WRITINGS BY THE MOTHER
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust

2 October 1957

"In what way can the teaching of the Buddha now be an obstacle or help to humanity on the path of supramentalisation?"

Everything that helps humanity to make progress is a help, and all that prevents it from making progress is an obstacle!

In fact, you are asking this because we study and meditate on the Dhammapada.... [Note: For some months, every Friday in the younger children's class Mother used to read a few verses from the Dhammapada, the most sacred text of Buddhist Teaching.] Naturally, I took this text because I consider that at a particular stage of development it can be very useful. It is a discipline which has been crystallised in certain formulas and if one uses these formulas profitably, it can be very helpful, otherwise I wouldn't have taken it. How helpful depends on each one. It depends on whether one knows how to profit from it or not.

And then, the last question:

"Sri Aurobindo has said that the Buddha was an avatar...."

We have said this several times already.

And then, here it becomes very mysterious:

"Apart from the teaching of the Buddha, what remains of his personality in the world?"

(To the disciple who had asked the question) Why do you make this distinction?

When he entered into Nirvana, it was said that his teaching would now remain in the relics.

In the relics! Well, then that means the two things go together. [new p. 198]I don't see why you separate them. There is something of his [old p. 197]influence in his teaching, naturally! It is the teaching that transmits his influence in the mental field.

His direct action, apart from his teaching, is limited to a very few people who are very fervent believers and have the power of evocation. Otherwise, the most important part of his action, almost the whole of his action, is associated, united, fused with his teaching. It seems difficult to make a distinction.

(After a silence) The forms of Divine Power which have incarnated in different beings, have incarnated with a specific aim, for a specific action, at a specific moment of universal development, but essentially they are only differentiated aspects of the One Being; therefore, it is in the particular purpose of the action that the difference lies. Otherwise it is always the same Truth, the same Power, the same eternal Life which manifests in these forms and creates these forms at a given moment for a specific reason and a specific aim; this is preserved in history, but eternally they are new forms which are used for new progress. Old forms can endure as a vibration lasts, but their purpose historically, it could be said, was momentary, and one form is replaced by another in order that a new step forward may be taken. The mistake humanity makes is that it always hangs on to what is behind it and wants to perpetuate the past indefinitely. These things must be used at the time when they are useful. For there is a history of each individual development; you may pass through stages in which these disciplines have their momentary utility, but when you have gone beyond that moment you ought to enter into something else and see that historically it was useful but now is so no longer. Certainly, to those who have reached, for instance, a certain state of development and mental control, I won't say, "Read the Dhammapada and meditate on it"; it would be a waste of time. I give it to those who have not gone beyond the stage where it is necessary. But always man takes upon his shoulders an interminable burden. He does not want to drop anything of the [new p. 199]past and he stoops more and more under the weight of a useless accumulation. [old p. 198]

You have a guide for a part of the way but when you have travelled this part leave the road and the guide and go farther! This is something men find difficult to do. When they get hold of something which helps them, they cling to it, they do not want to move any more. Those who have progressed with the help of Christianity do not want to give it up and they carry it on their shoulders; those who have progressed with the help of Buddhism do not want to leave it and they carry it on their shoulders, and so this hampers the advance and you are indefinitely delayed.

Once you have passed the stage, let it drop, let it go! Go farther.

Collected Works of The Mother, First Edition, Volume 09, pp. 196-98