Question 5

IS NOT THE WAY OF RAMA'S DEVOTEE SUPERIOR TO THAT OF KRISHNA'S? VIRTUES LIKE CELIBACY, DETACHMENT, DYNAMISM AND WISDOM ASSOCIATED WITH HANUMANA -- A CHIEF DEVOTEE OF RAMA -- ARE LACKING IN THE DEVOTEES OF KRISHNA LIKE MEERA, NARSI AND SURDAS, WHO ARE ALL INTROVERTS DISINTERESTED IN THE SERVICE OF SOCIETY.

AND LASTLY I WANT TO KNOW WHY PAINTERS OF THEIR TIMES DID NOT SHOW RAMA, KRISHNA, MAHAVIRA AND BUDDHA WITH BEARDS AS THEY DID IN THE CASE OF JESUS CHRIST.

Firstly, let us find out whether life is a schedule of duties and works to be performed, or it is a celebration. If life is work, a duty, then it is bound to turn into a burden, a drag, and we will have to go through it, as we do, with a heavy heart. Krishna does not take life as work, as duty; he takes it as a celebration, a festivity. Life is really a great feast, a blissful festivity. It is not homework, not a task that has to be performed willy nilly.

It is not that someone will cease to work if he takes life as a celebration. He will certainly work, but his work will be a part of the festivity, it will have the flavor of celebration. Then work will happen in the company of singing and dancing. It is true there will not be too much work, it will be less in quantity, but in quality it will be superb. Quantitatively the work will be less, but qualitatively it is going to be immeasurable.

You must have noticed how people who are addicted to work, who turn everything into work, have filled life with tension and only tension. All anxieties of life are the handiwork of the workoholics; they have turned life into a workshop. Their slogan is, do or die. They say, "Do something as long as you are alive, or die if you cannot do anything." They have no other vision of life except work. And they don't have even a right perspective of work. Work for what? Why does man work?

Man works so he can live. And what does living mean? To live means to celebrate life. We work so that we can have a moment of dance in our lives. Really, work is just a means to celebrate life.

But the irony is that the way we live there is no leisure left to sing and dance and celebrate life. We turn means into an end; we make work the be-all and end-all of life. And then life is confined between two places, our home and the office. Home to office and back home is all we know of life. In fact, home ceases to be a home, we bring our office home with us after we leave it in the evening. Then psychologically we are in a mess; we live an entangled life, a confused and listless life. Then we keep running for the rest of our lives in the hope that someday we will have time to relax, rest and enjoy life. But that day really never comes; it will never come. Really, workoholics will never know that there is rest and joy and bliss in life.

Krishna takes life as festivity, as a play, fun. It is how flowers, birds and stars take life. Except man, the whole world takes life as play, fun. Ask a flower why it blooms. For what? It blooms without a purpose. A star moves across the sky without a purpose. And purposelessly the wind blows, and keeps blowing. Except man, everything under the sun is a play, a carnival. Only man works and toils and sheds copious tears. Except man, the whole cosmos is celebrating. Every moment of it is celebration.

Krishna brings this celebration into the life of man. He says, let man be one with this cosmic celebration.

It does not mean that there will be no work if we turn life into a celebration. It is not that the wind does not work; it is always moving, blowing. It is not that the stars are idle; they are constantly moving. It is not that flowers don't do anything when they bloom; really, they do a lot. But for them, doing it is not that important; what is important is being. Being is primary and doing is secondary for them. Celebration comes first and work takes a back seat in their lives. Work is preparatory to celebration.

If you go and watch the way the primitive tribes live, you will know what work is in relation to celebration. They work the whole day so they can sing and dance with abandon at night. But the civilized man works not only in the day, but also at night. He takes pride in working day and night. And if you ask him why he works, he will say that he works today so he can relax tomorrow. He postpones relaxation and continues to work in the hope that he will relax some day. But that day never comes for him.

I am in complete agreement with Krishna's vision of life, which is one of celebration. I am a celebrationist. May I ask what man has achieved by working day in and day out? It is different if he works for the love of work, but I would like to know what he has achieved so far by working meaninglessly?

There is the story of Sisyphus in Greek mythology. He was a king who was condemned by the gods to push a heavy stone uphill and, when it rolled down the hill, to begin again. Time and again Sisyphus had to carry the stone from the base of the hill to its top; this is what "an uphill task" means. A workoholic is a Sisyphus endlessly pushing a stone uphill and beginning again when it rolls down. He is now engaged in pushing the stone uphill and then chasing it when it rolls down and then beginning to push it up again. And he never comes to know a moment of leisure and joy in all his life.

