When a mood against someone or for someone arises, do not place it on the person in question, but remain centered.
If hate arises for someone or against someone, or love arises for someone, what do we do? We project it on the person. If you feel hate toward me, you forget yourself completely in your hate; only I become your object. If you feel love toward me, you forget yourself completely; only I become the object. You project your love or hate or whatsoever upon me. You forget completely the inner center of your being; the other becomes the center. This sutra says when hate arises or love arises, or any mood for or against anyone, do not project it on the person in question. Remember, you are the source of it.
I love you--the ordinary feeling is that you are the source of my love. That is not really so. I am the source; you are just a screen on which I project my love. You are just a screen; I project my love on you and I say that you are the source of my love. This is not fact, this is fiction. I draw my love energy and project it onto you. In that love energy projected onto you, you become lovely. You may not be lovely to someone else, you may be absolutely repulsive to someone else. Why? If you are the source of love then everyone will feel loving toward you, but you are not the source. I project love, then you become lovely; someone projects hate, then you become repulsive. And someone else doesn’t project anything, he is indifferent; he may not even have looked at you. What is happening? We are projecting our own moods upon others.
That is why, if you are on your honeymoon, the moon looks beautiful, miraculous, wonderful. It seems that the whole world is different. And on the same night, just for your neighbor, this miraculous night may not be in existence at all. His child has died—then the same moon is just sad, intolerable. But for you it is enchanting, fascinating: it is maddening. Why? Is the moon the source or is the moon just a screen and you are projecting yourself?
This sutra says, when a mood against someone or for someone arises, do not place it on the person in question—or on the object in question. Remain centered. Remember that you are the source, so do not move to the other, move to the source. When you feel hate, do not go to the object. Go to the point from where the hate is coming. Go not to the person to whom it is going, but to the center from where it is coming. Move to the center, go within. Use your hate or love or anger or anything as a journey toward your inner center, to the source. Move to the source and remain centered there.
Try it! This is a very, very scientific, psychological technique. Someone has insulted you—anger suddenly erupts, you are feverish. Anger is flowing toward the person who has insulted you. Now you will project this whole anger onto him. He has not done anything. If he has insulted you, what has he done? He has just pricked you, he has helped your anger to arise—but the anger is yours. If he goes to Buddha and insults him, he will not be able to create any anger in him. Or if he goes to Jesus, Jesus will give him the other cheek. Or if he goes to Bodhidharma, he will roar with laughter. So it depends.
The other is not the source, the source is always within you. The other is hitting the source, but if there is no anger within you it cannot come out. If you hit a Buddha, only compassion will come out because only compassion is there. Anger will not come out because anger is not there. If you throw a bucket into a dry well, nothing comes out. In a water-filled well, you throw a bucket and water comes out, but the water is from the well. The bucket only helps to bring it out. So one who is insulting you is just throwing a bucket in you, and then the bucket will come out filled with the anger, hate, or fire that was within you. You are the source, remember.
For this technique, remember that you are the source of everything that you go on projecting onto others. And whenever there is a mood against or for, immediately move within and go to the source from where this hate is coming. Remain centered there; do not move to the object. Someone has given you a chance to be aware of your own anger—thank him immediately and forget him. Close your eyes, move within, and now look at the source from where this love or anger is coming. From where? Go within, move within. You will find the source there because the anger is coming from your source.
Hate or love or anything is coming from your source. And it is easy to go to the source at the moment you are angry or in love or in hate, because then you are hot. It is easy to move in then. The wire is hot and you can take it in, you can move inward with that hotness. And when you reach a cool point within, you will suddenly realize a different dimension, a different world opening before you. Use anger, use hate, use love to go within.
We use it always to move to the other, and we feel very much frustrated if no one is there to project upon. Then we go on projecting even on inanimate objects. I have seen persons being angry at their shoes, throwing them in anger. What are they doing? I have seen angry persons pushing a door in anger, throwing their anger on the door, abusing the door, using dirty language against the door. What are they doing?
I will end with a Zen insight about this. One of the greatest of Zen masters, Lin Chi, used to say, “While I was young I was very fascinated by boating. I had one small boat, and I would go on the lake alone. For hours together I would remain there.”
“ Once it happened that with closed eyes I was in my boat meditating on the beautiful night. One empty boat came floating downstream and struck my boat. My eyes were closed, so I thought, ‘Someone is here with his boat, and he has struck my boat.’ Anger arose. I opened my eyes and I was just going to say something to that man in anger; then I realized that the boat was empty. Then there was no way to move. To whom could I express the anger? The boat was empty. It was just floating downstream, and it had come and struck my boat. So there was nothing to do. There was no possibility to project the anger on an empty boat.”
So Lin Chi said, “I closed my eyes. The anger was there, but finding no way out, I closed my eyes and just floated backward with the anger. And that empty boat became my realization. I came to a point within myself in that silent night. That empty boat was my master. And now if someone comes and insults me, I laugh and I say, ‘This boat is also empty.’ I close my eyes and I go within.”
Use this technique. It may work miracles for you.
The first question:
That last technique you discussed yesterday said that when a mood against someone or for someone arises, not to place it on the person in question but to remain centered. But when we experiment with this technique on our anger, hatred, etcetera, we feel that we are suppressing our emotion and it becomes a suppressed complex. So please clarify how to be free from these suppressed complexes while practicing the above technique.
Expression and suppression are two aspects of one coin. They are contradictory, but basically they are not different. In expression in suppression, in both, the other is the center. I am angry – I suppress the anger. I was going to express anger against you; now I suppress the anger against you. But the anger goes on being projected onto you whether expressed or suppressed. This technique is not for suppression. This technique changes the very base of expression and suppression both.
