insensitive man

Everyone learns sooner or later that to be sensitive is to be vulnerable to many things. You pull yourself in; you create a barrier around you that is a safeguard – a safety measure. Then you can go on through the streets. Beggars are begging and there are dirty ugly slums, but you do not feel anything, you do not see really. In this ugly society, one has to create a barrier around himself, a wall – a subtle, transparent wall – behind which he can hide. Otherwise it will be very difficult to live.

That is why insensitivity sets in. it helps you to be in this ugly world without being disturbed, but then at a cost – and the cost is very much. You are at ease in this world without being disturbed, but then you cannot enter into the divine, into the Total, into the Whole. You cannot enter the other world. If for this world insensitivity is good and for that world sensitivity is good, that creates the problem. If you are really interested in entering that world, you will have to create sensitivity. You will have to throw all these walls, these securities.

Of course, you will become vulnerable. You will feel much suffering, but that suffering is nothing in comparison to the bliss you can reach through sensitivity. The more sensitive you become, the more you will feel compassion. But you will suffer because all around you there is hell. You are closed: that is why you cannot feel it. Once you become open, you will be open to both – to the hell of this world and the heaven of that world. You will become open to both! And it is impossible to remain closed at one point and open at another because, really, either you are closed or you are open. If you are closed, you are closed for both. If you are open, you will be open for both. So remember this: a Buddha is filled with bliss, but also filled with suffering.

That suffering is not of his own. It is for others. He is in deep bliss, but he suffers for others. And Mahayana Buddhists say that when Buddha reached to the door of Nirvana, the gatekeeper opened the door (this is a myth, and very beautiful), the doorkeeper opened the door, but Buddha refused to enter.

The doorkeeper said. “Why are you not coming? For millennia we have been waiting for you. Every day the news comes that Buddha is coming, Buddha is coming. The whole heaven is waiting for you. Enter! You are welcome!” Buddha said, “I cannot enter unless everyone else has entered before me. I will wait! Unless every single human being has entered, heaven is not for me.”

Buddha has a suffering for others. As for himself, he is now deep in bliss. See the parallel? You are deep in suffering, and you go on feeling that everyone is enjoying life. Quite the contrary happens to a Buddha. He is now in deep bliss, and he knows that everyone else is suffering.

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