Buddhist Monks Ask Their Deepest Questions to Sadhguru at Bodh Gaya | Sadhguru

Sadhguru chants Dhyatma Dhyatma, the Buddha, is not a teaching, not a philosophy, not a new religion. He is a method, he is a way. He is like a light. So, when someone lights up, you must see what is there to see, not look at the light. So, it's very important to honor a great being. We must live it, we believe it, we worship it, we carry it in our heads, that's not the point. Because he is not a god, he is not a son of god, he is not a messenger of god, he is just light. Don't look at the light, you must look at what he lights up, because that is the purpose of the light. Looking at the light will only blind us. Namaskaram, namaskaram all of you. Well, on this Jayasthi Paranami, to be here in this blessed place is a great fortune and a privilege. All of you are living a life of dedication to your path, so there's nothing much for me to say. But one thing we need to understand is, which anywhere, in any system, any path, what is a… what is a free-flowing, nebulous path slowly tries to be concretized. In that concretization, something very fundamental could be compromised. Happens everywhere. So in that context, not as a teaching for you or anything, I just thought I should say, there's a beautiful episode. We don't know if it's factual or it's a legend, but it doesn't matter because it represents Buddha. So there is a situation where Gautama is in a large satsang. A man appears early morning when it's still dark and he's a great devotee of Ram. He lives Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram. The devotees, some of them take to this, they will not utter any other word other than their deity's name. So if they want to call you Ram, Ram, if they want you to go Ram, Ram, if they want something Ram, Ram, only Ram, nothing else but Ram. He lived like this. Now time is rolling and he's aging, a little doubt has come in his mind. I'm spending my entire life saying Ram, Ram. Suppose I'm wrong, all these other people seem to be having a good time. They're eating well, living well, I'm doing Ram, Ram. Maybe I'm just wasting my life. He's a great devotee, he's on it, little doubt. So now there is an enlightened one here, so he wants to confirm. So from the back, he asked, is there God? Gautama looked at him and said, no. The whole congregation, oof, within all their minds, this is the struggle, is there God, no God, is there God, no God. A thousand times they've asked this question to the Buddha. But when they ask such questions, he becomes silent, he says nothing. For the first time, he clearly said an emphatic no, big relief in everybody's mind. Because just imagine if there is no God, nobody sitting there and watching you, nobody dragging you through hell and punishing you, you can live your life the way you want. Big relief, great celebrations happen through the day. In the evening, another man came, he's a Charvaka. He's an out and out materialist and an atheist. He knows there is no God. He's an expert Charvaka. If you talk to him for ten minutes, whatever kind of devotee you are, in ten minutes, he will make you give up your God, he's that kind of guy. But aging, time is passing away, little doubt has come, suppose there is God. All my life I proved to everybody there is no God, but suppose there is God, when I go there, will he leave me alone? He knows there is no God, just want to check. Now there's an enlightened one here, he wants to ask the question. So evening he came and asked the same question, is there God? Gautama looked at the man and said, yes. Again, everybody went into turmoil and confusion. Morning he said no God, evening he says there is God. What is he up to? So we need to understand Gautama, the Buddha is not a teaching, not a philosophy, not an ideology, not a new religion. He is a method, he is a way. A way is not a definition. A way is a method, something we are supposed to do, not something we are supposed to believe. Not something that we worship, something that we do, something that we become. It's like a light, if it's dark and I turn on the light, you don't go and hug the light, nor do you have to even look at the light. If the light comes on, you look at things that are lit, not the light itself. So when someone lights up, you must see what is there to see, not look at the light, because looking at the light will only blind you. So it's very important to honor a great being. We must live it. We believe it, we worship it, we carry it in our heads, that's not the point. We must live it. Only then he's truly honored because that was his only intent, that people should live it. So it's wonderful that so many of you and young boys taking up to this path, but we should not get carried away because he is not a god, he is not a son of god, he is not a messenger of god, he's just light. Don't look at the light, you must look at what he lights up, because that is the purpose of the light. Looking at the light will only blind