Dhammpada - The Way Of The Buddha

Life is a flux, nothing abides. Still we are such fools, we go on clinging. If change is the nature of life, then clinging is stupidity, because your clinging is not going to change the law of life. Your clinging is only going to make you miserable. Things are bound to change; whether you cling or not does not matter. If you cling you become miserable: you cling and they change, you feel frustrated. If you don't cling they still change, but then there is no frustration because you were perfectly aware that they are bound to change. This is how things are, this is the suchness of life.

It is a very strange world. Everything is momentary, yet every momentary thing gives you the illusion of being permanent. Everything is just a soap bubble, shining beautifully in the sunrays, maybe surrounded by a rainbow, a beautiful aura of light -- but a soap bubble is a soap bubble! Any moment and it will be gone and gone forever. But for the moment it can deceive you.

And the strangest thing is that thousands of times you have been deceived, yet you don't become aware. Again another soap bubble and you will believe. Your unintelligence seems to be unlimited! How many times do you need to be hammered? How many times do your dreams have to be crushed and shattered? How many times has life to prove that clinging is nonsense? Stop clinging and then you go beyond sorrow. It is clinging that is the root cause of sorrow.

The world is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand. Just watch your own life and you will see it happening within your mind too. You understand things which you don't manage; it is easy to understand things which you don't manage.

Somebody asked George Bernard Shaw, "Do you believe that nothing is impossible?"

Bernard Shaw is reported to have said, "Yes, I DO believe that nothing is impossible, provided somebody else is going to do it."

It is easy to understand what you don't manage. What YOU manage you don't understand at all. Do you understand your life? You understand about God and you don't understand about your life energy. You understand about heaven and hell. There are people who know how many heavens there are and how many hells.

Buddha does not give you doctrines, he does not give you dogmas. He is not a bit interested in giving you philosophies of life. His whole concern is one: how to make your mind clear, how to impart clarity to you so that you can see unhindered, so your eyes no more carry any dust, so your eyes are without dust and you can see through and through as things are.

Ordinarily whatsoever you see is your projection. That's what you call existence -- you project. The existence functions only as a screen and the projector is inside you, and you go on projecting your desires, your imaginations, your hopes, your dreams, and you go on seeing things which are not there.

People go on to the very end projecting. Even if you meet them after their death you will find them in the same mess.