The Mind
Just as the arrow-maker straightens his arrows, so also the intelligent
man straightens his thoughts, wavering and fickle, difficult to keep straight,
difficult to master.
Just as a fish cast out of the water, our mind quivers and gasps when
it leaves behind the
Difficult to master and unstable is the mind, forever in search of
pleasure. It is good to govern it. A mind that is controlled brings happiness.
The sage should remain master of his thoughts, for they are subtle and
difficult to seize and always in search of pleasure. A mind that is well guided
brings happiness.
Wandering afar, solitary, bodiless and hidden in the deep cave of the
heart, such is the mind. Whosoever succeeds in bringing it under control
liberates himself from the fetters of Mara.
The intelligence of one whose mind is unstable, who is ignorant of the
true Law, and whose faith is wavering will never be able to develop.
If a man’s thoughts are not agitated, if his mind is not troubled by
desire, if he no longer cares for good and evil, this man, wide awake, knows
nothing of fear.
Observing that the body is as fragile as a jar, and fortifying the mind
like a city at arms, one should attack Mara with the blade of intelligence and
should guard carefully whatever has been won.
Before long this body will be lying on the earth, abandoned, as
lifeless as a piece of old wood.
Whatever an enemy may do to an enemy, whatever a hater may do to a
hater, the harm caused by a misdirected mind is even greater still.
Neither mother nor father nor any other kinsman can do so much good as
a well-directed mind.
These few verses correspond to all the needs of those whose mind
has not been mastered. They point out the attachment that one has to one’s old
ways of being, thinking and reacting, even when one is trying to get away from
them. As soon as you emerge by your effort, you are like a fish out of water
and you gasp for breath because you are no longer in your element of obscure desires.
Even when you make a resolution, the mind remains unstable. It is
subtle, difficult to seize. Without seeming to do so, it is continually seeking
its own satisfaction; and its intentions are hidden in the core of the heart so
as not to show their true nature.
And while not forgetting the weakness of the body, you must try to
strengthen the mind against its own weakness; with the sword of wisdom, you
must fight against the hostile forces and treasure the progress you have made
so that these forces may not despoil you of your progress, for they are
terrible thieves.
And then there is a short couplet for those who are afraid of
death, intended to liberate them from that fear. Finally there is a last short
couplet for those who are attached to their family to show them the vanity of
this attachment.
In the end, a last warning: an ill-directed, ill-controlled thought
does more harm than an enemy can do to an enemy or a hater to a hater. That is
to say, even those who have the best intentions in the world, if they do not
have a wise control over their thought, will do more harm to themselves and to
those whom they love than an enemy can do to an enemy or a hater to a hater.
The mind has a power of deception in its own regard which is
incalculable. It clothes its desires and preferences with all kinds of
wonderful intentions and it hides its trickeries, resentments and
disappointments under the most favourable appearances.
To overcome all that, you must have the fearlessness of a true
warrior, and an honesty, a straightforwardness, a sincerity that never fail.
28 February 1958
The Flowers
Who will conquer this world of illusion and the
The disciple on the right path will conquer this world of illusion and
the
Knowing his body to be as impermanent as foam and as illusory as a
mirage, the disciple on the right path will shatter the flowery arrow of Mara
and will rise beyond the reach of the King of Death.
Death carries away the man who seeks only the flowers of sensual
pleasure just as torrential floods carry away a sleeping village.
Death, the destroyer, overcomes the man who seeks only the flowers of
sensual pleasure before he can satisfy himself.
The sage should go from door to door in his village, as the bee gathers
honey from the flowers without bringing harm to their colours or their
fragrance.
Do not criticise others for what they do or have not done, but be aware
of what, yourself, you do or have not done.
Just as a beautiful flower which is radiant yet lacks fragrance, so are
the beautiful words of one who does not act accordingly.
Just as a beautiful flower which is both radiant and sweetly scented,
so are the beautiful words of one who acts accordingly.
