"Off The Center"

 

    Man has a center, but he lives off of it – off the center. That creates an inner tension, a constant turmoil, anguish. You are not where you should be; you are not at your right balance. You are off balance, and this being off balance, off center, is the base of all mental tensions. If it becomes too much, you go mad. A madman is one who has gone out of himself completely. The enlightened man is just the reverse of the madman. He is centered in himself.

    You are in between. You have not gone completely out of yourself, and you are not at your center either. You just move in the gap. Sometimes you move very, very far away, so you have moments when you are temporarily mad. In anger, in sex, in anything in which you have moved too far away from yourself, you are temporarily mad. Then there is no difference between you and the madman. The difference is only that he is permanently there and you are temporarily there. You will come back.

    When you are in anger it is madness, but it is not permanent. Qualitatively there is no difference; quantitatively there is a difference. The quality is the same, so sometimes you touch madness and sometimes, when you are relaxed, totally at ease, you touch your center also. Those are the blissful moments. They happen. Then you are just like a Buddha or like a Krishna, but only temporarily, momentarily. You will not stay there. Really, the moment you realize that you are blissful you have moved. It is so momentary that by the time you have recognized the bliss it is finished.

    We go on moving between these two, but this movement is dangerous. This movement is dangerous because then you cannot create a self-image, a fixed self-image. You do not know who you are. If you constantly move from madness to being centered in yourself, if this movement is constant, you cannot have a solid image of yourself. You will have a liquid image. Then you do not know who you are. It is very difficult. That is why you even become afraid if you are expecting blissful moments, so you try to fix yourself somewhere in between.

    This is what we mean by a normal human being: he never touches his madness in anger and he never touches that total freedom, that ecstasy, either. He never moves from a solid image. The normal man is really a dead man, living between these two points. That is why all those who are exceptional – great artists, painters, poets – they are not normal. They are very liquid. Sometimes they touch the center, sometimes they go mad. They move fast between these two. Of course, their anguish is great, their tension is much. They have to live between two worlds, constantly changing themselves. That is why they feel that they have no identity. They feel, in the words of Colin Wilson, that they are outsiders. In your world of normality, they are outsiders.

    It will be helpful to define these four types. First is the normal man who has a fixed, solid identity, who knows who he is – a doctor, an engineer, a professor, a saint – who knows who he is and never moves from there. He constantly clings to the identity, to the image.

    Second are those who have liquid images – poets, artists, painters, singers. They do not know who they are. Sometimes they become just normal, sometimes they go mad, sometimes they touch the ecstasy that a buddha touches.

    Third are those who are permanently mad. They have gone outside themselves; they never come back into their home. They do not even remember that they have a home.

    And fourth are those who have reached their home... Buddha, Christ, Krishna.

    This fourth category – those who have reached their home – is totally relaxed. In their consciousness there is no tension, no effort, no desire. In one word, there is no becoming. They do not want to become anything. They are, they have been. No becoming! And they are at ease with their being. Whatsoever they are, they are at ease with it. They do not want to change it, do not want to go anywhere. They have no future. This very moment is eternity for them... no longing, no desire. That does not mean that a buddha will not eat or a buddha will not sleep. He will eat, he will sleep, but these are not desires. A buddha will not project these desires: he will not eat tomorrow, he will eat today. 

    Remember this. You go on eating in the tomorrow, you go on eating in the future; you go on eating in the past, in the yesterday. It rarely happens that you eat today. While you are eating today, your mind will be moving somewhere else. While you will be trying to go to sleep, you will start eating tomorrow, or else the memory of the past will come.

    A buddha eats today. This very moment he lives. He does not project his life into the future; there is no future for him. Whenever future comes, it comes as the present. It is always today, it is always now. So a buddha eats, but he never eats in the mind – remember this. There is no cerebral eating. You go on eating in the mind. It is absurd because the mind is not meant for eating. All your centers are confused; your entire body-mind arrangement is mixed up, it is mad.

    A buddha eats, but he never thinks of eating. And that applies to everything. So a buddha is as ordinary as you while he is eating. Do not think that a buddha is not going to eat, or that when the hot sun is there he is not going to perspire, or when cold winds come he will not feel cold. He will feel it, but he will feel always in the present, never in the future. There is no becoming. If there is no becoming there is no tension. Understand this very clearly. If there is no becoming, how can there be any tension? Tension means you want to be something else which you are not. 

    You are A and you want to be B; you are poor and you want to be a rich man; you are ugly and you want to be beautiful; or you are stupid and you want to be a wise man. Whatsoever the wanting, whatsoever the desire, the form is always this: A wants to become B. Whatsoever you are, you are not content with it. For contentment something else is needed – that is the constant structure of a mind that is desiring. When you get it, again the mind will say that ”This is not enough, something else is needed.” 

    The mind always moves on and on. Whatsoever you get becomes useless. The moment you get it, it is useless. This is desire. Buddha has called it TRISHNA: this is becoming.

    You move from one life to another, from one world to another, and this goes on. It can continue ad infinitum. There is no end to it, there is no end to desire, desiring. But if there is no becoming, if you accept totally whatsoever you are – ugly or beautiful, wise or stupid, rich or poor – whatsoever you are, if you accept it in its totality, becoming ceases. Then there is no tension; then the tension cannot exist. Then there is no anguish. You are at ease, you are not worried. This non-becoming mind is a mind that is centered in the self. 

    On quite the opposite pole is the madman. He has no being, he is only a becoming. He has forgotten what he is. The A is forgotten completely and he is trying to be B. He no longer knows who he is; he only knows his desired goal. He doesn’t live here and now, he lives somewhere else. That is why he looks crazy to us, mad, because you live in this world and he lives in the world of his dreams. He is not part of your world, he is living somewhere else. He has completely forgotten his reality here and now. And with himself he has forgotten the world around him, which is real. He lives in an unreal world – for him, that is the only reality.

    A buddha lives this very moment in the being and the madman is just the opposite. He never lives in the here and now, in the being, but always in the becoming – somewhere on the horizon. These are the two polar opposites. 

    So remember, the madman is not against you, he is against the buddha. And remember also, the buddha is not against you, he is against the madman. You are in between. You are both, mixed; you have madnesses, you have moments of enlightenment, but both are mixed.