Earn4Blog

It has been valued very much in the past: the warlike quality, the warlike man, because man has existed violently. In three thousand years we have fought five thousand wars. It is very rare that war is not happening somewhere or other on earth. It continues, if not here then there, if not there then somewhere else; it seems to be a continuous phenomenon. And what we call peace is not true peace, it is only a gap between two wars. In fact we should not divide history into war and peace. We should divide it into the period when we prepare for war and the period when we really make war -- preparation and war. What we call peace is nothing but preparation for another war.

In the future we have to drop those qualities from the human mind. So go beyond being war-like, then you become a sannyasin.

Love is the essential core of it. Creating a non-violent existence is what is meant by a religious man. Living in such a way that you are never in a fight, at least not from your side. You cannot prevent others from being in quarrel with you, but from your side, you need not initiate it.

To be nonviolent means to be non-competitive, because competition is bound to bring violence, gross or subtle, direct or indirect, but violence follows like a shadow if competitiveness is there. The ambitious mind is the violent mind; then you have to be warlike, then life is nothing but a constant struggle. And man has not only been fighting on the outside with others, man has been going through three kinds of wars. One is with nature, the other is with other people, and third is with himself. The first war has become science: the war with nature. The second war has become politics: the war with other people. And the third war, unfortunately, has become religion: the war with yourself.

I would like you to be absolutely without any war, neither the so-called scientific war with nature, nor the political war with others, nor the so-called religious war with yourself. That is the difference between my sannyasin and the so-called monks that have existed on the earth in the past: Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, Buddhist -- they were all fighting with themselves. They had stopped fighting with others, they were not political people, but their whole politics turned inwards. They found it a shortcut to avoid fighting with others: they started fighting with themselves. That became their preoccupation, and it is even more destructive than fighting with others, because others at least can protect themselves. If you fight with yourself there is nobody to protect you. You can kill yourself... and the so-called saints have all been suicidal, leaving aside a few exceptions which I don't count as saints: a Buddha, a Jesus, a Zarathustra, a Lao Tzu -- these are far beyond the sinner and the saint both.

Be a sannyasin, with no war. Let peace prevail, in each act, in each gesture... and slowly slowly that peace will become more and more dense, so tangible you can almost touch it, you can feel its texture.



COURTSEY: OSHOWORLD.COM