He is fulfilling his love desire, but it cannot be fulfilled that way. Love, whenever it happens, brings attention with it like a shadow, but attention does not bring love. Attention can come in a thousand ways. You can create some mischief and people will pay attention to you. The need of the politician and the criminal is the same.
The criminal also wants the same thing – attention. He murders and then his picture is in the newspapers, his name is on the radio, he is on the TV. He feels good. Now everybody knows who he is, now everybody is thinking about him – that he has become a name in the world. The famous and the notorious both seek the same thing.
Buddha is absolute love. He has loved existence, existence has loved him. That’s what samadhi is, when you are in an orgasmic relationship with the total. He has known the total orgasm – the orgasm which is not of the body and not of the mind either, but of totality, not partial. He has come to know that ecstasy. Now there is no need to ask for any attention from anybody.
He will pass you on the road and you will not be able to recognize him because you recognize only politicians, criminals and people like that. You can recognize a madman on the road because he will be creating mischief, but you will not recognize a buddha. Buddha will pass so silently, without a whisper. That is his chief characteristic, to be as if he is not. But if that is the chief characteristic – to be as if one is not – then he has no characteristics.
That’s what Buddha means when he says:
Yes, Subhuti…. For the Tathagata has taught that the dharmas special to the buddhas are just not a buddha’s special dharmas. That is why they are called the dharmas special to the buddhas.
The extraordinariness of a buddha is his utter ordinariness. His ordinariness is his extraordinariness. To be ordinary is the most extraordinary thing in the world.
Just the other night I came across a very beautiful story about Saint Francis, a buddha.
Saint Francis of Assisi lay on his deathbed. He was singing, and singing so loudly that the whole neighborhood was aware. Brother Elias, a pompous but prominent member of the Franciscan order, came close to Saint Francis and said, “Father, there are people standing in the street outside your window.” Many had come. Fearing that the last moment of Francis’ life had come, many who loved him had gathered together around the house.