Buddha

Buddha tried to talk only about Self-Realization

Buddha tried to talk only about Self-Realization and not about God at all. But His followers as they are always one better than the other, tried to create a Buddhism of their own style. And in this Buddhism, whatever He had told, they did observe it. Firstly He thought if there is ritualism and puja an all that, before Realization where will they land up? So He said, “All right, you do not do any puja to Me! Do not build any monument in My name! You should not worship anything!” So what did they do? They are worshiping His teeth, they are worshiping His nails, they are worshiping His hair.  Without Self Realization, all this worship took them to very ‘dark’ areas, worshipping the dead spirits of people. That’s how we find the Buddhists, who are nowhere near Buddha. Like if you go to Japan, you can’t believe they can be Buddhist. They are supposed to be Buddhist – Buddha who is the compassionate. Then we have got Chinese who followed Buddhism. They couldn’t understand Buddhism either. And we have Tibetans where we had these horrible lamas and we had other people in Ladakh and all that. They are all doing nothing else worshiping the dark side of dead spirits. So even His advent amounted to the same thing as everybody’s.

Now Buddha told three things which are very important, which are very useful for Sahaja Yogis to follow. He said, “Buddham Sharanam Gachami. – I surrender myself to the enlightened one.” Means what? I surrender myself to the one who is enlightened. In this case one can say it was Buddha. In your case it is your Spirit. You surrender yourself to your Spirit. “Buddham Sharanam Gachhami.” Buddha means the one which knows. Then He says another thing, “Dhammam Sharanam Gachami” means surrender yourself to the religion, which is true religion, which is the balance. Now as you see, all these man-made religions are so funny and you can’t make much out of them. You can’t explain if these are religions or these are Mafias. The reason is, Buddha said, “You surrender yourselves to Dharma.” So the Buddhist thought, “surrender to Dharma” means what you have to do is to become like Buddhist – means wear a dress like a Buddhist, like Buddha used to wear. You don’t become by wearing that dress Buddha, do you? Or then they thought, “We should do something more.” So some Buddhist got hold of a wheel, because He talked of a wheel-of-life and all that. Absolutely, I should say, very unintelligent way of understanding Buddha. And they would go on, you see, moving that wheel like mad. You can’t talk to them. You say, “Now, where is that road?” “Buddha.” (Laughter) “How do we go there?” (Laughter) Everything has an answer. So I said, “Please answer Me.” “This is the answer.” So what is this answer going on? Then these people thought we should find out new methods. So some of them took to again Upanishadas and started using also from there, making jataka kathas like the stories which are very absurd, funny stories, mysterious stories, this story, that story.

At the same time Hinduism took another funny role and they had a big assault of tantrikas. And when the tantrikas came in they brought all kinds of ugly, horrible things in the – say about the sixth century it started. And a complete belt starting beyond Calcutta going towards Dwarika, complete belt got involved into tantrism. So the same Buddhist later on, followed the same tantric methods. So they tried to bring in everything from this place, that place and a mixture, so now if you ask, “Now what’s your religion?” they say, “I’m Buddhist.” “What Buddhist?” – “Dinayan, hinayan…. I’m Zen – this, that, all kinds of Buddhism is there. Is impossible to understand really where is Buddhism there. So what do these do? One will shave their hair. One will shave their moustache. Another one will wear this kind of a dress. (Shri Mataji laughing) This is the only difference between from one to another. But the common point is that they are all cheats, they all can deceive you, they can tell lies without feeling funny. They are very sly, very cunning and suicidal. They can be very violent and the only desire they have is to kill everybody who comes across. This is where Buddha’s Buddhism has ended up.

Shri Buddha Puja. San Diego (USA), 23 July 1988.