The buddha represents dhamma, truth, in two ways. Verbally he communicates with the students; nonverbally, through silence, through energy, he communicates with the disciples. And then there comes the ultimate unity where neither communication nor communion is needed, but oneness has been achieved -- where the master and the disciple become one, when the disciple is just a shadow, when there is no separation. These are the three stages of growth: student, disciple, devotee.

 

MEDITATE ON THE THREE THINGS NOT TO BE DESTROYED.

 

The buddha, the sangha, the dhamma, meditate over these three things not to be destroyed. The world will be very much against all these three things; the world will be bent upon destroying them. Those who love truth, those who are real seekers, inquirers, they will do everything to protect these three things.

 

First, the buddha. Why does the world creates so many difficulties for the buddha whenever he appears, in whatsoever form? He may be Krishna, Christ, Atisha, Tilopa, Saraha; he may appear in any form. By buddhahood I mean awareness, awakening. Wherever awakening happens, the whole world becomes antagonistic. Why? -- because the whole world is asleep.

 

There is an Arabic saying: Don't wake up a slave, because he may be dreaming that he is free. Don't wake up a slave; he may be dreaming that he is free, that he is no more a slave.

 

But the buddha will say: Wake up the slave! Even though he is dreaming beautiful dreams of freedom, wake him up and make him aware that he is a slave, because only through that awareness can he really become free.

 

The world is fast asleep and people are enjoying their dreams. They are decorating their dreams, they are making their dreams more and more colorful, they are making them psychedelic. Then comes a man who starts shouting from the housetops, "Wake up!" The sleepers feel offended; they don't want to wake up, because they know that once the dream is gone they will be left with their misery and suffering and nothing else. They are not yet aware that behind their misery there is a source of joy that can be found. Whenever something like awakening has happened to them they have always found themselves utterly miserable. So they want to remain drowned in something, whatsoever it is; they want to remain occupied.

 

The teaching of the buddhas is: Find time and a place to remain unoccupied. That's what meditation is all about. Find at least one hour every day to sit silently doing nothing, utterly unoccupied, just watching whatsoever passes by inside. In the beginning you will be very sad, looking at things inside you; you will feel only darkness and nothing else, and ugly things and all kinds of black holes appearing. You will feel agony, no ecstasy at all. But if you persist, persevere, the day comes when all these agonies disappear, and behind the agonies is the ecstasy.

 

So the first thing: whenever the buddha appears the world is against him. The world is fast asleep, dreaming, and the buddha tries to wake people up. There are a thousand and one other reasons why the world wants to destroy a buddha, and why Atisha is saying:

 

MEDITATE ON THE THREE THINGS NOT TO BE DESTROYED.

 

Had Jesus' disciples known something like this they would have tried in every way to protect Jesus, but they were not aware at all. Jesus could live only three years as a buddha. He could have lived to a very old age, he could have helped millions of people on the path, but the disciples were not aware that a great treasure was in their possession and it had to be protected and guarded.

 

There are many reasons. One reason why people are against is because whenever a buddha appears in the world he is unique, he cannot be compared to any other buddha of the past; that is the problem. People become accustomed, slowly slowly, to the past buddhas, but whenever a new buddha arrives he is so new, so unique, so different, that they cannot believe he is a buddha because they have a certain conception.

 

Those who have known Mahavira, how can they recognize me as a buddha? -- because I am not standing naked. Those who have seen Jesus, how they can recognize Atisha as the buddha? -- because Atisha is not curing the ill and helping the dead to be raised again, is not helping the blind to see. Atisha is a totally different kind of buddha; he is not serving the poor, his work is on a totally different plane.

 

The Christian cannot recognize Buddha as a buddha. What to say of the Christian -- Mahavira and Buddha were contemporaries, but Jainas don't recognize Gautam Buddha as the awakened one, and Buddhists don't recognize Mahavira as the awakened one. They were contemporaries, in the same province, sometimes lived in the same town and once stayed in the same SERAI. But each buddha has a unique quality, incomparable; hence no previous buddha can be used as a criterion. That creates difficulty.

