Anandatirtha,
Out of his own device and deception,
He devised it in such a way that he will always be in Gautama's physical presence.
Gautama warned him,
This is not good to fix up life like this.
You are fixing me up like a wife would fix her husband.
Because Anandatirtha,
Being Gautama's elder brother,
Before he took his monkhood,
He put a condition on Gautama.
He said,
Right now I am your elder brother.
I can command you to do whatever I want,
But once I become your disciple,
I will have no such power.
So let me exercise this right.
And now I am telling you,
After I become your monk and your disciple,
Never should you send me away from your physical presence.
I must always be in your physical presence.
Never you should say,
Go there,
Do that,
Do this.
Always you must keep me next to you.
Gautama said,
You are trying to fix me up like a wife.
Never you should love anybody.
Never you should do this.
This is not good for you.
This is not at all in the interest of your well-being.
But as an elder brother,
You are asking me,
And if you insist,
I will abide by this.
But I'm telling you,
This is not good for you.
Ananda said,
It doesn't matter,
But I must be in your physical presence.
He stretched it to ridiculous lengths.
This wanting to be in the physical presence of Gautama,
He stretched it to ridiculous lengths.
It came to a point where after eight years break,
Gautama went back to see his wife,
Who was his wife at least,
Yashodhara.
Yashodhara is a very proud woman.
Gautama being her husband at that time,
And Yashodhara with an infant child,
Gautama left the house without telling her in the middle of the night like a thief.
He did that because he admitted that he did not have the courage to face her.
If he looked her in the eye,
His determination to go in search of truth may falter.
If he looks at his child,
When the child is awake and calls him father,
His longing to know may falter.
So he left in the night.
Now he is going back after eight years,
A fully enlightened being,
But he is sensitive enough to appreciate the emotions of Yashodhara,
How she would have felt and how she is still angry with what happened to her life.
What happened to Gautama's life is fantastic.
What happened to Yashodhara is not a good thing.
He knows that.
So he is going there to see what he can offer to her now to compensate for what she has lost in these eight years.
So it is a sensitive situation.
So he told Ananda,
This once,
Relieve me from the promise that I made you.
This is not for myself.
For me,
She is no more my wife.
I have grown beyond those things.
But for her,
I am still her husband who deserted her without telling her,
Without giving a warning about it.
So this is a sensitive emotion for her.
She is a proud woman.
It is not good for you to be there.
Ananda said,
You must keep your promise.
Gautama bowed down and said,
Okay.
And he took her,
Took him there also into that situation.
When Yashodhara saw that he has come with an assistant monk to face her,
She just flew into a rage.
Gautama knew this.
He said,
This once,
Relieve me of this promise that I made.
This is nothing spiritual that you are going to miss anything.
This is about my wife.
He said,
No.
Then towards the end of Gautama's life,
Gautama's work created many enlightened beings.
But Ananda was still the same man.
One service he has done for us is,
He recorded everything,
Events that happened according to his understanding.
But he recorded everything very diligently.
So people asked,
Why is he still like this?
So many people just came and met you for a moment and they got enlightened.
They have transformed themselves in so many ways.
But he is always sitting next to you and why is he like this?
Gautama just said,
A spoon cannot taste the soup.
What you refer to as the guru is just a certain energy,
Certain possibility.
It's not the person.
So the physical presence,
Is it important?
It is very important.
But the physical need not mean the physical body.
The grace is not a airy thing.
We can make it very physical.
It's as physical as the breeze that you feel.
It's as physical as the sunlight.
Initially,
When a person is just beginning to become receptive,
Being in the physical presence of the guru becomes very essential because your way of perception is only seeing and hearing and five senses.
Because of this,
You want to hold him in your eye.
You want to hold him in your ears.
This is the way you know he's there.
Yes,
It is a necessity in the beginning.
But you need not remain there all the time.
He will be very physically present in different ways.
It is the light that matters.
You don't have to hug the light bulb.
You don't go and hug the sun,
Do you?
You enjoy the sunlight,
It's nourishing your life.
You don't even look up at him,
Still you enjoy the sunlight.
Just that way.
Right now,
It is… a certain person has become a representative of that energy and that space.
The nature of the guru is not limited to time and space.
So,
It is not because you sit next to the light bulb,
You get the maximum light.
You could be a thousand miles away and you may receive more grace than the person who is right now sitting next to that person.
The guru is on all the time,
Speech or no speech.
But you pay attention to him only when this worldly man is speaking.
If you learn to pay attention to him all the time,
You will see he is very physically with you.
Very physically,
As physical as sunlight,
As physical as the breeze that you feel.
I think that much physicality is enough.
More than that,
It could be a trap.