Just as many garlands can be made from a heap of flowers, so a mortal
can accumulate much merit by good deeds.
The fragrance of flowers, even that of sandalwood or of incense, even
that of jasmine, cannot go against the wind; but the sweet fragrance of
intelligence goes against the wind. All around the man of intelligence spreads
the fragrance of his virtue.
No fragrance, not even that of sandalwood or incense, nor of the lotus
nor of jasmine, can be compared with the fragrance of intelligence.
Weak is the fragrance of incense or sandalwood compared to that of a
virtuous man which reaches up to the highest of divinities.
Mara cannot discover the way that those beings follow who lead a life
of perfect purity and who are liberated by their total knowledge.
As the beautiful scented lily rises by the wayside, even so the
disciple of the Perfectly Enlightened One, radiant with intelligence, rises from
the blind and ignorant multitude.
There are some very wise recommendations here, for example, not to
concern oneself with what others do nor with the mistakes they make, but to
attend to one’s own faults and negligences and rectify them. Another wise
counsel is never to utter too many eloquent words which are not effectuated in
action—speak little, act well. Beautiful words, they say, that are mere words,
are like flowers without fragrance.
And finally, lest you get discouraged by your own faults, the Dhammapada
gives you this solacing image: the purest lily can spring out of a heap of
rubbish by the wayside. That is to say, there is nothing so rotten that it
cannot give birth to the purest realisation.
Whatever may be the past, whatever may be the faults committed, whatever
the ignorance in which one might have lived, one carries deep within oneself
the supreme purity which can translate itself into a wonderful realisation.
The whole point is to think of that, to concentrate on that and
not to be concerned with all the difficulties and obstacles and hindrances.
Concentrate exclusively on what you want to be, forget as entirely
as possible what you do not want to be.
7 March 1958
The Fool
Long is the night for one who sleeps not; long is the road for one who
is weary; long is the cycle of births for the fool who knows not the true law.
If a man cannot find a companion who is his superior or even his equal,
he should resolutely follow a solitary path; for no good can come from companionship
with a fool.
The fool torments himself by thinking, “This son is mine, this wealth
is mine.” How can he possess sons and riches, who does not possess himself?
The fool who recognises his foolishness is at least wise in that. But
the fool who thinks he is intelligent, is a fool indeed.
Even if the fool serves an intelligent man throughout his life, he will
nevertheless remain ignorant of the truth, just as the spoon knows not the
taste of the soup.
If an intelligent man serves a wise man, if only for a moment, he will
quickly understand the truth, just as the tongue instantly perceives the savour
of the soup.
The fools, those who are ignorant, have no worse enemies than
themselves; bitter is the fruit they gather from their evil actions.
The evil action which one repents later brings only regrets and the
fruit one reaps will be tears and lamentations.
The good action one does not need to repent later brings no regret and
the fruit one reaps will be contentment and satisfaction.
As long as the evil action has not borne its fruits, the fool imagines
that it is as sweet as honey. But when this action bears its fruits, he reaps
only suffering.
Though month after month the fool takes his food with the tip of a
blade of Kusa grass, he is not for all that worth a
sixteenth part of one who has understood the truth.
An evil action does not yield its fruits immediately, just as milk does
not at once turn sour; but like a fire covered with ashes, even so smoulders
the evil action.
Whatever vain knowledge a fool may have been able to acquire, it leads
him only to his ruin, for it breaks his head and destroys his worthier nature.
The foolish monk thirsts after reputation, and a high rank among the
Bhikkhus, after authority in the monastery and veneration from ordinary men.
“Let ordinary men and holy ones esteem highly what I have done; let
them obey me!” This is the longing of the fool, whose pride increases more and
more.
One path leads to earthly gain and quite another leads to Nirvana.
Knowing this, the Bhikkhu, the disciple of the Perfectly Enlightened One, longs
no more for honour, but rather cultivates solitude.