These workoholics have turned the whole world into a madhouse. Everyone is mad with running and reaching somewhere. And no man knows where this "somewhere" is. I have heard that a man got into a taxi and asked the driver to drive fast. And the taxi sped. After a little while the driver inquired where he had to go, and the man said, "That is not the question, I have to go fast."

Everyone in the world is running like him, everyone is hurrying through life. "Hurry up," has become our watchword. But no one asks, "Where are we going?" We work hard, but we don't know why we work so hard. One does not even have time to think why he is toiling day in and day out. He is running just because his neighbor is running, his friends are running, the whole world is running. Everyone is running for fear of being left behind the other runners.

His son said, "It is true, as I learned from your life, that wealth is not happiness, but I also learned from your life that if one has wealth, one can have the suffering of his choice, one can choose between one suffering and another. And this freedom of choice is beautiful. I know that you were never happy, but you always chose your own kind of suffering. A poor man does not have this freedom, this choice; his suffering is determined by circumstances. Except this, there is no difference between a rich man and a poor man in the matter of suffering. A poor man has to suffer with a woman who comes his way as his wife, but the rich man can afford women with whom he wants to suffer. And this choice is not an insignificant happiness. "

If you examine it deeply, you will find that happiness and suffering are two aspects of the same thing, two sides of the same coin, or, perhaps, they are different densities of the same phenomenon.

The workoholics have done immense harm to the world. And the greatest harm they have done is that they have deprived life of its moments of celebration and festivity. It is because of them that there is so little festivity in the world, and every day it is becoming more and more dull and dreary and miserable.

In fact, entertainment has taken the place of celebration in the present world. But entertainment is quite different from celebration; entertainment and celebration are never the same. In celebration you are a participant; in entertainment you are only a spectator. In entertainment you watch others playing for you. So while celebration is active, entertainment is passive. In celebration you dance, while in entertainment you watch someone dancing, for which you pay him. But there is a world of difference between dancing and watching a dance performed by a group of professionals who are paid for it. You work hard during the day, and when you are tired in the evening you go to a concert to watch others dancing. It is all you can do, but it is not even an apology for celebration.

Albert Camus has said that the time is very near when we will have servants to make love on our behalf, because we don't have time for love. We are so busy we don't have time for love; we will employ others to do this job for us. Love is a celebration, but for workoholics it has become a superfluous thing. It does not yield any profits; it does not add to their bank balances. Love is an end unto itself; it cannot be turned into a business. So those who are addicted to work think it a waste of time to indulge in love. A kind of secretary can be asked to deal with it and dispose of it.

Obsession with work has taken away the moments of celebration from our life, and we have been deprived of the excitement and thrill that comes with celebration. That is why nobody is happy, nobody is cheerful, nobody is blossoming. That is why suffering has become the badge of mankind.

We had to find a substitute for celebration, and entertainment is that substitute, because we do need a few moments of relaxation, a brief spell of diversion. But entertainment is a very poor substitute, because others do it and we are only spectators. It is like the vicarious pleasure we derive from watching someone in love. This is precisely what you do when you watch a movie. You watch a man and woman loving each other and you enjoy it vicariously. It is a false substitute; it is utterly useless. It is not going to give you a taste of love; it is not going to satiate your thirst for love. On the other hand, your disaffection and torment will deepen and land you in still greater misery.

For God's sake, know love directly, enter into it, and only then you will be satiated and happy. Real love alone can make life festive, entertainment won't.

Krishna is all for celebration; he takes life as a great play, a mighty drama. The work-addicts have, instead of doing any good to the world, only created confusion and complication in the life of man. They have made life so complex that living has become extremely hard and painful.

It is true that devotees of Rama, like Hanumana, seem to be strong, active and sincere people, the devotees of Krishna are not so. Meera goes about dancing and singing, but she does not seem to be as dynamic as Hanumana. She cannot be. The reason is that while Rama takes life seriously, believes life is all work, Krishna is non-serious and takes life as a dance, a celebration. And life as celebration is a different thing altogether. Life as work pales in insignificance before it. If you are asked to spend twenty-four hours in the company of Hanumana you will think twice. You would want to run away from him if you were made to live in the same room with him for a long while. But you can live with Meera joyfully for any length of time.

It is true that Krishna's lovers gradually withdrew themselves from the world of outer activity, from the world of extroversion. They dived deep into the interiority of life and drank at the fountain of its bliss. This is as it should be, because Krishna knows how, when you lose yourself in its outer activities, you are missing life itself.

