When Gossip is Global, Time for Truth to Go Viral

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When Gossip is Global, Time for Truth to Go Viral

But the time has come where our ability to communicate is such we can make truth slip through every door. We can make truth knock on everybody’s minds and hearts. Never before this was possible. Technology has rendered us to this place. I feel this is the best age ever to make truth mainstream, to be truthful, to aspire for truth, to seek truth. The main force on the planet because we have tools that nobody ever had. The first time in the history of humanity that even truth can be gossiped about. You can start a global gossip on the Facebook and make it reach everywhere. Now that gossip has gone global, truth should global because for always this has been the realities of societies. What happened in your house that nobody was supposed to know the entire neighborhood knew somehow.

This is the power of gossip. The more you don’t want it to reach your neighbor, for sure, it will go. It is time that truth is taken off from laborious verses of scriptures and rehashed as gossip so that everybody will want to listen. Nobody wanted to listen to the sacred verses, but if you rehash it as gossip, everybody wants to know what is it about. The only thing is gossip picks up momentum, not only in its reach, but also in its content as it goes. From one person to another, it adds. That person to another, it adds. Globally managing gossip is going to be a bit of a challenge, but we can keep dressing it down. As it picks up volume, we can keep trimming it down. It’s possible to do that.

In a season like this in the northern part of India, right now almost 50% or 60% of the Indian subcontinent, more to the east, is receiving heavy rains. This is the time. The monsoons start from here, just as the crow flies, maybe 60 to 80 kilometers to the coast. That’s how close we are. It begins here and travels across India diagonally, going up northeast. Right now, that part of the country is receiving heavy rains. In a season like this, Gautama, the Buddha, with a large group of his disciples who was continuously travelling, made a rule that during the monsoon season, those two and a half months, you can stay in the same place.

The rule for the sannyasis or the monks who were with him is you should never stay in any place for more than two days. Normally, the monks were sheltered in many homes, so this rule he passed, more than two nights you don’t stay in one house because it will be too much of a burden for the host. They’re housing ten people. You don’t stay there for a month. Two days. It should have been one day. Two, because you have walked a long distance and come. Bit of recovery time. During the monsoon season, he said, up to two to two and half months, you can stay in one place because walking through the jungles of that region during the monsoon season would be treacherous and many would lose their lives.

This is a time like that. They stayed in a large town and they were spread across in many homes. The monks went out to get their alms from the people. Ananda, as he was known, who happened to be Gautama’s elder brother before his monkhood, went out and there was a courtesan or a prostitute in the town. She give him alms, looked at him, a handome young man, tall and straight. She said, “I hear that monks are looking for shelter in many homes. Why don’t you come and stay in my house?” Ananda said, “I have no issue, but I must ask the Buddha as to where I should stay.” Then she became really taunting. She said, “Oh, you’re going to ask your guru? Go and ask him. Let’s see what he says.”

So Ananda got what he had collected for the day. Gautama was sitting. He came and placed it at his feet. Everybody’s supposed to find food and shelter wherever they go. Ananda asked like, “This lady is inviting me. Can I stay there?” Gautama said, “If she’s inviting you with so much affection, you must go stay there.” The townspeople who were sitting here, they said, “What? A monk is going to go and stay in a prostitute’s home. This is it. This villager process has become corrupt.” Gautama looked at them and said, “Why are you so worried? The lady’s inviting him. Let him stay. What is the problem?” They all started getting up and started shouting.

He said, “Wait. I am on this path because I see this is the most powerful way to live. Now you’re telling me her ways are more powerful than my ways. If that is the truth, I will also go and join her. I’m here because I see this is the most precious and powerful way to exist. If you think her ways are better than mine, I should also go and join. If you are a true seeker, that’s how it should be. If you find something much higher, you go for that.” Then people shouted and many of them, of course, leave. Then Ananda went and stayed with her.

Monsoon time because of rains, it gets cold. Monk is wearing a thin habit, so she gave him a nice silk wrap. He covered himself. Then people said, “See. He’s gone.” She made nice cooking and gave it to him. He ate. Then, in the evenings, she danced for him. He sat, watching very carefully, with utmost attention. Then, when they heard the music, “This is it. Finished.” Things went on. When the time was up, when the rain stopped, when it’s time to move, Ananda came to Gautama along with a female monk. The power of being on the path of truth has been there, but has been many times at its height but never got mainstreamed.

I see that today because of our ability to communicate because of the tools of technology, the natural longing, the innate longing in a human being to find truth, this is not a taught thing. This is not something that being taught to people that you must seek truth. It is natural for human intelligence to seek what is highest. If you are given an option, any human being, given an option, either to be here or there, he will always say, “I want to be there.” Right now, he may be caught up here, but aspiration is to go to whatever is the highest. It is just that we have to show him that there are better highs than getting drunk. There are better highs than drugs. There are better highs than being caught up in social drama. There are better highs than being better than someone else. We just have to show it to him. We have to make him understand there is a better high.

Forever, many sages, saints, yogis, gurus have been doing this, but as I said, they were gentle people, didn’t have a voice a like me. They didn’t have a microphone. They didn’t have tools with which they could speak to somebody there. They could only speak to people here. In spite of that, they did tremendous things. For their times, many of them did tremendous things out of sheer grace and energy. Millions of people around them, they transformed. Millions of people around them, they put them on the path of truth, on the power of truth.