MEDITATION

The Secret

The Lion And The Fox

ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WAS A FOX WHO MET A YOUNG RABBIT IN THE WOODS. THE RABBIT SAID, "WHAT ARE YOU?" THE FOX SAID, "I AM A FOX, AND I COULD EAT YOU UP IF I WANTED TO."

 "HOW CAN YOU PROVE THAT YOU ARE A FOX?" ASKED THE RABBIT. THE FOX DIDN'T KNOW WHAT TO SAY, BECAUSE IN THE PAST RABBITS HAD ALWAYS RUN FROM HIM WITHOUT SUCH INQUIRIES.

THEN THE RABBIT SAID, "IF YOU CAN SHOW ME WRITTEN PROOF THAT YOU ARE A FOX, I'LL BELIEVE YOU."

 SO THE FOX TROTTED OFF TO THE LION, WHO GAVE HIM A CERTIFICATE THAT HE WAS A FOX.

 WHEN HE GOT BACK TO WHERE THE RABBIT WAS WAITING, THE FOX STARTED TO READ OUT THE DOCUMENT. IT SO PLEASED HIM THAT HE DWELT OVER THE PARAGRAPHS WITH LINGERING DELIGHT. MEANWHILE, GETTING THE GIST OF THE MESSAGE FROM THE FIRST FEW LINES, THE RABBIT RAN DOWN A BURROW AND WAS NEVER SEEN AGAIN.

 THE FOX WENT BACK TO THE LION'S DEN, WHERE HE SAW A DEER TALKING TO THE LION.

 THE DEER WAS SAYING, "I WANT TO SEE WRITTEN PROOF THAT YOU ARE A LION...."

 THE LION SAID, "WHEN I AM NOT HUNGRY, I DON'T NEED TO BOTHER. WHEN I AM HUNGRY, YOU DON'T NEED ANYTHING IN WRITING."

 THE FOX SAID TO THE LION, " WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME TO DO THAT, WHEN I ASKED FOR A CERTIFICATE FOR THE RABBIT?"

 "MY DEAR FRIEND," SAID THE LION, "YOU SHOULD HAVE SAID THAT IT WAS REQUESTED BY A RABBIT. I THOUGHT THAT IT MUST BE FOR A STUPID HUMAN BEING, FROM WHOM SOME OF THESE IDIOTIC ANIMALS HAVE LEARNED THIS PASTIME."

 

 MAN IS CONTINUOUSLY PREOCCUPIED WITH INVENTING A SELF FOR HIMSELF, but the invented self can never be the real self. There is no possibility that the invented will ever be the real. The real self has to be discovered, not invented.

 The invented self becomes our ego. The real self is not in any way the ego. The real self is not a self at all; it is utter emptiness, and the silence of emptiness, and the joy of emptiness.

 If you want to invent a self you will have to ask others; that's the only way to invent it -- to gather opinions of what people think about you. That's what we go on doing our whole lives. That's why we are so afraid of people's disrespect. That becomes our bondage. We want to be respectable, because if we are respectable then people's opinion about us is beautiful. They praise us and we can have a better self. If we are not respectable people condemn; and then you will not ever have a beautiful self, you will have an ugly self. Your self consists only of the opinion s of others; it is a patchwork. A has said something, and B has said something else, and C something else, and so on, so forth. You collect all these things, these paper cuttings. Then you make an image out of them -- you fix them together, you glue them together.

 From the very beginning the child starts collecting this rubbish. The mother says something, the father, the brother, the neighbors: if it is gratifying he starts feeling proud, if it is not gratifying he starts feeling depressed. To avoid depression he goes on flattering everybody that he meets. The flattery is nothing but an arrangement: "I will flatter you so that you can give me a good certificate. I will flatter you more if you are willing to give me an even better certificate." But all these certificates are just from the outside, and nobody knows you, who you are -- not even you yourself.

 So what others say about you is almost irrelevant to your reality. They only know your appearance, and appearances can be very false. The person who looks very gentle on the outside may be very egoistic inside. That gentleness may be just a camouflage, a protection, an armor. The man who looks very clever on the outside may be just the opposite -- he may be utterly stupid. The stupid person has to pretend cleverness; it hurts to know, "I am stupid." The man who goes on bragging about his knowledge is bound to be ignorant. But who wants to be known as an ignorant person? -- he collects some information and goes on broadcasting that information to people. Slowly, slowly he gathers a reputation that he knows, but this knowledge is false, this reputation is false. These certificates are given to you by people who don't know you, who can't know you. There is no way for anybody else to know you except yourself. And whatsoever they are saying, they are saying only so that you can give them a good certificate. So it is a mutual conspiracy; we are deceiving each other. Somebody says, "You are beautiful," and of course you have to return the compliment. Somebody says, "You are so intelligent," and you have to return the compliment: "You must be a very intelligent person, otherwise you would not have known about my intelligence. You must be a man of great understanding -- you are the first man who has understood me."

