touchables, or objects of mind. That is why he is called a streamwinner.
If, O Lord, it would occur to a streamwinner, “By me has a streamwinner’s fruit been attained,” then that would be in him a seizing on a self, seizing on a being, seizing on a soul, seizing on a person….

The Lord asked: What do you think, Subhuti, does it then occur to the arhat, “By me has arhatship been attained”?
Subhuti: No indeed, O Lord. And why? Because no dharma is called arhat. That is why he is called an arhat…. And why? I am, O Lord, the one whom the Tathagata…has pointed out as the foremost of those who dwell in peace. I am O Lord, an arhat free from greed. And yet, O Lord, it does not occur to me, “An arhat am I and free from greed.”
If, O Lord, it could occur to me that I have attained arhatship, then the Tathagata would not have declared of me that “Subhuti, this son of good family, who is the foremost of those who dwell in peace, does not dwell anywhere; that is why he is called a dweller in peace, a dweller in peace.”
The Diamond Sutra will appear to most of you as absurd, as mad. It is irrational but not anti-rational. It is something beyond the reason, that’s why it is so difficult to express it in words.
Once a whisky drinking, chain-smoking and popcorn munching American priest was staying with me. Roaming in my library, accidentally he found The Diamond Sutra. For just ten to fifteen minutes he looked into it here and there, then he came to me and said, “This man Buddha must have been mad. And not only was he mad, he had mad followers too.”
I can understand his statement. Buddha will look mad to you too, because he is trying to say that which cannot be said, he is trying to catch hold of something which is essentially elusive. Hence all these strange sayings – they are strange. They are strange because the way they are put, the way they are expressed, is not logical. It does not make any sense, not at least on the surface.
And if you have not felt something of the beyond it is very difficult for you to understand what Buddha is trying to do. We can understand only that which we have experienced, if not in toto then at least in part. Otherwise our understanding remains rooted in our experience.

It happened: Charlie had been to school that morning for the first time. When he came home his mother said, “Well, Charlie, how do you like school?”
“I like it well enough, but I have not got my present yet.”
“Your present?” queried the mother. “What do you mean?”
“Teacher said, when she saw me, ‘You may sit here for the present, little man.’ I sat there all morning and didn’t get a thing!”

Now, a small child’s understanding is a small child’s understanding. And that’s how you are – small children as far as Buddha is concerned, as far as his statements are concerned. His statements are of the ultimate experience. You will have to be very very patient, only then something will start dawning in your consciousness. They are of utter significance. Even if a single statement is understood that will prove radical, that will change you from your very roots.

A father took his young son to an opera for the first time. The conductor started waving the baton and the soprano began her aria. The boy watched everything intently and finally asked, “Why is he hitting her with his stick?”
“He is not hitting her with the stick,” the father explained.
“Then why is she screaming?”

In your mind these ideas will come many times: What is Buddha saying? It looks so utterly mad, it doesn’t make sense. It is beyond sense. You will have to gather yourself together to climb to something higher than you. You will have to stretch your hands towards the beyond. Even if you can touch just a fragment of these sayings, your life will not be the same again.
But it is difficult. We live rooted in the earth. We are like trees rooted in the earth. Buddha is a bird on his wings in the sky. Now these trees rooted in the earth are trying to understand the message of the bird who has no roots in the earth anymore, who is flying in the sky, who knows the vastness, the infinity of the sky. He has a different understanding, a different vision. And the distance is immense.
Only very few can have a few glimpses of what Buddha is trying to do. Something of absolute value is being conveyed to you. If you cannot understand, then remember that you cannot understand. Don’t say, like that whisky drinking, chain-smoking, popcorn munching priest, that Buddha is mad. Don’t say that, beware of that. It is easier to say that Buddha is mad then you are freed of the responsibility of understanding; then you can close The Diamond Sutra and forget all about it.
If you say, “It is beyond me,” then there is challenge. When you say, “Maybe I am very childish, juvenile. I cannot understand, I have to grow into my understanding. How can Buddha be mad?” then there is a challenge and you start growing.
