Question 4

COULD YOU PLEASE TALK ABOUT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE PATIENT NON-REACTION OF THE ZEN MASTER AND THE POISONOUS NON-REACTION OF REPRESSIVE SELF-CONTROL?

There is a great difference -- as great as possible. When one is patient, one has nothing repressed in him. Otherwise patience is not possible. Because patience is not disturbed by somebody else insulting you; patience is disturbed by your own anger, hatred, jealousies, which are repressed within you. The other's insult functions only as an excuse; the real thing happens because of your repressions.

You go on repressing anger. It goes on piling up within you. Then just a spark of insult and there is going to be a great fire within you. It is absolutely out of proportion to the insult. And you also realize many times that it was not such a great thing -- but why did I become so mad?

Sometimes the other has not even provoked it. The other was not even aware that he was insulting you and you became insulted, you became mad. You must have been carrying anger for a long time; it was overflowing. It was just waiting to find some situation where you could rationalize and throw the responsibility on somebody else's shoulders.

Patience is possible only if you are not repressive. Otherwise you will be impatient.

Look. Ordinarily, anger is not bad. Ordinarily, anger is part of natural life; it comes and goes. But if you repress it, then it becomes a problem. Then you go on accumulating it. Then it is not a question of coming and going; it becomes your very being. Then it is not that you are sometimes angry; you remain angry, you remain in rage, and you just wait for somebody to provoke it. Or even a hint of provocation, and you catch fire and you do things for which, later on, you will say, 'I did it in spite of me.'

Analyse this expression -- 'in spite of me'. How can you do anything in spite of you? But the expression is exactly right.

Repressed anger becomes a temporary madness. Something happens which is beyond your control. If you could have controlled, you would have controlled it still -- but suddenly it was overflowing. Suddenly it was beyond you. You couldn't do anything, you felt helpless -- and it came out. Such a person may not be angry, but he moves and lives in anger.

If you look at people... stand by the road and just watch... you will find two types of people. Just go on watching their faces. The whole humanity is divided into two types of people. One is the sad type, who will look very sad, dragging somehow. Another is the angry type -- just bubbling with madness, ready to explode at any excuse.

Anger is active sadness; sadness is inactive anger. They are not two things.

Watch your own behaviour. When do you find yourself sad? You find yourself sad only in situations where you cannot be angry. The boss in the office says something and you cannot be angry; it is uneconomical. You cannot be angry and you have to go on smiling -- then you become sad. The energy has become inactive. You come home, and with your wife you find a small thing, anything irrelevant, and you become angry.

People enjoy anger, they relish it, because at least they feel they are doing something. In sadness, you feel that something has been done to you. You have been at the passive end, at the receiving end. Something has been done to you and you were helpless and you could not retort, you could not retaliate, you could not react.

In anger, you feel a little good. After a big bout of anger, one feels a little relaxed... feels good. You are alive. You also can do things. Of course you cannot do to the boss, but you can do to the wife.

Then the wife waits for the children to come home -- because it is uneconomical to be angry with the husband. The whole life seems to be economics. He is the boss, and the wife depends on him, and it is risky to be angry at him. She will wait for the children. They will come home from school, and then she can jump and she can beat them -- for their own sake.

And what will the children do? They will go in their rooms, they will throw their books, tear them, or beat their dolls, or beat their dogs, or torture their cats. They will have to do something. Everybody has to do something, otherwise one becomes sad.

The people you see on the streets who have become sad, so permanently that the face has taken a certain mould, are the people who are so helpless, so down the rung of the ladder, that they can't find anybody to be angry with. These are the sad people. Up higher on the rung you will find angry people. The higher you go, the angrier are the people you will find. The lower you come, the sadder are the people.

In India, go and see the untouchables, the lowest class. They are sad. Then go to the brahmins -- they are angry. A brahmin is always angry; for any small thing he will go mad. He is a brahmin. An untouchable is simply sad because there is nobody else below him on whom he can throw his anger.

Anger and sadness are both faces of the same energy... repressed.

Patience comes when you are neither angry nor sad. Patience is a great phenomenon. When you are neither angry against anybody nor sad against anybody -- sadness and anger both have gone; your energies have settled, centered; you are at home.... Patience means you have come back home. Now nothing distracts, nothing disturbs. You are so happy, so blissful inside, that everything else is irrelevant.

Somebody insults you: you need not get insulted. You are so happy. Have you watched? When you are happy and somebody insults, you don't get so angry. When you are unhappy, you get too angry. That simply shows the mathematics of it. When you are unhappy, you are ready to be angry, waiting to be angry. When you are happy, the same thing doesn't matter.

When one is deeply blissful, simply enjoying each moment of life as god's gift, who bothers? Nothing is worth it then. You have such a precious thing with you that everything else is simply irrelevant.

A religious person is not a repressed person, although the religious persons you have come across are all repressed persons. But a religious mind is not repressed. A religious mind is a happy mind, a blissful mind, a celebrating being.

I will tell you one anecdote:

"Armstrong played a twosome on the golf course with the minister of his church one or two times a month. Reverend Brown was a good golfer and the competition between them was keen, but Armstrong had to admit that the matches offered a special strain on his internal workings.