It will be a peaceful and happy world that will abound with Meeras. And a world full of Hanumanas will be a restless and warring world, a sorry world. If it comes into being, wrestling rings will appear all over and society will be ridden with conflict and strife. We can accommodate one or two Hanumanas; more than that would be too much. But any number of Meeras will be welcome. Meera is in contact with life at its deeper levels; Hanumana lives at the surface. Hanumana is nothing more than a faithful servant, a volunteer; he is just serving his master. He is, of course, sincere, persevering and hard-working. Meera is a class by herself; she is rare. Her bliss, her ecstasy comes from being, not from doing. For her, just being is festive and joyous. Her song, her dance, is not a piece of work for her, it is an expression of her bliss, her ecstasy. She is so blissful that she is bursting into song and dance.

I would like this world to be more and more filled with song and dance, with music and festivity. And so far as the external world, the world of extroversion and action is concerned, we should go into it only to the extent needed for our inward journey. More than that is not necessary. We need bread, but bread is not everything. We need bread to live, but there are people who go on stockpiling bread and, in the meantime, forget all about eating and living. By the time they succeed in making a mountain of bread their appetite is gone and they don't know what to do with the huge stock.

When Alexander was leaving for India he went to see Diogenes, a great sage of the times. Diogenes asked Alexander, "Where are you going and for what?"

Alexander said, "I am going to conquer Asia Minor first."

Then Diogenes queried, "And what will you do after conquering Asia Minor?"

"I will then go to conquer India," said the would-be conqueror.

"And what then?" asked the sage.

And the answer was, "I have to conquer the whole world."

Diogenes was Lying on the sandy bank of a river; he was completely naked and enjoying the morning sunshine. He asked again, "What will you do after you have conquered the world?"

Alexander said, "Then I will rest and relax."

This reply of Alexander's sent Diogenes into loud laughter, and he called his companion, his dog, who was sitting some distance from him. When the dog came to him Diogenes said, addressing the dog, "Listen to what this mad king is saying. This man says that he will rest after he conquers the world. And here we are resting right now without conquering a single place." And he said to Alexander, "If rest is your ultimate objective, why not join me and my dog right now on this beautiful river bank? There is enough space here for us all. I am already resting. Why ate you going to create so much trouble and disturbance around the world just to rest at the end of it all? You can rest right here and now."

An embarrassed Alexander then said, "What you say seems to be very sensible, but I cannot rest right now. Let me first conquer the world."

And then the sage said, "There is no connection whatsoever between world conquest and rest. Here I am, resting well, without having to go in conquest of the world."

What Diogenes told Alexander at the end of their dialogue proved to be prophetic. He said, "You will in fact, turn back mid-journey. Who has ever returned after completing his journey?" On his way back from India the conqueror died; he could not reach Greece.

All Alexanders die, and die mid journey. They gather wealth but don't have the time to enjoy it. They do everything to collect all the instruments of an orchestra, and when everything is ready they find to their despair that they have lost the capacity to play them. Their hands are empty and they can't do anything but weep. Alexander died empty handed.

No, life is meant to be a celebration; celebration is its central note. If someone asks you, better ask this question of yourself: "Do I live to work or work to live?" Then the answer will become very clear to you, and you will move much closer to Krishna. You do everything so you live, and not so you live to work and work meaninglessly. And to live you don't need to do much; too much doing has no meaning.

If this attitude that we work to live gains ground, much of our trouble and misery will disappear. Most of our troubles arise from our madness to do too much, and if this madness goes, there will be much more peace and joy and cheer in the world than we have at the moment. With the disappearance of overdoing, many things will disappear -- tension and anxiety will disappear, mental diseases and madhouses will disappear. This much harm it will do, if you take it as harm. It will be a sane world indeed.

Therefore I say that I am in complete accord with Krishna's festive vision of life.

You also want to know why all the avataras and Tirthankaras of this country, like Rama, Krishna, Mahavira and Buddha, have been portrayed without beards. What may the reasons be?

I don't think all of them were without beards; one or two might have been exceptions to the rule. It is not factual that they did not have beards, yet it is true that not one of them has been portrayed with a beard. There must be reasons for it.

Firstly, the time before one grows a beard is the freshest and finest time of his life. That is the peak moment of life's freshness; after that it begins to decline. But as far as men like Krishna are concerned we saw them as the very picture of that freshness, of that infinite freshness, and saw that they retained this freshness through their whole lives. There is never a point of decline in their freshness; they are always young and new. Not that they don't age and grow old. They all age, but as far as their consciousness is concerned it is always in the adolescent state. Their consciousness is eternally young, eternally new, eternally fresh.

These paintings and portraits of Rama, Krishna, Mahavira and Buddha that we see without beards, do not represent their persons; they represent their spirit, their soul, their consciousness. We saw a constant freshness, youthfulness, accompanying them through their childhood, their youth and old age, and we captured that freshness in our paintings and pictures of them.

We can never think of Krishna as an old man leaning on a cane. He must have grown to old age, for he lived long, but we fail to imagine how he looked as an old man. There is something in him which is eternally young and alive.