us. So being here on this day, well, I was here almost twenty-three years ago. Nobody noticed me, I could spend time here quietly. But today, if you have any questions, please. Thank you Guruji, coming here as well as sharing you this nice short story regarding with the at the Buddha's time, those 18 questions that his followers or someone asked, but Buddha didn't answer directly, he stayed in silence. So may I ask you, over the many decades following your path, gradually concretizing your path, what is your doubt? I don't live in doubt. I'm very clear. What we know, we know, what we do not know, we do not know. Very clear. Because I don't go by any belief system or philosophy or ideology. What I see, I see. What I don't see, I don't see, as simple as that. And if you're honest enough with life, most of it we don't know. We figured out a little bit. That little itself is a great blessing. Most of this cosmos, what it is, we do not know. But we know by inference. It's like today, modern physics is telling you, the basic construction of an atom and the cosmos is about the same. It is just the sophistication and the complexity is multiplying. But essentially, it's the same. So if you know an atom, by inference, you know the cosmos. You have not seen it. But by inference, you know the cosmos. We are born out of one cell. One cell became like this. The simple mathematic of this is, one became two, two became four, four became eight, eight became sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four. This is how we became. Can you believe this was one cell sometime ago? Hello? Isn't that the way it's happened? So if you know that one cell, in some way, you know the entire life. But by inference, not by actually walking through it, nobody knows it that way. Because no one in this world, either people who claim to be men of science, they do not know where the cosmos begins, where it ends. People who claim to be men of God, they also do not know where it begins, where it ends. We're in such a blessed creation that even if you travel at the speed of light for a million years, still you won't reach the ends. Isn't it a fantastic thing? If you hit the end, what would you do? You would bounce back. So we are in such a blessed creation that even if you travel for millions of years, you will not touch the end. That is the beauty of this creation. If we are not… if you don't have humility to enjoy your ignorance, then you have a serious problem. I do not know is a very powerful possibility. Only when you see I do not know, the possibility of longing to know, seeking to know and the possibility of knowing arises. Everything I do not know, I believe. No, no, it is an imaginary bridge. You don't cross anything by that. I believe something. It's only in my mind, isn't it? Hello? What I believe is only in my mind, it's not a reality. Maybe it'll give me psychological strength or it'll give me confidence without clarity. Confidence without clarity is a disaster. Gautama is against all confidence without clarity. He is for clarity. If you don't see, you don't see. Don't imagine that you're seeing something. If it goes beyond a point, it's called a psychological ailment. It's like this. If you pray to God, you are different. If you pray to God, you are talking to God. It's all right. You can talk as much as you want. Instead of talking to some local gossip, you're talking to God. It's okay. But in case he speaks to you, that means you're schizophrenic. Understand? If you speak, it's prayer. It's okay. It has many benefits because without getting entangled, you're working out your karma in a way. If you talk to somebody, you'll get entangled. You're talking to God, perfectly fine. But in case he speaks, just know you have become a schizophrenic. This is very important to understand that… See, our knowledge, even if you read the libraries of the world, it's just a minuscule in this limitless cosmos. But our ignorance is boundless. So in yoga, we always identify with our ignorance because our knowledge is so small. If you identify with that, you will become so small. If you identify with your ignorance, you are a boundless being. So we celebrate ignorance, not as a qualification, but as a possibility. Only if you recognize that you're ignorant, the possibility of knowing arises in one's life. Hindi? Our Hindi is very weak. So now in these days, everywhere have the fighting and the hate and the people are engaged in this country to country. And the people also have to really… the solution for this. See, the main problem with the history of humanity has been, we've been trying to transform societies and nations. Society is just a word. Nation is just a word. There is just you and me as a reality. If I'm not willing to transform myself, I want to transform the nation. It's just a joke. It's a… it's a way of playing a joke on the world, that we are fooling ourselves and fooling everybody. I'm transforming the whole world. You cannot transform the world because