This technique says, do not project it on the other, you are the source. Whether you express it or suppress it, you are the source. The emphasis is neither on expression nor on suppression. The emphasis is on knowing from where this anger arises. You have to move to the center, the source from where anger, hate and love arise. When you suppress you are not moving to the center, you are struggling with the expression.
Anger has arisen in me. Ordinarily, I can do two things: express onto someone or repress it. But in both the cases I am concerned with the other and I am concerned with the energy of anger that has come to the surface—not with the source.
This technique is to forget the other completely. Just look at your energy of anger arising and move deep down to find the source within yourself from where it is coming. And the moment you find the source, remain centered in it. Do not do anything with anger—remember. In expression you are doing something with anger; in suppression also you are doing something with anger. Do not do anything with anger; do not touch it, just use it as a path. Just go deep down into it to know from where this has arisen. And the moment you will find the source, it is very easy to be centered there. Anger has to be used, really, as a path to find the source. Any emotion can be used.
When you suppress you are not going to find the source, you are just struggling with energy that has come up and wants to be expressed. You can suppress it, but it will be expressed sooner or later because you cannot struggle forever with the energy that has come up. It has to be expressed. So you may not express it upon A, but then you will express it upon B or C. Whenever you find someone who is weaker than you, you will express the energy. And unless you express it you will feel burdened, tense, heavy and ill at ease.
So it will be expressed. You cannot suppress it continuously. From somewhere it will leak out, suspended phenomenon which will have to be released. Then what to do?
This technique says, do not do anything with the mood itself, just go back to the source from where the mood is coming. And while the mood is hot, the path is clear, visible inside; you can move on it. Use moods for meditation. The result is miraculous, unbelievable. And once you find the key that shows you how to pour the energy back to the source, you will have a different quality of personality. Then you will not be dissipating anything, then it will look stupid.
Buddha has said that whenever you are angry against someone, you are punishing yourself for the misdeed of the other. He has insulted you—that is his deed—and you are punishing yourself by being angry; you are dissipating your energy. This is stupid. But then, listening to Buddha, Mahavira, Jesus, we start repressing; we start suppressing our energy. Then we think that it is not good, that it is stupid to be angry.
So what to do? Suppress the anger, do not be angry, pull yourself in, close yourself. Fight with your anger and suppress it. But then you will be sitting on something which will explode any moment. You are sitting on a Vesuvius—any moment it will explode.
You go on collecting. The whole day’s anger is collected; the whole month’s anger is collected; the whole year’s anger, and the anger of your whole life, and then the anger of many lives, is collected. It is there, it can explode at any moment. Then you become very afraid of being alive even, because any moment anything can go in and you will explode. You become afraid, every moment is an inner struggle.
Psychologists say it is better to express than to suppress, but religion cannot say this. Religion says both are stupid. In expression you are harming the other and also yourself. In suppression you are harming yourself, and you will harm someone else someday. Move to the source so that the energy falls back to the source and becomes formless. Then you will feel very powerful without being angry. Then you will feel energy—vital energy. You will be alive, you will have an intense life without forms. Anyone will be impressed just by your presence. You need not dominate anyone, just your presence and they will feel that some powerful source has come.
Whenever someone goes to a Buddha or to a Krishna, suddenly his energy feels a change of climate because of such a powerful source. The moment you move near, you are magnetized. No one is magnetizing you, no one is trying anything, there is just the presence. You may feel that someone has hypnotized you, but no one is hypnotizing. The presence of a Buddha—whose energy has become formless, whose energy has gone to the source, who is centered at his source—the very presence is hypnotizing. It becomes charismatic.
Buddha became enlightened. Before his enlightenment he had five disciples. They were ascetics and when Buddha himself was a great ascetic, torturing his body in many, many ways, inventing new and more sadistic techniques to torture himself, those five were his ardent followers. Then Buddha felt that this was wholly, absolutely absurd. Just by torturing one’s body one is not going to realize oneself. When he realized this, he left ascetic ways. Those five followers left him immediately. They said, “You have fallen down. You are no more an ascetic.” They left him.
When Buddha became enlightened, the first idea that came to his mind was about those five followers. Once they were his followers, so he must go to them. He felt a duty – he must find them and tell them what he has found. So he searched for them, and he traveled in Bihar, from Bodhgaya to Benares, just to find them. They were at Sarnath. Buddha never came back to Benares again, because he came only for those five disciples.
He came to Sarnath. It was evening time, the sun was setting, and those five ascetics were sitting on a hillock. The saw Buddha coming, so the said, “That fallen Gautama Buddha, that Gautama Siddhartha who has fallen from the path, is coming. We must not pay any respect to him. We should not pay to him even ordinary respect.”
So they closed their eyes. Buddha came nearer and nearer, and those five ascetics began to feel a change—a change of mind. They became uneasy. When Buddha reached just near, suddenly all the five opened their eyes and fell at the feet of Buddha. Buddha said, “But why are you doing this? You decided not to give any respect to me, so why are you doing this?”
They said, “We are not doing it, it is happening. What have you gained? You have become a magnetic force. We are just being pulled. What are you doing to us? Have you hypnotized us?” Buddha said, “No! I have done nothing to you, but something has happened in me. All the energies have fallen to the source, so wherever I move, suddenly a magnetic force is felt.”
That is why those who are against Buddha or Mahavira go on saying for centuries, “That man was not good; he was hypnotizing people.” No one is hypnotizing. You become hypnotized—that is another thing. When your energy falls back to the original source, you become a magnetic center. This technique is to create this magnetic center in you.