On the other hand there are children who seem to be born old. Recently I visited a town where a young girl met me -- she was hardly thirteen or fourteen years old -- and she said that she wanted moksha, liberation. Now this girl is already an old woman, and I told her so. She has yet to live life and she talks of liberation. She has yet to be in bondage and she wants to be free of it. She told me that she belongs to a family where everyone is religious. I even visited her family, which was really a religious family -- sad, somber and dead. Everyone in that family was waiting for moksha; no one had time to live. Her father looked dead, her mother looked dead; even the youngsters of the family looked anemic and ill. It seemed to me they were living in the shadow of fasting and starvation; they were dissipated and dead.

Naturally this girl has grown old, and if an artist paints a picture of her he would not want to show her as a young woman. That would be an inauthentic picture. The artist will have to show her as a seventy or eighty year-old woman. That would be her correct mental age.

Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna and Rama are ever young, really adolescent. We could have painted them as twenty-five years old as well. That is the age of youth, but then they would have to be shown with beards. But we portrayed them as teenagers without beards and mustaches. 'Why? There is a reason for this too. It was not proper to portray them as twenty five year-olds with beards and mustaches, because that would have shown they were on their way to Qld age. Once a thing begins, it necessarily has to come to an end. You cannot portray the eternally young with beard and mustache; that would defeat the very purpose. So adolescence is the right age in which to show them, because it is the prime time of newness.

There is yet another reason why men like Krishna are shown without beards. Man's concept of beauty is feminine; it is derived from the beauty of women. For him, woman, and not man, is the image of beauty. And most of our painters and sculptors, our poets and our writers of scriptures have been men. Naturally if they have to depict someone as handsome, beautiful, they will do so in terms of feminine beauty. So if Krishna has to be portrayed as a beautiful person -- and he is superb; who can be more beautiful than him? -- he will certainly be shown in exquisite feminine beauty. That is why statues and portraits of Buddha, Krishna and others like him have feminine faces. Their images are distinctly feminine; they are fat from masculine, because man's understanding of beauty comes from his appreciation of woman's beauty.

It is for this reason that with the growth of man's aesthetic sense, all the world over, he began to shave his beard and mustache. First, he removed them from the faces of Krishna and Buddha, and then from his own. Because he believes that woman's face is much more beautiful than his own, he has been trying to imitate her in various ways.

But woman's concept of beauty is quite different; her concept of beauty is masculine, is based on her appreciation of man's beauty. A woman is not attracted by another woman's beauty, she is always attracted by the beauty of man. Her image of beauty comes from the man's face. So I think if women had painted pictures of Krishna and Buddha they would definitely have shown them with beards and mustaches.

I don't think that even today women like men with shaved faces; they look feminine to them. The beard and mustache are symbols of masculinity for women. Just think how you would react to a woman who appears before you with a beard and mustache on her face; she will be repelling. In the same way a man without a beard and mustache should repel a woman. Whether she says so or not is another thing, because women don't have even this much freedom. that they can express their likes and dislikes. Even their ways of thinking are determined by men; they cannot assert their own preferences.

Remember, whenever and wherever masculine beauty manifests itself in its full grandeur, beards and mustaches return to men's faces. It has always been that masculine beauty gains its peak with the return of the beard and mustache. But when man begins to imitate women, he shaves his beard and thus loses a part of his masculinity.

It is ironic that women are out to imitate men on a very large scale. This craze has become almost worldwide. Women now want to dress in jeans like men, because their concept of beauty is based on their appreciation of the male look. They like to wear watches on their wrists exactly as men do. They are taking to men's professions for the same reason. They think that man is the picture of beauty and strength. Their whole lib movement is moving in the direction of imitating man. And if someday they win -- there is every likelihood that they will win, because men have dominated long, and they must now quit so that women take center stage -- it will not be surprising to see women wearing beards and mustaches. Today we cannot even think of it; it seems quite unthinkable. But they have already started wearing beards and mus taches in subtler ways; they are doing their very best to imitate men in every way. They want to look like men; they are out to become carbon copies.

But whether men imitate women or women imitate men, it is ugly and absurd. It is utterly stupid. Imitation itself is stupid.

Painters and sculptors who portrayed Krishna, Rama and Buddha, were men, admirers of feminine beauty, and for this very reason none of these portraits can be said to be authentic. If you see the statues of the twenty four Jaina tirthankaras you will be surprised to find that they are all alike, that there is not the least difference between one and another. If you remove the different signs engraved at the bottom of their statues, you cannot tell one from the other; they are exactly the same. Similarly, there is no difference between the statues of Mahavira and Buddha other than of clothes. While Mahavira is naked, Buddha is in clothes. Do you think all of them really looked alike?