This part seems to be mythological because there is no god of the clouds and rainbows, but it is significant in the sense that Mahavira was not angry. On the contrary he said, “Up to now, my silence was only half – I was not speaking but others were speaking and I was hearing. And nature has not provided any way to close your ears just as you close your eyes, so he was certainly a very good man and he has done me a great service. He has now made my silence complete.”

Such silence, which is complete, is the direct way.

This way is no other than the realization of your own mind.

The word mind is from his old habit as a teacher, but he is using it with a capital M, and that is equivalent to no-mind. The old mind is no longer there, but he uses the word out of habit.

Teachers have used, instead of mind, transcendental mind, Mind with a capital M. But a man who is not a scholar will simply say, “There is no mind anymore…why do you even talk of transcendental mind?”

That which is not – you cannot transcend it. He is still carrying dead bones; what he wants to say is right, but his old habits of speaking are there and he is still using them.

He says,…the direct way to become a buddha…

But nobody ever becomes a buddha. That is the language of the scholar, the teacher, the preacher, the philosopher. The experience of the existential man, the original man, is that you are always a buddha. You may not recognize it, you may even deny it, but that does not matter. A fish can deny the ocean because the fish has never known the ocean. It has been born in it, it has lived in it and one day it will disappear in it; it is just a solid wave.

There is an ancient Sufi story….

A young philosophically minded fish starts inquiring, “I have heard so much about the ocean. Where is the ocean?”

Nobody could answer. They were all in the ocean. All around was nothing but the ocean. An old fish said to the young philosopher, “Ocean and we are not separate. You are the ocean. We are just waves in the ocean.”

You need not become a buddha. You have just to be silent, to experience that which is already there.

Now, what is this Mind? – again, with a capital M. He is trying to make a distinction but it would have been better to ask, “What is this buddha-nature? What is this consciousness?” The word mind can be deceptive.

It is the true nature of all sentient beings…

His description is correct, that’s why I say he has come home – of course he is late, but he has arrived.