Mad Elephant Meets Guatama Siddhartha...

 

  

These sutras of Patanjali are very significant. 

Many things are implied. First, in India we have never used the word "love." We always use "nonviolence" -- "ahimsa" pratishthayam. Jesus uses "love"; Mahavir, Patanjali, Buddha, they never use "love" -- they use "nonviolence." Why? "Love" seems to be a better word, more positive , more poetic. "Nonviolence" looks like an ugly word, negative. But there is something to it. When you say "love," you have moved with a subtle aggression. When I say, "I love you," I have moved from my center towards you. The aggression is beautiful, but it is still aggression. Patanjali says "nonviolence." It is a negative state, a passive state: It simply means, "No one will be hurt," that's it.

Love says, "I will make you happy" -- which is impossible. Who can make anybody happy? Love promises. All promises are false. How can you make anybody happy? If everybody is responsible for his own self, how is it possible even to think that you can make somebody else to be happy? When I say, "I love you," I am creating so many promises, I am showing you so many beautiful gardens... I am calling you towards dreams. No, Patanjali will not use the word, because deep down I am saying, "I will make you happy. Come near me; come close to me. I am ready to make you happy" -- which is impossible. Nobody can make anybody happy. At the most I can say, "I will not hurt you." That is in my hands - not to hurt, but how can I say, "I will make you happy"?

That's why all love leads to frustration. Lovers promise each other -- knowingly, unknowingly -- beautiful roses, paradise; and each one thinking about the promise -- and then it is never fulfilled. Nobody ca n make you happy -- except yourself. If you fall in love: the man is thinking the woman is going to give him a beautiful life, enchanted, a magical world; and the woman is also thinking that the man is going to lead her towards the last paradise. Nobody can lead anybody. That's why lovers feel frustrated: the promise was false. Not that they were deceiving each other, they were deceived by themselves. Not that they were deliberately deceiving each other, they didn't know. They were not aware what they were saying.

Mahavir, Buddha, Patanjali, they use an ugly word: nonviolence, ahimsa. Does not look good, is simply negative -- it says "no violence," that's all. "I will not hurt you" -- that much can be fulfilled. Even then, there is no absolute guarantee that you will not feel hurt. "I will not hurt you," that's all; then too there is no absolute necessity that you will not feel hurt. Still you can feel hurt because you create your own wounds, you create your own misery. "I will not be a party to it," that's all Patanjali can say -- "I will not participate in it. I will not hurt you."

"When the yogi is firmly established..." in this attitude of nonviolence, that he will not hurt anybody, "... there is an abandonment of enmity by those who are in his presence." Such a man, who is not in any way thinking, dreaming consciously, unconsciously, has no desire to hurt anybody -- in his presence, abandonment of enmity happens. But before you conclude it, many more problems arise.

Jesus was crucified; enmity was not abandoned. That's why if you ask Jains they will not say that he was enlightened, because people could crucify him. But the same has happened to Mahavir. After his enlightenment he was stoned. To Buddha the same has happened -- not crucified, but stoned, insulted. People tried to kill him. Then how to understand it? Jains, Buddhists, they have explanations. If it is a question of Jesus, they will say he is not enlightened -- simple explanation, finished -- but if it is a question of Mahavir they say that he is closing his accounts of his past lives . Both are wrong. Both are wrong because when one becomes enlightened he has closed all accounts. He has finished all karmas; now nothing is there.

Still, there have been cases: Jesus has been crucified; Socrates poisoned; Al-hillaj Mansoor killed, murdered very brutally; Mahavir stoned many times, insulted, thrown out of villages; Buddha, many times murder was attempted. Then how to explain Patanjali's sutra? If the sutra is true then these things should not happen.

If these things happen then there are only two possibilities: either all these persons -- Al-hillaj Mansoor, Jesus, Mahavir, Buddha -- are not enlightened, are not really established in nonviolence, or there are some exceptions to the rule. There are a few exceptions.

In fact whenever a man is established in nonviolence, life -- except for human beings -- becomes absolutely nonviolent towards him. Man is a perverted being. The mirror is not clear. Life... trees are nonviolent towards a Buddha, animals are nonviolent.

It happened that one of Buddha's cousin-brothers, who was in deep competition with him -- unnecessarily, because a Buddha is nobody's competitor -- was continuously thinking, "Buddha has become so great a man, and I am left behind. I am nobody." He tried in every way to gather disciples and declare himself, that he is a Buddha, but nobody would listen to him. Of course, a few fools gathered.