This seems to point directly to hypocrites who take up the
external forms and appearances of wisdom but in their hearts keep all the
desires, ambitions, the need for show, and live to satisfy this ambition and
these desires instead of living for the only thing that is worth living for:
attainment of the true consciousness, integral self-giving to the Divine, the
peace, the light and the delight that come from the true wisdom and
self-forgetfulness.
One could easily replace throughout this text the word fool by the
word ego. One who lives in his ego, for his ego, in the hope of satisfying his
ego is a fool. Unless you transcend ego, unless you reach a state of
consciousness in which ego has no reason for existing, you cannot hope to
attain the goal.
The ego seems to have been indispensable at one time for the
formation of the individual consciousness, but with the ego were born all the
obstacles, sufferings, difficulties, all that now appears to us as adverse and
anti-divine forces. But these forces themselves were a necessity for attaining
an inner purification and the liberation from ego. The ego is at once the
result of their action and the cause of their prolongation. When the ego disappears,
the adverse forces will also disappear, having no longer any reason for their
existence in the world.
With the inner liberation, with a total sincerity and perfect purity,
all suffering will disappear, because it will no longer be necessary for the
progress of the consciousness towards its final goal.
Wisdom, then, consists in working energetically at the inner transformation
so that you may emerge victorious from a struggle which will have borne its
fruits but will no longer have any need to exist.
14 March 1958
The Sage
We should seek the company of the sage who shows us our faults, as if
he were showing us a hidden treasure; it is best to cultivate relations with
such a man because he cannot be harmful to us. He will bring us only good.
One who exhorts us to good and dissuades us from doing evil is
appreciated, esteemed by the just man and hated by the unjust.
Do not seek the company or friendship of men of base character, but let
us consort with men of worth and let us seek friendship with the best among
men.
He who drinks directly from the source of the Teaching lives happy in
serenity of mind. The sage delights always in the Teaching imparted by the
noble disciples of the Buddha.
Those who build waterways lead the water where they want; those who
make arrows straighten them; carpenters shape their wood; the sage controls
himself.
No more than a mighty rock can be shaken by the wind, can the sage be
moved by praise or blame.
The sage who has steeped himself in the Teaching, becomes perfectly
peaceful like a deep lake, calm and clear.
Wherever he may be, the true sage renounces all pleasures. Neither
sorrow nor happiness can move him.
Neither for his own sake, nor for the sake of others does the sage
desire children, riches or domains. He does not aim for his own success by
unjust ways. Such a man is virtuous, wise and just.
Few men cross to the other shore. Most men remain and do no more than
run up and down along this shore.
But those who live according to the Teaching cross beyond the realm of
Death, however difficult may be the passage.
The sage will leave behind the dark ways of existence, but he will
follow the way of light. He will leave his home for the homeless life and in
solitude will seek the joy which is so difficult to find.
Having renounced all desires and attachments of the senses, the sage
will cleanse himself of all the taints of the mind.
One whose mind is well established in all the degrees of knowledge,
who, detached from all things, delights in his renunciation, and who has
mastered his appetites, he is resplendent, and even in this world he attains
Nirvana.
There is a sentence here which is particularly felicitous. It is
the very first sentence we have read, “We should seek the company of the sage
who shows our faults, as if he were showing us a hidden treasure.”
In all Scriptures meant to help mankind to progress, it is always
said that you must be very grateful to those who show you your faults and so
you must seek their company; but the form used here is particularly felicitous:
if a fault is shown to you it is as if a treasure were shown to you; that is to
say, each time that you discover in yourself a fault, incapacity, lack of
understanding, weakness, insincerity, all that prevents you from making a
progress, it is as if you discovered a wonderful treasure.
Instead of growing sad and telling yourself, “Oh, there is still another
defect”, you should, on the contrary, rejoice as if you had made a wonderful
acquisition, because you have just caught hold of one of those things that
prevented you from progressing. And once you have caught hold of it, pull it
out! For those who practise a yogic discipline consider that the moment you
know that a thing should not be, you have the power to remove it, discard it,
destroy it.
