A DROP OF OIL
Posted at 12:16, 13.11.2006
A man who took his two little girls to the amusement park noticed that Mulla Nasrudin kept riding the merry-go-round all afternoon. Once, when the merry-go-round stopped, the Mulla rushed off, took a drink of water, and headed back again. As he passed near the girls, their father said to him, "Mulla, you certainly do like to ride on the merry-go-round, don't you?"
"No, I don't. Rather, I hate it absolutely and am feeling very sick because of it," said Nasrudin. "But the fellow who owns this thing owes me a hundred rupees, and taking it out in trade is the only way I will ever collect from him."
Money seems to be the greatest obsession in the world. Money seems to be the greatest madness in the world. We go on selling our lives and collecting pebbles; we call it money. One day we simply disappear and the money is left here. And the life that you wasted in collecting that money could have been used in a more creative way. It could have become a song, a dance; it could have become a prayer, a meditation; it could have become a realization of truth, freedom... but you missed.
Buddha says:
I CONSIDER THE GAUDY DRESS OF SILKS AND BROCADES AS A WORN-OUT RAG.
All that you go on desiring seems foolish. There are people who live only to eat; there are people who live only to dress; there are people who go on playing with things -- good when you are a child, but it seems that very few people ever become grown-ups. They certainly grow old, but very few people become grown-ups. To grow old is one thing, to become grown-up is quite another. A grown-up person is one who can see through things: what is a toy and what is not a toy. Small children playing -- you laugh at them; but have you looked into your own life? Have you grown up at all? Maybe you have changed your toys -- they are playing with toy cars and you are playing with real cars -- but the play remains the same. There are people who love cars, who love houses. It is not very difficult to see what has happened to them. These are the people who cannot love a person; they can only love a thing -- because you can manipulate a thing, control a thing, better than a person. A person is always dangerous. If you love a woman it is always dangerous; if you love a man it is always dangerous -- because a man or a woman is a freedom, intrinsic freedom. You cannot totally control. Man has tried in every way -- to create marriage, and laws, and this and that, and create respectability around it, and punishment and awards, and everything just to make one thing certain: that the woman is no longer a freedom, that the man is no longer a freedom. When a man is a husband he is no more a person, and when a woman is a wife she is no more a person. The freedom has been killed. Now, a husband is a thing, and a wife is a thing: they can be controlled more easily. If the wife does something, you can go to the court. The magistrate will help you; the police will help you to force the wife back into her 'thinghood'. People love things... and people are afraid of persons. Then people can go to absurd limits. Now, a car has a utility; certainly it has a utility -- but to be in romantic love with a car is absurd. And this is romance! It is absurd -- not only absurd, it is insane.
Buddha said:
I CONSIDER THIS UNIVERSE AS SMALL AS THE HOLILA FRUIT.
I CONSIDER THE