Always remember that: never decide about the other. Even if Buddha is mad, take it as a challenge. You will not lose anything. If he is mad, then too you would have gone beyond your boundaries just in the effort to understand him. If he is not mad, then you have met with something precious, then you have stumbled upon a great treasure.
The sutras:
The Lord then said: Yes, Subhuti…. For the Tathagata has taught that the dharmas special to the buddhas are just not a buddha’s special dharmas. That is why they are called the dharmas special to the buddhas.
Now look at the absurdity – but it is significant, it is very meaningful. What are the dharmas of the buddhas, the special characteristics of a buddha? His special characteristic is that he has no characteristics, that he is utterly ordinary, that if you come across him you will not recognize him.
He is not a performer, he is not a politician, he is not an actor. He has no ego to perform. He is not there to convince anybody about his importance. He is utterly absent – that is his presence. That’s why these absurd statements. His characteristic is that he lives as if he is dead; that he walks and yet nobody walks in him, that he talks yet nobody talks in him…there is utter silence, never broken.
Zen monks say Buddha never uttered a single word, and Buddha spoke for forty-five years continuously. If anybody can surpass him, it is me; nobody else can surpass him. And I say to you, I have also not uttered a single word. Zen people are right. I agree with them with my own experience. I go on saying things to you and yet deep inside there is absolute silence, not disturbed by what I say. When I am speaking the silence is there, not even a ripple arises in it.
I am here, in a way utterly present, in another way absolutely absent, because there is nothing arising in me which says “I.’” Not that I don’t use the word; the word has to be used, it is utilitarian – but it connotes to no reality. It is just a utility, a convenience, a strategy of language; it corresponds to no reality.
When I say “I,” I am simply using a word to indicate towards me, but if you look into me you will not find any “I” there. I have not found. I have been looking and looking and looking. The more I have looked in, the more the “I” has evaporated. The “I” exists only when you don’t look inwards. It can exist only when you don’t look. The moment you look, the “I” disappears.
It is just like when you bring light in a dark room, darkness disappears. Your look inwards is a light, a flame. You cannot find any darkness there – and your “I” is nothing but condensed darkness.
The basic characteristic of a buddha, the Buddha dharma, his unique quality, is that he is not, that he has no attributes, that he is indefinable, that whatsoever definition you put upon him will be unjust because it will demark him, it will limit him, and he is not limited. He is pure void. He is a nobody.
Buddha is so ordinary that if you come across him you will not recognize him. You can recognize a king, you know the language how to recognize a king, and the king knows what language you recognize. He prepares for it, he rehearses for it. He is bent upon proving to you that he is special. Buddha has nothing like that. He is not trying to prove anything to anybody. He is not trying to be recognized by you. He has no need to be recognized. He has come home. He does not need your attention.
Remember, attention is a psychological need. It has to be understood. Why do people need so much attention? Why in the first place does everybody want people to pay attention to them? Why does everybody want to be special? Something is missing inside. You don’t know who you are. You know yourself only by others’ recognition. You don’t have any direct approach into your being, you go via others.
If somebody says you are good, you feel you are good. If somebody says you are not good, you feel very very depressed – so you are not good. If somebody says you are beautiful, you are happy. If somebody says you are ugly, you are unhappy. You don’t know who you are. You simply live on opinions of others, you go on collecting opinions. You don’t have any recognition – direct, immediate – of your being. That’s why you gather a borrowed being. Hence the need for attention.
And when people are attentive to you, you feel as if you are being loved, because in love we pay attention to each other. When two persons are in deep love they forget the whole world. They become engaged into each other’s being absolutely. They look into each other’s eyes. For those moments all else disappears, exists not. In those pure moments they are not here. They live on a plenitude somewhere high in the sky, or in heaven, and they are absolutely pouring their attention into each other.
Love is attentive – and everybody has missed love. Very rare people have attained to love, because love is the divine. Millions live without love because millions live without the divine. Love has been missed. How to substitute that gap? The easier substitute is to get people’s attention. That will befool you, deceive you that they love you.