To discover a fault is an acquisition. It is as though a flood of
light had come to replace the little speck of obscurity which has just been
driven out.
When you follow a yogic discipline, you must not accept this
weakness, this baseness, this lack of will, which means that knowledge is not
immediately followed by power. To know that a thing should not be and yet
continue to allow it to be is such a sign of weakness that it is not accepted
in any serious discipline, it is a lack of will that verges on insincerity. You
know that a thing should not be and the moment you know it, you are the one who
decides that it shall not be. For knowledge and power are essentially the same
thing—that is to say, you must not admit in any part of your being this shadow
of bad will which is in contradiction to the central will for progress and
which makes you impotent, without courage, without strength in the face of an
evil that you must destroy.
To sin through ignorance is not a sin; that is part of the general
evil in the world as it is, but to sin when you know, that is serious. It means
that there is hidden somewhere, like a worm in the fruit, an element of bad
will that must be hunted out and destroyed, at any cost, because any weakness
on such a point is the source of difficulties that sometimes, later on, become irreparable.
So then the first thing is to be perfectly happy when someone or
some circumstance puts you in the conscious presence of a fault in yourself
which you did not know. Instead of lamenting, you must rejoice and in this joy
must find the strength to get rid of the thing which should not be.
21 March 1958
The Adept
No sorrow exists for one who has completed his journey, who has let
fall all cares, who is free in all his parts, who has cast off all bonds.
Those who are heedful strive always and, like swans leaving their
lakes, leave one home after another.
Those who amass nothing, who eat moderately, who have perceived the
emptiness of all things and who have attained unconditioned liberation, their
path is as difficult to trace as that of a bird in the air.
One for whom all desires have passed away and who has perceived the
emptiness of all things, who cares little for food, who has attained
unconditioned liberation, his path is as difficult to trace as that of a bird
in the air.
Even the Gods esteem one whose senses are controlled as horses by the
charioteer, one who is purged of all pride and freed from all corruption.
One who fulfils his duty is as immovable as the earth itself. He is as
firm as a celestial pillar, pure as an unmuddied lake; and for him the cycle of
births is completed.
Calm are the thoughts, the words and the acts of one who has liberated
himself by the true knowledge and has achieved a perfect tranquillity.
The greatest among men is he who is not credulous but has the sense of
the Uncreated, who has cut all ties, who has destroyed all occasion for
rebirth.
Whether village or forest, plain or mountain, wherever the adepts may
dwell, that place is always delightful.
Delightful are the forests which are shunned by the multitude. There,
the adept, who is free from passion, will find happiness, for he seeks not
after pleasure.
There is a very interesting sentence here: “He who is not
credulous but has the sense of the Uncreated....”
One who is not credulous—all kinds of things can be understood from
this word. The first impression is that it refers to one who does not believe
in invisible things without having an experience of them, as distinct from people
who follow, for example, a particular religion and have faith in dogmas simply because
that is what they have been taught. But he “has the sense of the Uncreated”,
that is to say, he is in contact with invisible things and knows them as they
are, by identity. The Dhammapada has told us, to begin with, that the greatest
of men is he who has no faith in what is taught but has a personal experience
of things that are not visible, he who is free from all belief and has himself
had the experience of invisible things.
Another explanation can also be given: one who is not credulous is
he who does not believe in the reality of appearances, in things as we see
them, who does not take them for the truth, who knows that these are only
misleading appearances and that behind them lies a truth that is to be found
and known by personal experience and by identity.
And this makes one reflect on the number of things, the countless
number of things that we believe without any personal knowledge, simply because
we have been taught that they are like that, or because we are accustomed to
think they are like that, or because we are surrounded by people who believe
that things are like that. If we look at all the things that we believe and not
only believe but assert with an indisputable authority, “This is like this”,
“That, but of course it is like that”, “And this thing, yes, it is so....” In
truth, however, we know nothing about it, it is simply because we are in the
habit of thinking that they are like that. What are the things that you have
experienced personally, with which you have had a direct contact, of which you
can at least say with sincerity, “I am convinced that it is like that, because
I have experienced it”? Not many.