there is no world. There are only people, individual people. So wanting to transform individual people is a painstaking lifelong work. It's not one day slogan on the street. Shall I tell you my problem, sir, because he wanted to know. Doubt, I don't have doubt, but I have problems. Shall I tell you? So this happened to me when I was twenty-five years of age. By the time I'm twenty-five, by the time I'm eleven, twelve, I'm a super skeptic, graduated to be an atheist, then became an agnostic, then again became an atheist, then became a communist, then became an agnostic. I haven't been through many steps of transformation there. By the time I'm twenty-five, I'm into businesses. I'm running about half a dozen businesses, all successful. When everything that you're doing is successful, you… I'm not arrogant, but little cocky. Everybody is clapping their hands. Everybody says, wow, you're doing great. I'm only twenty-five. So you're little beginning to feel like the planets are going around you, not the sun, you know. Success makes you feel like that. Hello? So one afternoon, I'm just sitting on a small hill. I don't know if you've any… any of you ever been to Mysore? You've been to Mysore? Bayalkuppe you've been? Okay. I've spent a lot of time in Bayalkuppe and also the Hunsur camp. Some of the monks that I knew, I think they are no more in Hunsur camp. We worked closely with them for some time. I used to camp there because I used to forage into Nagarole reserve forest and I was part of the earliest Project Tiger with Dr. Karan. So we used to camp in the Bayalkuppe, I'm sorry, the Hunsur camp, which was just coming up at that time in seventies. So I went up this hill and just sat there. Suddenly I did not know which is me and which is not me. What was me was just all over the place. I always thought this is me, that's you. I have no problem with you, but this is me, that is you. I feed this one, not that, all right? Suddenly I did not know which is me, which is not me. Everything was me. I thought this lasted for 10-15 minutes, but about four and a half hours had passed before I came to my so-called normal consciousness. For the first time in my adult life, tears, me and tears were impossible. I lived like that. But tears to a point, my shirt is all wet and every cell in my body is bursting with ecstasy, like dripping ecstasy. So I shake my head and ask my super skeptical head, what do you think is happening? My head says, maybe you're going off your rocker, you're losing your balance. Then I asked my closest friends, what do you think is happening to me? I'm just ecstatic. If I just close my eyes and look like this, I think it's two minutes, but seven, eight hours have passed. I lost sense of time, totally. Hours and days just passed like moments. So I knew there is no context around me to tell me what is happening to me because I did not grow up in any spiritual atmosphere. I grew up very agnostic, reading Dostoevsky, Camus, Kafka, this kind of European intellectual stuff, not anything spiritual. So then I sat down and experimented and saw what is causing this. I just realized that if I keep a little distance from my psychological happenings and my physiological happening, both our body and our mind is something that we accumulated over a period of time. If I keep little distance from that, it's like if you keep little distance from these clothes, you know this is just a cloth. But if you are wearing a skin tight clothing, probably you do not know which is a cloth, which is your skin. So little distance if you keep from your psychological and physiological activity, suddenly every cell in the body bursts forth in ecstasy. Then I sat down and experimented many ways and I know it'll work. Then I tried with a few handful of people, it worked. Then I sat down and made a plan. I took the world's map. On that day, the world's population was 4.82 billion people. So I sat down and made a plan, in two and a half years' time, I will make the whole world blissful because who wouldn't want to be blissful? See, forty-four years. Three-hundred-and-sixty-five days, seven days of the week, sixteen to eighteen hours a day, non-stop. Still people say we have touched around two billion people today. Two billion is not my idea of the world. Today the world's population is 8.4 billion. Population is going on increasing. So now I know I will die a failure, but I'm a blissful failure. So you must come to terms with some things, but you must be blissful. That's the important thing. If you're blissful, you can come to terms with anything. If you're miserable, even with the best things you cannot come to terms with. So right now, this is the problem. People are not blissful. When they were five, six years of age, they were hopping around in joy. Somebody had to work hard to make them miserable. Today somebody has to work hard to make them happy. The equation they have reversed. Just imagine, sir, when you are very joyful, do you ever think of causing harm to