That’s what happens to a political leader: he becomes the prime minister of the country or a president of the country and of course the whole country has to pay attention to him. He feels good. It is a vicarious way of feeling loved, and nobody loves him. Once he is out of the post, nobody is going to care where he is.
Who cares about Richard Nixon, whether he is alive or dead – who bothers? You will know about him only when he dies. Then newspapers will have to say something about him. Then suddenly you will know, “So he was alive?” Who cares about a politician who is not in power? But when he is in power people pay attention. They pay attention to power, but the politician thinks the attention is being paid to him.
And the politician is one who is searching for love and has not been able to love and has not been able to be loved. The search is for love; it has taken a very very subtle change and turn. Now it has become a search for attention. He wants to see his picture every day in the newspaper. If one day his picture is not there in the newspaper he feels neglected.
He is fulfilling his love desire, but it cannot be fulfilled that way. Love, whenever it happens, brings attention with it like a shadow, but attention does not bring love. Attention can come in a thousand ways. You can create some mischief and people will pay attention to you. The need of the politician and the criminal is the same.
The criminal also wants the same thing – attention. He murders and then his picture is in the newspapers, his name is on the radio, he is on the TV. He feels good. Now everybody knows who he is, now everybody is thinking about him – that he has become a name in the world. The famous and the notorious both seek the same thing.
Buddha is absolute love. He has loved existence, existence has loved him. That’s what samadhi is, when you are in an orgasmic relationship with the total. He has known the total orgasm – the orgasm which is not of the body and not of the mind either, but of totality, not partial. He has come to know that ecstasy. Now there is no need to ask for any attention from anybody.
He will pass you on the road and you will not be able to recognize him because you recognize only politicians, criminals and people like that. You can recognize a madman on the road because he will be creating mischief, but you will not recognize a buddha. Buddha will pass so silently, without a whisper. That is his chief characteristic, to be as if he is not. But if that is the chief characteristic – to be as if one is not – then he has no characteristics.
That’s what Buddha means when he says:
Yes, Subhuti…. For the Tathagata has taught that the dharmas special to the buddhas are just not a buddha’s special dharmas. That is why they are called the dharmas special to the buddhas.
The extraordinariness of a buddha is his utter ordinariness. His ordinariness is his extraordinariness. To be ordinary is the most extraordinary thing in the world.
Just the other night I came across a very beautiful story about Saint Francis, a buddha.

Saint Francis of Assisi lay on his deathbed. He was singing, and singing so loudly that the whole neighborhood was aware. Brother Elias, a pompous but prominent member of the Franciscan order, came close to Saint Francis and said, “Father, there are people standing in the street outside your window.” Many had come. Fearing that the last moment of Francis’ life had come, many who loved him had gathered together around the house.
Said this Brother Elias, “I am afraid nothing we might do could prevent them from hearing you singing. The lack of restraint at so grave an hour might embarrass the order, Father. It might lower the esteem in which you yourself are so justly held. Perhaps in your extremity you have lost sight of your obligation to the many who have come to regard you as a saint. Would it not be more edifying for them if you would, er, die with more Christian dignity?”
“Please excuse me, Brother,” Saint Francis said, “but I feel so much joy in my heart that I really can’t help myself. I must sing!”

And he died singing. In the whole Christian history, he’s the only one who has died singing. Many Zen people have died singing, but they don’t belong to Christianity. He is the only Zen master amongst Christian saints. He didn’t care a bit about Christian dignity.
Now what happened? This Brother Elias wants to prove to people that Saint Francis is a saint. Now he is afraid that people will not think that he is a saint; they may think he is mad or something. A saint has to be sad by the very definition. Christians believe only in sad saints. They cannot believe that Jesus ever laughed; that is below Christian dignity. Laughter? – so human, so ordinary? They know only one thing, to put Jesus there high above humanity – but then all that is human has to be taken out of him. Then he becomes just a dead, bloodless thing.
This Brother Elias is worried. This is the last moment, Francis is dying, and he will leave a bad name behind him. People will think either he was not a saint or he was mad. He is worried because he wants to prove. In fact he is not worried about Saint Francis, he is worried about himself and the order: “It will be very embarrassing for us later on. How are we going to answer these people? What happened in the last moments?” He is worried about himself. If the master is mad then what about the disciple? He is a disciple.
