Peasant_Wisdom

Now the story...

A tremendously significant saying. Maybe the peasant hasn't meant it in such a significant way but the rabbi took it in that way. It was a precious stone. Out of that ordinary peasant.... He may not have meant it the way the rabbi understood it - you understand only in the way that you can understand.

The old man must have meant it in the ordinary way. He was saying that in this life you can have only that which you have worked for. There is no other way. One has to work hard to have something.

That is the experience of an ordinary farmer. The farmer was not a king; a king can have much that he has not earned by his own labour.

A very great, rich man was once asked by a poor man, 'What is the best way to get rich in the world?'

The rich man said, 'The best way is to find the right parents.'

You can have much without ever having earned it if you were clever enough to find the right womb. Very few people are that clever. They simply rush into any womb available!

You can rob, you can cheat, you can exploit...there are a thousand ways. But the farmer, the peasant, really lived by his own earning. He was not a king, he was not a politician, he was not a rich man - whatsoever he earned, that's all he had.

The farmer must have said it in the very ordinary sense, but look at the beauty of it. Whatsoever you hear, you hear from your dimension. The rabbi heard it in a totally different way. It became a very illuminated saying in his being. It was a simple, ordinary statement, but the rabbi was in a deep meditation, the rabbi was in his other dimension - the dimension of being.

When you are in the dimension of being, small things, ordinary pebbles, become precious stones. Ordinary things take on so much colour, become so colourful. Ordinary events become so psychedelic...it depends on you, on your vision.

This is true. In the innermost world it is absolutely true - although it may not be so true in the outside world. In the outside world there are a thousand and one ways to be dishonest, to cheat, to rob, to steal, to exploit. In fact, in the outside world the workers don't have much, only the cheaters. The cunning people have much. Those who work don't have much. Those who don't work, they have much.

But in the inside world the statement is absolutely true. You cannot have anything there in your being that you have not earned. And it is earned the hard way; there are no shortcuts. So don't try to cheat God.

A man who is deluded by having things, loses all opportunities of attaining to the state of being.

I have heard.

A husband took a shot at his mother-in-law, so she brought charges against him. 'You were drinking,' said the judge, 'so I must tell you something. It was liquor that inflamed you. It was liquor that made you hate your mother-in-law. It was liquor that got you to buy the revolver to shoot her. It was liquor that made you go to your mother-in-law's house, point the revolver, pull the trigger and fire. And note, it was liquor that made you miss her!'

It is the same story, the same liquor. Throughout your whole life it is your ambition to have that functions like the liquor. So watch it. Beware of it. That is the only illusion in the world.

One day when you go, then you will realise - but then it will be too late.

I have heard about a man.

He went to Florida with his wife, and became fascinated by the spectacle of eight horses chasing each other around a track. He and his wife bet heavily, and after a few days they had only two dollars left between them. But he was a hopeful type and he convinced his wife that everything would be all right if she let him go out to the track alone.

A friend drove him out. There was a forty-to-one shot in the first race, and he decided to bet on it. The horse came in.

In every race the man backed the long shot, and in every race he won. By the end of the last race he had over ten thousand dollars, and he decided to press his lucky streak. On the way back to the hotel he stopped off at a little gambling club and ran his stake up to forty thousand on the roulette wheel. One more play, he decided, and he would leave. He put the entire forty thousand on black.

The wheel spun. The croupier announced, 'Number fourteen, red.'

The man walked back to the hotel. His wife called him from the verandah. 'How did you make out?' she asked eagerly.

The husband shrugged: 'I lost the two dollars.'

In the end, when death comes, the whole game of thousands and thousands of dollars, achieving this, attaining that, becoming this, becoming that, the power, the prestige, the money, the respectability - nothing counts. Finally you have to say only, 'I have lost my being.'

In running, rushing into the dimension of having, only one thing happens - you lose your being. Life is a great opportunity, a great opportunity. In fact, there are millions of opportunities in it to attain to yourself, to know who you are. But that comes the hard way. You have to work for it.

Don't try to borrow. Nothing can be borrowed in that inner world. And don't try to become just knowledgeable. Attain to a clarity, attain to a vision where no thought exists in your mind. This is the hardest thing in the world. To drop thoughts is the hardest thing in the world, the greatest challenge. All other challenges are very small. This is the greatest adventure that you can take and those who are courageous, they accept the challenge and go into it.

The greatest challenge is how to drop the mind, because only when the mind ceases, the God can be. Only when the known disappears, the unknown can be. Only when there is no mind, no you, nothing of you left, suddenly there is that which you have been seeking forever and forever. God is when you are not. This is the hardest thing to do.

The last anecdote.

Rabbi Grossman and Father O'Malley were seated beside each other at a banquet. 'Have some ham,' offered the priest. 'I'm afraid not,' answered the rabbi. 'C'mon, try some,' the priest encouraged. 'It's real good!'

'Thanks, but I don't eat that kind of meat because of my religion.'

'It's really delicious !' said Father O'Malley five minutes later.

'You oughta try this ham, you'd like it!'

'No thank you!' replied Rabbi Grossman.

After dinner, the two men shook hands. 'Tell me,' said the Jewish clergyman, 'do you enjoy sex with your wife?'

'Oh, Rabbi, you should know I'm not allowed to be married,' said the priest. 'I can't have sex!'

'You ought to try it,' said the rabbi. 'It's better than ham!'

That's all that I can say to you. You ought to try the state of no-mind, the state of being. It is better than all the worlds put together.

The world of being is the only real world, the world of truth. And unless you have come to it, you go on wandering in foreign lands. You can never come home. You come home only when you have come into the innermost core of your being - which is possible. It is difficult, but not impossible; arduous, but not impossible. It is difficult certainly, but it has happened. It has happened to me, it can happen to you.

But don't cling to cheap remedies. Don't try to cheat, chemically or otherwise. Don't try to borrow knowledge. Don't go on accumulating.

It is already there, accumulations only hide it. It is already there. Once you stop accumulating and you drop all the junk you have accumulated inside you - that's what your mind is, the junk. If you drop that junk, suddenly it is there in its absolute purity, in its absolutely beauty, in its absolute benediction.

Let me repeat it: "When you realise the difference between the container and the content, you will have knowledge."

The container is your consciousness, the content is your mind. The container is your being, the content is all that you have accumulated. When you realise the distinction between the content and the container - between the mind and the being - you will have knowledge. In a single split moment, when you remember and you recognise that you are not the content, you are the container - there is a mutation, there is a revolution. And that is the only revolution there is.

 

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