Every day you have to be vigilant. Living in this world is like living in the enemy country. A very strict law applies to you even if you’re not a citizen of this world. So even if you’re a Bodhisattva or Buddha Who has come down to this world, you will suffer also. Especially if you interfere with the karma of other people, other beings on this planet. If you try to help them in any way at all, it’s not too good. So, many of the humans retire. They retreat into a high mountain, or thick jungle, stay there, practice meditation or read sutras alone. Learning alone either by books or later, in a higher level, they contact directly the Heavenly Beings or Ascended Masters and learn with Them. Though they don’t like to mingle with humans, maybe sometimes they do just for paying some karma from last lives or something. Or it has to be like a process. So sometimes they are in the mountains. They practice for many, many years maybe, and sometimes they come down for a couple of years or a year or a few months, it depends. Or just go down and come back.
If you practice like that, you don’t even have to worry about karma or anything because in that type of meditation, that type of practice, you’re not allowed to interfere with any being’s karma on this planet. Not at all. Not even a worm’s karma, little karma. You don’t even feed the bird-people. You don’t do anything. You don’t love. You don’t show affection to or worry about anybody at all. You just worry about yourself and connecting with Heavens inside while you are meditating or living alone in your spiritual endeavor. You might stay with two or three people, maybe with your Master and a couple of other brothers and sisters, meditate together, eat simple. Or sometimes you practice well and you don’t eat anymore; you don’t need. Something like that – possible. And then you will have more power, at least. And you don’t even have to die, or maybe you can live a long, long time. Like in some old legends, you have been told in some stories that this and that man lived forever, or for many hundreds of years! And nowadays, if somebody can live over one hundred years, people celebrate already, and newspapers come, television takes a clip, and all that.
In old times, people lived long, long, long – some thousands of years. That was normal. There are some people who still practice such a method. The Quan Yin Method is good for you – the best – because we don’t have a lot of time in our busy lives to study such a practice. The Buddha studied such a practice – one of those practices. So that’s why He told Ānanda that He could live forever, or at least some thousands of years, with His body intact. Or Babaji in the Himalayas, He also lived so many hundreds of years already. And one of my Masters lived four hundred and some years. Not anymore. At that time, it was four hundred and some years already. Some can live some hundreds of years; some don’t want to live longer.
I don’t really want to live longer. If I have to, I will. But I really… Sometimes, some days, I prefer just to go Home. Because sometimes it’s just too overwhelming for this physical body and mind – truly like that. Not that I don’t love you guys, but this world has not much attraction for me. Even if I could live a long, long time, hundreds or thousands of years – in that case, if I could, if I chose to do that, it would be probably out of love only. And only if God wants me to do that; otherwise, I would prefer to have just a normal human life and then just go Home. Don’t blame me.
It would be nice if you could live long and don’t need to worry about anything. But in this physical world, there are many things to make you worry – the war, the pandemics and the vicious people. Humans! Your own human race people, if they happen to discover that you are special, oh man! They would spare no means to harass you, to slander you. Even though you don’t even know them – you never knew them, and you’ve never done anything wrong to them – they would track you down and trace you out and give you trouble, no end – giving you names, or beating you up or poisoning you, all kinds of things.
Milarepa had very few disciples because He listened to His Master. His Master told Him, “You just go to the mountain. Meditate alone. Don’t bother with humans because most of them just want material things. They just ask You to bless them for those things, the mundane stuff, and waste Your time and energy. Don’t bother.” So, most of the time, Milarepa just stayed in the mountains. Even if He had nothing to eat, He just ate nettles, I think. The one that has a lot of spikes and if you touch it, you will have itchy skin. It could be very uncomfortable. If you want to eat that, you have to use a glove or something to handle it. After you boil it, it’ll be ok. And that is, I think, one of the most nutritious vegetables that you can get – maybe even the best, one of the best, full of nutrition. So even if you just eat that, you’ll survive. It’s just like Milarepa did, and He became all green because He kept eating just that. And it dyed also His hair on His body green as well, so some people asked Him whether He knows He is a human or He’s a devil or demon. But I do not advise you to eat just that.