But see two different planes, two different dimensions together. Elias is concerned with public opinion. He wants to prove his master to be the greatest master, to be the greatest of saints, and he knows only one way to prove it – that he should be serious, that he should take life seriously, that he should not laugh and should not sing, should not dance. They are too human, they are too ordinary. Ordinary mortals can be forgiven, but not a man of the stature of Saint Francis.
But Saint Francis has a different vision – he is just ordinary. He says, “Please excuse me, Brother, but I feel so much joy in my heart that I really can’t help myself. I must sing!” In fact, it is not that Francis is singing, Francis has become the song. That’s why he cannot help it, he cannot control. There is nobody left to control it. If the song is happening it is happening. It is not within control, it can’t be, because the controller has disappeared. The self, the ego, no longer exists. Saint Francis does not exist as an individual. There is absolute silence inside. Out of that silence this song is born. What can Francis do? That’s why he says, “I can’t help it. I must sing!”
And he died singing. And there can be no other better death. If you can die singing that proves that you lived singing, that your life was a joy and death became the crescendo of it, the culmination.
Saint Francis is a buddha. The characteristic of a buddha is that he is ordinary, that he has no ideas about himself of how he should be, that he simply is spontaneous, that whatsoever happens, happens. He lives on the spur of the moment, that is his authenticity. You can call it his characteristic, but what kind of characteristic is this? It is simply that he has no character, he has no straitjacket of a character around himself; he has no armor, he does not live from the past, that he does not know what Christian dignity is. He lives in the moment like a child.
Yes, Subhuti…. For the Tathagata has taught that the dharmas special to the buddhas are just not a buddha’s special dharmas. That is why they are called the dharmas special to the buddhas.
Ordinariness is his extraordinariness, nobodiness is his somebodiness, absence is his presence, death is his life.
The Lord asked: What do you think, Subhuti, does it occur to the streamwinner, “By me has the fruit of a streamwinner been attained”?
Subhuti replied: No indeed, O Lord. And why? Because, O Lord, he has not won any dharma. Therefore is he called a streamwinner. No sight-object has been won, no sounds, smells, tastes, touchables, or objects of mind. That is why he is called a streamwinner.
If, O Lord, it would occur to a streamwinner, “By me has a streamwinner’s fruit been attained,” then that would be in him a seizing on a self, seizing on a being, seizing on a soul, seizing on a person….
Buddha had talked about four stages of the seeker. The first he calls the streamwinner. Streamwinner means one who has entered into the buddhafield, one who has become an initiate, one who has become a sannyasin. Why is he called the streamwinner? – because he is no more standing on the shore, he is no more static, he has started moving with the stream of life. He is no more fighting with the river. That ego that used to fight with the river and that ego that used to go upstream is no longer there.
Now again you will feel it is absurd. The stream has won, that’s why he is called a streamwinner. He has dropped all conflict. He has surrendered, that’s why he has become victorious, that’s why he is called a streamwinner. Strange words. First he was trying to win the stream. That’s what all are doing in the world – trying to have a life according to their own desires and plans and projections, trying to impose a pattern on life of their own making, of their own dreams, of their own desires. Everybody is trying to go upstream, everybody is trying to fight with life, with nature, with God. The ordinary human life is the life of conflict.
But with whom are you fighting? You are fighting with your own source. With whom are you fighting? With yourself. And the fight is going to lead you into deeper and deeper frustrations because you cannot win, that is not the way to win. You will be defeated, because you are only a small part and the existence is vast, is enormous. You cannot win against it. You can win only with it.
You cannot win against it, you can win only through it. If it supports you, you can win. If it doesn’t support you, you can go on believing but you will be defeated. It is only a question of time. Sooner or later you will be tired, frustrated, exhausted by the fight, and then you will drop – but then you drop in defeat. And then in that defeat there is no joy. How can there be joy in defeat? The people of understanding know that before defeat comes, if you can surrender there will be joy.