In reality, if you truly want to have knowledge, you must begin by
making a very important study: verify the things that we have been taught, even
the most common and the most insignificant. Then you will understand why the
text says “the greatest among men”, because I do not think that many have made
this experiment.
Just to find out the number of things we believe and assert, simply
because it is customary to believe and assert them, is indeed a very
interesting discovery.
Now go and look into your thought and consciousness for all the
things that you assert without proof. You will see!
28 March 1958
The Thousands
Better than a thousand words devoid of meaning is a single meaningful
word which can bring tranquillity to one who hears it.
Better than a thousand verses devoid of meaning is a single meaningful
verse which can bring tranquillity to one who hears it.
Better than the repetition of a hundred verses devoid of meaning is the
repetition of a single verse of the Teaching which can bring tranquillity to
one who hears it.
The greatest conqueror is not he who is victorious over thousands of
men in battle, but he who is victorious over himself.
The victory that one wins over oneself is of more value than victory
over all the peoples.
No god, no Gandharva, nor Mara nor Brahma can change that victory to defeat.
If, month after month, for a hundred years one offers sacrifices by the
thousand, and if for a single instant one offers homage to a being full of
wisdom, that single homage is worth more than all those countless sacrifices.
If for a hundred years a man tends the flame on Agni’s altar, and if,
for a single instant, he renders homage to a man who has mastered his nature,
this brief homage has more value than all his long devotions.
Whatever the sacrifices and oblations a man in this world may offer
throughout a whole year in order to acquire merit, that is not worth even a
quarter of the homage offered to a just man.
For one who is respectful to his elders, four things increase: long
life, beauty, happiness and strength.
A single day spent in good conduct and meditation is worth more than a
hundred years spent in immorality and dissipation.
A single day of wisdom and meditation is worth more than a hundred
years spent in foolishness and dissipation.
A single day of strength and energy is worth more than a hundred years
spent in indolence and inertia.
A single day lived in the perception that all things appear and
disappear is worth more than a hundred years spent not knowing that they appear
and disappear.
A single day spent in contemplation of the path of immortality is worth
more than a hundred years lived in ignorance of the path of immortality.
A single day spent in contemplation of the supreme Truth is worth more
than a hundred years lived in ignorance of the supreme Truth.
All kinds of different things are gathered here under the same heading.
It is an association of words more than an association of ideas. But the
central trend is this, that it is preferable to have one moment of sincerity
rather than a long life of apparent devotion and that a psychological and
spiritual victory over oneself is more important than all external victories.
There is also an interesting reflection, that a victory over oneself
is the only victory which is truly safe from the intervention of any god or
power of Nature or any instrument of evil. If you have gained self-mastery on
one point, that goes beyond the reach of any intervention even from the very
highest powers, whether they are gods of the Overmind or any anti-divine powers
in the world.
The opening text says that a single word that gives you peace is
worth more than thousands of words that have no meaning—this anybody can
understand—but it is also said that the word that gives you peace is worth more
than thousands of words that can satisfy the mental activity but have no
psychological effect on your being.
Indeed, when you have found something which has the power to help
you in gaining a victory over your unconsciousness and inertia, you must, till
you reach the final result, exhaust all the effects produced by that word or
phrase before you look for others.
It is more important to pursue to its end the practice of the effect
produced by an idea that one has met somehow, than to try to accumulate in the
head a large number of ideas. Ideas may all be very useful in their own time,
if they are allowed in at the opportune moment, particularly if you carry to
the extreme limit the result of one of those dynamic ideas that are capable of
making you win an inner victory. That is to say, one should have for one’s
chief, if not only aim the practice of what one knows rather than the
accumulation in oneself of a knowledge which remains purely theoretical.
So one could sum up: put into practice integrally what you know,
only then can you usefully increase your theoretical knowledge.
11 April 1958