In the Himalayas, where Milarepa was, it was mostly very cold with not a lot of vegetable leaves where He was in a cave in the high mountain. When I was in the Himalayas, I also had to look for some wild vegetables, little things that grow in the mountains. But there’s not a lot there either. And you just eat raw in some places because you can’t cook. The air is so thin; when I tried to cook, it took forever. It didn’t seem to even want to warm up. You have to find good, good wood, really dry; otherwise, it just doesn’t go anywhere and takes forever. And I didn’t have good pots or pans or anything like that. I told you I had only one little plate, just like a mold for a birthday cake, sponge cake. That kind of dish will have a wall on it, and then I can cook chapati with it, and I can also boil water to drink. And I had a little cup, also, very small. And later on, I gave them all up. I sold them because I couldn’t carry them for too long into the Himalayas. That’s all I had. But I was happier than now.
At that time, I didn’t see much of the world’s suffering. Except when I was in the Himalayas, I saw the laborers had to carry humans – some elder humans or some rich people didn’t want to walk or they were scared to walk – and they had to carry these people up into the high mountains. The ice was under them, and sometimes they slipped, and it was terrible. Their shoes were all broken. It’s not like they had good sports shoes like we have for climbing. And even if you have sports shoes like I had, they are all soaked after a while. My feet were swollen and wet and cold. Every day, if you walk in the Himalayas, you have to expect that because you walk in the snow. It’s still there, some snow, but not like thick because the army already roomed (cleared) it away. But still, new snow is coming and some rain is coming, and in some places there’s still some snow and ice, so the water from the snow will melt into your feet and wet you, and you can’t just stop there to change shoes. I didn’t have any other shoes. I was luckier than those laborers. Laborers just wore plastic shoes and all were broken. Oh, my heart… Only then, my heart felt so, so, so much pain. But otherwise, there’s nothing that will make you feel suffering in the Himalayas where you’re walking around or in some ashram. You don’t see suffering much.
It mostly feels very spiritual, wherever you go in the Himalayas. Even the people who live there, they’re also very religious. At least they believe in God, and they pray or they count the beads. And like in Rishikesh, it’s only vegetarian. I didn’t see eggs either, so these vegetarians mean maybe only having milk, fresh milk; they milk the cow-people by hand. Maybe in the big city or somewhere far away, they would have a cow-people factory or something. I never saw one. I only saw cow-people walking very freely and leisurely on the street anywhere. And if they’re in the middle of the lane there, oh, poor cars, all have to stop until they get up, or somebody will try to get them up and walk away. That is how I saw cow-people in India. That’s why when I was in India, I thought the people drinking milk was OK. I didn’t have a lot of money to buy milk, but sometimes if people made milk tea already, I drank some, because I didn’t feel guilty or anything at that time.
I didn’t know much about the cow-people factory that tortures them so much, hooks them up to all the machines and squeezes them out, makes them pregnant to have milk again until even their intestines and stomach come out and they cannot even walk anymore. This is how cruel we humans can be. Please think about it and turn away from animal-people meat – from murder. Murder of the innocent, like the cow-people – they’re so sweet, gentle. They are big. They could even kill you in one instant, but they never do that. So why should we be less noble and gentle than a cow-person, who has all the strength but never uses it to harm? And we don’t have strength as big as a cow- or elephant-person, but we try all day, all night, thinking of how to kill these innocent animal-people in order to get their tusks or their skin, or their meat and eat them; even some eat raw, bloody dripping in the mouth like that. Who are we like that? Please think of your noble self. You are the children of God. You have Buddha Nature inside; you’re a future Buddha. Please act like one!
Photo Caption: The Strong Doesn’t Oppress the Weak We Look Different, But Our Essence Is the Same.