Surrender and defeat are so different and so alike. The defeated also seems to be surrendered, and the surrendered seems to be defeated, but that is just apparent, only on the surface. Deep down they are worlds apart. The defeated is feeling angry, in rage, in frustration, he is in hell. The surrendered, the one who has surrendered, has no misery. He is elated, he is ecstatic. He has understood that the whole fight was meaningless, that the whole fight was destined to fail, doomed to fail.
It is as if my left hand starts fighting with my right hand. It is as if my fingers start fighting with my body. How can they win? It is foredoomed. The man of understanding surrenders. He says, “Let God be. Let thy will be done. Let thy kingdom come.” He says, “I am no more. Flow through me. Let me be just a hollow bamboo, a reed flute. Sing through me if you wish so; if you don’t wish so, let silence pass through me.” He becomes just a passage. He starts moving with the stream. He says, “Let life’s stream take possession of me. I will not fight. I will not even swim. I will float, I will go with the wind.”
To enter into such an understanding with life is called becoming a streamwinner. But it is a strange word. Surrender is called winning – because fighting leads to failure and defeat. Surrender leads to conquest, to victory.
This life is paradoxical. What can Buddha do? Life is paradoxical. Those who have surrendered prove themselves to be the winners, and those who go on fighting one day find they have lost all their energy in fight and there is no sign of any victory anywhere.
Remember, Alexander has failed, not Francis. Napoleon has failed, not Jesus. Genghis Khan and Tamerlane have failed, not Buddha. The real history should not be bothered with failures – Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Alexander. The real history should think more of Buddha, Jesus, Francis – the real people who have won. But their winning came out of their surrender.
Just think of it, just think of the beauty and benediction of it when you are not fighting, when you are just going down the river with it. It takes you to the ocean, it is going to the ocean. You are unnecessarily making much fuss. It is going already. You simply go with it and you will reach to the ocean, to the ultimate, to the infinite. This utter surrender to existence Buddha calls the fruit of the streamwinner.
The second stage is called once-returner and the third, never-returner and the fourth, arhat. The streamwinner forsakes three fetters. The first is ego, individuality, the idea of a separate self. Naturally that is the whole root cause of fighting. Second, living by mere rule and ritual; there are so many religious people but they live only by rule and ritual. They know nothing of religion. Ritual is not religion, rule is not religion.
Religion is a totally different kind of life – a life of awareness, life of love, life of compassion. But if you look around the world you will see millions of people going to the churches, temples, mosques, gurudwaras, praying, doing this and that, and it is all ritual, and religion is nonexistential.
I have heard an ancient Indian story:

A man was doing the traditional shraddh ceremony to honor his just departed father. Shraddh is a ceremony that when somebody’s father dies you pray for his journey, you pray for him.
During the ceremony the family dog wandered into the prayer room. Afraid of defiling the occasion the man hastily got up and tied his dog to a post outside on the verandah.
Years later, when he died, his son performed the shraddh ceremony in his turn. Anxious to follow it in every detail he had to catch hold of a dog from the neighborhood, because he remembered that it must be very important. “My father had got up in the middle of his prayers to do it, and when he had tied the dog to the post then he was so happy and he went again and prayed.” And he was not going to miss anything, the ceremony had to be perfect.
By this time it happened that the family had no dog so he had to run in the neighborhood to find a stray dog. He caught hold of one, tied it carefully to a post on the verandah, then finished the ceremony with a satisfied conscience. In that family, down the centuries, the rule is still followed. In fact, the sacred dog ritual has become the most important item in the ceremony.

That’s how things move. People live in unconsciousness. Your fathers were doing something, their fathers and their fathers were doing something. It takes on an aura of sacredness. You just go on repeating it, you don’t care what the meaning of it is.
Jesus called God “My Father – Abba.” You go on calling him father but it is meaningless. You don’t have that heart, the ritual is just superficial. You don’t have that heart that can call God Abba. The word abba is not meaningful, but the feeling in the heart. If that feeling is there, there is no need even to say that word, feeling will do. But if the feeling is not there then it is a dead ritual.