 This constant preoccupation with inventing one's own self has to be understood. Why is it there at all? It is there because you are feeling a constant gnawing emptiness within your heart. You don't know who you are, and it is very difficult to live without knowing who you are. Unless you know who you are whatsoever you do is going to be a failure, a frustration.

 You can succeed in being fulfilled only if you know who you are. Then you will choose your life in such a way that it becomes a fulfillment to your real needs. Otherwise, not knowing yourself, whatsoever you do remains accidental. Maybe once in a while your arrow may reach the target, but that is accidental and it will happen only once in a while. You are shooting in darkness, without knowing who you are, without knowing where the target is. It is almost impossible that sometimes it may hit the target; ninety-nine percent is the possibility that you will remain empty and you will die empty. Your life will be a tragedy. That's why people carry such a tragic sense on their faces, in their eyes.

 Watch people, watch yourself, and you will see -- people are living a very tragic existence. Their whole past has gone in vain and they know that today is also slipping out of their hands; and deep down the suspicion that whatsoever they have been doing in the past they are going to do in the future too. So it is all a meaningless journey, "a tale told by an idiot, full of fury and noise, signifying nothing".

 And unless significance is felt, how can you be joyous? Unless your life throbs with significance how can it become a song? Only a significant life becomes a song. When you start feeling there is meaning, when you start feeling that you are fulfilling something very essential to existence -- that you are needed, that you are part of this cosmic drama, this cosmic play, that without you something will be missing, that without you the drama will not be the same at all -- then great respect arises towards oneself; and in that very respect gratitude towards existence, prayer, thankfulness.

 But the most fundamental thing is to know oneself: Who am I. And to know oneself means to discover -- because you are already there, you are not to be invented. Whatsoever you invent will be a fiction, will not be truth. And how can you delude yourself? Maybe for one day you can delude yourself, for two days, but for how long? Delusions wear out. They cannot remain against reality forever. Reality goes on asserting.

 And there are only two kinds of people in the world: the majority consists of those who invent the self, and a very small minority of those who discover the self. And the difference is vast, the difference is tremendous: they are two worlds apart. A Buddha, a Jesus, a Bahaudin, a Rumi, a Mansur -- they discover.

 What do I mean by discovery? The first thing to remember is that you already have the self. You are. That needs no proof. That is indubitably there, you cannot even doubt it.

 The great European philosopher, Descartes, says, "The only indubitable fact about life is that I am." Only this cannot be doubted; everything else can be doubted. You can doubt the world; it may not be, it may be just a dream, as Hindus say -- that it is maya, an illusion, a dream in God's mind. Maybe, possibly; it cannot be denied, there is no way to deny it. That's exactly what Berkeley says -- that the world is not a real world, it is a fantasy, a thought, not a thing. Nobody has ever been able to refute Shankara or Berkeley. It cannot be refuted. How to refute it?
 

 Berkeley was walking with Doctor Johnson. Doctor Johnson was a realist. He was very offended by the Berkelinian idea that the world is only a thought, not a thing; that it is just a fiction, a mind projection -- there are no trees outside, there are no people outside; only I am. Johnson, being a realist, was getting very angry, more so because he could not find how to refute this man logically, how to prove that the tree outside there was really there....

 How to prove it? -- because in the dream also we see trees, and they look almost the same as these trees. And in the dream also we think that they are there; only in the morning when we wake up do we find that they were not there. Who knows? -- when death comes and we wake up finally, we may come to know that all those trees, and the people, and the world, and the earth, and the moon, and the sun, were all just a long, long dream. How to prove it?

 ... He took a rock from the road and hit Berkeley's feet with the rock. Blood started oozing and Berkeley was in great pain and very angry too. He said, "What kind of behavior is this? What wrong have I done to you? Why have you hit me with the rock? I don't see the point."

 Johnson laughed and he said, "This is to refute your so-called idealism. Now if the rock is unreal, why are you crying? Why are there tears in your eyes? How can I hit with an unreal rock?"

 Berkeley started laughing. He said, "But my pain is unreal too, and my tears are unreal too. Only I am real. Who knows that the tears are flowing, that the blood is oozing, that the feet are hurting like hell? Only I who knows, the witness, is real. Everything else, Doctor Johnson -- you and your rock and the world -- is all unreal. "

 Now how to prove it? Johnson was not capable of proving it. His realistic argument had failed, utterly failed. No, it cannot be proved, it is always doubtful.

 For example, you are listening to me: maybe you are just dreaming. Maybe many have fallen asleep; maybe with closed eyes you are asleep, and you are having a dream. The other cannot be proved.

 

The only indubitable phenomenon is my own existence. That cannot be doubted. Why cannot you doubt it? -- because even to doubt it, it will be needed. If I say I am not, even to say this -- that I am not -- I have to be there. So to doubt oneself is the only impossible thing.

 And we don't know who we are. The only indubitable fact has not been discovered; and we have been struggling to discover many dubitable things. And the irony: we go asking others, whose existence is dubitable, about who we are. Whatsoever they are going to say will remain only their opinion. They cannot penetrate your being; nobody can penetrate anybody else's being.