 

Buddhas are unrecognizable, because your life has no experience through which you can recognize a buddha. The sexual person can recognize the sexual, the money minded can recognize the money minded, but how can you recognize a buddha? You don't have any experience of awareness. In the buddha you will only see reflected your own mind. It is natural.

 

The buddha is uncompromising; that creates trouble. He cannot compromise. Truth cannot be compromised with any lies, comfortable lies. The buddha seems to be very unsocial and sometimes antisocial. The buddha never fulfills any expectations of the multitudes -- he cannot; he is not here to follow you. There is only one way: you can follow him if you want to be with him, otherwise get lost! He cannot fulfill your expectations. Your expectations are foolish, your expectations are your expectations -- out of unawareness and blindness. What value can they have?

 

The buddha is always rebellious, antitraditional, nonconformist. That creates trouble. The buddha does not belong to the past; in fact, the future belongs to the buddha. He is always before his time, he is a new birth of God.

 

All these things are enough for the society of the blind, mad, power-hungry, ambitious egoists, all kinds of neurotics, psychotics -- it is enough for them to be together and to destroy any possibility of there being a buddha.

 

And they are also against the sangha -- even more so. They can tolerate a buddha if he is alone; they know, what can he do? They have tolerated Krishnamurti more easily than they can tolerate me. What can Krishnamurti do? He can come and talk and people listen, and people have been listening for fifty years and nothing has happened -- so he can talk a few years more; there is nothing to be worried about him.

 

I was also alone, traveling all over the country from one corner to the other corner almost three weeks every month on the train, on the plane, continuously traveling, and there was not much problem. The day I started sannyas the society became alert. Why? -- because to create a buddhafield, to create a sangha, means now you are creating an alternate society; you are no more a single individual, you are gathering power, you can do something. Now you can create a revolution.

 

So people want to destroy all communes. Do you know, communes don't have long lives; very rarely do communes survive -- very rarely. Millions of times communes have been created, and the society destroys them sooner or later, and more sooner than later. But a few communes have survived. For example, Buddha's commune still continues -- not with the same purity, much garbage has entered into it. It is no more the same crystal-clear water that you can see at Gangotri where the Ganges is born. Now the Buddha's commune is like the Ganges near Varanasi -- dirty, dead bodies floating in it, all kinds of garbage being poured into it. But still it is alive. Many have completely disappeared.

 

For example, no commune of Lao Tzu survives, no commune of Zarathustra survives. Yes, a few followers are there, but they are not communes. No commune of Saraha, Tilopa, Atisha, survives. They all had created communes. But the society is really big, huge, powerful; when the master is alive maybe the commune can survive, but once the master is gone the society starts destroying the commune from all possible directions.

 

Atisha says:

 

MEDITATE ON THE THREE THINGS NOT TO BE DESTROYED.

 

And the third is dhamma, the truth. The world is against the truth, the world lives in lies. Lies are very comfortable, very secure, cozy, and you can create lies according to yourself, according to your needs. Truth is never according to you; you have to be according to the truth, and that is difficult. Many chunks of your being will have to be cut so that you can fit with truth. Your ego will have to be dropped so that you can enter into the temple of truth.

 

Lies are perfectly beautiful, cheap, everywhere available. You can go shopping and you can purchase bagfuls of lies, as many as you want. And the best thing about them is that they fit with you, they never require that you should fit with them. They are very friendly; they don't require anything from you, they don't demand, they don't ask for any commitment. They are ready to serve you.

 

Truth cannot serve you, you will have to serve truth.

 

Atisha is giving you a great insight. Particularly for my sannyasins it has to be remembered, meditated upon. The buddha is here, the commune has started happening, the truth is being shared. Now it is up to you to help it survive, to protect it, so that it can live long and serve humanity long.

 

And the last sutra:

 

MAKE THE THREE INSEPARABLE FROM VIRTUE.

 

Let this be your virtue, your religion: serving the buddha, serving the commune, serving the truth. Let this be your only virtue, your only religion.

 

Enough for today.

 

- Osho, "The Book of Wisdom, #17"