I have heard:

After the four-year-old girl was tucked in bed, she folded her hands and started praying. By mistake she started saying her table-prayers. Realizing what she had done, she looked upward with a big smile and said, “Erase that, Jesus.” Then she proceeded with her bedtime prayer.

Rituals are like that. They don’t grow in you, they are just imposed from the outside. You go on repeating, they become mechanical.
Buddha says that a few things have to be dropped by the streamwinner. One is ego, the second is living by mere rule and ritual, and the third is doubt, perplexity.
A doubting mind cannot relax. A doubting mind cannot surrender. A doubting mind can never be total; a part goes on fighting, a part goes on saying no. A doubting mind cannot say an absolute yes, and that is the fundamental of becoming a streamwinner – to say yes to life, to say yes unconditionally, to say yes simply, with your whole being. That is prayer enough. If you can simply sit silently and can say yes to existence, enough – nothing more is needed, no ritual.
These three things have to be dropped by a streamwinner. Then the second stage is called once-returner. Once-returner means one who will die and come once more. He has to forsake greed, sensuality and ill will. But he will come once more.
The third stage is called never-returner, one who will not come again. He has to forsake lust for life, lust for the other life, lust to be. And the fourth stage is called the state of arhat, one who is absent, nobody, nothingness. He has become a buddha.
Buddha asked Subhuti about these four. He asks:
…Does it occur to the streamwinner “By me has the fruit of a streamwinner been attained”?
A simple question, but very significant.
Subhuti replied: No indeed, O Lord. And why? Because, O Lord, he has not won any dharma.
If you say, “I have surrendered,” then you have not surrendered, because how can you surrender? You have to be surrendered. The “I” has to be surrendered. You cannot say, “I have surrendered.” If it is something of your doing then it is not surrender.
People come to me and they ask, “How can we surrender to you?” And I say, “You cannot. You are the barrier in surrender. You just get out of the way and there is surrender.”
Surrender is not something that has to be done or that can be done, it is not a doing. Surrender is an understanding. “I” is always in a fighting mood. “I” can never be without fight, it exists through fight, it survives through fight, it depends on fight. Either you will be fighting with others, or if you change that you will start fighting with yourself. That’s what your monks go on doing in the monasteries. They don’t fight in the world, they don’t fight with anybody, they have renounced the world; now they start fighting with themselves.
The body says, “I am hungry,” and they say, “No.” Now this is fight. Now ego has arisen in a new way. The ego says, “Look, I control my body so beautifully. I am the master and the body is the slave.” Your eyes are tired and they say, “We want to go to sleep,” and you say, “No. I have decided to stay awake the whole night. This is my meditation. I am on a particular meditation, I cannot sleep.” And you feel good. Now you are fighting.
Your body wants a little comfort and you sleep on the stones, your body wants a little shelter and you stand in the hot sun, your body wants a few clothes and you stand naked in the cold. These are ways of fighting. Now you don’t have the world to fight with so you have divided yourself in two.
The ego lives through friction, any kind of friction will do. The husband fights with the wife, the wife fights with the husband. These are nothing but ways of feeding the ego. The more you fight, the more the ego becomes strong, and the greatest strength the ego gets is from fighting with yourself, because that is the hardest fight. To kill somebody else is one thing; to kill yourself slowly, continuously, for many years, is a difficult job, it is a slow suicide, and the ego feels very good. That’s why the so-called religious monks have great egos; you will not find such great egos in the ordinary people in the marketplace. If you want really great egos, if you want to see how they are, go to the Himalayas and in the caves you will find them.
The man who has surrendered cannot claim that “I have surrendered,” he can only say surrender has happened.
…No, indeed, O Lord. And why? Because, O Lord, he has not won any dharma. Therefore is he called a streamwinner.
Because you have dropped the “I,” that’s why you are called a surrenderer. You cannot claim that “I have surrendered.” If you claim you have missed the whole point.
No sight-object has been won, no sounds, smells, tastes, touchables, or objects of mind. That is why he is called a streamwinner.