somebody? It's not your goodness which is a protection. Good people have done the most horrible things. People who believe they are good, they have done the most horrible things on the planet. But when you're very joyful, you will not do any harmful things to anybody because human being is essentially sharing their experience. If you're joyful, you do pleasant things. If you're miserable, you do ugly things. If you're resentful, you'll do horrendous things. So right now, people become leaders without any sense of… forget about joy and bliss, they're not even peaceful. So we cannot transform the world. We have to transform individual human beings. It's a lifelong work. It cannot be done by one person or one organization or one something. A large number of people have to strive to bring that to every human being. And after all, largely in the world, at least eighty, eighty-five percent of the planet is democratic. If the people are really blissful, peaceful and blissful, they will elect such a person. Right now, they're also miserable and stressed, so they elect such a person. So without reason, they will fight. Most of the time it's without reason because there's no good enough reason to kill millions of people. Hello? There's no good enough reason for that. It is just that we get identified. See, in this culture, before we offer education to a child, from zero to twelve in this culture, we should not teach a child anything. Just they must eat well, play well, sleep well, because the body and brain should grow to full size. That's the most important thing. Don't load it with anything till twelve. Twelve, when we want to induct them into education, we initiated them. This I'm talking in ancient Bharat. The initiation was Aham Brahmasmi. That means you make the child identify not with the parents, not with the family, not with the community or nation, identify with the cosmos. My identity is cosmic. See, if I'm identified this with this body, you are a problem for me. If I identified with this community, those who are outside are a problem for me. If I am identified with this nation, those who are beyond the borders are a problem to me. We must understand there is no other crime on the planet except limited identification that human beings take. The entire spiritual process is to bring a human being to that experience that your identification with the body, your identification with your surroundings and your people, your genetics, your whatever, all these things are lowered so that your identity is much larger. If I'm identified with you as my own, if I experience you as my own, where is the question of a fight or a war? So, there is no immediate solution, we need to understand this. There were mechanisms in the world to at least contain it, like we… after World War II, we came up with United Nations and some international laws, so that it is not that they stopped the wars, at least there was a legal process for that. Well, in the last twenty years, we've broken all those things. I can wage war on anybody, you understand. Very large countries are waging war on other countries. We can wage war on anybody you want, okay? You can pick a small country and demolish them. There is nobody to ask anymore. It's only… Might is right. If I have the muscle, I can beat you up. So, we are building a lawless world. This law is not for genuine peace. At least it kind of contains violence. But even that we have broken. People have withdrawn from nuclear treaties in the last ten years, you know. There were international nuclear treaties that we won't use nuclear weapons, everybody has withdrawn from that. Everybody is ready and ready to fire. How much nuclear weapons do we have? America has some 5,600, 700, you know. Russia has some 6,400 or whatever. Chinese have some 3,000 plus. India has some 300 or so. Like this, if you add up everything, we can not only destroy this planet, we can destroy the moon and the Mars and whatever other planets we are planning to go, all of it we can destroy. We have that much firepower. So, if very sane human beings are not there at the top, it's a very dangerous world. It is. There's no magic wand solution. If a generation works hard to bring meditativeness into the larger population, some change will happen, they will elect somebody who is little meditative, who will not think of aggression. But it's not an insurance. It is a better possibility. This is how the world is. Don't ask me difficult questions. Participant 3 Guruji, namaste. Welcome to Andhra Bodhicharya. We are very fortunate to have chance to meet you, receive blessing from you and also chance to ask, but I have no special questions. I'm little bit nervous. So, therefore… Sadhguru I'm not as dangerous as I look. We say, commit no evils. Engage as much in virtuous deeds. Subdue one's own mind thoroughly. That is only the way benefit for all sentient beings. So, my questions, would you like or would you agree with this? Megan, say something please from you. Sadhguru