Be a light unto yourself: ‘Appo dipo bhava’. This teaching of Lord Buddha is an eye opener. Buddha says to be a light unto oneself one should not be guided by the so-called beliefs of society as all beliefs are non-scientific and hence of no value. Belief simply means to escape a scientific approach. A scientific mind doesn’t accept, it goes on researching.Scientific approach means to have a doubt and when doubt creeps in, one automatically proceeds to explore the truth. Doubt is the means and the search and exploration of truth is the end. Buddha has laid emphasis on the very term doubt and states it is doubt which propels one to be on the way of search or shodh. It is this shodh which makes a man arrive at truth, at what scientists do. Lord Buddha wants to save humanity from being turned into humanoids. A humanoid is a human being that is incapable of knowing himself and all his ideas are borrowed, nothing original. A humanoid lives in a state of unconsciousness — no awareness, no awakening, nothing at all. Belief and truth are poles apart — they are two separate entities. Belief enslaves the mind whereas truth liberates the mind.Buddha says that what is needed is to surrender oneself completely, that is, to drop one’s ego. If a man is living in the midst of ego, that means he is living in utter unconsciousness. Once the cloud of ego is dispelled, the inward journey will automatically start — one has to go nowhere nor be guided by the so-called beliefs. He becomes a light unto oneself. So surrender is the only way to be a light unto oneself. Buddha says if one surrenders, he becomes a light unto oneself. If he becomes a light unto oneself he becomes capable of surrendering and remembers there are no contradictions in it, it’s complementary and actually helps.‘Appo dipo bhava’. Be a light unto yourself. That was his constant teaching, the undercurrent of all his teachings and for this he always laid emphasis on surrender. When people came to be initiated they would have to declare triple surrender: ‘Buddham sharanam gachchhami’ — I come, I surrender myself to Buddha’s feet; ‘Sangham sharanam gachchhami’ — I surrender to the commune of the sanyasins; ‘Dhammam sharanam gachchhami’— I surrender to the fundamental law of life, logos, tao, dhamma.But what Buddha added along with this is rather more important and that is ‘Don’t go by the experience of others, not even by my experience. It should be your own experience. Be a light unto yourself’.