He has not won anything like an object. In fact, rather than winning anything he has dropped the very idea of winning. That’s why he is called a streamwinner. He has dropped the whole fight, the whole war, that he was doing for many many lives. He has dropped the whole project, he is no longer interested in it.
He cannot show you anything and say, “I have won this. See! This is my victory.” He cannot show you his kingdom that he has won. He has not won anything visible. In fact, rather than winning anything visible he has dropped his ego, he has lost his ego. But in that losing of the ego is great victory. But that victory is such that it cannot be claimed.
If, O Lord, it would occur to a streamwinner, “By me has a streamwinner’s fruit been attained,” then that would be in him a seizing on a self, seizing on a being, seizing on a soul, seizing on a person….
The moment you think, “I have won, I have surrendered,” again you have created a new “I,” again a self has arisen, again you have started seeing in the ways of the ego. Again you have perceived the self.
The English word perception is beautiful. It comes from per-cap and capio, meaning to take hold of, to seize, to grasp, to capture. The moment you perceive that you are there in any way, you have again captured the ego and the ego has captured you. Again you are back into the old rut. The whole point is lost, you are no more a streamwinner.
This way Buddha asks about once-returner and never-returner, but because it is the same I have dropped it, I have not taken it into the sutra. Finally:
The Lord asked: What do you think, Subhuti, does it then occur to the arhat, “By me has arhatship been attained”?
Subhuti: No indeed, O Lord…. And why? Because no dharma is called arhat. That is why he is called an arhat…. And why? I am, O Lord, the one whom the Tathagata…has pointed out as the foremost of those who dwell in peace. I am, O Lord, an arhat free from greed. And yet, O Lord, it does not occur to me, “An arhat am I and free from greed.”
If, O Lord, it could occur to me that I have attained arhatship, then the Tathagata would not have declared of me that “Subhuti, this son of good family, who is the foremost of those who dwell in peace, does not dwell anywhere; that is why he is called a dweller in peace, a dweller in peace.”
Simple, once you get the idea. The idea is that when you start moving into the world of truth, you cannot be a claimer. Your claim will be a disclaim.
Once a man came to Buddha and asked, “Have you attained?” and Buddha said, “I cannot claim because I have attained.”
Just see the beauty of it. He says, “I cannot claim because I have attained. If I claim, that will be a sure sign that I have not attained.” But see the difficulty too. If Buddha says, “I have not attained,” then he is saying a lie. If he says, “I have attained,” that is not possible because there is no “I” in that attainment. That attainment is such that it happens only when the “I” has gone. You see the difficulty, how language becomes impotent.
Buddha asked:
What do you think, Subhuti, does it then occur to the arhat, “By me has arhatship been attained”?
Now arhatship is not a state. It is not something like an object; you cannot catch hold of it, you cannot possess it, you cannot hoard it. It is a freedom, not a thing to be possessed. It is a freedom. You simply go on dropping your chains. One day all chains have disappeared – even the last chain of the idea of “I” has disappeared. Then there is nobody present. That consciousness is called arhat.
Buddha asks, “Does it occur to the arhat, ‘I have attained arhatship’?”
That is why he is called an arhat…. And why? I am, O Lord, the one whom the Tathagata…has pointed out as the foremost of those who dwell in peace.
Now Subhuti takes himself as an example. He says, “You have declared of me that I have attained. You have declared of me that I have become an arhat. You have declared that I dwell in peace.” This is a special way of Buddha of saying that there is nobody inside – dwelling in peace.
Dwelling in peace means there is nobody, because if there is somebody, peace is not possible. If there is somebody, some turmoil will continue. The house is silent only when there is nobody in the house. Even if somebody is there a little bit, turmoil will continue. Even if one person is there he will put things from here to there, he will do something. Even if he is fast asleep he will snore. Something is bound to happen. When there is nobody at all then there is peace.
Buddha calls the state of arhathood when there is absolute peace, so much that there is not anybody to be found there. When Buddha used to say, “Now Subhuti, you dwell in peace,” he is saying, “Now Subhuti, you are no more.” It is the same.