So, whether you want the well-being of all beings or not is not a question. It's a natural longing in a human being when he's not identified with something small. You're identified with this property, just this property. Now somebody encroach into this. Well, you will protest, you will complain, then you will fight. So, I'm saying the fundamentals of conflict in the world is not necessarily human intent. It's the human identity which causes conflict. And I must… If I have to narrate something to you, intent is there. Ten commandments are there. They're saying thou shall not kill, thou shall not do this. Well, people, these same people have been killing a lot alone. In the last two millennia, lot of killing has happened, isn't it? I was to speak in Tel Aviv. I'm flying out of Atlanta in United States. Well, due to some technical problems on the plane, it got delayed. I'm supposed to land at 11.30 in the morning and speak at 6.30 in the evening. But instead I landed at 6 in the evening. I'm flying an American airline. There is nothing edible on the plane, you know. So, I'm super hungry when I get down, famished. But 6.30 I have to speak, six o'clock I land. I have a reputation, in this forty-four years I have not been late to a single event. So, I quickly change in the airport and rush, no time to even have a bite of anything. And when I go to the venue, this never happens to me. On that day, I'm speaking in a fine restaurant in Tel Aviv. I thought, wow, when you're so hungry, they set it up in a fine restaurant where they smell of food and I have to speak only there, after that they'll serve me all right. So, I went in and people were greeting me and one of them comes up and says, I asked him, what does it mean? He says, this is the highest way of greeting. I say, see, that's your opinion. What does it mean actually? No, no, this is the highest way of greeting. I said, all right, what does the word mean? He said, it means peace. See, I told him, see, why would peace be the highest way of greeting unless you're born in Middle East? In South India, if somebody comes up to me in the morning and says, peace, I will say, what's wrong with you? Those who are deprived of peace for centuries, they think peace is the highest thing. You go to America, people will say, God is love. Because love is missing in the society, God becomes love. Here we call God Annapurneshwari, because food is missing, food becomes God. I'm saying whatever we deprive ourselves of, we try to raise it to heaven. Don't do that, because to be peaceful, to be loving, to be blissful, to be ecstatic, these are all human qualities, hello? If ourselves and everybody around us was peaceful, blissful, joyful, loving, we would live in a wonderful world. But everything that is good about a human being, we have a tendency to export it to heaven. If you say bliss, they say heavenly bliss. If they say ecstasy, heavenly ecstasy. Why? These are all human things. We must keep it in this world, keep it in our hearts. Is this not important? No, God is love. Whether God is love or not, who cares? Are you love or not? That's what matters, isn't it? So, this is very important we need to understand. If we do not create fundamental processes in our mind, which will inevitably lead to conflict. It doesn't take any genius to look at this. If you pay attention, you can see what are the structures in our mind which leads to conflict. If you bring them down, if not fully, if you lower them substantially, you don't have to tell myself, I don't… I never told myself, thou shall not kill. Do I never thought of killing my neighbor, okay? I never told myself, thou shall not steal. I never thought I should take what belongs to you. So, I'm saying we are creating those things, it's like, please forgive your enemies. You make someone an enemy, how? How do you make somebody an enemy? I don't like the way you are. Now, you are my enemy, I'm done, I tried to forgive you. This is very hard circus you're doing. Why make him an enemy? He's like that. Maybe I don't like the way he is, so I'll go this way if he goes that way. Hello? That's about it. So, we create structures in our minds which are inevitably conflict and then we're trying to bring morality, don't do this, don't do that. Well, has it worked in the world? Why are we going on doing things that don't work forever? It's time to evaluate these things, isn't it? And anyway, in the month of August, this is not to make you feel bad, but I thought I can help you in taking your spirits with me. In the month of August, I'm riding through Tibet. Okay, every year I've been doing it for the last 20 years. Yes, last 20 years, every year I've been going. So, I'm riding on a motorcycle. There is a seat for you, sir, if you… Okay, maybe I can ride at the back, Guruji. I will ride at the back with you. I know many of you cannot go for political reasons, but I'll take you with me. So, pray for us. Thank you. Namaskaram. Thank you, thank you. Thank you very much. Namaskaram.