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(Buddha Jayanti Message 1976)

I have been requested today, especially, to speak a few words on the significance of this particular day - happily, this subject that I have been describing just now: the adjustment of the mind with the conditions prevailing outside. This subject of meditation has been a great point made out by a master who was supposed to have been born today - Buddha. Buddha Jayanti is celebrated today, and his philosophy and teachings were nothing but this very, very particular theme.

He does not ask you to meditate on God or the Atman, but on a particular psychological state of the mind. The whole of Buddhist philosophy is psychology and ethics, and controversies of a religious nature or a philosophical character are futile where the interest is spiritual. Our interest in Buddha or his followers is spiritual. It is not philosophical in a dogmatic sense, or in the sense of any cult or a school of thought.

He had a vision, and the vision was of the structure of the universe; that was all. And, when you are able to visualise the nature of things as they constitute this huge edifice called the universe, you'll be taken aback, just as you'll be taken aback if you are going to see your own body through a powerful microscope. Can you imagine what you are going to observe when you see the human body through a microscope which is very, very powerful? This is what Buddha saw through his intuitive eye. His mind itself was a microscope. It could see through things.

The complex nature of the universe and the ingredients that form this shape that we call 'objects', were before his mind. You cannot have any kind of aesthetic feeling towards things when their true nature is seen. A rose petal is beautiful, but see it through a microscope and you will see something quite different altogether. You will see only small globules of matter revolving and rotating in a hectic manner for purposes not known to us. The whole universe is of that nature, including my own body, your body, and every blessed thing in this world.

Sorrow is the nature of this life, and contemplate on this sorrow, the Upanishad tells us. Contemplate the very meaning behind sorrow: how sorrow comes. Then you will have no sorrow. Sorrow has come because you do not know why the sorrow is coming. If you know the cause of sorrow, perhaps you will avert the coming of sorrow itself.

Sorrow of every kind comes to us on account of our not knowing our relationship with things. Neither do we know why this body has come - what our mental attitude or our relationship should be with this body - nor do we know what our social relationship should be with other people. We do not know what is good for us and what is not good for us. We do not know why we are living at all in this world; why we are working so hard from morning to night; what is the ultimate aim behind things. Why is it that certain things give pleasure to us and certain things bring sorrow to us? Do people find it easy to find an answer to these queries? No one knows.

Everything is dark in front of us. So we are in a state of utter ignorance. We are ignoramuses of the first water. And, a peculiar sensation in our mind in respect of the body which it inhabits, and our social relationships, give us a kind of titillation of the nerves, and that brings us pleasure. It is not a pleasure born of understanding or of knowledge. It is born of subjection to instinct, and being under the thumb of certain reactions produced by our own senses in respect of visible objects.

That was discovered by Buddha, and that was to the horror of anybody. Things are not what they seem. All is not gold that glitters. The world is not a compact solid object as it looks. The solid stone before us is not a solid stone, really. It is a family of small, small insects called atoms, molecules, etc. They are like flies running here and there in a brood which looks like a mass or a solid object. If one thousand flies sit together in one group, they would look like a black hard object, but they are only a bundle of flies, like maggots or insects. You call them atoms, electrons - running here and there for purposes they only know.

These are the flies; these are the insects; these are the microbes; these are the building bricks which are at the back of all these beautiful things that we see in this world. Behind all the beauty of things, there is an ugliness hidden behind. Behind the rosy petals that nature presents before us, there is a knife kept under the armpit. This is what Buddha saw before his intuitive eye. He was really horrified, but why should one be horrified when one sees truth? "I have been mistaken." Now, you are disillusioned.

So, the illumination or the enlightenment of the Buddha was nothing but a disillusionment, ultimately. Anyone would be taken aback by this kind of discovery. "I have been hugging to my heart's delight an object to my own satisfaction, and today I realise it is constituted of flies. It is not a solid object as I thought." It can be dismantled. When the flies depart here and there, they are no longer there. Like a beehive, as it were, the object is. When you pull out every brick of the building, the building itself is not there. What you call the building is only a name that you give to a heap of bricks. There is no such thing as 'building'; it does not exist. Why don't you call it a 'heap of bricks'? Why do you call it 'building'? You have only created a further bondage by adding one more name to a non-existent object. When the world does not exist, you call it a 'world'.

Why does not the world exist? It does not exist in the same way as a building does not exist. But the world exists in the same way as a building exists. Don't I see the building? Yes, I see. Don't I see the world? I see the world. But what is this building made of? It is made up of little, small pieces of earth you call bricks, or heated mass of earth. If you remove the plaster, you can see the little pieces inside. Remove the plaster of the world; the illusion that covers your eyes; the infatuation with which you look at things. This is the plaster that you put over the building bricks of the cosmos. Remove the plaster. You'll see the horrible sight of little pieces which constitute this solid so-called world which is before you.

So, there is a shaky foundation behind, or underneath, this so-called stable cosmos. We are insecure in life. There is insecurity behind the security of all so-called pleasures of life. We seem to be seated on velvet cushions, but underneath it there is an earthquake taking place, and we can go down any moment. Such is the beauty of the world, such is the stability of things, and such is the security that these can give us.

All this illusion has been created on account of the attachment of consciousness to the mental structure. This is a Vedantic touch given by the later thought to the discovery of the Buddha. The mind is as much a name as a building is, or as any object is. There is no such thing as the mind, just as there is no such thing as the building, just as there is no such thing as any object or the world at all. They do not exist. They are only some heaps of molecules; they are heaps of transitory passages or phenomena - they are processes. They are only passing stages which look like a solid object; like a cinematographic projection, which is nothing but an illusion projected before the mind by the quick movement of pictures. The solid things are not there. What is solid is only a screen behind. Likewise, there is a screen of ego which substantiates the passages of the various phenomena which constitute this cosmos.

So, there is no such thing as existence of anything; it is only transience of everything. There is a momentariness of objects. Everything passes - even this shall pass away - even your body; even your mind which also is a complexity of structures, of various impressions, or Vasanas. Various thoughts put together constitute the mind. If the thoughts are pulled out, like threads from a cloth, the mind does not exist. Likewise, you pull out every brick of everything, and you find no world exists.

So what is it that you are working for? What is it you are asking for? You understand why you're unhappy in this world. You have an illusion before you. You are caught up by a nightmare of the perception of the world. An incubus is before you. This is the world perception. You are under a terrible misapprehension of things. This misapprehension is called Avidya, which causes desire, or Trishna as it is called in Sanskrit. In the language of Vedanta, it is Avidya, Kama, Karma. Ignorance causes desire. Desire causes action towards the possession of the object of desire, which brings about a reaction, again, which is called Karma - which brings rebirth. The wheel of life thus rotates; the Samsara Chakra moves endlessly, as it were, causing bondage and bondage, bondage after bondage.

What is the solution? The discovery of the cause of sorrow. The discovery of the cause of sorrow means the finding out where this misconception has arisen at all. It is in your own mind. You have got a wrong perception of things, and therefore you have to, first of all, practice a discipline capable enough to dissect the mind itself into its components, so that it disintegrates and the personality vanishes, because the personality is nothing but the working of the mind. There is an extinction of personality.

This extinction of personality by the disintegration of the constituents of the mind is called Nirvana. You are blown up like the lamp that is blown up by the wind and you reach Nirvana, a blessed state. What it is Buddha did not say, and no one can tell you.

This is the message of the Buddha for you today, Buddha Purnima.

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