Subhuti says, “You have declared that Subhuti dwells in peace, you have declared that Subhuti has become an arhat, and you must be true, Lord. How can you be untrue? But I cannot say, it does not occur to me, ‘An arhat am I and free from greed.’ If it occurs to me, then you are wrong. If it occurs to me that I am an arhat, then ego has arisen, then a self is seized, then again I am caught in the old trap. If it arises in me that I dwell in peace then the peace is lost because the “I” has come back, the dweller is back.” Then you cannot dwell in peace, then something is bound to happen – some misery, some dream, some desire, and the world, the whole world starts.
The ego is the seed of the world. The small seed contains the whole world. Just feel “I am” and the whole world comes following, immediately!
Subhuti says:
…It does not occur to me, “An arhat am I and free from greed.” If, O Lord, it could occur to me that I have attained arhatship, then the Tathagata would not have declared of me that “Subhuti, this son of good family, who is the foremost of those who dwell in peace, does not dwell anywhere; that is why he is called a dweller in peace, a dweller in peace.”
When one has disappeared, when the dweller is no more, then the peace is attained.
Nothingness is the taste of Buddha’s message. One has to come to that point when one is not, when only absence prevails, but then nobody can claim, then nobody can come and say and brag about it.
To understand Buddha you will need a few glimpses of non-being. Just linguistically you can understand what he is saying, but that won’t help much, that won’t take you far into it. You will have to have a few glimpses of it – and they are possible.
Sometimes just sitting silently, doing nothing, keep quiet; not even a mantra to disturb you, not even the name of God, not even a special yoga posture to sit in, not even to contemplate, not even to meditate – just sitting silently in your room or by the side of a tree or by the side of the river, lying in the grass, looking at the stars or with closed eyes. Just being there, just a pool of energy going nowhere – and glimpses will start coming to you. For a moment you will feel you are and you are not.
You are, utterly you are, and still you are not. You are not and for the first time you are. Then you will see why Buddha is so paradoxical. You are only when you are not. When all is absent there is great presence. When the ego has completely disappeared you are the whole, you are the all. You disappear as the drop and you become the ocean. On one side you have disappeared and on another side you have appeared, and for the first time.
Enlightenment is a death and a resurrection. And they both happen together, simultaneously. Here happens death and immediately it is followed by resurrection. But you will have to taste, you will have to savor it. These words are not mere words, these are not just doctrines and philosophies; they are existential experiences.
I understand your difficulty. Many questions have come to me that “When you talk on Sufis our hearts dance, but this Diamond Sutra and our hearts are not dancing.” This is higher, this is more rarified.
Sufis you can understand, they are close to you. They talk about love. At least you have heard about the word love, you have some ideas what love is. You may not understand the Sufis’ love, what they mean, but at least you know something about love, you know at least what you mean, and when hearing about love your heart starts melting. But these words of Buddha are far superior.
But it is not so with everybody. A few questions have come to me that they are thrilled. It depends. You can ask Prasad; his heart is dancing so much with The Diamond Sutra that he is almost having a heart attack. Or you can ask Pradeepa.
Remember one thing: here I am speaking for so many people. They are different, their approaches are different. Sometimes it will fit with you, sometimes it may not fit with you. When it doesn’t fit you have to keep patience, because when it fits with you it will not fit with somebody else. He has to keep patience. I am speaking for many people – and not only am I speaking with you and for you, I am speaking for millions who are not here, to whom these words will reach.
Sometimes if you feel the thing is too difficult for you or unapproachable for you, be patient. Listen. Maybe your heart is not dancing, maybe it is higher or deeper than the heart.
There are things of the head, there are things of the heart, and there are things which are beyond. This is of the beyond. And the beyond is very difficult. You know something of the head, you know something of the heart, but you know nothing of the beyond.
But these words are rare. This Diamond Sutra is a diamond, the most valuable diamond that exists in the world literature. Nobody has spoken like that, nobody has taken such flights. But if you feel that you cannot fly so high, don’t close yourself. Make efforts. Even if you can go a little further than you can go right now, even if you can take a few steps towards the unknown, that will be enriching to you.
Enough for today.