 In your innermost core you are ultimately celibate, alone. Nobody has ever walked into that solitude, into that shrine of your being, and nobody will ever walk there. Even lovers cannot penetrate into each other's core. The core remains beyond. Only you, and only you, can know it.

 But people go on asking, "Who am I?" And watch yourself -- directly, indirectly, that's what you are trying to do. How much you hanker for a compliment! How much you long that somebody will say that you are beautiful, that you are very intelligent, that "You have made my life worth living", that "It is because of you that I have tasted something of meaning". Just watch your mind! -- this is a constant preoccupation. And how worried you become when somebody says something that goes against your image, how much you feel hurt, how much you start defending, fighting, arguing. Why is there so much fear? Why is there so much longing to have good opinions from others? -- because that is the only way to create a false self.

 The false self is cheap. It is very easy: it needs only a little sociability, it needs only a little cleverness, cunningness; it needs only to be formal, mannerly, it needs etiquette. It needs a little alertness about what people want -- "Be that. If you cannot, at least pretend to be that." If they respect a knowledgeable person, then gather knowledge. Go to the university, have a few degrees so that you can write a few letters behind your name. If they respect character, then cultivate character.

 It may be doing great harm to you; that is not the point. It may be going against your grain, it may be creating a division in your being, it may be creating a duality, a schizophrenia, but that is not the point. Respect has to be gained, because only through respect can you have a beautiful decorated self; and everybody will be supporting it.

 A sannyasin has to be very much aware of this trap. You are not to invent your self. You have to discover it. And discovery means an inward journey. Discovery means not asking the other but asking oneself "Who am I?" asking in one's aloneness "Who am I?" letting this question penetrate deeper and deeper, like an arrow, so that it penetrates your very core -- and there, one day, is the revelation.

 And the moment you know who you are your whole life is transformed. Your whole life becomes divine because you are gods. Your faces are different, your talents are different, your colors are different, your minds, your conditionings are different, but these are only layers around you; they don't constitute your core. The core is your original face, uncontaminated by the society.

 And when you come to know your original face -- the face that you had before you were born and the face that you will again have when you have died, the face that has been given to you by God -- that face is the greatest experience. Knowing it, one knows all. Not knowing it, you can become very knowledgeable, but you are just hiding your ignorance.

 The people who are very much concerned with inventing a self live a very mediocre life. They have to live a mediocre life, because they have to satisfy the mediocre crowd around themselves.

 In India, if you want to be respected as a mahatma you will have to starve, you will have to fast. Unless you fast nobody is going to respect you as a mahatma. If you want this identity then you will have to fast. You will have to adjust to the demands of a mediocre society.

 And everywhere the society consists of mediocre minds -- the middle class, the bourgeoisie; those who have known nothing except chasing after money and power, those who have never seen anything in depth, those who are not aware at all of the vertical dimension of life, those who go on running as fast as they can on the horizontal plane. And then one day they fall in their graves without knowing at all what they have missed, without knowing the glory and splendor of life and existence.

 Society consists of the mediocre people, and to adjust yourself to the mediocre people is to become a mediocrity on your own. Beware of it. Watch your steps. The trap is all around and the trap is very alluring because it gives you the cheap satisfaction of being a certain self. And all kinds of selves are available; you can go window-shopping. If you want to become a mahatma then the mask is sold in the marketplace; you just have to know a few requirements of how to be a mahatma: what to eat, what not to eat; when to sleep, when not to sleep; how to move, with whom to move; what scriptures to read, what books to avoid. Just small things, trivia... any stupid person can manage it. In fact only stupids can manage it. If you have intelligence, you would like to live your own life on your own terms. You will not compromise. You will live like a Jesus. Even if it means crucifixion, it's okay. Jesus died on the cross, but died with a self, died with a discovered self. That's why he was not angry with the people who were killing him, because now he knew nobody could kill. People can kill only the self that they have given to you. They are powerful about it: they can withdraw their support and you will start collapsing.

 People can only kill politicians, not the mystics. People can kill the politician because the politician exists only on people's votes, their opinions. They can withdraw their opinion and you are nobody. The throne of the politician is carried by the mediocre crowd; any moment it can change its mind, any moment somebody else can satisfy it more, can be more compromising with the mediocre people. It can change immediately.

 You cannot destroy a religious man; that is impossible. You can kill him, but even in your killing him he remains deathless.

 That's the whole meaning of the resurrection. People crucified Jesus, but they could not -- that is the meaning of the parable. I am not saying that it is an historical fact, that he walked again on the earth. People killed him, but people can kill only the self that they have given, they cannot kill the self that has been discovered. It is beyond their reach, it is beyond their vision. How can they kill it? They cannot even see it. The people who were crucifying Jesus were absolutely unaware of the person whom they were confronting. Who was this man that they were killing? They were killing God! They were killing one of the most significant expressions of God on the earth, but they were blissfully unaware.

 That's why Jesus said, "Father, forgive these people, because they don't know what they are doing. They don't know me, and what they are killing is their own idea of me. They cannot kill me."

more.... click here