Then he became very antagonistic towards Buddha; he tried to kill him. It is said Buddha was meditating under a tree near a hill, and Devadutta, Buddha's cousin-brother, rolled a big rock from the hill. There was every possibility that Buddha would have been crushed, but somehow the rock changed its path. Buddha remained untouched. Somebody asked, "What happened?" Buddha said, "A rock feels more than does Devadutta, my brother. She changed the route."

A mad elephant was released against Buddha by Devadutta. The elephant was mad; he rushed. Disciples escaped, they forgot completely, and Buddha remained silent sitting under the tree. The elephant came near... something happened -- he bowed down at Buddha's feet. People asked, "What happened?"

He said, "A mad elephant, also, is not so mad as Devadutta. Even this mad elephant has some sanity left in him."

One of the greatest psychologists working and doing deep research on the human brain is Delgado. He has tried an experiment with electrodes. Something like that must have happened when the elephant stopped and bowed down.

https://youtu.be/23pXqY3X6c8

Delgado placed electrodes in the brain of a bull. Those electrodes could be manipulated from anywhere by radio, wireless. Then, he pushed the button; thousands of people had gathered to see. He pushed the button and pressed the center in the brain from where anger arises: the bull became angry and mad. He came in a rage; he rushed towards Delgado. People stopped breathing, because this was certain death. Just a foot away, Delgado pushed another button, and suddenly something happened inside and the bull stopped -- just a foot away, death just a foot away.

Delgado has done it with electric instruments, but the same is the possibility: Buddha has not done anything, but it happened -- a deep nonviolence, and something triggered in the brain of the elephant. He was no longer mad; he understood. He felt; he bowed down. Humanity is no longer a right mirror. Humanity is not so pure as the echoing hills.

Humanity is perverted, so it is possible. I don't find any explanation in past lives. I don't find any explanation in denying that Jesus was an enlightened man, no. The explanation is this: that life can reflect only when life is alive. Man has become so dead.

Most humans don't feel. Even you, if you come to meet a Buddha -- you don't feel much. You say he is just a man as any other. Of course the bones are the same and the skin the same and the body the same -- the boundary is the same -- but who is within the boundary of that flame?

But you can feel it only if you have felt it already within yourself. Otherwise how can you feel it? You can recognize a Buddha only when you have recognized a certain quality of Buddhahood within yourself; from there, is the bridge. If you have not realized any Buddhahood within you, any divineness in you, it is impossible for you to recognize a Buddha, to recognize his nonviolence, to recognize that he has transcended, that he is no longer part of your own madness.

That's why Mahavir was stoned by humans who had gone completely perverted. A natural law didn't function with them; otherwise the law is absolutely perfect. If you are silent and you come near a Buddha, suddenly you will feel a great change happening within yourself. You cannot feel enmity.

That's why there is a fear of coming near a Buddha. You can feel enmity when you are far away from him. If you come face to face with him it becomes difficult, more and more difficult. If you are in his presence, even if you are mad, the possibility exists that his presence may work as a magnetic force; the possibility exists that even you in all your madness may be changed and transformed into something that you may be unfamiliar with.

That's why people have always been avoiding Buddhas -- Mahavir, Patanjali, Jesus, Lao Tzu. They don't come near them. They gather things about them in the marketplace and they start believing in rumors, but they won't come near. They won't come to see what has happened.

And by the time they come they have gathered so much rubbish, so much rot around them, that they are already deadened. They have so many fixed attitudes that their mirror functions no more. Their mirror is covered with dust. Of course a mirror mirrors, but if it is covered with dust then you can go on looking and your face will not be reflected.

Animals, trees, birds, even they have understood. It is said that when Buddha became enlightened flowers bloomed out of season. And it has not happened only with Buddha; it has happened many times. It is not a myth. The trees became so happy.... That's why Buddhists have been preserving the tree, the Bodhi Tree, under which Buddha became en lightened. It carries something -- it has witnessed one of the greatest happening s in the world. It is the only witness left. It carries the real history, what happened in that night when Buddha became enlightened.

Now scientists say that the bodhi tree is the most intelligent tree in the world. It has some chemicals which are absolutely necessary for intelligence, without which the mind cannot be intelligent. Other trees are there, but nothing like the bodhi tree, the bo tree. It has the greatest quantity of those chemicals which make the mind intelligent. Maybe it is the most intelligent tree in the world. It has witnessed Buddha flowering into a different dimension. It has known one of the greatest peak hours of the whole of existence. But man's mirror is covered with dust -- dust of beliefs, ideologies.

Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 6
Chapter #1
Chapter title: A Life is a Mirror
1 September 1975 am in Buddha Hall

 

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