The Most Fundamental and The Primary Question - Answered by Buddha

One day Buddha came into his assembly of the monks. It must have been just a morning like this. His sannyasins were sitting and waiting for him. They were puzzled because this was for the first time that Buddha had come with something in his hand – a handkerchief. They all looked at the handkerchief. What was the matter? There must be something special in it. And Buddha sat on the platform and rather than starting speaking to the assembly he looked at the handkerchief, started tying a few knots in it, five knots in all.

The whole assembly watched – what is going on? And then he asked the assembly, ”Can anybody tell me: is this handkerchief the same as it was before the knots were tied?”

Sariputta said, ”This is a tricky question. In a way the handkerchief is the same because nothing has changed, in a way it is not the same because these five knots have appeared which were not there before. But as far as the inner nature of the handkerchief is concerned – its nature is concerned – it is the same; but as far as its form is concerned it is no more the same. The form has changed: the substance is the same.”Buddha said, ”Right. Now I want to open these knots.” And he started stretching both ends of the handkerchief farther away from each other. He asked Sariputta. ”What do you think? By stretching farther will I be able to open the knots?”
He said, ”You will be making knots even more difficult to open because they will become smaller, more tighter. ’

Buddha said, ”Right. Then I want to ask the last question: what should I do so that I can open the knots, the tied knots? How I can untie them again?”

Sariputta said, ”Bhagwan, I would like first to come close and see how in the first place the knots have been tied. Unless I know how they have been tied it is difficult for me to suggest any solution.”

Buddha said, ”Right, Sariputta. You are blessed, because that is the most fundamental question to ask. If you are in a certain fix, the first thing is how you got into it rather than trying to get out of it. Without asking the most fundamental and the primary question, you will make things worse.”

And that’s what people are doing. They ask, ”How we can get out of our sexuality, greed, anger, attachment, jealousy, possessiveness, this and that?” without asking, ”How in the first place we get into them?”

Buddha’s whole approach is, first see how you get into anger. If you can see the entrance, the same door is the exit; no other door is needed. But without knowing the entrance if you try to find out the exit you are not going to find; you will get more and more desperate. And that’s what people go on doing. In the scriptures, what are you looking for? – solutions. You create the problems – and the solutions are in the scriptures! Why don’t you look at the problems yourself. How you create them?

Why don’t you watch when you are creating a certain problem? And you create every day, so it is not a question that you have to go back. Today you are going to be angry again, today you will feel again the sexual urge: see how it arises, see how you enter into it, how you get hooked into it, how it becomes so big like a cloud that surrounds you and you are lost in it. And then you go to ask others! You are functioning almost like a stupid bee. Bees can be forgiven, but you cannot be forgiven.

If you are in a certain fix, the first thing is how you got into it rather than trying to get out of it. Without asking the most fundamental and the primary question, you will make things worse.

All We Need is a Story - That Perfect Story

All everyone want in their life is to write a story. A book with lots of chapters, lots of pages. They turn pages around so that they can finish that story at their own pace - sometimes slow, sometimes fast just so that one day they can look back and smile. But you are sometimes just stuck onto that one page. People around them finish their book or move on with some other story but you are just stuck.

We all want that story. We all want that perfect resolution to satisfy our curiosity. But is that a story?

Sometimes all we need to do is stop thinking and stop sabotaging reality for the sake of fiction. Sometimes in our head, real life is not as good as a story. We don't actually want to complete that story in that particular moment, we are stuck instead and just want a possibility of the story getting completed and that's what keep stopping us to turn that page. We think of that story as a destination but reality is that we never want to go there. This whole thing takes time to be accepted and it fucking sucks. Somehow we think we want to complete that story but get stuck at this page the whole time. No story can happen if we are not willing to turn the page. We just hold onto this possibility and before we know the reality, the rest of the world is gonna finish reading their book or start reading a new one. So instead of being stuck at same page, reading it over and over again. Let's just not be scared and evolve ourselves. There are certain things that will never disappear. May be those things are untouchables. Those memories, those people in time of their lives - they are untouchables but the story needs an ending.