Armstrong had, as so many of us do, a gift for rich invective, and on foozling a shot he had a habit of voicing his feelings by addressing the ball, the green, and the general surroundings with a wealth of purple passion. Yet in the presence of Reverend Brown, he found himself restrained from indulging himself, and by the end of the round he would be pale with repressed verbiage.

The minister, on the other hand, though he also foozled shots now and then, would on such occasion -- observe a patient silence that irritated Armstrong even more.

Finally Armstrong said, 'Reverend Brown, I must ask. Tell me, how is it that you manage to keep your temper when you slice the ball into the rough, or when you miss your putt because there's a twig on the green you didn't see?'

Reverend Brown replied, 'My good friend, it is a matter of sublimation. I need not shout or use vile language. Surely that will not alter the situation and will, on the other hand, imperil my soul. Yet, since I must do something, I sublimate. I spit.'

'You spit?'

'That's right.' Here Reverend Brown's eyes darkened. 'But let me tell you this! Where I spit, the grass never grows again!"'

The people you have known as religious have been sublimating things. But sublimation is just a trick of the mind. There is nothing sublime in it. The word is a misnomer.

And because of these sublimations, many things have happened to humanity which could have been avoided. After each ten years a great war is needed because of sublimation -- because people go on repressing. Then the whole thing becomes too heavy; it has to be thrown.

Have you seen? Whenever there is a war, people look so happy, so vibrant with life; their dullness disappears. Something is happening. And now they can call the other country names that they have been avoiding up to now. The other country becomes the devil; the other country becomes the enemy of god; the other country becomes the very personification of evil. And the other country has to be destroyed, uprooted completely.

Now destruction is allowed -- not only allowed, but praised. Violence is allowed -- not only allowed, but praised. People are allowed whatsoever was not allowed before -- anger, hatred, jealousy, violence, the murderous instincts... everything is allowed. People feel very good.

After each ten years a great world war is needed; less than that won't do. Because man has been taught to sublimate -- repress sex, repress anger, repress cruelty, repress everything, and try to smile, try to wear a mask, have a false personality.

Deep down you go on sitting on a volcano and on the face you go on smiling. The smile is false, painted. Nobody is deceived by it, but you go on thinking that you are sublimating. Nothing is sublimated.

Understanding transforms, it does not sublimate. If you understand, anger disappears and the same energy becomes compassion. Not that you sublimate: anger simply disappears, and the energy that was involved, invested in anger, is released and becomes compassion. When you understand hate, hate disappears and the same energy becomes love.

Love is not against hate -- it is absence of hate.

Religious people go on conditioning you: Love your enemy. They go on saying to you: Wherever you feel hatred, repress it and show love.

I cannot say that to you. I will say: Wherever you feel hatred, become aware.

No need to love your enemies. You have not even loved yourself; how can you love your enemies? You have not even loved your friends; how can you love your enemies? That is impossible. First love yourself, love the friends, then you can love the strangers and then you can love the enemies.

It is as if you throw a small pebble in the silent lake -- small ripples arise and then they go on spreading to the farthest shore. First you have to love yourself, then your small circle of friends, then the great circle of strangers, and then the enemies. Not that you have to force love for your enemies. Otherwise you will take revenge in some other way. You will sublimate.

You may not swear, you will spit -- and the grass will never grow wherever you spit. Then you will sublimate and you will create the idea of hell for your enemies. Here you cannot create a hell for them; then you will create a hell for them somewhere underground, where they will be put into fire, into burning oil, tortured in every way.

Just look. The christians, the hindus, the mohammedans -- what type of a hell they have created! If you read their stories about hell, you cannot improve upon them. They have done the last thing; the sadist imagination has reached its peak.

If you repress, you will take your revenge somewhere or other. All your so-called saints go on hoping that somewhere in hell their enemies will be put into fire and tortured. That is their hope. And here they go on showing love. That love is bogus. That love is impotent.

I don't teach you to sublimate. I simply teach you one thing -- understanding. Let understanding be the only law.

Understand anger, watch anger, become aware of anger. Don't do anything; just let it be there in front of you. Look deep into it, and suddenly you will see that just by looking into it, a transformation starts happening. Just by observation, anger starts changing into compassion.

There is the key. Nothing has to be done -- just awareness does everything for you.

And of course, then you are patient. Not that you have controlled your anger. You are patient because you are so happy. You are patient because your anger is transformed into compassion. You are patient because your hatred has become love. You are patient because your greed has become a sharing. You are patient because now you are enjoying life at its peak. Who bothers what others say? One is not concerned at all.

A zen master was going to his temple after his morning walk with his disciple. A man came, hit him hard on the back with a staff, and ran away. The master did not even look back; he continued his walk. The disciple could not believe it. He said, 'What is the matter with you? Are you mad? The man has hit so hard and he has escaped and you have not even looked back.'

The zen master said, 'That is his problem. How am I concerned with it? He must be mad, poor fellow. I feel much compassion for him. And I cannot look back, because he is already mad; my looking back may make him more mad. Already he will feel guilty back home; with my looking back he may feel that I have condemned him. No, that won't be human. He is already in trouble. Now there is no need to create more trouble for him. That is his problem.'

When you are happy, then others' problems are no more your problems. Let me say it in this way: when you have no problems, then nobody can throw his problem on you. Because you have problems, others can throw their problems on you and you become hooked.